June 11, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

What is it You’re Trying To Do?

Q: What is it You’re Trying To Do?

A: Wow. What do you mean by that?

Q: Why did you move here?

A: Well, it was Grandma’s house. Almost every Christmas of my life has been here. It was available, affordable and emotionally satisfying. Plus it’s a good place to raise the kids.

Q: But can’t you do all that without the animal work?

A: Oh. Well…I mean…I guess. I could rent the fields to another farmer who may or may not farm in a way I approve of. He could spray whatever out there, abuse the ground in whatever way, cause erosion and pay me for the abuse but isn’t it better if I just manage it myself?

Q: So what are you managing?

A: Well, I can grow forage without even trying. I mean, it’s silly how easy it is to grow forage. I just depend on free sunlight and free, occasional rain. But grass isn’t worth much so it really doesn’t matter how much I can grow unless I can find a way to add value to it. Right now we’re using cows to convert that grass into beef and milk. Milk isn’t worth a whole lot. Beef isn’t worth a whole lot. But they are worth more than grass. Further, using cows to mow saves me from mowing. Grazing, trampling and manuring also help more grass to grow than would otherwise be there so that means I’m fixing more carbon than my farm would otherwise…so I get a happy green feeling inside. So, to answer your question, I guess you could say I’m managing grass.

Well, except I jokingly refer to myself as the “Head Farm Steward” (a title I am anxious to hand to one of my much more capable children). Stewardship has little to do with cattle or grass. It means I’m accepting that I am in charge of a few resources for a short time and have to do my best to increase those resources. That means more dirt, more carbon, more grass, more earthworms, more dung beetles…but it also means more money. I mean, 5 talents or 5 acres, I want to hear, “Well done.” We are currently using grass to convert sunlight, sunlight and time to convert beef into dollars. Would we see more increase if I planted forests to passively fix carbon, absorb sunlight, mine nutrients out of the soil and create value? Maybe. Dunno. Would it be better to open a composting facility? Dunno. Would it be better to build an array of hog floors, haul in nutrients, add value to corn and haul out manure? Maybe…maybe not. That sounds like a lot of work. Also, it sounds like a lot of manure for my few acres to metabolize.

At any rate, “management” sounds/feels different than “stewardship”. I wish you had asked me what I was stewarding. That’s an easy question. I’m stewarding land that has been in my family since 1843. My land surrounds the graves of my mother’s fathers. In a way, I’m honoring the work they did when had their turn on this land. Honoring my father and mother…well, my mom’s father and mother. Dad’s side are all buried in Eastern Tennessee.

The “what” question takes us to the “how” question. That takes us back to grass and cows…and chickens. …and ducks. …and a small orchard. …and children. …and an alarmingly small amount of money. And it’s the money I am working on growing as I find that it helps with so many problems. And that’s why I need sunlight, rain and cows. And that’s why we need Eddie Van Halen (bonus points if you got that reference without using Google).

But here we are. Taking things of lesser value and adding value to them. Chicks to chickens. Chicken feed to eggs. Logs to lumber. Sunlight to grass. Grass to beef. Girls to women. Boys to men (ABC BBD (…mmmm hmmmm)).

So now I ask you, Are you adding value to something each day? Are you conscious of your need to steward your resources and seek increase?

June 7, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

Fly Predators

Every year our white house is covered in black flies. The kids take fly swatters out and make a sport of killing 10 or 12 in one swat. Not this year.

This year I got on the Spalding Labs site to buy fly predators. When they arrived, we waited for them to start hatching then released them in groups in each of the recent grazing areas. The idea is that they will attack flies in the pupae stage, flying up to 150 feet to find more. Every 30 days through September the company will send more fly predators so every 30 days we’ll go behind the cows, dropping more predators on manure pats.

Fly populations are already getting strong but I hope we’re far enough ahead of the curve to have a fighting chance. I suspect we’ll have to start earlier in the spring next year. This year we’ll just run with what we’ve got.

June 6, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

Strawberry Picking

It’s time. Strawberries are coming in full force. And just because she’s not wearing a ring doesn’t mean you should go getting ideas. It wears her out to carry that enormous rock around all day…lol.

Last year I planted strawberry plants with the Jeavon’s grid in a 20′ row, 4′ wide. In the fall I had so many runners I planted the other 20′ of the row. Both ends of the row are very, very productive this year. Because the row is 4′ wide we can easily reach in 2′ from each side to pull the few weeds that come through or pick the berries.

Now, having extolled the virtues of 4′ rows, I’m not entirely sure I’ll do it again. Weeding is a breeze, fertility is high, maintenance is low but I wonder if I wouldn’t get more berries if each plant got more sunlight. I may plant two rows in a 4′ space when I plant runners in half of the next row (where the onions and cabbages currently are.

Pay no attention to the pale leaves on my blueberry plants. I planted into part of grandpa’s rock collection and the soil is a little chalky. I’ll get the acidity up in time. Bear with me.

Mulberries are ripening, dewberries are just around the corner. Broccoli and Cauliflower are finishing up and I need to plant beans in that row. Maybe I could hire someone to go to my job for me…

June 2, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

Fescue World Domination

Well, not world domination but…my pastures anyway. Our friend from SailorsSmallFarm asked the following question:

So, probably a dumb question, but if they never eat the fescue, since it’s clearly the boring food in their salad bar, and just trample it in, won’t it eventually dominate the pasture?

Not a dumb question but before I answer I offer a disclaimer: I think this is an exciting topic. If you don’t think growing grass is exciting…come back tomorrow. I’ll try to put up pictures of kittens soon as those seem to be popular on the internet. The short answer is, no matter what your forage base, rainfall, livestock, temperature…it’s all up to your skill at grazing management to maintain forage diversity. As a small point of correction, cows DO eat the fescue. However, at certain points in the year fescue adds a measure of difficulty to grazing. For the long answer we have to look closely at fescue.

What’s wrong with Fescue?

Rather than answer that question immediately I’ll start with what is RIGHT with fescue. It may be some of the very best forage I can grow. First, it’s durable. Horses can eat it down to the dirt, pigs can root through it, making a muddy soup of the soil and it will grow back and will grow thick, tall and lush. Second, it’s an excellent forage for your winter stockpile. It has a waxy coat and the green of fescue growing in healthy soil survives long past frost and even into freeze. From the West Virginia Extension Service:

There is seldom a problem when tall fescue is used as part of a forage system containing other forages, with the tall fescue being used primarily in the spring and winter seasons. The best use of tall fescue is for late fall and winter grazing.

So I just have to make sure I’m offering them other options besides pure fescue. No problem.

Back to the winter forage idea, Joel Salatin also emphasizes the value of winter feed in Salad Bar Beef by suggesting you add chicken manure to your stand in the late fall to help the fescue stay green into the freeze. It may be only a maintenance ration but it really lasts. He points out that frosted fescue goes up to 14% sugar. Pretty good winter eats.

So what’s the problem?

Toxicity. If you do a little research you’ll find out that Fescue will knock the hooves off of your cows and cause them to abort calves by raising their body temperature on hot days. It lowers circulation causing tips of ears and tails to turn black. Scared yet? Should you be? I don’t know. Joel Salatin doesn’t warn his readers of imminent cow death in Salad Bar Beef. Neither does Greg Judy. But both men maintain diverse swards. This paper lists three options for dealing with fescue and two of them include spraying it with a strong herbicide until you win then replanting. Greg Judy discusses this briefly in No Risk Ranching saying he tried. The first 3 or 4 years after replanting, the pasture was soft and pugged quickly. The 5th year it was dominated by fescue again. But the first option listed is “dilution with legumes.” This is what Greg Judy says to do in No Risk Ranching by seeding red clover into stands of fescue after grazing them hard in the fall/winter. More on this later.

Many plants, if eaten in isolation, are toxic. Walt Davis says this even includes alfalfa. But, when eaten together with other species…even other toxic species, the toxicity of each decreases. So, is the endophyte in my fescue stand an issue? It can be but primarily if it’s a pure stand of fescue. It limits weight gain in hot weather, limits milk production…not good, right? Right. But it can be managed by making sure I have a diverse sward. And good news…I do…well, mostly…ish.

How do I maintain that diversity? By making sure all plants have a chance to reach reproductive maturity. Rather than grazing the whole pasture at once and allowing the cattle to stick to favorite grazing and loafing areas, overloading nutrients in some places, overgrazing forage in some places and allowing brushy overgrowth in others, all of my pasture gets grazed, manured, stomped on and rested fairly evenly in a rotation. That means the cows can’t return to graze the clover or ryegrass out of my pastures before it has a chance to recover and re-establish itself and also weeds that would normally be ignored and allowed to grow are either eaten or stomped into oblivion.

Trampling…any carbon will do.

It’s the stomping into oblivion that I find most interesting. The soil is hungry. How about that? It’s hungry. Soil is alive. It needs to eat. If I scoop up all the growing grass, bale it and haul it away what is left to feed the soil? The roots that are pruned off of the plant but not much else. When the cows step, stomp, jump, run and otherwise disturb the soil with their hooves they are pushing organic material down. That could be manure, grass, weeds, tree branches, dead bugs…whatever is out there. It will be broken down by microorganisms and added to the soil structure by worms, moles, mice, dung beetles….things that physically work the dirt. But I have to have something in contact with the soil. If the cows are allowed to eat it all I get nothing. Cows are not inclined to eat fescue down to the ground. They are more inclined to eat a little fescue along with everything else growing out there and knock the remaining fescue to the ground. Perfect. At around the 9 minute mark of this podcast Ian Mitchell-Innes says:

Do not eat everything. In fact, the more you tread on the ground, the more your return over time because the carbon you put on the ground will be worth more to you, in the long run, than the animal.

He also goes on to say that as soil health increases you’ll see darker greens and more leaf material. All that extra nutrition punched down into a 4″ circle of soil by 1,000 pounds of beef leads to healthy soil in a number of ways. The additional organic material helps the soil retain moisture…in fact, helps it to soak up more water before allowing runoff. With water and food, microbial life in the soil explodes. Legumes do a good job of fixing nitrogen but microbes do too, then they are eaten by worms. A healthy worm population can eat 40 tons of dirt each day…but they won’t be a healthy population unless I feed them and feed the things they like to eat. And it’s mostly the fescue that gets stomped, tromped and abused. From an article about Greg Judy:

The Judys may get another advantage particular to their area from leaving so much forage behind. Their primary forage base is endophyte-infested fescue. It appears their cattle eat less of it, including fewer of the “hottest” plant parts — the stems and seed heads — when they are moved frequently and not made to “clean up” all the forage. That fescue then contributes organic matter and ground litter to help build the soil.

So I just have to make sure the good stuff is out there to eat as they tromp down the mature fescue. How do I do that? Where the stands of fescue are the most thick I’m grazing in narrow strips because narrow strips = higher residual while wide strips = higher forage utilization. I want to knock down as much as I can as the cows race through the stand looking for something to eat. But the real secret comes before they graze and tromp. I overseed annuals and legumes into the stand. Then the cows tromp those seeds into the soil and I have additional diversity just in time for the next grazing cycle. Beyond the use of annuals I need to keep up a program of frost seeding red clover until I reach the point where the tall grass grazing will enable established stands of red clover to re-seed themselves. Here’s another article about Greg Judy:

Judy focuses on utilizing the existing seedbank that is stimulated by the heavy impact of mob grazing to initially promote the resurgence of a polyculture. If there is no legume seedbank, an initial seeding of clovers and other legumes may be necessary. One established, tall grass grazing will ensure the legumes will reseed themselves, and reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizer.

Rest, Nutrient Distribution and Pasture Diversity

If the cows are allowed to run the pasture in a set-stocking situation, they will find places where soil nutrition is high and the grass tastes good and will eat it down to the roots. They will find stands of bluegrass, bromegrass, rye, clover or wild oat and they’ll eat it all each time it begins to recover. They will find tasty saplings and eat them as fast as they can recover. Over time I’ll be left with a pasture full of cow paths, weeds, briars and thorny trees that tolerate grazing well, not to mention fescue. I will have very little clover, very little wild oat, very little rye or bromegrass. I say this from direct observation. Left to their own, cows will travel long distances (making paths) for one little bite of grass. The sod will be poor as the root systems won’t develop to their potential. Manure will be largely concentrated in the loafing areas. Loafing areas will be compacted. I could keep going. I am describing my farm as I bought it. Grazing a mob, the cows ignore a fair portion of the fescue I offer them but they do eat some along with other, tastier forages. The animal density puts a hoof print in at least every square inch, manure in every square yard and more is better. Then they are forced to move on, leaving manure, trampled waste and stubs of tasty forages behind for 40-90 days. In those 40-90 days those forages have an opportunity to fully recover. They may even develop a seed head. If I have managed my grazing correctly, the grazing action of cattle will help those species to gain ground in their territorial battle against other species or at least fill in the spaces between plants. I have clover where I have never seen clover before. I have fewer thistles than I have ever seen (in fact, I have watched my cows eat thistle). Bromegrass, rye, foxtail, wild oats start showing up in unexpected places. Dandelions fill in the holes along with a variety of weeds I have never seen and can’t always identify…but there they are. Impact is the tool but rest is the key. Not just the time between grazings but the time between pastures. Almost a third of my farm is held in reserve and is outside of the regular rotation…and I will rotate that third each year. This gives room for ground nesting birds to do their thing, allows native prairie grasses the chance to go to seed, builds deep, tangled root systems and provides a forage reserve in case of drought. All of those things are positives.

Observation, Change, Control and Experimentation

How do I know if I have managed my grazing correctly? How do I know if this is working? There is no set formula for this. No predetermined function allowing me to pass in cows, land and time to return pasture health and diversity and profitability. So how do I know if I’m using the time tool, the land tool and the cow tool correctly? I observe…daily if possible. I define a goal. I shoot for that goal. I review my progress, make adjustments and continue moving forward. Sometimes it works and nobody notices. Sometimes I fail miserably and I look like an idiot or, worse, animals get sick. That’s not the goal. I make adjustments and move on again. What if I seed millet and cowpeas into the pasture before the cows trample the ground? What if I frost seed red clover every year? What if I don’t? The forage will change over time. I have to monitor those changes. I am an active part of the grazing program. The herd will change over time. Some cows will do better than others even without changing breeds. David Hall of Ozark Hills Genetics relies on the best performing cows passing their genetics on to future herd members. Cows that can’t tolerate our conditions will ultimately get culled from our program. Fescue is just part of our program. Am I worried that fescue will take over the world? Well, it already has…at least on my farm. Now I have to give a competitive advantage to other species and leverage the strong points I see in fescue. Over time the pastures will change…for better or for worse. Each year the weather will change…for better or worse. I’ll just have to accomodate those changes and roll with the punches. But since Joel Salatin and Greg Judy can live with it, I can make it work. Right now the focus is on knocking as much of it down as I can to build soil health while also establishing a healthy stand of clover. That should keep me busy for a couple of years. Now, if you want a little homework, study up on midwestern pasture grass identification with me.

May 23, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

Adventures in Childhood

Let me put together several recent conversations I had with my kids into a single narrative.

“Dad, what did you study in college?”

“Well, I majored in Biology…though I have a liberal arts degree. That means I took more classes than I could have, with a wider focus than you might suspect but still spent 40 hours/week dissecting dead cats and sharks for Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy. I also had a job on campus caring for animals in the Biology department. I raised rats and mice, cared for the snakes and lizards and cleaned the salt-water aquariums. But mostly I tried to convince your mother that I was the right guy for her while working several jobs at once so we could finish college with minimal debt.”

“Snakes?”

“Well, yes. But also salamanders and frogs and turtles. In fact, when we look through Tom R. Johnson’s book, “The Amphibians and Reptiles of Missouri” I have observed or collected nearly everything pictured short of the toads that are only common in Western Missouri.”

“Yeah, but…Snakes?”

“Yup. Snakes. Lots of them. Most of the snakes that live here are safe to handle and, if you are careful how you act around them, actually seem to like it. To them, you’re just a warm tree. Tom Johnson’s book indicates that there are probably 3 Prairie Kingsnakes for every acre. Now, to be sure, ask me before you go picking up snakes. There are a few around here that can really hurt you and one you may be allergic to. Here, hold this Prairie Kingsnake. ”

“Where did you find it?”

“The neighbors are cultivating their field to plant beans. That ruined his habitat so he was crossing the road looking for a new home. Since we have acres and acres of grass he’ll probably find a home here.”

And that’s how it goes. We talk about stuff. We go out and do stuff. We take pictures of stuff.

Beyond the wildlife, there’s cool dead stuff out here too! My cousin’s bull died in the creek two or three summers ago and with the recent rains the bones resurfaced. It’s an exciting time of discovery…and work. They dig for cow bones in the creek bed then haul them over hill and dale to our back porch. I think they want to re-assemble them…like I need a bull skeleton in my living room. Hmm…let me know if you want a cool bull skeleton in your living room. We haven’t found the skull yet.

But it’s not all work. Sometimes it’s just fun to get wet.

Or pick up a dead frog. Whatever.

Moving out here wasn’t necessarily the best financial decision we could have made but none of the children in our former subdivision have excavated cow bones from a creek bed. I drive a long way to work each day. I think it’s worth the sacrifice. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my kids will be in therapy after years of helping butcher chickens, swimming in creeks, fighting off ticks and going potty in a bucket. Who knows. Maybe they would have been in therapy if we had lived in the suburbs and taken them to ballet. At least they will be physically strong and healthy as they sit on the therapist’s chair. Maybe they’ll give the therapist something interesting to listen to for once. There is the very real possibility that my kids will be able to handle what life throws their way…that they will be well-adjusted, thoughtful, caring, curious, intelligent men and women of God who don’t need a therapist, just a little time for reflection in the woods.

May 22, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

Strolling Through the Pasture May 2013

I’ll start off by making a loop around the cemetery hill then we’ll head North. Looking toward the cemetery I’m standing in grass that won’t be grazed for about 2 weeks…but what a difference two weeks makes. Compare this picture with this one taken two weeks later with this one taken another two weeks later. What a difference two weeks makes. Closest to the cemetery is ground that was grazed two weeks ago. Recovery is happening but it really didn’t get trampled as well as the pasture in the foreground.

The fescue is tall but the other grasses have a lot of growing ahead of them before I can graze them again.

Maybe this is a better picture. The cows ate whatever this was right down to the ground. That’s my fault, not the cow’s fault.

We grazed across the remaining bottom ground South of the branch then crossed the branch and grazed it out. You can see the line where we put electric fence 2-3′ inside of the perimeter fence. I really didn’t want my cousin’s Angus bull to get any opportunity with my Shorthorns.

Also notice the abundance of honey locust trees. I’ll be busy next winter.

Cows grazed the best out of this, trampled quite a bit but we still didn’t have enough pressure on the land. Too much fescue was left standing. But there was a section in the middle that got missed in the grazing rotation. The diversity of species there is amazing and shows where the above picture started. A good stand of red clover and a mix of weeds including goldenrod, burdock and multi-flora rose but there was a total lack of chicory and dandelion. Maybe because it’s wet, sandy bottom ground. Who knows.

Notice none of the fescue heads were nibbled off. Yup. We messed up. Oh well, we’ll trample it hard when we come through again in June.

The next area was grazed a little over two weeks ago. Portions of it are recovering well, other portions are totally dominated by white clover and the recovery is slow.

Back to the South the bottom ground is recovering well. A fair portion of the growing green stuff is goldenrod but this has been a weedy mess for years. Two years ago (maybe three?) the 6 of us spent an evening with a tractor pulling hundreds of saplings our of the bottom then I mowed it (I mowed because I didn’t have cows). Now I’m hoping to continue improving the stand by way of cows. Check in again in a couple of years to see.

The stand is recovering well but there are a lot of hoof prints. We got more than a foot of rain toward the end of April, several more inches at the beginning of May. I would guess we have had 16-20″ of rain in the last 6 weeks. Anyway, hoofprints…

Follow this link to see the flood water standing in the bottom. This is the same area (side view) today (…well, Sunday).

Up the hill, my fallen tree is getting lost in the grass. I thought the grass was tall last time we grazed here. I have never seen this much grass here before and am anxious to see what it looks like in another month when the cows return to it.

Now we have made the loop and we’re back to the cows. They have nothing to say to me and are clearly unafraid. None of them want to snuggle with me but the dairy cows are nearly pets. The others know I’m the guy who can move the fence forward, I mean nothing else to them. Look carefully at the picture and you can see the next division we’ll open up the next morning. Two fences behind the cows. We just roll those two cross fences backwards then push the water and the back fence forwards leaving 2-3 days of grazing area under the cows at any given time.

A little further South, looking South I can see the few acres I have set aside for drought. By my measurements I am actively grazing less than 10 acres with 8 heifers and two calves. I have 4 acres set aside as a reserve along with odd patches of hilly, wooded areas I don’t care to pasture heavily. Add to that 3 or 4 acres of alfalfa (well, mostly alfalfa….well, mostly alfalfa and orchardgrass…well, mostly alfalfa and orchardgrass and a few bare spots where the chickens killed the plants standing in mud during days of heavy rainstorms) that we’ll use for hay. I hope to graze this pretty hard starting in July and again in November or December. The plan is to set aside a portion of the farm each year for stockpile. This gives my main pastures additional recovery time just when they need it and builds standing forage for winter grazing. I’m not exactly making this up as I go along but I am playing by ear. Stay with me as I learn. Anyway, straight ahead of the brush pile is an old bridge. The stream flows from right to left under the bridge. Everything across is set aside for July.

Now moving West we come to the place the pigs were in March. It’s hard to hurt fescue…

…but there are some spots where the pigs managed to set it back. Those spots are dominated by chicory and dandelion. I’ll need to work to get more clover growing here going forward. There is always more to do.

We’ll just have to wait and see what the cows eat here in a few weeks. Hopefully it’s not too stale. I may follow Gabe Brown’s advice and sew in cowpeas, sunflowers and millet as the cows stomp through, then winter annuals when they go through again in the fall. Who knows. Again, playing by ear here.

In spite of my best efforts to build big grazing areas early and cover the farm quickly I fell behind. It all got away from me. Now I’m slowing down a little, trampling more grass with narrow grazing strips and just hanging on. The plan is to double our herd size next year as our farm triples in size. Yeah, I know…but you have to work within your budget.

How is your grass growing?

May 21, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

4 Inches in 45 Minutes

4″ in less than an hour. That’s a lot of rain. The storm was not intense, it just rained a lot in a short amount of time. The basement filled with water but that’s another story.

The stream was up 5′ above where it is now, which was about another 5′ in elevation from where the cows were pastured. Looks like the whole bottom was a stream briefly.

All of our wide collection of driftwood was moved. The barrier fences on both ends of the branch will need to be cleaned out and maintained. But the good news is we’re covered in grass. While the neighbor lost a lot of soil from cow paths and bare dirt, I suspect we trapped soil. I especially like the protein tub pushed against the fence in the first picture.

Looks like the pasture wasn’t hurt, just the fences. We’ll deal with what comes our way.

May 20, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

Morning Grazing May 2013

One day. Just one day. This is the first paddock of second grazing of the growing season. We raced across the farm through late March, April and early May, now we are beginning to slow down. I’m asking the cows to work through a somewhat narrow grazing area, trampling around 60% of the standing forage, eating 30% and leaving 10% standing.

They seem just as happy as can be. They mob up, as much as 6 cows can mob up, and march across whatever fresh ground I give them then lay down to chew their cud.

Looking forward a bit, in about two weeks we’ll be here:

The cheat that is growing there will be absolutely unpalatable by then but the crimson clover out there should help. They’ll just trample what they don’t eat but the cheat will stick to their socks.

Sooner or later the cows will be on the South slope of the hill. That slope is hot, fairly steep and covered in cow paths. In short, it doesn’t grow a lot of grass. The hill is mostly clay and is hard packed. We’re just praying for weeds to break up the clay.

I have to make sure this has recovered as much as possible before we graze it, not for the sake of the cows but for the sake of future grass here. I need healthy grass, deep roots and more microbes. We’ll have to manage it carefully to clean up these spots.

Will it work? I have the cows I have, right cows or not. I have to put the cows I have in the right place at the right time for the right length of time while allowing time for the rest of the farm to recover. And while managing for pasture diversity. No pressure.

I think we’re getting there. In case I mess up I have about 4 acres in reserve. Gotta have a backup plan.

What’s your backup plan? How does your pasture look?

May 6, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

Regularly Scheduled Simplification

There is only so much I can ask of my wife. She is intelligent, beautiful and strong. She cooks, cleans and cares for all 5 of her dependents (including me). She teaches the children. She washes, sorts and boxes the eggs. She runs her own business, continues her ongoing education as well as that of the children and keeps the farm running when I go sit in the A/C at a desk job. It is important that we simplify things as much as possible…that I stack the cards in her favor. She is strong but she has a hard time moving chicken tractors. She is willing to work hard but tires out long before I do. There are only so many hours in a day and I can’t expect her to be able to do everything I can do. So we have to simplify.

What do I mean by that? Recently we took possession of 6 new heifers. Now, six heifers doesn’t look like much on paper but it’s a whole new deal for us. Rotational grazing. Mob stocking. Hoping and praying that the green stuff growing in our fields is appetizing to our hooved animals. We have to learn how to move fence, how to move the water tank, how to troubleshoot shorts in our fencing, how to watch for problem weeds and to monitor how full the cows are. Again, on paper, no big deal. But in real life, learning all of that all at once is a bit daunting. Learning all of that while keeping the food cooked, the dishes washed, the laundry folded, the kids educated and the business growing is pretty rough (though she does it all while looking great).

So we simplified. We scheduled our production for the year and made sure several things were finished or on break before the heifers arrived. The broilers are in the freezer. No more chicken tractor chores. The pigs went to market. No more planning and moving pig pastures…or working pig pasture recovery into our grazing schedule. We planned ahead, knowing our spring is busy and staging things out so we could learn new skills away from the pressure of existing skills. Now, there’s no getting away from housework or even garden work but just freeing her from checking broilers 3-4x per day and liberating her from her fear of 300 pound hogs lightens her workload enough that she can afford to focus on these new heifers just when they need it without shorting the kids of the time they need.

The goats were scheduled to be sold in December. The two females finally left today. Once they are gone we’ll be down to just ducks, cows and layers. Over time we’ll work pigs back into the rotation. In the fall we’ll do another big batch of broilers. In between we’ll attend Cattle Grazing University, Chism Heritage Farm campus, and the school of hard knocks. Experience is a great teacher. I have read every grazing book I could get my hands on and I’ve learned more in the last week than ever before.

I think pigs, turkeys, goats and broilers all have a place in our lives, in our business and on our farm but we can only ask so much of ourselves. At regular intervals we plan time to review what we are doing, why we are doing it and verifying that we are making the best use of our time. Are we happy or just busy? It makes me happy to see the pigs run in the pasture. I enjoy butchering chickens with my children. I love our goats. That said, today I’m content to watch the cows eat grass. They have a lot to teach me and require my full attention.

Most importantly, I have to consider my wife. This is our dream, not simply mine. I can’t abuse her with hard labor and expect her to remain enthusiastic.

May 5, 2013 by Head Farm Steward

Hatching a Few Eggs

The duck hatch was so successful we set some eggs from our mostly New Hampshire flock. Somebody gave us a gold laced Wyandotte and a Buff Orpington so those eggs were mixed in as well. We can sift those chicks out as they hatch striped, not a big deal. They started hatching Thursday night and will have to be finished Sunday morning so I can set more eggs.

We are attempting to hatch our own replacement layers this year. Approximately 20% of the eggs we get are not New Hampshire eggs. 50% of those remaining will be males. And we shouldn’t expect to hatch more than about 75% of the eggs we set. That means I probably only get 12 pullets every hatch. I’ll be hatching for a while. It would be better if I would just go separate those two hens from the flock but the kids like the striped chicks.

For now we are brooding in a 300 gallon Rubbermaid trough in the back room. Really, this is just a place to keep the chicks warm until we free up brooder space in the greenhouse. (AKA we kick the ducks out). We’ll need nicer weather before we do that.

This is an awful lot of fun and could be the beginning of generations of NHR chickens on our farm. Their mothers and fathers (plural) have survived 2-3 years of heat, cold, wet and dry. Some of their peers didn’t make it. Hopefully, in a few generations, we’ll have birds that are genetically predisposed to success on our farm.

Red birds? Red cows? I sense a trend.