Still No Internet

Well since we got back from the conference, our internet comes in and out. Mostly out though. We now have not had it for 5 straight days. This is not good if you are trying to do a blog, hence the reason I have not updated for over a week. However, tomorrow they are suppose to come and hopefully fix it for good. Who knows though, they have tried that before. So for now, I can't add pictures since I am having to type this at work. The conference was great though. My wife got to go with me and we both learned so much. She writes much better than me, and she wrote a great summary of what we heard. Here is a link to our family website where it is located. I got a lot of new ideas that I am working on and it has finally quit raining enough to do some work. I will update this week hopefully, internet pending.

Gone For a Bit

This weekend is very exciting for us. Lynsey and I are going to be attending the TOFGA (Texas Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association) seminar in College Station this weekend. We aren't in any hurry to be certified organic and don't even know if that is the route we will venture into, but there is a lot of information to be had here. There are farm tours, exhibits, speakers on hollistic animal care and herd management, soil rebuilding, and many other keynote speakers. It pretty much lasts all day. I feel like I am in college again, which isn't good because I didn't finish that. However, we get to spend the whole day together and learn about good stuff. Can't wait to share.

Got Fruit

This morning it rained 1.3" so once again everything was soaked. What to do with such soft ground? Plant trees. So I planted 3 peach trees, 2 pear trees, and 2 plum trees. I still would like to get some apple trees planted this winter but I haven't found any that were good enough looking to invest in. Eventually, we would like to have our own full fledge fruit orchard including grapes, oranges, raspberries, blueberries, and who knows what else.

I am by no means a tree planting pro but I felt that maybe some people may not know how to go about planting a tree. So this post I will do my best to explain it to those who may need a little assistance. I'm sure that the saying "there is more than one way to skin a cat" applies to tree planting, so if you have any good info please feel free to give it.

First, place the tree in its pot on the ground and cut a hole bigger than the top diameter of the pot.

Once you have the outline cut, remove the circle patch of grass and clean out the hole to where the dirt in the pot will be flush with the top of the ground.

Then once the hole is cleaned out, take a pair of post hole diggers and dig a hole in the hole about 12-18" deep. This is to assist the tap root in developing without making it have to fight through the tough ground. Our ground has a lot of clay so it is very hard.

Then fill the hole you dug with the post hole diggers with a top soil compost mix.

Add compost to the dirt you intend to put back into the hole. Take the root ball out of the pot and place the tree into the hole. Put the compost dirt mix around the root ball but do not over fill the hole covering the tree too much. Only cover up to where the tree was originally in the pot.

Pack lightly, then form the excess dirt in a ring pattern around the filled hole. Stake the tree on two sides and tie with string loosely. Do not tie the string tightly around the trunk and do not tie the string too tightly to the stake. It should have a little give. If you can play a note like a guitar on the string, loosen. Water and enjoy your work.

Pear Trees

Plum Trees

Blackberry Plants

Around the Farm 2

Official count 14. (By end of day 15) She got off them for a long time so either she gave up on them or she is trying to build one huge clutch. Who knows.

Here on Yonder Way Farm, we have roll call every morning. It is a very detailed plan of how today will be ran. Notice how attentive they are. In the middle of it some just began to walk away.

While checking on the pigs, I noticed 3 deer eating rye grass in our next pasture. They pretty much go there every morning, now that deer season is over, right in front of my tree stand. I think some times I see a tongue sticking out and hear "Nana, Nana, Boo Boo, You can't shoot me. Always next year.

The cows are enjoying this paddock much better. It is up on the hill so not near as muddy. I am so ready to get them out of these paddocks and onto the rye grass. I keep telling myself, stick to your plan. Its hard though.

Drinking ACV (apple cider vinegar). For a lot of these cows, this is their first round of ACV. I fear that with the wet weather, we may have an abundance of parasites and worms right now so I have decided to keep them on it for a while. To maintain I will continue giving ACV 3 days out of the month, but to get on top of them, I will keep them on it at least a month. We'll see how the performance of the animals inproves.

This is how you get rich orange yolks. I love seeing the chickens pluck the newly formed grasses and slurp them up. It looks like they are eating noodles. Once again, sad to think that the eggs you eat from the store are from chickens that have never enjoyed grass. This is a feather legged chicken that looks like a big robot when it runs at you. They bound with huge strides.

Thats all I have for now. Its raining this morning so we will have to see how the day unfolds. I still can't get in the pastures to put in water lines so it will be something around the garden or barn.

Hide & Seek

Well for the last week or so I had been noticing that eggs were missing out of the barn nesting boxes. I usually get around 4 in there and for a while I was getting 1-2. Didn't understand it. I looked everywhere. In every box I could find, anywhere with hay, under the trailers, in the bushes. Couldn't find any eggs out of place. Well I did notice a couple of times that a chicken would come out of the new layer house I had cleaned out. So I looked everywhere I thought a chicken may lay. (There aren't many places to lay in a cleaned out building.) Except for one place apparently. Today while going out to feed, I heard a noise and low and behold, a chicken flew up onto the rafters. Then she went up onto this flat area that is the roof of a smaller room at the front of the layer house. Wha la. There she had made the cutest nest with at least 12 eggs in it. She was in such a broody mood that I couldn't get her off to count accurately. So what a pleasant surprise. I have no idea how long she has been setting so only she and the Lord know when these will hatch. I put her food and water up there so that she won't have to go far to leave them. Good thing is its a pretty big area up there so she can stay up there for a while after they hatch to bring them down. I love births.


Then while in the barn, I noticed one of our barn kittens was hiding in a feed pan. I kept waiting for him to say Peeka Boo but he didn't. So I just took his picture instead. We have 4 true barn kittens if anyone is interested. Would be great outside cats. They already are hunting everything.

Dudley rooting

I know I put a bunch of pictures of our pigs but they truly are the life of the farm. It saddens me to think that commercially raised, and confinement pigs never touch a blade of grass in their entire lifetime. It makes me happy to know that these animals get to be in there natural environment, eating natural diets, fulfilling their purpose; to be eaten but having a great life getting to that point.

Who needs a plow?

Are you my mamma?

Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Still waiting for the pastures to dry up in order to finish installing the water lines for the pig pasture. Chance of rain tomorrow so who knows. Won't complain though.

I love Potatos

I don't know what it is about them, but I do thoroughly enjoy them. Potatoes are one of those things that can be cooked so many ways of which all are pretty much yum. I feel that instead of shrimp, Bubba should have went on about all the ways that potatoes could be cooked. If there were only potatoes and eggs to be consumed in the world, I would be a happy man. I even put potatoes in my eggs every morning. I am salivating as I type this just thinking of getting to eat that conglomerate together when I wake up. Oh my.

Grow Baby Grow!!!

Going to try and do the clean potato method on this batch. You make a trench and lightly cover the potatoes. As they grow, you add straw. You keep adding straw as the tubers get longer and then when it is time to harvest the potatoes, they are on top of hay and not in the dirt. "Take a chance, Columbus did." Uncle D.

Today I planted our first batch of potatoes. Last year we planted some and they were the best potatoes I have ever had. So crispy. We eat nothing but red potatoes. They are so much more healthier for you than any other potato; especially the skin. So today I planted about 20#'s worth and in about 6 weeks, I will plant 40 or 50 more pounds. Like I said before, one of my 2008 goals is having a large enough garden this year to support at least 10 families. This is all new to us so we will have to see how it works out. I don't know how much food it takes to feed 10 families but hopefully we will come out ok. Who knows, maybe we will have enough for 15-20.

Now that I have the goats moved to their new home, I now realize how much I enjoy them. They have absolutely no purpose on our farm. As a matter of fact, they are probably the only animal on the farm that will never get eaten. This being said, their only purpose is to have babies, eat, and be loved. Two of them are much more friendly than the other two but I feel they are coming along. I feel that at least 2 of them are pregnant, although I don't know how far along. I feel one should be having a kid anytime. I felt her milk bag and it is full. How exciting will that be. I love the miracle of life, not the movie, and can't wait to see what they look like. These are pygmy goats too so I know they can't help but be cute.

Cute little girls (Thelma & Louise). They keep getting fatter and fatter.

Other female (Anna Bell). Hopefully will have her kid soon

Dr.'s Visit

Yesterday, I moved the cows to a new paddock. Every month, I try to give my cows preventative check ups. This consists of deworming and mineral replacement. I have read a lot about ways to deworm, and we use different methods for our different animals. With the goats, chickens, and pigs, we put diatomaceous earth in their feed. However, with our cows this is different because we don't feed anything other than grass. So in comes Apple Cider Vinegar.

When we first started administering ACV, I would fill the water trough with water and add 1 ounce per gallon of water in the trough. Then I would have to turn the water off, so that when the cows drank, it wouldn't fill back up and keep dilluting the vinegar. The problem was that I had to check the water every couple of hours to make sure it wasn't dry. Sometimes, I would go out and the trough would be almost full. Then other times, it would be completely dry. In comes the Chemilizer.

This makes things so much easier. Hook it up to your water source, drop the pump sciphon in a bucket of ACV, and connect it to your water trough. For every gallon of water that flows, 1 ounce of ACV is applied. No more checking, no more worrying if they are getting enough water. You figure that on average, a cow consumes 1 gallon of water for every 100 pounds of weight. So a 700 pound beeve will consume about 7 gallons of water daily needing 7 ounces of ACV. By doing this 3 days out of the month, you should have no problems with internal parasites and worms.

I also supply trace mineral blocks for 3 days. Without these, your cows will begin lacking the natural minerals that are sub par on your pastures. We are in a building phase of pasture renovation for the next couple of years so this is much needed for us. It is amazing to see that when these blocks are put out, the cows that have been with us the longest rarely go to the blocks. The newer beeves sit and lick and lick. They make a ground up mineral feed but it is much easier for me to put out blocks in pans than to move a covered mineral trough around. Much cheaper also. Hopefully in the future, trace minerals will all be provided by our pasture grasses. That will be down the road though.

So this is why I say that the beeves are at the Dr.'s office for this rotation. Without healthy cows, you get poor performance with poor gains. If you are wanting to try ACV with your cattle, I highly recommend the Chemilizer for its simple assembly and easy use. Only happy, feeling good cows here.