Hurricane Farm

Sarah, our Toggenburg milk goat, is hopefully an expectant mother.

That being the case, it was time to build her a place of her own.  She was living with the sheep, able to come and go in and out of the pasture on the schedule of the cattle, but we thought that she might be better off in her own space.

I cleared out some nasty, prickly multiflora rose (invasive!), waded through a sea of poison ivy, set some posts, and stretched some fence.  We ended up with two new areas for Sarah, or any other livestock that may need to be isolated at any given time.  The areas offer some sun and grass as well as the shade of the wetland that cuts through our farm. 

Sarah has been busy clearing poison ivy, debarking Russian Olive trees (invasive!), and clearing the brush from an old stone wall that is starting to re-emerge inside her new pen.  What a great worker she is!

We acquired a "new to us" trailer that will work out perfectly for hauling hogs and our cattle, as well as myriad other things (kids, pumpkins, hay, wood).

Our plan is to move two of the cattle to the new pasture this afternoon.  If all goes according to plan, there may be some interesting photos up here this evening.  I still have some work to do on the trailer--right now both wheels are off, as is the hitch, and I'm in the midst of re-wiring the whole thing.  It should be ready this afternoon, though.  Yesterday the kids and I went out to the farm store twice.  The first time we purchased some nice, shiny new wheels (tires and rims) for the trailer.  They measured (in theory, apparantly) to be the right size.  The bolts holes were 4 1/2 on center, etc, etc.  We got them home.  No luck.  One bolt hole was off by less than 1/16" of an inch on each wheel.  Either we have some funky sized hubs on the trailer, or they are selling seriously flawed rims at the farm store.  So, back we went.  Which was good because I needed to buy about 12 more things for the trailer anyways.

We ended up going to a local tire store and they popped on two "seasoned" tires onto the original rims, which still have plenty of life left in them, for $80 including the labor and balancing.  Not a bad deal.  I'm planning to take the red truck up there soon now that I know they do that sort of thing.

Here are some photos of the new pasture being prepped for the cattle.  I'll be putting up a gate this morning, finishing the trailer, and then working on loading the trailer with one of the cattle.  We'll see how that goes...

The grasses (and weeds) are really tall!  The cattle will start working on that this afternoon, hopefully.

Violet will have one last chance to pick wild flowers before the cattle get to them.

The tools needed to string up field fence.  (Anyone look up "rod" yet?)  There is my trusty homemade fence-puller (the F.T. 2000) leaning up against the tailgate.  Yes, it does resemble some 2 x 4's and some bolts.  I also figured out an easier way to move around those heavy rolls of fencing using the tractor and some bungees.

The grass is almost up to the kids' heads!  We could use this as a hay field if we had the equipment, but for now we'll put the animals to work on it.  I'd love to bring down 50 turkeys, but I would worry that predators would get to them at night.

Well, I managed to get tons of poison ivy all over my arms and hands from working in the new pasture.  I had to brush hog some areas to run the fencing and it did not dry out enough with all the rain so I ended up covered with it.  It's really itchy.

But, on the other side, now that I have poison ivy some of the chores here at the farm that involve poison ivy are fair game!  I started today clearing out some more of the side of the wetland and put up some field fencing.  The area is covered with poison ivy, but once I have it it's not like it will get worse...I hope. 

(And of course, I really needed a new project to work on as I'm down to only about 7 that I'm in the middle of at the moment.)

I started, with the help of kids in the non-poison ivy area, putting up a side of fencing that will become "Goat World."  Our Toggenburg milk goat, Sarah, is hopefully pregnant and in another day or two she'll have her own quiet fenced in area.  Once more, she'll have all the delicious poison ivy that she can manage to eat.  Then, the sheep can roam free in the main pasture after I move the cattle down the road.  That does involve finishing some more projects, but they're coming along.  After all, it did not rain today!

By the way, along with rocks, we sure do grow some impressive poison ivy!

You'd almost think that this photo was taken 60 years ago. 

Anyhow, Erica snapped this on Monday afternoon in the midst of my fence work on the new pasture. 

Stunning looking machine, eh?  I got to drive it down the road about 1/2 mile to the location of the new field/pasture.  I needed to use it to stretch out the field fence.  And of course it is WAY cool to ride on the road with farm machinery.  I had not really gotten a chance to put it into 3rd gear, or what folks must now call "over-drive," and man did it cook down the road!  13 miles per hour seems really fast on an open chassis mobile!  Wind in my hair, indeed.

Here is a shot from the back of the pasture looking towards the front.  I am pleased to say that I managed to get up 80 rods (yes, rods---look it up) of field fence up in three days, rainstorms included!

Pictures of the completed project, with cattle hopefully, to follow.  Am I lucky to to have such a wonderful photographer as a wife, or what?  Tractor calendar, anyone?

There is so much to do that sometimes we don't take time to notice how large some of our animals are getting, especially as they transtition from little babies.  Remember those hogs that we used to till up our gardens, orchard, and bramble patch?  We brought them to Farm Day in Scotland, too.

Well, they've grown substantially and we won't be bringing them around for fun any more!

Additionally, we have been working on our new pasture.  It is pretty large, about 7-8 acres in all.  We'll be using the back 2/3 for now and maybe more later.  I spent yesterday brush-hogging the areas where I plan to erect the field fencing, and then I set in some nice cedar posts.  I plan to finish the cedar corner posts and then strech the fence today and tomorrow.  We'll be using metal t-posts between the end/corner posts to allow us to move the fence if we need to easily enough.  Our neighbor has been generous enough to let us use the field/pasture free-of-charge for a couple of years.  We'll be bringing our cattle down there next week at the latest, I hope. 

It's amazing, but we have more than doubled the size of our grazing area in the course of a couple of days.

I drove the tractor down to the field last night so it would be wating for me this morning (it's fun to drive on the roads!).  We took a few photos of the field before the fencing is up and we'll post them later on.

So here are some photos of our farm just before we moved in.  These were taken by my wife and our friend Jeff, who checked out the farm when it was for sale.  These photos (actually, mention of the barn!) was all it took to convince me to buy the place.  We put in a bid before I even stepped foot inside.  It's all been working out quite nicely...

Here is the meadow that we turned into our pasture.

  And here is a shot from the other end looking toward the barn.

The next two are some shots of the interior before we put up stalls and made a workshop.

We spent many days working into the wee hours of the morning cleaning out and building up the barn.  We now have stalls for our sheep and milk goat, cattle, hogs, as well as seperate areas for brooding poultry, housing laying and meat hens, housing turkeys, and for milking the goat.  Several other smaller areas can be converted into whatever needs may arise.  We hope to have a few lambs nursing in one or two of these areas in a few weeks' time.

Here are some shots of the work in progress from last summer.  The first one is just beautiful.  It is so cool watching the dew burn off on an early Summer morning.  Don't be fooled--those rolls of fencing are easily a couple hundred pounds each!

Here is the fence after a morning's work.  Let me explain about those posts...We dug those holes by hand.  That was by far the hardest and most time-consuming job we have had here yet.  It was also quite a mental challenge at first as the spot we started in was all rocks and hard soil!  We thought that it would take all Summer.  Eventually, though, the digging went much quicker when we got down the incline into more forgiving soil.

Have you heard the saying, "Too many cooks spoil the soup?"  Well, let me tell you that this absolutely does not apply here.  Notice how my mom is right there supervising?  It was the first real job that we used the tractor for.  I built a fence-stretcher out of two pieces of 2 x 4.  We bolted them together with the fence between and we were easily able to put enough tension on the field fencing to snug it right up to the posts.  I'm sporting my "Summer beard" there.

Here is a shot of the barn area after some work.  This area that my son is so diligently sweeping is now "Turkey World."

Finally, here is shot of the completed pasture fence as our young poults begin their explorations.  We are lucky to have such a great mixture of grasses in this field.  This year, we will be dividing up the pasture into two areas in order to rotate the animals back and forth and sustain high quality grass all season.