Managing the Herd

When I say herd, I'm talking about all three of our cows.  Hopefully by next fall our heard will grow to four cows, that's if our two heifers produce calves.  Yeah, the math doesn't add up there because next month one of the herd will be removed for processing--beef.  Our goal is to run no more than 6 to 8 cows total.  Need to keep the herd manageable for the amount of pasture we have, including our horses.  There are several types of cattle operations, like: beef, calving, dairy, purebred, grass finished, grain finished, organic, mini breeds, etc.  We're focusing on quality beef from 'organic' grass fed mixed breed steers.

Ideally we'll have three producing heifers that will give us some steers and replacement heifers for a sustainable small herd.  That's our simple plan, but with it comes the regular care and ongoing maintenance of the animals, land, and fencing.  Our cows need to be kept healthy, and to do that we have to handle them.  They need routine vaccinations to prevent illnesses, worming to manage parasites, and ear tags for identification and fly control (yes, ear tags with insecticides to kill flies and their larvae).

Since cows are large animals and won't always hold still for you, no matter how tough a cowboy you are, we'll need at minimum a head gate to restrain them.  Big operations use expensive squeeze chutes with head gates, but our simple operation just doesn't afford the big money toys so we shop around for used equipment and cash in our sweat equity to accomplish our goals.  A couple of weeks ago I found a used head gate and installed it in the our small pasture near the operations headquarters (farm house and barn), and plan on adding a wood chute, a turn, and catch area in the next few weeks.  We need to have this setup operational by mid January when the cows come back in heat so we can breed them.

Installing on posts a Priefert auto/manual head gate

We found an Artificial Insemination (AI) Tech in the area and will be scheduling her to come out mid January to inseminate for fall calves.  We'll select semen from an Angus bull known to throw smaller calves for the first time to reduce likelihood of calving difficulties.  Then as first time cow parents we'll worry like crazy that our cows are eating healthy and hopeful there won't be any problems after the ~283 days until the calves show up.

Until then we'll keep working on the chute and catch area and make sure the heifers stay healthy.  We'll actually be getting our first beef at the beginning of next year.  In late December our Angus steer will be processed, we're having Farmer's Helper out of Harrisburg coming out for an on-site slaughter.  We'll be sure to share that experience as well.  We'll likely sell a half of the steer, and a quarter is already spoken for so only a quarter would be available if we opt to sell it.  We'll decide last minute after we know the hanging weight and how much beef we'll have.  Then we might do a couple how-to videos on canning beef and beef stew.

Check back in on us and see what we're up to.

Fall is Here, Winter is Coming

Summer came and went without a single blog post here, I suppose my busy life limits my blogging time or I'm just not as ambitious as I thought I was.  Farm progress has been slow and steady so here's a summary of what's been going on...

On the gardening front, all of our bare root fruit and nut trees that we planted survived the summer drought and were a bit of extra work to maintain watering.  The blueberry bushes did well, although, the raspberry plants all died.  I'm pretty sure the raspberry issue was more about the plants being trampled by the dog (Dexter) rather than a failure to maintain on our part.  We'll need to choose a better location for getting them established next year. 

We finally bought a 3-point tiller for the tractor, but it was a bit late to get a garden in like we had hoped.  We did plant some spuds, onions, tomatoes, pumpkins, and watermelons.  Harvest was small since we didn't amend the soil as needed, but we got some practice in and established a nice garden area.  Now we just need to focus on improvements to the soil, install some irrigation, make fencing improvements to keep the animals out, and focus on an overall plan for what we'll seed next spring.  We tilled up areas for some more perennial plantings, like: asparagus, artichokes, strawberries, and raspberries. 

The four mature apple trees that were already established and came with the farm are doing much better.  I pruned them last winter and tilled the ground to cut down on the codling moth population, generally that was somewhat successful.  We still had a lot of damaged fruit, but not nearly as bad as last year, and the volume of fruit the trees produced was much greater.  We had more apples than we could deal with!  Lots of processing!  We canned, dried, and juiced apples until we couldn't do it any more...

Photo Album of our Apple Processing of 2018

We'll continue to be busy working on improving our gardening this fall and winter in preparation for a big spring planting!

On the animal husbandry front, the chickens are doing well and the cows stayed in the pasture mostly.  Well, Ron got out quite a few times and Becky got out once, so I had to make some fence repairs and fretted a bit about the poor condition that much of our perimeter fence is in.  That's going to be slow going because fencing takes money and lots of work, and the money is always the problem around our place.  I may need a second or third job I suppose because our little farm will never bring in the money it will take to maintain itself in reality.  I suppose if we charged $8 a dozen for the few dozen of eggs we sell each week we'd be banking the dough...or not.

We'll have some beef in early January.  We'll begin processing our angus steer on December 21st, so with hanging time and processing we'll likely have beef first week of January.   We anticipate selling at least 1/4 of it to help offset our processing costs.  The price would be $2/lb by hanging weight, plus cutting and wrapping fee (usually around $0.65/lb).  We'll be using Farmer's Helper out of Harrisburg to process the cow.  An average 1,000 lb steer will have a hanging weight of about 600 lbs and produce about 400 lbs of boneless trimmed beef to give you an idea of the cost.  So a 1/4 steer would cost roughly $398 cut and wrapped for roughly 100 lbs beef.  That's a little more expensive than Walmart's 20% fat ground beef, but not by much, and you'll be getting more than just ground, and you'll know it was a well cared for steer.

Our bee hive is still alive, but barely.  The yellow jackets were really bad this year and took a toll on our honey bee hive.  We put out about 20 yellow jacket traps and they filled almost daily, it didn't seem like we even put a dent in their population.  We'll be working on more aggressive measures for addressing the yellow jacket population next year because we intend to add another honey bee hive, and we don't want to lose one!

Photo Album of Farm Animals

On the farm improvements front, we've made some progress on the farm house and the barn.  We built another chicken coop, added stalls to the barn with rubber mats and doors,  Just yesterday I finished installing new bathroom flooring in the main bathroom after Theresa and Victoria finished a fresh coat of paint on the ceiling and walls.  It looks amazing compared to what it looked like previously.  We installed two new exterior doors on the house, replacing doors that wouldn't close and had visible gaps at the jam that rodents could easily pass through.   It's so nice having insulated doors that close snugly!  We cleaned out the Lion's Den (small out building), added more rock to drive areas to curb winter mud issues.  We've been working on pasture improvements clearing drainage, smoothing bumps and ridges on ditches, and mowing to decrease the weeds.  We'll be over-planting some fresh pasture mix grass seed to improve forage for the cows and horses as well.  Worked on general cleanup clearing more debris that was left behind from previous owners and trimming trees that needed some maintenance.  We have a few more floors in the farm house to go and some major work on the den, as well as, a number of other major projects around the farm, but everything requires money so we'll progress as we can with the little resources we have. 

Photos Album of some farm improvements of 2018

Even though the farm has added a lot of work to our schedules, it brings lots of joy.  We're not always working, we do enjoy taking the horses out for rides, fishing, movies, visiting with family and friends, and just enjoying life!  Hopefully I won't wait so many months before my next blog...we'll see.   

Final May Update - To Garden or Not To Garden

That's the Question

We've been really busy lately and yet we still don't have our garden planted and it's already the end of May!  Our biggest issue with getting the garden in has been lack of adequate time and equipment to work the soil, at least that's our excuse and we're sticking to it.  Our planned garden is also rather large, so shock and fear of the undertaking may be a slight deterrent.  Thankfully, Oregon has a long growing season so we still have a couple of weeks, so there's hope yet for getting some plants into the ground.  Victoria and I did till and plant a couple flower beds near the farm entrance with the small Mantis tiller we have.  The Mantis is big enough to do small flower beds but not big enough to work an acre garden.  Hopefully our mammoth sunflowers, poppy, marigolds, and forget-me-nots take off and provide some pollen for the honey bees.

Our soils are mostly clay so getting it into gardening shape isn't easy.  When it's wet it's sticky and after it dries it's like concrete.  I did turn over half the garden with the plow but we really need a disc or tiller to break it up enough to get it into planting shape.  Tillers aren't cheap, and we've already spent all our available farm remodel and startup funds.  A recent expensive car repair to replace the solenoid pack on the transmission didn't help either, but transportation is important. 

On the positive side, we did plant a number of fruit, nut, and berry trees and bushes this winter, so we haven't been completely unproductive.  Let's just hope we can keep them alive and healthy.  We're already battling a bit of peach leaf curl in our peach trees and I noticed a bit of scab fungus on our apple trees.  A couple applications of lime-sulfur fungicide seems to be working well and a bit of manual maintenance, like removing the infected leaves.  I believe we'll have things under better control next year since we can apply the fungicide in the fall when it's most effective.   We did perform a lot of maintenance on the apple orchard, removing all fallen apples and reducing the risk and potential food source for the codly moth.  We still need to deploy a few moth traps and keep an eye out for apples that have holes in them to keep the orchard clean.

Got Worms?

Every animal lovers most cherished duty, de-worming...  What, you don't like it?  Yeah, I guess "cherished" is too strong of a word for this fun task.  On the farm parasites just happen to be everywhere, and learning to live with them is a big challenge.  With the assortment of animals we care for we have an even bigger variety of pests to contend with.

For the cats and dogs the problem is they have access to field mice and fleas, both carry tapeworm larvae.  We routinely de-flea the little furry critters with Frontline and Revolution, but despite our best efforts the parasites will eventually come, and they have.  Fortunately, it doesn't require a vet exam but we do have to purchase the medication from the vet's office, and administer ourselves.  The joy of shoving a pill down a dog or cat's throat is difficult to describe, even more exciting is the occasional gagging and regurgitating of the pill onto the floor in front of you.  Oh sure, you can hide it in a treat, and when you sit down on the couch and feel that wet little lump sitting there next to you and realize it's a partially dissolved pill that you attempted to hide in a treat, just know that the dog left it there intentionally to make a point.  Ah yes, the guilty puppy face and indignant scampering away can easily be translated into a barrage of curse words--for the love of our animals.

For bigger animals, like our cows and horses, we have to deal with both worms and flies. It's even more of a problem this time of year as spring seems to be the time for all things to flourish.  For years the common practice has been to constantly bombard parasites with a continuous flood of de-wormers in a rotation schedule targeting by effectiveness of types of worms for the season, but fear of parasites developing resistance to these treatment methods has caused professionals to revamp their recommendations.  Now it's a more thoughtful approach of assessing the problem, then focus your treatment.  We're adopting this more conservative approach and looking at it as an overall management strategy, where we're utilizing our powers of observation and all of our resources, including the chickens, to keep pests at bay.  It all relates to pasture management, the healthier your pasture the healthier your animals.  But even if we do a great job managing our pastures, rotating the animals and using our chickens to clean after, we still have to contend with the fact we live in a valley with lots of other animals, and pests and parasites migrate easily between pastures.  It's just a fact of life.

That's why I keep an eye on the cows to see how they're doing and recently noticed the horn flies were starting to accumulate on Becky's back, Ron and Patty had some as well.  So to keep our cows happy I opted to treat them for both flies and worms since I'm sure a fecal exam would suggest it's a good time to pour-on the parasiticide.  This morning while feeding them some grain I took advantage of their focus on food as a distraction while I squeezed between them to pour-on their de-wormer and fly control.  Last night Victoria administered the de-wormer paste to the horses, and thankfully they handled it well. I'm imagining the paste or gel used doesn't always taste that great, although, we did choose the brand that smelled like apples and was supposed to be apple flavored. 

I'll probably smell like cow when I show up to work today, but that's just my work-life balance routine.

References:

Preventing and Treating Parasites in Your Horse  (pdf), Oregon State University Extension Service

Equine Recommended De-worming Schedule (pdf), Colorado State University

Managing Internal Parasites of Cattle (pdf), Oregon State University Extension Service

Chicken Moving Day

Yesterday was chicken moving day!  Last week we worked on building a new coop in the pasture that can be moved around all three pastures, so the chickens can help spread the manure and cut down on the fly population.  The new coop isn't completely finished, but it's nearly done and last night we were able to move the birbs into their new digs.  We waited until dusk, after they settled into their old roost, and gently picked them up one-by-one and carried them into their new roost.

It took them about an hour for all the chickens to test the new roosting branches and find which branch and what spot on the branch they liked the best.  I'm not sure if it's determined in some sort of 'pecking order' or if they have free choice?  Lance, the head rooster (Black Australorp), waits outside the coop entrance every night for all the hens to roost before he goes in.  He's very protective, a good roo.  After he went in we knew it was moving time.

The move freed up the old coop so we could move the French Black Copper Marans from the brooder into a coop of their own. They're now living in the run along the barn.  Unfortunately, our hatch produced far more roosters than hens so it's going to be awhile before we get any quantity of the chocolate Copper Maran eggs.

All the chickens will be 'cooped up' for a couple of days as they adjust to their new living quarters, then it's back to free ranging hen-mania...

New Pasture Coop

Chickens Settling into Their New Roosts

Original Coop in Run Along Barn

Buzzing With Excitement

Yes, we are buzzing with excitement because soon we'll be adding a honey bee hive to the farm!  When we started planning and thinking about things we'd be doing here, like gardening and animals on the farm, Victoria really liked the idea of starting a bee hive.  For her, it's a personal challenge because she's suffered from 'bug' anxiety and deeply feared anything that buzzed nearby.  It's always triggered her fear and flight mode, so why not just get some bees to cure that anxiety!  Right!

The idea of harvesting honey is also appealing, and there seems to be a growing number of hives and people willing to try their hand at being an apiarist.  The honey industry has been fueling the beekeeper market with fear of massive hive die offs due to mysterious causes that will lead to crop failures and food shortages for lack of pollinators.  It's actually been a successful campaign because just about every farm supply store now carries bee keeping supplies and sells starter colonies.  A few years ago you could only find those things in specialty stores or a few online vendors.

There is some truth to colony collapse disorder, although it's been an issue for longer than the general public may have been aware.  Like everything, it's complicated.  The reality is honey bees aren't native to North America, so they actually compete with native pollinators for food.  If you're a bee keeper you obviously don't want to lose your hive to an unknown cause, and the honey industry needs production and consumers...so there you go.   Maybe big Ag has something to fear, but I guess that's partly why we're homesteading and working on producing food for ourselves.

Anyway, as new keepers we wanted to educate ourselves as much as possible, and we've been doing lots of learning.  Victoria got her first brood chamber for Christmas and a few apiarist supplies, like a protective suite, smoker, and tools.  A coworker of mine heard we were planning on starting a hive and coincidentally her husband was quitting the bee hobby and had some supers he wanted to get rid of.  Now we have enough brood chambers and honey supers for two hives!

This weekend will be busy, we've got a huge list of chores and projects that have been piling up because the Spring rain has kept us from getting some of the gardening done, and we're also still adjusting from only taking care of a small house on a city lot to caring for an old farm house, old out buildings in need of repair, and 21 acres of pasture and fencing...not to mention the animals we've already added to the family farm.  We do need to prioritize some things though because next weekend we pick up our first colony of bees.  That means we need to get our hives cleaned and ready for the new Carniolan Queen!

References:
GloryBee Bee Weekend 2018
Colony Collapse Disorder, Wikipedia

A Pig Learning Experience

Years ago as a younger lad growing up in southern Illinois, my family occasionally raised hogs.  My dad would buy 10-20 Berkshire, or Duroc, or Hampshire piglets as feeder pigs for market and personal processing.  He didn't do it that often because it wasn't a very lucrative farming venture.  Markets have been controlled by large scale operations and processors that supply the supermarket food chains, making it difficult to make a profit in that sector.  There are niche markets for smaller producers that cater to specific upscale restaurants or provide local organic stores with a unique pork product, but that requires some significant effort and attention to establishing relationships and the ability to process your own pork product for resale.  Those challenges haven't stopped people from trying, in fact, it's fairly common for homesteaders and small farmers to raise pigs if for nothing else it's a personal rewarding experience.

We opted to give it a try on our new farm, hoping that we could at least break even or sell enough to cover the cost of grain and provide some pork for our freezer.  We researched breeds and looked for local deals on feeder pigs, finally opting to try our hand with some heritage Gloucetershire Old Spot piggies.  We found our piglets on craigslist offering them for $125 each, or $80 if you bought four or more.  We intended to get at least four, and compared to other prices we thought we found a deal.  We didn't know at the time that the piglets we were getting were actually racing pigs!  Yep, turns out the seller uses cute little piggies to perform races for entertainment at fairs and events, the All Alaskan Racing Pigs (http://www.pigrace.com ).  They were cute and healthy so their racing background didn't deter us, we brought them home.

Racing Pigs at the Trough

Research told us that production operations feed their pigs about 600-700 lbs of feed per pig to get them to market weight (~250 lbs live weight) in 4-5 months, so we had an idea of overall cost.  We talked with a local feed store, McKenzie Feed, and checked prices at the bigger box farm supply stores and found that feed would cost us about $14 per 50lb bag if we purchased a ton (40 bags, $560/ton).  We thought a ton would get the pigs most of the way, but it didn't quite work out that way.  The colder fall weather and early winter months meant they'd need a bit more feed to put on weight and stay warm, so we ended up buying another ton of grain.  Feeder operations don't give their pigs room to roam and they're kept in enclosed buildings which keep the pigs warmer, so they require less feed in general.  I expected a difference, but was a little surprised how much difference since our pigs consumed a bit more than 1000 lbs of feed per pig before we took them in to process.  So with cost of piglets and feed, we invested $1,500 into the pigs by the time they were ready for market.  Keep in mind that doesn't take into account the 5 months of daily care, like: watering, feeding, and pen cleaning work.

Once they're at market weight, processing is the next step.  Honestly, this is the most difficult part and it's why most small farmers sell their pork and let the customer deal with processing.  Unfortunately we wanted to offer a simple experience for our customers and chose handling the work with the processor.  Our lack of experience here showed because we weren't prepared with cut orders in advance, the processor we chose didn't assist with that in any way, and that put us in the middle.  If the processor does a bad job, it would make us look bad.  Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened.  There aren't that many processors in the area to choose from, and reviews are mixed.  We finally settled on nearby processor, Mohawk Valley Meats, and scheduled two months in advance.  I know that our lack of experience didn't help, but the processor's lack of communication made things worse.  Not only did they not keep their schedule with us, but they didn't get the cut orders right.  We dropped off the pigs first week of January and didn't get the finally order back until March.  I understand it takes longer to process the cured and smoked meats, but that should be no longer than 3 weeks after slaughter, not 3 months.  The biggest concern with a processor is trust, do you trust that the pig you brought them is the meat you're getting back, and if it is your pork are you getting all of it back?  How do you know if the hanging weights are accurate?  That was our biggest failure, putting ourselves in the middle of that trust relationship with the processor and customers.  It's also not cheap, processing gets expensive and adds a lot of cost.  It was nearly $200 per pig overall just for processing.

Things will be different when it's time to process the beef, customers will work with processor directly.  We haven't given up on raising some hogs, we hope to do it again, at least for ourselves.  If and when we do though, we'll be processing our own pigs to ensure we're getting our own pork and won't have to worry about being shorted, or the cost.  If we raise any pork for sale, customers will choose their own processor and work directly with them and we'll stay out of the middle of that relationship.  We'll simply feed them up and deliver.

A life lesson learned, we're moving on.  It wasn't a horrible experience and hopefully the few customers we had understood the issues with the processor wasn't us.

Is Garlic Our Savior

As fans of Supernatural, salt and garlic are important items in our household--you never know when you'll need to protect yourself from a demon or rogue supernatural monster.  I've heard rumor even Jesus loved garlic.  I'm fairly certain it's known as one of those super foods.  Honestly, I love garlic so we usually do have a good supply around the house in most readily available forms, like: garlic powder, garlic bulbs, garlic cloves, garlic salt, pickled garlic, minced garlic, and probably some garlic oil.  Victoria has even started a garlic bulb in a planter in the house as a gardening experiment, she's been getting geared up for planting the garden and I'm pretty sure wants to plant a garlic bed.  Theresa grew up near the "Garlic Capital of the World," or so Gilroy, California is nicknamed because they grow lots of garlic and are known for their annual garlic festival.  Interestingly enough it's near Castroville, California; which is known as "The Artichoke Capital of the World."  Another of my favorite foods, but I'm getting off subject here.

So, this whole garlic post actually started this past weekend when I saw a short news story on TV that reported garlic as being used in cattle feed to reduce methane gas.  Apparently it reduces the population of methane producing microbes in the cow's digestive tract by 50%, which is substantial.  The problem with using garlic in feed is the taste actually passes to the milk, so adoption of adding garlic to feed hasn't caught on that quickly.  The research though is leading to alternatives that don't bring the garlic taste along with the milk.  I found the story interesting so I decided to do a little research of my own.  In the process of searching and reading a few articles on the subject I also discovered garlic is being used in cattle diet for another purpose.  Apparently, it helps reduce fly populations.  I'm assuming garlic "flavored" manure isn't that attractive to flies...  I'm not sure our chickens will appreciate that because they enjoy scratching through cow patties to chow on all the bugs.  Hum, maybe there will be a side effect in the chicken's diet that would reduce the likelihood of mites?  Okay, I hope that thought doesn't stick in your head, my apologies.

I haven't completed my research, there's a bit more to learn and some unanswered questions for me.  I'm not sure how much garlic it takes in a cow's diet to make a difference, and what are the other impacts.  I do like the idea better than the specialized backpack-tanks designed to capture methane from the cows for energy use. It's definitely something I'd like to learn a bit more about and maybe we'll experiment a little with our own cows, at least it gives us a reason to get that garden bed of elephant garlic going...



References -

• How Garlic May Save the World, Rupp, National Geographic, Apr 2014
• Ranchers uses garlic to keep flies at bay, Arnason, The Western Producer, Aug 2012 
• Garlic, Wikipedia
• Gilroy Garlic Festival

Happy Hens, Happy Farm

It only stands to reason that if a happy wife leads to a happy life, then happy hens lead to a happy farm.  Those simple truths are what makes farm life so special.

Our first brood of hens started laying eggs a few weeks ago, and we're now collecting about a dozen a day. Since our hens are free-rangers collecting eggs is more like an Easter egg hunt every time.  Fortunately, about half the girls use the nest boxes in the coop while the others have found some interesting places in the barn and shop to lay.  It keeps us on our toes.

Hens typically start out laying smaller than normal eggs before they become full sized, so the first several dozen we handed out as gifts.  Now we're selling all our excess for $3 a dozen, so let us know if you'd like some eggs and we'll work you into the Egg Train.

Actual Eggs from our Chickens

So about the quality of our eggs…first, we’re not in the egg production business rather just a small homestead and are really selling eggs because we have an excess and happen to love raising chickens.  If you’ve seen any of the pics we've shared then you might suspect we love chickens too much…   We’re not organic certified and we do feed our hens cracked corn (some people are completely against feeding chickens corn and soy, but corn is actually really important for chickens for the carbs to stay warm over winter).  We buy our feed from a local family owned feed store in Springfield, McKenzie Feed, or at the Wilco Farm Coop.  We don’t always buy GMO free labeled feed, only when on sale.  Typically we buy Scratch and Peck Feeds or Purina Organic, or CHS Payback layer crumble.  Our chickens are only given free choice for oyster shell and grit.  The oyster shell is important for the calcium they use creating those shells.  Grains are only fed in small quantities twice a day, once in the morning when chickens are turned out to free range and once in evening when secured in coop for their protection from predators at night.  About 80% of our chicken’s diet is from free-ranging, they forage on their own.   That means our eggs are smaller, you won’t see XL eggs in our cartons…just won’t happen.  We also don't wash our eggs and we have roosters in our flock -- All Nat-ur-al.

Sign Posted in Work Lunch Room

So I noticed on top of a carton of organic certified eggs that someone shared with me, they (the brand) brag about their free range chickens having 21.8 square feet of outdoor space to free range in…wow, a full whopping 2’ x 10.5’ chicken run!  Honestly, that’s not free range and those chickens are getting their food entirely from pellets.  By comparison our hens have 46,000 sq ft of free range space per hen, but they actually don’t range further than about 5,100 sq ft/per hen, of space.  I’m also building a mobile coop now so we can move the girls between pastures so they don’t focus on the bugs in just one area.  It's part of our pasture management plan.

Organic Certified with 21.8 sq ft of Outside Open Space

We have another brooder full of French Black Copper Maran chicks, which will lay a nice dark chocolate egg about the color of the dark brown in the picture above, let's hope for lots of hens from this hatch!

Happy Chickens!

Pasture Managment

Mowing Pasture

With three cows, a horse, and more animals on the way we've got to get our pasture tuned in to help support all the critters crawling around it.  The past few weeks the weather dial has turned back to normal cold with some snow and winter rain.  We almost got fooled there with a short spell of spring like warmth that had us thinking about busting the kiddie pool out.  Having to pick up another ton of wood pellets for the stove to keep the house warm, and some more hay for the animals to chew on a couple more months snapped us back into reality.  It's also got us thinking about improving the pasture drainage and general pasture management.  As we're thinking about the future of having more grazing animals to care for, we'll need to maximize our lands ability to sustain good grass growth and hay production for winter feeding.

Cows Doing What They Do

Unfortunately, when we bought the place the pasture wasn't in great shape with three sides of outer fencing in poor aged condition, weeds, poor drainage, and only a small section cross-fenced.  It was used for grazing by the neighboring farmer, but never really cared for because they rotated their large cow herd through to improve their own pastures.  Currently the 21 acres of pasture is fenced off into two pastures, one large pasture that's about 15 acres and a small pasture that's about 3.5 acres.  It's a start, and gives us plenty to work with...and a lot of work at that.

We've been planning since we moved in, and have made some improvements already.  Our overall plan is simple and includes: improving the drainage; repair and/or replace fencing as needed; split the 15 acre pasture into a 10 acre and 5 acre pastures; control weeds; sow new grass seed mix; fertilize; and maintain.

We've been busy with fence patching, mowing/weeding, and some drainage improvements.  Now that we have some animals on the ground the big thing we need to focus on is moving them around, so we're working on splitting the big pasture.  With three pastures we'll be able to rotate our small herd to improve forage and grass growth.  Once we get rotation down we'll begin sowing seed and fertilizing with a goal of maintaining enough growth to keep four horses and a half dozen cows happy and healthy.  Oh, the chickens will play their part, a mobile coop will be in the rotation to help with spreading the manure and keeping the fly population down.     

700' of Fencing

T-posts Going In

That's our pasture management in the works.

Slow 'Cookin' Eggs, Barn Paint, & More...

As usual the weekend passes and I'm sitting here writing an update about the details of our weekend life, homesteading.  We were busy again planting stuff, watching stuff, fixing stuff, and playing around with stuff.  That's just what we do.

The post title might lead you to believe we've been cooking eggs, well, not like on a stove but more like how a mother hen would brood her nest getting those chicks 'slow cooked' to hatching perfection.  Theresa ordered a dozen hatching eggs from a show quality breeder a few weeks ago and they've been 'cookin' in the incubator the past couple of weeks.  She's hatching a batch of Rhode Island Reds, and the last time she hatched chicks from this breeder one of our hens won Grand Champion at the Benton County Fair.  Theresa has been candling the eggs and monitoring their progress, they're doing really well and on their way to zipping those shells on the 10th (21 days).  In preparation for the new chicks I built a brooder to keep the chicks warm.  Theresa likes to use shelf liner for the brooder floor which provides good traction for those chicks to strengthen their legs.  A lot of people use sawdust shavings thinking it's easier to clean, but actually it's bad because chicks will often eat the shaving and become "blocked".  The lack of traction the sawdust provides can also lead to curled toes or bent legs, both will lead to lack of ability to thrive.

Hatching Eggs in the Incubator

Brooder Setup & Ready

Besides playing mother hen, we were busy planting blueberries and raspberries this weekend.  Theresa and I did that while the kids painted the pump house.  We picked up our plants from Roger's Garden Center off 42nd Street.  If you live local, this place is where you want to get your plants.  Small local business and Roger is just a nice guy.  He'll offer lots of help and information about planting and taking care your plants.  We got a dozen random variety of blueberries, for cross pollination purposes and early to late producers to lengthen the harvest season.  Similarly we chose a variety of raspberries, but more for lengthening the production season as raspberries are self pollinators.

A Dozen Blueberry Bushes Planted

Tori & Zach Painting Pump House

Besides painting the barn we also hung our farm sign that we got for Christmas, well, actually it wasn't delivered until yesterday but it was our Christmas present from Theresa's dad.  We were planning on having a sign made by a local artist that specializes cutting custom signs, but his work isn't cheap so this will give us time to save some money, besides it's a cute little sign for the gate that adds a nice accent to the farm.  A thoughtful gift.

New Farm Sign

Oh, and as usual we did more than I could ever blog about, like pruning the apple trees, cleaning up, and all the other normal stuff...  Other stuff would be like watching another season of SOA and taking the motorcycle out for a ride.  We rode through Old Marcolla Rd and McKenzie View, stopped to eat a quick bite at Applebee's, then hit a motorcycle shop to pick up a new tube for one of the dirt bikes.  After getting home and replacing the tube on the bike, Zach and I had fun riding the dirt bikes around the pasture, splashing through ditches and slipping through the bog.  Tori had a turn on the dirt bike as well and took a mud bath, just having fun.  We took advantage of the spring like weather in February and enjoyed ourselves.  Now it's back to the grind for a week and the only farming we get is feeding the cows and chickens in the morning and evenings, before and after work...

Late Weekend Update & Dog Treats

Last weekend was really busy...it started off right with a Friday evening date night at the theater to see The Greatest Showman, and then home for a relaxing night cap.  That reminds me we're getting low on the hard cider we bottled.  I'm hoping the apple crop this year is a bit more bountiful so we can ferment and bottle more.  The movie was fun, and if you haven't seen it and enjoy musicals it's worth it in my humble opinion.  Hugh Jackman can really sing, maybe one of his mutant powers?

On Saturday I got up early to finish up the bacon I cured, had to smoke the last batch and vacuum seal it for the freezer.  An arborist friend of mine, Chris White with Sperry Tree Care (only tree service in the area that I'd ever recommend), gave me a couple chunks of apple wood so I chipped away enough to smoke the last of the bacon.  The first batch I used hickory and although it turned out good I wanted to try something different.  I'm glad I did, because the apple smoked bacon turned out fantastic, will definitely be my preference choice for bacon in the future.  We don't have a cold smoker built yet so I cheated and used our Big Chief heated smoker without using the heat element, I just put chips in a tin can and used a soldering iron which heated the chips enough to smoke them.  After smoking I put the bacon back in the fridge over night for the smoke to set over night.  I sealed Sunday morning while everyone was sleeping in, something I've never been able to do.

Slabs of Bacon in Smoker

Smoked Bacon Vacuum Sealed

Saturday was also filled with running around, Theresa picked up some animal feed on sale at Coastal then dropped Zach off at his friend's for a sleepover, and Victoria took off to meet her friend at Valley River Center to browse shops and see a movie.  I believe they went to see Coco, another movie I think I'd like to see but maybe just rented from RedBox and in the comfort of the farm house.   After Theresa got back from dropping off Zach and both of us unloading the bags of feed she had picked up, we took off to Lane Forest Products to pick up some bare root fruit trees.   Once back home we finished off the first Season of Sons of Anarchy with the house to ourselves.  Pretty sure we didn't get much else done that night other than finish off a few more hard ciders and snuggle near the pellet stove and TV.

Selection of Bare Root Trees to Plant

Sunday was the real busy day.  Theresa and I ventured off in the morning to pick up a mocha at our favorite small coffee drive-thru, Old Crow Coffee.  If you're in Springfield, Oregon then 72nd Street intersection is the place to get your coffee, at Old Crow.  Do it, owner is beautiful and sweet and makes a really nice coffee treat.  Boom, I rhymed. 

After grabbing coffee we grabbed Zach from his friend's and then ventured home to start planting trees.  Victoria got home shortly after and started helping get the trees in.  It took lots of tilling and digging to get all the trees in, but it was actually fun.  Well, except those moments when I was barking orders and fretting about whether we'd get all the trees planted before dark...

Tuckered Tractor Driver

Tilling the Planting Holes

Raking an Leveling Crew

Pig Shit Fertilizer

Just like in the World of Warcraft, "Jobs Done."  That was the excitement of planting 2 plum, 2 apricot, 2 peach, 2 cherry, 2 almond, and a pear tree.

I almost forgot, Saturday morning I also finished prepping the cured pork bones and scraps we got from the processor to make dog treats, and I filled the dehydrator.  I used a minimal amount of non-iodized table salt and water to cure the bones because sodium and nitrates (in cure salt) aren't good for dogs.  Cooked bones aren't good for dogs because they splinter, so I cured and dried them in the dehydrator to make excellent dog treats.  The bones have meat and fat scraps attached and are filled with marrow, all natural and healthy for our dogs and yours.  I finished vacuum sealing all the treats Sunday night, so if you want some pork bones for your dogs let us know.  We'll sell them $4 each.

Pork Bones & Scraps Cleaned & Prepped for Drying

Dehydrator Loaded

That's another weekend wrap-up, that's all we did.  Well, we probably did a few other things in there but our weekends are mostly just dinking around...  Come on out for a visit and see for yourself!

Bare Roots & Fruits

Yes it's still January and most people aren't thinking about spring planting yet, but we're getting excited to get things growing.  We've already staked and mulched the locations for our fruit trees a couple months ago, and now it's time to get the planting done.  We've decided on adding peach, cherry, plum, pear, apricot, and almond trees this year.  We'll also be putting in blueberry, raspberry, and strawberry patches as well as a nice big vegetable garden.

Blueberry and Fruit Tree Plots

For now we'll focus on the fruit trees though because this winter dormant period is the time to pickup bare root trees and plant them.  Bare root trees are less expensive and easy to start.   Hopefully the rain slows down enough this weekend to give us that chance to get them into the ground for a successful start.  I'm sure we'll have pics and another update on our busy weekend, we always have more going on than time to blog about it!  :)

Weekend Update

Oh, as usual we've been busy.  This past weekend seemed to pass quickly and yesterday when someone asked what we had done over the weekend I was honestly stumped.  Well it was a Monday morning and I wasn't quite awake yet, but it took me awhile to come up with things that we did.

I guess part of the problem was the fact that I had taken Sunday off to go fishing, so really Saturday was my only day of laboring on the farm.  It was nice taking a day off though, and I did hook a couple fish but only got one to the bank and lost the other.  It was a wild, so I rubbed it's belly for good luck and thanked her for the photo op before releasing her back into the river.  I'm sure she didn't appreciate the sore lip but was probably thankful to still be alive--or so I'd assume not really knowing what fish think.  It was a nice rainy day hanging with a friend by a smoky fire, fishing and drinking some hard cider, and sharing bullshit stories.

Wild Steelhead on the Notellem River

That wasn't the highlight of my weekend though, nope, it started off with a Friday evening with Theresa and I dropping the kids off at the Hult Center so they could enjoy a Broadway production, The Book of Mormon.  They met up with the grand parents and sat in the orchestra section, so while they enjoyed their good seats Theresa and I took off to appreciate our time alone together soaking in a hot tub!  Oh, there's nothing quite like soaking in a hot tub on a winter night with a slight mist in the air.  It made me realize we don't get nearly enough time alone together.  Afterwards we partook in some of the best chocolate around, Euphoria chocolate, warmed up and poured over some Prince Pucklers ice cream--infamous Euphoria sundae at Prince Pucklers.  If I had my A game on we'd have kept on partying the night away busting a move at one of the clubs, but we opted for a more restful evening watching a movie.

Saturday was more of our typical weekend day, getting farm chores done.  The pigs, chickens, and cows went through all of the hay we had stored in the barn so we ran to town to pick up some cow hay, feed, and ran a few errands.  We also hung some nest boxes in the chicken coop and rounded up the two cows that found a way through the fence and into the neighbor's pasture.  That will give me something to do next weekend, finding that week spot they were able to squeeze through.  Thankfully there's a gate between pastures and I easily coaxed them back into our small pasture with a bucket of grain.  They'll need to hangout there until I can find the weak point in the big pasture.  It's an old fence with mostly 4-strand barbed wire which isn't great for keeping cows in.  Just another one of those projects on the list waiting for that money tree to start producing.

Cow Whispering

Ron and Patty Eating Some Cow Hay

After work on Friday I had picked up the last of the fresh cut pork from the last pig we had butchered.  Unfortunately the processor didn't take care of us as they should have, I had scheduled our hogs to be processed 2 months in advance and they finished two timely but then set the other two aside and didn't get to them until later the next week.  They didn't even finish them the same day so I made several trips.  Grrrr.  At least Elijah and Ryanna finally got some of their pork!  They drove all the way from the coast to our farm on Saturday to pick it up, but they got the farm tour so their trip wasn't a total waste, well worth it.  :)

Probably the biggest thing we got done on Saturday was grinding up all of our own pork cutting scraps to make a couple batches of sausage.  We mixed a batch of basic seasoning and then a batch of Italian and packaged them up with the vacuum sealer for breakfast sausage.  I would have made another video but I was still frustrated and upset from dealing with the butcher and didn't want to be on camera with my crabby face.  Although, I may have taken more care with trimming and grinding because I took and ground everything from the scrap bags rather than sorting and removing some of the fat as I probably should have.  I'm sure it's going to turn out good though, it smelled amazing.

Sausage - Plain Cure & Pepper/Cure & Italian

Vacuum Sealed Portions

Well, that was pretty much what we were up to over this past weekend.  Just keeping busy.  Hens will be laying eggs soon so stay tuned for fresh eggs and chicken pictures!

Tori & The Golden Girls

Homestead Blogging, The Latest Fad

Apparently we're just "sheep" or "conformers"...this whole homesteading thing we're doing is really nothing more than the latest fad.  At least that's kind of what I thought after looking at all the links shared in a Facebook post Theresa tagged me in yesterday.  The post was from an urban farm blogger offering suggestions for how to be more successful at blogging and asked followers to share a link to their blog.  Maybe I'm just assuming it's the latest fad and really it's simply because the page's following base would be urban or small farmers and we're just in that audience group like the others that shared their links.  Either way it doesn't really matter much.  I'm not looking to earn income off blogging nor do I feel the need to become a blogging pro.

I honestly started this blog as a way to share what we're doing with family and friends rather than create a customer base as a writer or blogger.  I'm not as good of a business person as my beautiful wife, I don't have the personality nor the patience to work with satisfying customers on a regular basis.  Theresa on the other hand has a wonderful personality, far more outgoing, and much better at working with people from a customer service perspective than I.  I actually enjoy my day job, and for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I get to routinely help people in support of using computers and systems on a regular basis.  Generally I simply enjoy helping people.  I suppose the benefits and income working for a premier employer in the area also has its draw as well, but honestly I'm fortunate to work with a lot of good people at my day job.  Don't get me wrong, if I could farm full-time and make a reasonable living I'd gladly hang up the day job because I enjoy the farm labor.  I like to keep myself busy.

I see our farm as a lifestyle, a way of living that I've always dreamed about and for years thought I'd never get to here--living on the farm.  If sharing any of our experiences with how we're living and how we got here helps others, that would be great too.  As far as blogging goes, the only improvements I'd like to see for myself would be in my writing ability.  How can I improve my writing to entertain and engage, that's what I want for myself and for anyone reading my posts.  Are you excited yet?  Have I made your day?  Did you read anything entertaining, inspiring, or useful?

Getting positive responses from those questions is my blogging goal in general and success is actually completing a post, whew, got that one done!

If you came here thinking you'd learn something about homesteading being the latest fad, well sorry to disappoint.  Here' all you'll find are bullshit posts about stuff we're doing or random thoughts and who knows what.  Pretty sure everything is a fad nowadays!

What I really hope to be doing more of is leather work, so once we get caught up on the renovations that we've already run out of money for I'll focus my attention on some leather projects...after fishing and horsing around of coarse.  Here's a pic of Victoria sporting one of my first leather projects I did a few years ago of a holster I made for my black powder pistol.  She was participating in a steam punk photo shoot with professional photographer Leanna Weber.

Victoria as Steam Punk Buffalo Gal

See what I did there, started blogging about blogging and drifted straight back to other stuff.  You've got to keep up if you want to read my posts!

First Weekend of 2018!

I didn't realize until this moment that I spent this past weekend, first of the new year, doing farm chores.  Wait, first weekend of the new year?  Shouldn't that be like a special occasion or some sort of celebration!  Well, I probably should have at least gone fishing, but that didn't even happen.  Nope, just worked on the farm and here's my latest updates.

As usual we've been busy wrapping up small projects on the farm.  I spread the load of gravel we had delivered and it covered the driveway in front of the shop, it's going to take a lot more rock to finish what we want done.  Just more time and money is all.

I also hauled the piggies to market.  Actually, to the processor and once the processor has finished their work then we'll have lots more to do.   Since the hogs are gone we also removed the panels and posts this weekend and will clean out the area of barn so we can add our desired horse stalls now.

For our hog I only had them do the fresh cuts, so we'll be grinding and making all our own sausage.  We'll also be canning a bunch of pork for storage as well.  We'll only freeze the chops, bacon, ham, and some roasts.  The cut orders for the pigs we sold were a mixed selection of fresh cuts, smoked, and ground sausage.  It's going to be great pork and we learned some valuable lessons this first round of raising hogs.  In the future we'll be processing our own because the butcher is not cheap! 

Last week I also finished Zach's closet and installed the organizer rack.  After some drywall work I painted the interior of the closet and with what we thought was matching leftover paint I put a coat on the surrounding exterior wall only to discover is was a different shade of light blue, more like a light slate color.  Either the paint was old or I didn't mix it well enough, either way it's going to take repainting his room to make it look right, so I'll need to finish that up this coming week so we can get the base trim installed.  At least the base trim is stained and ready to go.

New Organizer in Zach's Closet

It's not all hard labor though, I've been having fun too.  This past week I worked on one of the projects I've been tasked with and finished some nice coat hangers for Theresa.  Simple horseshoe hangers made from cutting some shoes in half then welding, a coat of paint, then nailing onto a nice stained piece of oak.  It's part of the motif in the entryway.

First New Coat Rack Hung

New Horseshoe Coat Rack

I also spent some of my weekend working on trapping some moles that are digging up the pasture.  Didn't have any luck catching yet, several traps were tripped but no moles!  I picked up a couple bigger traps and will continue working on the sets until we make a dent in the population, so many moles in the valley and they're really tearing up the pasture.  They'd make quick work of the garden so we've got to get that problem nipped in the bud.

We also worked on some pruning and trimming.  I took the week wacker out along the pasture and cut more blackberry growing outside the fence along the roadway.  Theresa worked on trimming the bushes back around the house and pump house.

Oh, I'm sure there was more things accomplished but I need to work on remembering to capture a few more pictures to share the visual excitement, maybe a few smiling faces after the job is done.  Overall we started the new year out right and made a list of our projects to work on...it's a long list and every day I think we'll realize that "other thing" we forgot to add to the list.

That's farm life, 24/7-365.

Sometimes It's the Little Things

On the farm sometimes just getting the little things done makes a big difference.  Just a couple nails tacked into a wall to hang up a broom or pick can make a world of difference.  It may not seem like much, but having your tools hung up so you know where you can find them means you can get to it and finish those chores without wasting time.

Here's a few little things we've been up to the past several weeks.  Oh, this isn't everything we've been doing, far from it, but it's some of our progress.

This past weekend was filled with all sorts of little things on the farm.  First I wrapped up some of the little projects on the pump house that started weeks ago.  I added a new step.

New Step on Pump House

It's not much of an out-building, but having a place to house the well pump and filtration system is important, so the pump house should be reasonably serviceable.  This little shed has been neglected for years, one end had settled to the ground and it was full of junk.  A couple weeks ago Zach and I emptied the junk and hauled it away, cleaned up the spidy webs and dirt and created a usable space again.  This past weekend I took the tractor and with a little leverage lifted the sagging end of the pump house and blocked it back up, then finished it off with a new step.  Kyle and I hauled in some gravel for some of the driveway work we're doing and added a nice path to the pump house, so now it needs some bushes trimmed around the outside, a new coat of paint, a little floor repair, and some new gutters.  Plenty of little things to work and keep me busy here.

New Filtration & Softener System in Pump House

Usable Organized Space in the Pump House

A few weeks ago we finished fencing in a yard area for the dogs, so Dexter the coon hound doesn't go running off chasing deer or bobcat at night.  I built a gate as well, but didn't finish it off so it was a plain squared off ugly gate.  This past weekend we finished off another little project and I trimmed the gate up and we laid down some mulch to make a pathway around the house to keep the mud traffic down.  Just another little thing done to improve the overall farm landscape.

Yard Gate & Mulch Pathway

Oh, I also built a ramp for loading the hogs, and we started letting the chickens free-range the yard now that they're big enough to fend for themselves.  We hung a new ceiling fan in the den (living room), installed new flooring in Zach's room and in process of remodeling his closet space, and pruned a few trees.  I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting that we've done since my last update, but it's hard to keep track of all those little things.

Ramp for Loading Hogs

Free-ranging Under the Apple Tree

Chickens Under Foot

You see, all those little accomplishments can add up in the end, so appreciate every little thing you do.