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!