Pasture Preparation

I'v been busy getting one of our pastures ready for our intensive rotational grazing setup. This pasture is about 12 acres and is divided in to a grid of mown lines running east and west, and north and south across the whole pasture. Each square in the grid is 82 x 82 feet. I keep the lines mowed throughout the grazing months and the sheep and goats do the rest! Well not really, someone has to move the portable electric netting once every day sometimes twice this is primarily me. Our farm gets a lot of attention from passerby's on the road because of this. sometimes we'll meet somebody for the first time and when telling them where we live they'll say "oh are you at the place where the sheep and goats are in a different spot when ever we go past?" This goes to show that not many are doing intensive rotational grazing in our area. This is very sad to me it is not good for the health of the Pasture and the animals to stay in one place fore over 24 hours at a time. I if you look at a wild herd of ruminant animals their always on the move to new feeding places also in a well balanced ecosystem there are predators so they stay close together for protection. We can mimic this wonderful aspect created by God by using portable electric fencing. The fence is like a predator and keeps the herd bunched up and moving every day. Doing it this way improves the health of pasture and the herd.

This is the rotational grazing setup. The sheep&goats eat the grass and then the egg laying chickens follow then the grass is left to re grow.

sometimes we put young cattle in the fence too. We use to run the cows with the sheep and goats, but onetime one of the cows stepped on a sheep and broke it's leg so not any more

This is a wild resident of the pasture, it is a Upland Plover chick.

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Garden Update

Spring is advancing fast this year so I'm get the early things planted outside already. Today I planted Beets, carrots, spinach, lettuce and cabbage. The cabbage I planted in a cold frame because it likes warm temperature to germinate. Also I planted sugar beets and red mammoth mangel wurzels. These are for the animals to eat in the fall and winter months. I planted more of these beets this year than I did last year I planted them where I'm going to plant the corn in one long row about 600 feet long. While I was planting all this by hand with a hoe and enjoying the feel of the damp soil on my bare feet the was quite a contrast on the other side of the road. The commercial crop farm across the way is being leased out to a large agribusiness from down state. They seem to have a lot of money (or should I say debt and farm subsidies? ) by the look of their brand new tractors and matching red pickup trucks! The land is being leased out by one of the farmer families that has been farming this valley since the it was first settled in the late 1800's. It is sad to see this large farm gulp up more land. They own a piece of farm land across road from the land they're renting this land was once two family dairy farms with old growth trees in the fence lines. One farm even had a 10 acre remnant of Virgin forest that was the farm families sugar bush. When this big farm bought it they cut down all the trees to make way for irrigation pivots (an automatic watering system). This is bad for us as a small pesticide herbicide free farm. Last year they spayed their carrot field 20 or more times using a airplane and then when it came time too harvest they did not harvest all the carrots and let them rot in the field, what a disgusting wasteful way to "farm". This year this agribusiness is going to plant potatoes for a seed crop on this rented land for their big potato farm down state. So I guess there will be more foolish spraying than ever this year and what makes it worse it will be right across the road from us.

This is one of our gardens every thing is planted in beds with foot paths in between .

The oats, barley, and red clover are up and growing good now.

This is my propagation garden in it I have planted several heritage wheat, and oat varieties. And also a number of heirloom root crop vegetables that make seed in their second year, including rutabagas, table beet, onions, carrots, sugar beet and red mammoth mangel wurzels. I have never saved seed before from these kind of vegetables, it will be interesting to see how each one goes to seed.

This is the same part of the garden that my blog header picture was taken last summer. It is neat to see how different it looks in the spring!

The giant tractor disking up the field.

Here is a close up view

Here is a picture I took last year of the the pickle field being sprayed. Yes that is a pallet of bee hives for pollination of the cucumbers in the foreground, I'm glad their not my hives no wonder the bees are dying . I think I'm going to have to move my bees out of this pesticide strewn valley this year.

Long Days

The days are growing noticeably longer with each passing. This is my most favorite time of the year(spring in the north). I don't think I would like living in The Land Of The Midnight Sun though I would like to experience 24 hours of sunlight someday. I think 18+ hours is enough for me! It is such a wonderful design the Creator put into place for all of us who live in the north. With such a short growing season we can still plant tropical plants such as corn and tomatoes, because of the long daylight hours, though the past two years have been a struggle do to cloudy wet wether. Another nice thing is it allows more time to get things done especially getting in the hay for the winter.

I have been busy getting ready to plant field corn about( 1.5 acres) we're planing on planting it by hand. I was going to plant it with the neighbor's four row corn planter but then I decided to plant it in hills every 36 inches both ways acrossed the field. This is the way corn was planted by the Indians and traditional farmers and how I planted it last year. This way of planting corn is called checked corn. And is the best way to plant the old verities of corn. The field is all ready for planting so when the rainy wether clears and the oak leaves are the size of squirrel's ears it will be time to plant the corn

Also today we had two more kids born.

Natural pest control

I think this is a Tiger Beetle or maybe a Searcher Beetle, it is a good bug that eats bad bugs.

I found it out in one of the pastures today it was running in a open place in the grass and its iridescent spots caught my eye. One way I attract these good beetles is by leaving wild places around our vegetable gardens. By doing this there is no need for pesticides even the so called "organic/natural" ones such as Pyrethrum. It is the most widely used "natural" pesticide and is derived from the chrysanthemum plant. There is another one called Organocide and is a mixture of 5% Sesame oil, 92% fish oil, and emulsifiers 3%. These sound sort of natural, what's wrong with them? There all from plants and animals. Well lets look at the chrysanthemum plant where was it grown? Were rain forests cut down, or some other ecosystem destroyed in order to plant a mono-crop of chrysanthemums to meet the world's demand for Pyrethrum? What about the Sesame oil? Was the Sesame grown sustainably? Or was it sprayed with Pyrethrum to kill the bad bugs! What about the fish oil? Fish certainly grow naturaly right? Well sadly maybe not these days. As the world's demand for fish goes up and there is no longer enough fish for every one in the ocean and lakes. We are starting to see more fish raised on fish farms. And the fish are eating a mostly corn (maize) diet. Fish eating corn? Yes they are breeding fish that can grow on corn more than likely GMO. Also the fish are fed antibiotics to keep them "healthy". So if you don't Want to support all this non earth friendly stuff, but still think you "need" to use something like Organocide. Why don't I make my own? Easy, just find some very Eco friendly Seseme oil and fish oil at the local health food store. What would be wrong with this? Nothing, you could eat it, its all food grade. But wait why do you think you "need" to spray this on your plants? Oh I have this little mite sucking the juice out of some of my plants and I read this will kill them. Well mites are related to spiders and so you may be killing them too. The spiders eat a lot of bad bugs and maybe mites too. So don't spray and let the good bugs kill the bad.

Package Bees

To day I picked up 4 bee packages from a near by beekeeper. A bee package is a small screened box with 3 pounds of worker bees, a caged queen bee, and a tin can of sugar syrup so they can have something to eat on the trip up from the southern states. And is one of the ways to start new hives.

a package of bees is about 9000 bees

The four bee packages waiting to be in stalled in hives

Me taking the bees out to the apple orchard where I set up their new homes

Getting the bee smoker going

Shaking the bees out of the box and into their hive

This is one of the queen cages it is designed to slowly release the queen. It has a plug of fondant candy that the bees eat to let the queen out.

Triplets

Yesterday one of the goats gave birth to three kids, one is a buck and two are does. We were surprised she had triplets since she did not look big enough. This goat has never had just one kid though, she had twins her first time. Also another Shetland sheep had twin ewe lambs a few day back so now the young of the herd is 3 lambs, and 4 kids.

Also we got a frost last night. The peach tree is in bloom and I hope the blossoms didn't freeze. The tree was planted by the previous farm owners and is on the south side of the barn. This is good for the peach tree since it is protected from north winds. Its a little to far inland to plant peach trees here in Michigan all the peach orchards are closer to Lake Michigan in what is called the fruit belt and is planting zone 6 but some of the orchards still get hit hard by frost. Which will probley happen this year since we had such worm days this early spring and the fruit trees are blooming too soon. We are zone 4/5 so we don't always get peaches from our tree. But maybe with the compost pile so close to the tree it will keep it warm at night.

Yesterday we went to sell things the farmers market. it was nice to be setup in doors out of the cold wether. Yes it went from 80 on wednesday to cold and a little snow in the air on Saturday! I was not too surprised though because the third saturday of April is the spring consignment auction day. It seems to either rain or snow on that day. This is a good thing though for the sale because, as the auctioneer once said in his opening speech "Now I pick a rainy cold day so you all can come, no one is out sunning on the beach or raking their lawn." We stopped by the auction on our way back from the market to see the goings on there. You can bring any thing to this auction to have it sold to the highest bider so there is a lot of stuff to look at. mostly farm stuff and used vehicles and a tent of antiques. There are twelve rows of stuff for sale and three or four auctioneers and hundreds of people. We did not stay long it was late in the day and cold.

A GMC pickup we saw there with a lode of goodies from the sale

Back view of the North woods style political sign!

Scrap steel is $290. a ton so it looks like the someone is going to make a few bucks!