Bye Bye, Overgrown Garden Beds

I moved the old raised garden bed frames to a new spot, and am going to clear out the area for the kids' pool.

Dude, where's my raised garden beds?

I now have several already-built beds to re-prpose.

A Cow for the Whole Family

Bridget Da'Cow is truly a family cow for us.

Bridget Da'Cow with Thing #3 (left), Thing #1 (middle), and Thing #2 (right).
I tethered her near the family while we worked on reinforcing the paddock fences.

She is extremely docile, has already mastered halter leading, and even stays perfectly still when the kids are nearby petting her. I think they petted her like this^ for a good 30 minutes. Bridget didn't budge.

Goodbye, Samson

To make room for Bridget and Brisket, our new family cows, I had to re-home Samson the Donkey today.

Samson the Donkey, roped and grazing in the early morning a few days ago.

We only have 5.4 acres. Wife and I very carefully considered where we wanted to take our family, and based on the direction we're going, there simply aren't enough acres for cow and donkey to coexist.

So, we found a new place for him about an hour away. He was picked up and brought to the vet earlier this afternoon for a checkup by his new owners. He'll "retire" on a 30-acre farm with 4 horses. He'll be happy. Right now, we're still sad.

I still believe in the benefits of donkey ownership. However, the benefits of cow ownership, coupled with the economics of backyard milk cows, simply tipped the scales.

Goodbye, Samson the Donkey. We will miss you.

Why Are Self-Sufficient Family Farms So Big?

Short answer: horses.

Long answer: there are many factors involved. First of all, for a true "self-sufficient" farm, you need to produce everything you need from the land. That's all food, water, clothing, building supplies, medical supplies, cleaning supplies, heating, lighting, tools, books, recreational activities, etc., along with all of the other necessary to keep them up.

I think most farms are needlessly large and hyper-specialized these days.

Of course, one person (or heck, even one family) cannot reasonable do it all. Taking on blacksmithing, woodworking, animal training, dairying, crop growing, shearing, weaving, looming, tanning, medicine, home building, and general day-to-day repairs, on top of the routines of life with laundering, cooking, cleaning, and normal family life, is a big task.

So self-sufficient farms really DON'T do it all. Instead, they produce extra of whatever, and then sell and/or barter to fill in the gaps. Or, they maintain a separate income source and narrow their focus. But I often encounter situation where advice or "standards" are based on the first camp.

"Oh, you definitely need at least 60 acres to be self-sufficient."
"You can't have sheep and cows on less than 10 acres."
"You have to a barn, and 5 acres for hay, and this for that, and ...."

Bah!

More Hay! Ole!

I had to go get some more hay this afternoon.

A 25 minute drive, 11 square bales, $41, and 1 minivan. You do the math.

It looks really good, and it better daggone last the rest of the winter. I'll be moving donkey out to graze the residual overgrowth until springtime. The hay is for the sheep.

The kiddos have to clean out the van tomorrow anyway, so they'll just be adding some loose hay to their chores. :)  Hey, we all gotta do our part.

Bitter Cold

In Tennessee last night, it got down to -4 degrees. Yesterday, the high was 14. Today it was 21. The animals hung in there pretty well.

Corn the Rooster patrolling the coop and keeping his girls safe. They huddled together
underneath the coop for the better part of the day.

Year-End Animal Inventory

At year's end, we have:

• 1 English Mastiff
• 1 donkey
• 1 corn snake
• 1 outdoor cat
• 15 or so African Ciclid fishies (they had babies!)
• 3 Katahdin sheep (2 of whom may or may not be pregnant)
• 16 chickens (1 rooster, Corn, plus 15 hens)

New Year's Homestead Update

What a crazy year it has been.

This weekend, I took inventory of where things are. First things first, a chicken update. We are now getting 8+ eggs a day consistently. I got 19 in just the last two days. Here was yesterday's next boxes:

Count'em - that there's 10 eggs!

Aside from the few random eggs on the coop floor, the girls have managed to lay in the boxes very consistently. It's SO nice to literally see our reliance on a factory-produced grocery store item disappear. At a current WINTER pace of 50 eggs a week for an 8-month-old flock, we're doing amazingly well.

The repaired coop is also holding up quite well.

2013, We Hardly Knew Ye

"...from such films as Andre the Giant,
We Hardly Knew Ye...."

Or, we knew Thee all too well for our own Stinking Goode.

Either way, it was a crazy-town, whirlwind year here at the homestead.

This time last year, I knew there was so,so much to get done, so I dubbed 2013 "The Year of Getting Things Done."

Boy howdy, was it ever.

I have a yet-unfinished list, sure, but I did complete some very major accomplishments this year. We will continue our self-sufficient journey in 2014 with some exciting new additions and expansions.

For now, though, let's look back at 2013: The Year of Getting Things Done.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A day late, technically, but giving thanks to God never gets old.

I treated the animals to some Thanksgiving treats in the morning (pics after the jump). But the star of the show was the Paleo Thanksgiving Feast that Wife put together.

Clockwise from the smoked turkey leg: paleo orange cranberries, brussel sprouts cooked in bacon,
mashed cauliflower, paleo pork and apple stuffing, sweet potatoes topped with pecans,
 and sauteed green beans.

Breakfast was just as paleo and yummy.

Late November Homestead Update

Whelp.Winter is here.

The leaves are gone. The grass is brown. The chicken waterer is freezing overnight. The heaters are out in the house.

Thing #3 helping me winterize.

I have a lot to do to get ready for winter. It's here too fast this year.

Homestead Update

Fall depresses me.

Here we are, entering October. It's fall. This fact is now unavoidable.

I cling to summer as long as possible. I love shorts and T-shirts. I break them out early in the spring, even if I shiver at first. I continue to wear them until I can't take it. At least there's a few more weeks of short sleeves left this year.

The garden is done for the year. I have a few lingering peppers, and maybe a handful of cherry tomatoes, still hanging on. The rest is done. I decapitated the poor, ghostly sunflowers yesterday. I picked all of the dried beans in the pod. I'll probably have the Things sort through them for some extra ca$h.

Homestead Update

So besides the quarter of grass-fed cow and the ginormous website project, the homestead has been relatively quiet. The garden is great, the animals are finally stable and healthy, and things are hitting their summer stride.
That is, when the cucumbers are not swallowing them.
I was excited to see the first okra on the stalk today.

HUGE okra coming off the stem. The cucumber vines are sending yellow flowers
to squat in the other squares and devour it all.

But wait! There's more!

Moving the Electric Netting

Animal friends in the electric net system.

Every 7 to 14 days or so, I need to move the animals to a new spot. I have 4 pieces of electric netting, 164 feet long each, and a solar charger for the fence. I only use 3 nets right now, because the sheep and chickens are still so little, they're not eating enough to justify the increased area.
It's a pretty cool setup. Most of the time it takes me about 2 hours to move it. Between that and daily water checks, I really have very little other animal maintenance. This movable pasture system provides so many cool benefits:

• The periodic moves keep the animals on fresh grass all the time.
• The system prevents overgrazing.
• Parasites are unable to establish themselves given the time that passes between the animals grazing over a particular spot. I like to give at least 30 days rest between moving them back, allowing any existing parasites to die off.
• The electric fence, and the moving of said fence, keeps predators at bay.

So I decided to document what I do.

Bird's Eye View of the Garden

A view of the garden, with the orchard behind it, from the roof.

Well, roof's eye view anyway.

I had to finish adding the silicone caulk to the roof, and touching up the paint this weekend. I also did some gutter work. Whilst up there, I thought I'd snap a pic of the garden. It's a neat perspective on the land, being 30 feet up.

From the same perspective, I took a shot of this week's grazing area.

Sheep, chickens, and donkey in the new temporary grazing pasture.

I do enjoy the view from the roof, if not the work. Makes we wish sometime for a nice, tall balcony.
Oh well.

Why Every Homestead Needs a Donkey

Samson the Donkey and I, chillin' in the back 2.

So a year ago, we had been experiencing some issues with gardening and grass cutting. The garden wouldn't grow right, and the grass wouldn't stop.
I just couldn't manage to get either one under control.
Our vegetables were having nitrogen fixation issues. Our lawn was growing faster than I could mow.
So I did what I do - I got on Google.
How do I enlist help mowing the lawn, without buying a big riding mower? How do we get nitrogen back into our soil? What steps can be taken to balance the land?
I stumbled across a gardening thread where somebody casually mentioned having access to donkey manure. The other members were insanely jealous, calling it "garden gold" and wishing they had some instead of their cow manure.
At the time, we had no animals, and no access to manures of any kind. Also, we had no fence.
But with some looking into it, I discovered some fascinating information about donkeys. Pretty soon, I realized we just couldn't go on much longer without a donkey.
The next hurdle: convincing the Wife.

Grass, Hay, and Biodiversity

This is some of my grass.

Look at all those different, yummy grasses! Mmm-mmm!!

In my animal grazing area, I have at least a dozen different grasses, plus the occasional weed. This gives the animals a good, balanced diet.
I just can't fathom why some folks insist on feeding animals a single kind of hay. First of all, animals in their natural environment do not seek out and eat grasses that have been cut then dried for several weeks. They eat fresh. Uppity livestock types call it "forage" and caution about the amount that is "safe."
Gimme a break.
Second of all, animals do not eat one kind of grass only. They move from place to place eating first one kind, then another, and around and around until it eventually ALL gets eaten. The ones that taste best, or have needed nutrient content, go first. In a mixed environment, the animals take in all of the grasses, and get a far more balanced nutrient-rich diet.
As hay sits, nutrients leech out anyway. So the dry, single-species hay fed to static animals is a feedlot seriously impacts their overall health. Giving them fresh, diverse pastures lets them eat a natural, God-designed diet that encourages optimum health.
Oh yeah - they need water, too.

Animal Friends

Our homestead is rapidly expanding this year. We've been here for just over two years, and have finally gotten to the point where we're adding our "infrastructure animals." The first wave is sheep and chickens.
I've had a donkey for about a year now, and he's been an excellent lawnmower. He is also there to provide some compost for us, and to keep the coyotes and foxes at bay.
These are my three little lambs. I'm weaning them off the bottles this week. The older two had their last one yesterday, so the inconsolable bleating should attract every predator this side of Memphis for the next few nights. Great.

From left, Meatloaf, Pot Pie, and Pancake.
The food names will make it easier when I send them off to Freezer Camp.

These three will breed the next generations of meat lambs. We plan to keep them through several lambings, until we get a new generation to start it all again with.

Here are the baby chicks. We got 26, mostly hens, but some roosters too to help keep the population going.

Yeah, I'm not naming 26 chickens. I still have a little sanity left...

So, our 5.4 acres are brimming with new little animal lives, and keeping things interesting already.

God bless.