Author: raisingwood

Texas snow is happening. Blink and you’ll miss it. It’s enough to remind us each of the mortality of man every time and then brief enough to be fondly remembered in hindsight. It also makes a challenge for the pasture raised pigs who want to stay in their snug abode until hunger forces them out.

So they get some of the sweet potatoes that went to freeze previously and I don’t want to eat.

Pigs are rewarding creatures to have around. Always excited about gifts and abounding in squeals of thanksgiving.

They are still pigs though, so not strong on manners.

We did not do very well with winter crops in the garden. By not very well, I mean life caught us in a series of squalls and nothing was planted for winter. But spring is coming and we’ll start up again. Like baseball, everything works well in the spring.

In the meantime, what if there was a way to reduce the squash bug population, aggressively fertilize the earth, till the surface thoroughly, lower overall operating capital and labor while improving our protein machines?

Turns out chickens are good for all that. She is the supreme predator of the pestilent squash bug eggs. Hens are rapid and cheerful tillers, turning over the top soils and integrating top level biomass into the soil to accelerate composting. Free fertilizers with strong nitrogen content are deposited all over the garden. They do all this unsupervised while laying improved eggs daily. It’s a great deal and a fun example of integrative ecological systems benefiting each other.

In all of the tilling work they uncovered more troves of sweet potatoes from rogue vines. These are past a freeze date and not good for people to eat. They are also not part of the hen cuisine in our area.

But they are dynamite for happy piggies going through winter. More on that later.

Managing the hay access has been a challenge. The pallet fences that worked so well to keep the goats and cows out of the hay bales all summer and winter are failing. Given the thousands of pounds of beef weight shoving them around, that only surprises a city boy like me.

The bullcalf Yum is taking the cake. He’s small enough to fit in some of the cracks and got stuck on top of the rounds. He even fits through the hay feeder ring openings.

Now, I have a hypothesis. I don’t have a picture of it but the dogs keep getting on top of the hay bale rounds. I think the young one Ashok learned it from the goats this summer. The dogs and the calf have been playing and following one another around lately. So I think the calf learned it from the puppy. The dogs bolt off the hay when I go to take a picture, but I think they got up there and left their beefy buddy high and dry.

Eventually the calf hopped down and I modified the fencing to restrict access. It’s been working, mostly. Keep your hay dry folks!

Managing the hay access has been a challenge. The pallet fences that worked so well to keep the goats and cows out of the hay bales all summer and winter are failing. Given the thousands of pounds of beef weight shoving them around, that only a surprise to the city boy like me.

The bullcalf Yum is taking the cake though. He’s small enough to fit in some of the cracks and got stuck on top of the rounds.

Now, I have a hypothesis. I don’t have a picture of it but the dogs keep getting on top of the hay bale rounds. I think the young one Ashok learned it from the goats in a storm this summer. The dogs and the calf have been playing and following one another around lately. The dogs bolt off the hay when I go to take a picture, but I think they left their beefy buddy high and dry up there.

Eventually he hopped down and I modified the fencing to restrict access. It’s been working, mostly. Keep your hay dry folks!

Last winter we spent a lot of time managing goat and cow hay when it got cold. To clarify cold, it’s when I have to change how I manage livestock water. If it’s going to be solid on top through lunchtime, it’s cold. In the barn area we can manage water much easier then out in a pasture.

So, when the weather is right, into the barn they go. Barns do not grow grass well. So we feed hay. Hay on the ground is a waste, hay in a feeder is money well spent.

So we made a feeder that looks like a barrel, if a barrel was made of 4×4 inch mesh panel. Cheap, effective… Annoying because the goats keep smashing it in on itself.

We noticed another problem: the big queen goats kept all the other girls off of ‘her’ hay. The bucks are always welcome to get hay, just none of these other lady goats. With the impression of artificial scarcity, the whole herd suffered.

They make commercial grade feeders and sell them at ag stores, specifically for goats. They bite hard into our profits, so I was reluctant to buy one. But listening to sad lady goats bawling about being cut off from hay convinced me something must be done.

We go to the AG store, braced to pay full price. “What’s that? Oh you don’t have any. “

Off to the next ag store… “What’s that? You don’t have any either?” Hmmm.

“Wait, what’s that? That gnarled and faded piece of gear hanging off your fence back here? Yes, it sure is damaged. Yes it sure would be some work to make it usable. What’s that? You’ll sell it for 80% off? … Yeah I guess we can do that, if you insist.”

So after hammer work on the metal and mounting work on scrap wood (keep it for a reason!) and left over tote lids… We got ourselves a feeder for less then half price.

It works. It works even better then my barrel contraption because they eat the seeds on the tray as well.

Lessons learned are good lessons.

Good news in the pasture. Our Beefmaster cow birthed a bullcalf for the herd.

Because it’s nature, there’s always some chaos in the mix. Momma birthed him right by a (dead) electric fence and he tangled himself up in it by the time I noticed the activity.

Being a bullcalf, he promptly tore the fence down and hobbled his way the other direction.

Right into a different fence.

I’ve got a pocket knife and knowledge. Momma has snorts and stamps and protective instincts. Bullcalf brings enthusiasm for yanking fence wire tighter.

Together we managed to avoid smashed humans and tangled calves, and I don’t think he’s touched a fence since then.

Haven’t cracked the code on naming him… Odysseus and Homer are out, T-Bone and Yum are in the running right now.

Every year around Thanksgiving the Cornucopia is used in decorations. It was originally the horn of the goat filled with plenty of nuts and berries brought in from foraging the countryside. Today it’s even more expansive: a woven basket heavy with harvest and spilling out upon the table.

You notice some changes. It is no longer hunter-gatherer but agriculture. No longer a found and repurposed object (goat horn) but a made-to-spec woven product. No longer constrained with what was freely acquired, but increased abundance from what was produced. There’s thoughtful work going into it and much better output as a result.

What you choose to eat works in a similar way. Casting about and eating what comes easy and falls to you will work. You will have calories. You will have low costs on paper as the upside and blessings of industrial agriculture rain down around you. You may even have others coming for you all the time if you keep hitting the drive through.

Even in the ancient near east, a wise man pointed to the birds who eat and asked, why do you worry? Does not your father love you more then these sparrows?

This approach beats the pants off starvation and blatant malnutrition, where you don’t have the ability to even wear pants! Raise your goat horn my friends, for you have much and gratitude is in order.

Then sometime when you stop to think about food, you start to think differently. In a very real sense, to think at all is to think differently. What about the future costs of treating your inputs casually? What are the spillover costs others bear? How can there be so much transportation involved? Does local biome impact my body? What would it be like to know my farmer? Can I make small changes today to grow for tomorrow?

Once you start asking, you start to make changes. Maybe go to organics in produce. Maybe drop chemical colors. Maybe do eggs from the farm. Maybe find a farmer to hang a side of beef. Maybe start gardening. Maybe just cook at home more and drive through less.

Suddenly, you’re weaving that horn and planning a future. You’ve moved from the goat and the gathering to the basket and the harvest.

You’re improving health and lowering future costs. You’re uncovering delight in the patterns of the seasons. You soak in gratitude for the men who came before and breed these seeds and beasts to best serve man. It brings you closer to Eden, where God placed Adam in the first place.

Are you willing? There is great abundance for anyone willing to peek behind the easy button and start to build relationships.

Last year we grew some sweet potatoes. For us it was the first time they grew vines and covered the earth.

Then disaster struck in the form of goats on hooves craving their high protein leaves and vines. Once in May and once in July the furry blight descended on the happy sweet potato village. Ruin was wrought but the plucky little plant kept coming back.

The vines came back but the roots never grew big and consumable. The tubers grow big when they can store up energy from the sun, not when they have to focus energy on regrowing solar panels.

The gardeners constructed better walls and defensive measures and the 2021 sweet potatoes grew in peace and prospered.

After pulling the enlarged tubers from the soil you brush off the dirt and inspect. Some of the rejects had worms and these were given to the very happy pigs. The good ones are kept at 90f for 10 days to season and sweeten. Using a space heater and the well house we were able to manage that process.

Taking a cue from the goats natural behavior, we gave them all the discarded vines for supplement feed in the pasture. Great time had by all.

Part of the fun in homestead farming is the power tools. Drills, impacts, sawzalls…and tractors running a woodchipper.

Winter is coming and after the deep freeze last year, no more joking around for us. The pole barn is being rearranged to optimize space. Animals will stay on concrete floor areas for easy cleaning. Then we will be keeping hay separate from the animals.

The plan is inspired from some Joel Salatin writing on the wonders of using wood mulch as bedding in the winter. It soaks up the free fertilizer and can be converted to soil. To help the conversion in the spring, you put some corn in between your layers of mulch. Then the pigs dig up the corn and aerate the mulch in the spring. To do this, we need more chips.

Jenny has thought a woodchipper was a good idea for months. Over the summer she had a Don Quixote fixation with cutting tree branches down. They helped to feed leaves to the goats. It also helps grass grow under the trees to get more sunlight to the ground under the canopy.

Between that effort and the brush clearing to fix fences last year and this year, we have wood to burn.

Or in this case, chip into mulch, scatter as bedding, scatter some corn kernels amongst the bedding, put more mulch on it, then turn the pigs loose to till it all up into fluffy garden soils for the spring.

Michael Pollan is one of my favorite authors. He takes something simple such as what a person eats (The Omnivores Dilemma) or how food is prepared (Cooked) and asks the reader to think about it. What is a moral meal? Is there nobility in the kitchen? If you were a plant or animal, how would you conquer the earth?

For example, grass has nearly conquered the earth. It’s everywhere, before you consider wheat and corn dominating agriculture. Their pasture allies the cattle have also been propagated everywhere man builds. If you’re looking to conquer the earth, get humans to domesticate you and value your production.

These domestic, albeit heirloom tomatoes have done the same in the garden. They fruited in the summer and dropped some fruit. Those fruit planted themselves and now we get to harvest these volunteer fruits.

Because life is complex and I ain’t a good farmer yet, a lot of this fruit went bad or was damaged by critters while on the plant. The upside with having livestock is they don’t care about blemishes, they love nature’s nutrition.

A no waste volunteer food system? We can work with that.