Raising Wood

Joel Salatin talks about having hay on hand as a high yield savings account. He’s right. We had our pastures baled over the summer before any livestock set foot and came away with 16 bales at $22 each. Our friends from BA Agriculture helped line the bales up in the pole barn with their tractor.

This last week of feeding unlimited hay has used up 3 bales, at current winter rates that’s $65 per bale. We should make it through the whole winter using about 5 bales and have hay for the next two winters as well.

Going into 2021, working to figure out a square bale solution. For our plans human sized solutions are needed. The round bales look rolly, but they aren’t. It’s a huge labor to move one around, and we have no way to sell them as we can’t load up someone’s trailer with it. Square bales may cost more but will fit our purposes, and agricultural antifragility, much better.

The snow tells stories of the past. Tales of travelers and expeditions the full length of the driveway.

It appears to be a footprint in three parts. The investigation led to a father and son. The witness testimony was eager but ultimately without merit.

Folks, were dealing with rabbits here. Crisis averted and the mail wasn’t here anyways. Back to your normally scheduled programming.

It’s been holding steady well below freezing for 3 days now. I’m a Texas boy, this is new and strange. One of the problems we noticed quickly is the animals water freezes over, so you have to go break it open.

It doesn’t sound daunting or tedious until you have to suit up for the cold. I freezer burned an earlobe on day one without enough head coverings.

The best tool so far is the mattock from EasyDigging. Normally a good hand tool for people of all ages in the garden, it’s become my go to for opening water portals. Then there’s steers like this that don’t want the easy water, they’ll get some on their own.

Through it all, I’ve been impressed by the Anatolian Shepherd, Sullivan, having the least amount of concern about the cold.

The Cold is not something we spend much time preparing for. It seldom freezes in north texas, and never for long. Until this week, a week looking to be solid below freezing and with many inches of… What’s this? Real snow??

We don’t have much infrastructure for winter, so we are learning what our livestock need by watching closely and adjusting, and beating the ice off the water tubs many times today.