I have a confession to make. Don’t tell everyone. I lost comprehensively to an opponent without a consciousness.
Let me explain. This year, the spring was full of promise. Rain in abundance, year 3 with a garden bed prepared, pregnancy for the humans, and a rain water system ready to go. I assembled a low pressure drip irrigation system. We shaped the rows and prepared seed beds.
Green beans
Several days later, everything is looking good! We had the drip nozzles tuned, the timer worked. Water flowed from the rain tank. Mulch from our own trees run made with the chipper on the tractor. Goat manure as fertilizer. Seeds in the ground.
Drip nozzle in the toro blue line Shut off valve on each branch of line Overall view, note the dark strips where water is precisely placed Inline water filter, timer, pressure regulator at the head of the water lines Rain water for garden and cow water
Then the real work began.
The real work is when it’s hot out and the kids need dinner and there’s morning sickness in the house and the goats are swimming in worms and you want to get kitchen cabinets done before a baby arrives and the car needs repair and the electric fence is down again and the riding mower needs a repair and the gate needs a new battery and there’s actually a career job that needs attention and ect.
Then also battle back the Bermuda and monkey grass and to train the tomatoes.
This year, the jungle won. The tyranny of the urgent conquered the important. The beautiful garden space was full of hope and seeds and clever engineering solutions. Now it’s a lost world. I think I saw a Parasaurolophus giggling to herself with the okra. With our baby on the way, she can have the fall garden too. I’ll get back to this place with my machete next spring.
Garden on the left, happy cow pasture on the right, when things were rainy and green
People all over these United States make a claim every year. They sing together that the Christmas season is the most wonderful time of the year. I want to submit that at Raising Wood, a wet spring is the at least a tie with the Advent, even beyond the fruitful flame war of Christmas vs Easter. I’ll give some examples from this past month. As a bonus, there’s a picture at the very end that would be impossible to plan for.
Spring has new life. Birds hatch and escape their nests. I found this blue bird on the ground amidst tall stands of grass. It was such a lovely day, Blue the cat came through and made some paw swipes and moved on. Hours later the fledgling was flapping and scampering up past the house, with a whole life of predatory insect control ahead of him.
Speaking of grass grown tall, we have pastures that never grew above my ankles last year. With rain instead of drought, growth is past my knees. It is fun in person to watch the goat kids leap and bound through the grassy jungles as we move them into new pastures. You can see that the stand is up to the momma’s bellies, sometimes past their ears. The sward is thick and rich.
Speaking of new life and mommas, we hatched chicken eggs. Mixed results. Batch 1: 21 eggs, 0 hatches. No reason why, they were silent in the exit interview process. Batch 2: 21 eggs, 9 hatches. They did well in the new halfway house and have transitioned to grass based chicken RV living very well. Curiously, we have seen a dramatic increase in the chickens grass eating capabilities and problem solving skills as we’re on the third generation. There’s chicken capabilities being unlocked that we didn’t get from the store chicks. It’s alsbeen fun seeing the chicks hatch from the brown eggs laid by Wellsummers show yellow feet. The Americana/East Eggers from the olive&blue retain their gray feet. They are for sale, as is the next batch. Email me.
We added two head of cattle to the mix in the winter. One was a bull calf that was already steered, the other was intact. We took the intact one to the vet for the castration. Somehow he dive-bombed my leg in the transport process. Turns out he had a diet very high in fresh grass. It left grass stains on my khakis through the manure. Sometimes you get the steer, sometimes the steer gets you, I guess.
Seeing fresh grass is wonderful. Believe me, they are more aware of the fresh grass on the other side of the fence then we are. Now we get to rotate the cows to fresh pasture as they finish up a pasture. A welcome change from the hay filled tedium of winter feeding. The pasture on the left is ready for grazing. They have spent 2-1/2 days in the pasture on the right and it will grow for 20-30 days before we rotate cows back on it.
Out on those rotation pastures, we’re trying a different method for chickens. The goal is to add grass and insect life to the chickens diet. The A frame is where the hens are roosting and laying eggs. The white net is a portable electric fence that we can use to give them a ‘yard’ around the A frame. This will fertilize the pasture, destroy more grasshoppers, and give the chickens more space to be fun and happy birds with less confinement housing. No manure build up means better sanitation for everyone. This picture is the third area we’ve set up. We’ll move them forward 40 feet in a week. The net connects to all the existing pasture fencing. It is a wonderful layering solution to our infrastructure.
Can I get all of the glory of the spring together into a single picture? No. But if I could make an attempt, this is the front runner.
Do you see it? The cattle in the foreground devouring a pasture that was heavily grazed by goats in the winter. They’re de-worming and eating and fertilizing and becoming delightful beef. The goats in the far back left, fresh pasture with tree branches and so many glorious leaves to nibble at warp speed. Midframe, a tree in full leaf putting shade over my children’s project house, fresh off a good hose washdown and brush scrubbing to ‘clean it up’. Then some pallet fencing protecting the garden. Finally, To the very far back right, where the rainbow terminates, beyond the garden and the pasture: Not pots of gold with red headed guardians, but the finest of does come to admire the view.
My friends, that’s most wonderful time of the year.
Spring is coming and we have done a lot of blending livestock with each other to make feeding easier this winter.
Our livestock guardian Anatolian Shepherd, Ashok, has taken to preferring goat feed over dog food. He’s also sleeping with the Kune Kune pigs and playing with the bullcalf Yum.
In his spare time he’s also started fights with his pops and eaten a chicken, so there are some problems.
Let the wash begin
Cattle in herds take care of grooming each other. We see them lick fly ridden areas on each other and rub on areas the tails can’t reach. They also give the piggies a bath. The piggies will come up and roll over for a good solid lick down and then wonder off again. Complete surprise to us.
Let’s play paw-to-hand through the glass
The cats are also friendly with the kids, through the door way. No cats in the house!!
