Hay – Raising Wood

February 1, 2024April 23, 2026

When Winter Comes

North Texas has a long and hot summer followed by a random autumn. Highs from the 40’s to the 80’s, lows from the 20’s to the 70’s. Then spasms of winter compete with autumn and spring from Thanksgiving until Easter. Highs in the 20’s to the 70’s, lows in the 10’s to the 60’s. It’s beautiful and erratic and helps you feel alive.

Here are some tips for running temporary electrical infrastructure on a homestead with active animals.

Priorities:

1. Keep all electrical pixies where they belong

2. Manage stock water to be always safely accessible. (Let the deicers do the work.)

3. Zero damage to water infrastructure.(Drain yer hoses.)

Here’s my work process:

Residential panel boxes are safe to open

First, open your panel box and understand the amp rating on your circuit breaker. This will tell you how much you can run off the plug in the wall, as a safe system has all components rated equal or greater than the circuit breaker capacity.

These are 20amp, they are commonly 15 in household boxes

Now take the watts rating of your deicer. Convert them to amps at 120 volts. Designate type as alternating current (AC) in this calculator: https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/Watt_to_Amp_Calculator.html

Use outlets with Ground Fault Current Interrupt capabilities. If it’s the first outlet in the circuit it covers all outlets downsteam. This will immediately disable the branch in the event of a grounding issue. Examples are water ingress or broken components.

Now you know the amps of your deicer and the capacity of your circuit. Match extension cords to the application. Going big is always acceptable for electrical systems.

Outdoor rated, because they’ll be outside. Lighted plugs because that gives me information at a glance if the system is working.

12 gauge wire handles 15amp/1875 watts. On a 20amp circuit I can run a 1500w de-icer and a 250w de-icer safely and continuously.

When you use a splitter, verify the amp rating is at least as high as your extension cord. In this case it is 15amps splitter on a 12amp cable set.

Physically inspect your cable’s insulation (colored plastic) for physical damage. Vermin chew on them. Cover securely with quality electrical tape like Scotch 33+. This is not suitable for industry or contract work but it works in my residential setting. Beats exposed wire.

Now that you have your components figured out, it’s time to put it together.

As much as possible run on top of fence lines. If the cable is on the ground it will be tripped on. Whej stepped on it will damage the cable. Perfect your time and investment and run elevated.

Leave 5 to 10 feet of spare cable at each end, so as to have extra capacity when it is yanked on.

Work to secure the cable at multiple points along it’s travel path. I find an overhand knot, the first part of tying your shoes, to be the simple way.

These over hand knots are of particular importance where junctions occur

Finally, if a junction is on the ground and any source of water is available I like to secure it with a weather box. These are like $4 and last for years. Make sure it can accommodate your cable size, some do not handle 12 gauge he may duty cables. This also acts as a strain relief in the event a cable is yanked on.

Winter without deicers, ice holds a cow on top

Until it doesn’t. Just run the deicer safely and avoid the impromptu swimming party opportunity

Oh, one more thing:

August 20, 2023April 23, 2026

Hot Days, Dry Days, Hay Days

Texas in the summer. It’s hot. Has been my whole life and will continue to be hot. Last year was an extreme drought, this year is a regular drought. So grass is dormant and we’re back to hay.

Yum the steer, Leeli the new calf, both born here on greener grass

We finished up the hay from the winter buying and realized all of our delivery hay contacts were out of hay. So we’ve been hauling two at a time on our trailer. Ten bales now in the barn.

New to us heifer Amber with the cream color

We added a new heifer Amber to the herd this summer. She has high end Beefmaster genetics and has grown on range grass, perfectly in line with our development goals. The target has been to run two breeding cows, two growing cows and two finishing steers on a revolving basis. We are there now and will see how the plan works in reality.

We also added some kittens from a friend. One made it past the first two weeks, the other passed with some parasites we were unable to treat effectively. The laughs were fun though and we managed to keep both grown up cats in this new kitten process.

Nom nom

We had three hens die in the shade this week, which did not happen last August. We’ll be developing the breed to higher heat tolerance as this continues. Egg production is way down, 10 layers giving 2 to 3 eggs a day because of the stress. Fortunately we have been hatching and raising more as the summer progresses so the farm team pipeline is strong.

We did have a baby boy goat who struggled with parasites and weight gain. After a week of two or three time a day intensive care and treatment, he’s back on his feet and feeding on the range with the rest of this scrappy herd. They are delightful to watch prosper on scrappy drought land. They keep an antifragile edge to our meat on pasture production process.

January 7, 2022April 23, 2026

The Scrappy Winter Hay Feeder

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.

March 1, 2021April 23, 2026

Protect the Hay!

Previously we talked about Hay bales representing a great store of value over the winter and bragged about how much hay was in the barn. Since that time all the goats have decided the green spring grass is no good and they want to tear up all the unauthorized Hay bales. It’s great fun.

Imagine if this was a marshmallow, where would you start eating it?

Wood is pricey right now and we have stacks of pallets bought cheap on Craigslist last year. Time to put them to work.

Nothing like a lovely lady working to spice up the foggy morning

This was one of the good days in life. Kids played, all the materials were on hand, clear objectives and smooth work flow. Finished the whole side of the barn by lunch.

After that we hung gates on the two ends of the barn to finish isolating it.

We’ve never had so many compliments for the quality hayfork before this morning

February 19, 2021April 23, 2026

Hay Savings

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.