“Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge?” Shakespeare, Sonnet 146 (The fun thing about cherry picking quotes from the literary luminaries is that one can usually find appropriate quotes, so long as context is ignored. As quoted, these worm lines are germane; in context, they take the reader in quite other directions.) […]
Sorry, no pictures since we don’t raise meat chickens over the winter. The first batch arrives in early April. After years of lackluster broiler chicken experiences, we finally felt like things were clicking in 2016. Chicken health was great, mortality was lower than we imagined possible, and feed conversion rates were vastly improved. Last year we
Changes 2017: Meat Chickens Read More »
Here is the second installment in my series outlining the changes planned for Wrong Direction Farm in 2017. I’ll use the Sergio Leone’s time tested rubric to review the plans for pigs this year. The Good There’s no doubt about it: pigs are my favorite farm animal. I like cattle as a group, but I
Changes 2017: Pigs Read More »
This is the first in a series of posts on changes we are making to the farm this year. Please stay tuned for more over the next two weeks. We would love to hear from our customers as we describe our plans for 2017. Please comment or email or call us. Or stop by for
With the ice accumulations overnight I was wondering if the polywire fences would still be standing when I went out to move the cattle this morning. I was glad to see that all the fences fared well.
“Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years.” Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front So I’ll start by honestly saying I can’t manage to take meaningful motivation for the thousand year view. There are too many intervening potentialities. But I want to manage my
Taking the Long View Read More »
The whole idea of feeding hay runs counter to the prevailing wisdom in swine production, where feeding anything other than supercharged grain rations is considered foolish. But in farms like ours where there are concerns beyond simple feed conversion calculations, hay feeding has its place. But I’ve always wondered: what is the right hay for
Finding the Right Hay for Pigs Read More »
“But he (he knew very well how he must appear to others) was a country gentleman, occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game, and building barns; in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of the world, is done by
Sorry for the last week of postlessness, but I’ve been running the farm solo while the family goes a-visiting friends and relatives for a few weeks, so blog posts don’t often make it up to top priority on the daily to-do lists. The weather has been crisp with lots of below-zero nights but not too
Bale grazing works well when we can reliably exclude the cattle from bales and ration their access to fresh bales throughout the winter. We learned early on that trying to cross fence with step-in posts was not ideal since the frozen ground makes post insertion impossible without using a masonry bit, and later it makes post
Pigtail Post Extensions Read More »
