Question for you Raw Feeders or BARFers or however you self-identify… For folks who are feeding raw meat and bones to your dogs or cats, what are you looking for? We’ve started grinding chicken heads and feet for our farm cats. They are pleased with it. Please send us a note or leave a comment if you […]
I’m always amused by farm and fence glossy advertisements showcasing products held in perfectly clean hands. Anyone building high tensile fence has dirty hands; there’s no way around it. Besides all the dirt from fence posts, shovels, augers, hydraulic oil from post pounders, gas and oil from chainsaws, there’s always a lot of zinc or zinc-aluminum dust
I had to do a double take passing by a pen of weaned piglets. One of the pigs was entirely off the ground climbing the fence. Pigs are not good climbers and this one was no exception. He only made it an inch off the ground before his back feet slipped from the fence. But he
Dolma Stuffed Pigs Read More »
Someone propped an iron bed frame against a tree and over years it became entwined and engulfed by that tree and three later arrivals. There are any number of aphorisms, proverbs, or life lessons that could be trotted out with this picture as a backdrop, illustrating the slow but inexorable enveloping of time and natural forces. I can
This weekend I got a surprise when I stumbled upon a dead hawk in the pasture. It is pretty rare to find a top tier predator dead of natural causes. It wasn’t warm, but it also wasn’t too stinky or fly covered so it must have been recently deceased. I brought it up for the kids
This year I’ve tried planting annual forage crops for the pigs and cattle. I’ve been raising livestock and managing perennial pastures long enough not to be a novice, yet not long enough to be an expert. But when it comes to cropping, I’m completely inexpert. And my results this year certainly back up my claims to knowing
Crop Failure Etiology Read More »
We pulled the cattle out of the woods this weekend and herded them a half mile to one of the open pastures, back to their normal grazing routine. We’ve run the cattle through woods before, but this year we fenced in a lot more forest acreage. We have a few places, as pictured above, where the tree canopy
Feeding Hay in August? Read More »
The twine on an oat straw bale came undone, so I ended up forking it all and carting it home loose. The kids couldn’t lift the loaded pitchforks high enough, but they helped by climbing on top of the stack and packing it down so we could get all the straw collected in one trip. Some people
I’ve been a woodsman more than usual this summer, working on fencing in the wooded southern edge of our farm. We had been experiencing a dry summer until August changed all that with hotter than normal weather and lots of rain. In the woods this has triggered the fruiting of all kinds of mushrooms. I’m
Identify This Fungus Read More »
