I kinda miss my 45-year old Case 530 backhoe. It was always either broken down or on the verge of breaking, but the business ends of the machine (the implement attachments) were built much tougher than anything on our new tractor. The new Case 65A has a 25% horsepower advantage, far more traction and stability, and a lot of …
Some of our black piglets have red stripes on them when they are little. No, not this kind of Red Stripe. We call them racing stripes, and although we can’t be certain that the pinstripes actually make them go faster, it at least makes them look faster. Von Dutch would be proud of the detailing …
We’ve been building a bridge over the last two weeks. We replaced a culvert with a small span, crossing a seasonal stream in the middle of our land. The stream runs most of the year, drying up for a week or two most summers. It never gushes, but we’ve had problems with the culvert plugging with ice …
During the summer we feed the pigs a fair amount of vegetables. These are waste products from produce wholesalers and farmers markets, unsaleable due to discoloration, bruising, and freezer burn (when the coolers accidentally go below freezing). Sometimes the fruit sports a light fuzz of white mold, but the pigs don’t mind that. Feeding produce …
In a three way fight, who wins in this sequence: bald eagle, Coopers hawk, or redwing blackbird? My camera couldn’t resolve the pictures of these birds in flight, but you might be surprised that the little blackbird came out the ultimate avian champion. A bald eagle was soaring overhead today, but apparently it was in …
I built a portable high-power solar fence charger mostly from parts and scrap. I’ve been using a 2 joule solar fence energizer from Premier for four years and it has worked well when we need a temporary fence out away from our main fences. But since the Premier fencer is in use over by the pigs and chickens, we needed another solar …
Remember when Han Solo yelled at C3PO, “Hurry up, goldenrod”? That always struck me as a strange word choice, considering that the story happened in a galaxy far, far away and especially considering that the characters in question were on an ice planet. The cattle would love to hurry up and get out of the goldenrod and back …
We are about to rotate the cattle into some poor pasture. I recently wrote about the transformation of a portion of this field with last year’s grazing. We plan to move the cattle through the untouched portion of that field this year, and then to graze an adjacent scrubby pasture. We can clean up the fields …
I have not seen a single wild honey bee this year. For several years they have been scarce, but it is shocking and disappointing for them to be gone. [Edit 13 July 2015: I have found two live honey bees and two dead ones since the article was written.] It is no secret that bee populations …
We’ve been experimenting with hilling discs in our potato patch. Last week we tried it, but the ground was wet and the weeds matted, so the discs were just lifting sheets and then dropping them back in place, slightly disturbed. After a few (somewhat) dry days and some light rototilling along the rows, we used the discs again. It took several …
