Our Web Site Is Up!

We have our website up and running (click here). We need to work out a few bugs, but it's where we want it to be. Our youngest son Sean built it for us in his spare time, to which we are very appreciative. Check it out when you have a chance.

Label Gadget Added

I updated the weblog template to include the label feature for each post because we want to show folks how we do things on the farm. We hope that by sharing "how-we-do-things,"  other new homesteaders will gain something from us and even better, someone may come across our weblog and offer us a better or different solution on how to do something.

Pretty much everything that we do here on our homestead is done through a low cost, sometimes low tech, and generally, can be done by one person method. It boils down to two things, keeping cost low while getting the job done, and being able to accomplish it with one person.

Anyway, we hope this will be useful, and if you have any questions about how-we-do-things, please drop us  a line in the comments section and look to the right hand side for the "Labels."

Rams and Lambs

I had the camera handy and saw an opportunity to take a picture of our sheep in action. In the background are our 2013 crop of lambs that just moved into a new paddock a few minutes before. In the forefront are our rams; two yearlings from 2012, kept for our freezer, and our main ram Cam. (The folks we bought our ram from have a naming method where they use words from one category in a given year. In 2011 they named all their ram lambs counties in Africa and ours was named Cameroon. So we call him Cam for short.)

The three are helping with a little reclamation along a creek bed. I fence the area off with four strands of polywire and then move the sheep in there to clean it up, eating away the briers, weeds and saplings. This works well keeping the wooded area growth from moving out into the pasture without have to use our tractor to cut it back. The other great benefit is during the hottest summer months where we put them in the wooded areas either along a creek bed or between pastures so the sheep can lounge in the shade during the hottest periods of the day. They're still able to graze on the branches without being stressed due to the heat as they would on an open pasture. But this summer we haven't had the heat issue and I've had them on pasture pretty much all the time.

Rams and lambs

As for our ewes (which aren't pictured here), they are on a back pasture grazing and putting on weight after weening.  I'll be setting up wire along another part of the creek and they'll spend the next two weeks cleaning this out for me too.

In the past I used the extra polynets we have to fence off these wooded areas, the same ones you can see in the picture. It worked well, but the nets took a bit of a beating. So I switched over to the polywire and as stated above running four strands around the given area. With the polywire there is almost no wear and tear. One thing we don't do is to run lambs in there. Lambs are likely to get out and coyotes could get in. If we were going to run lambs in there we would use seven to eight wires to create a good barrier for the coyotes. However, with the ewes we have our livestock guard dog (LGD) in there, so with a good charge, 5,000 - 8,000 volts, it's unlikely that we'll have a coyote attack. We don't run our LGD with the lambs because she's a pup right now and is a little too aggressive with the lambs, so for now she stays with the sheep that are least a year old.

Mid Summer Update

Here we are at the end of July and I haven’t posted anything to this web log since last December, mea culpa. Well quite a bit has happened since then, so here goes:

Over all it was a tough winter for us coming off the drought. We went through our square bales by the end of January because we had to feed earlier than expected. With the drought we weren’t able to stockpile grass for December. We cut the last time at the beginning of August our winter pasture, which under normal conditions would have produced some good growth and seeded with the no-till drill we rented from the county, with Kentucky blue grass and orchid grass, but because of the heat and lack of rain we had almost nothing to show for December on 12 acres. So by the middle of February we started to buy round bales. I built a round bale feeder (put link in) from a plan I found on the sheep discussion board I belong and that made all the difference. Mainly because there was little waste and the bales were pleasing to the sheep. I’m not sure what the nutritional content was but the sheep really liked it and it showed in body condition scores as we approached lambing, which for an average was close to 3.5. Overall we had to buy 18 round bales and this cost us about $400.

As I posted in December we decided to breed a little later this year shooting for the second and third week in May for lambing. The gamble paid off because we had great weather and grass in April and even better grass in May, so our ewes really performed well. Over all we had a good lambing with 37 lambs, but I post a separate article explaining more about our lambing and our data later.At this point in July 2013, with all the rain we have been getting is making up for last year.

Back to winter: it was a colder winter and not real wet. Wood cutting went pretty good and I was able to stay stocked. But we are still below what we need to be in inventory at this point.

At beginning of December we butchered our egg layers and thought about giving them up. The reason came down to cost. With farmers going after the quick buck raising corn for ethanol feed prices have continued to climb making raising chickens too expensive. But after some discussion we decided to press forward with egg layers and soon meat birds. But Murphy struck or I should say Kera our German Sheppard pup. We had moved the birds outside from the brooder in the basement and all was fine. But after moving the coop one evening in early June I didn’t latch the door properly and Kera found her way in there and did what dogs do. So a couple of weeks later I was back at the post office picking up another order of chicks. These are doing fine and are now ready for the pasture. But before we can do this I need to build a new egg mobile. The one we have now is on skids, but I was able to get an old camper trailer and will build a new one on the frame. More on this will follow.

Well I am going to close here and I am sure I have missed quite a bit, but we’ll try to fit some blogging time in once a week. It does help having what we do written down because we can go back and reflect on our labors, but it’s like everything else that’s not animal related…it falls to the bottom of the to-do list.

Warm and wet for the first part of December

Our part of Ohio had a fair amount of rain and the temperature has been in the low 50s during the day this week, and it helped greened up the pastures a little bit. In between the rain we were able to build temporary fenced-in paddock to hold the 2012 lambs. The sky was clear on Saturday so Beth and I were able to bring in all the sheep and check them for health and weight, and separated those that were going to breed and the 2012 lambs that won’t.

We were about finished and ready to move the lambs when some folks that are buying our lamb stopped by. It was good opportunity for us to show them the lamb they are going to purchase and explain a little bit about our operation. If you are going to buy fresh food, be it vegetables or meat, I highly recommend going to that farm and checking out the operation and seeing for yourself how the farm business enterprise is managed.

After they left we finished moving the lambs.  Lambs are a little tricky to move without established lanes across a farm. It’s a bit like moving with a group of teenagers at the mall. As we moved from the sheep sorting area the group broke into two and one group stayed with me and the other broke for our house. But like being with teenagers, the key is to stay calm (I can hear the laughs from my sons right about now). Beth was able to get them at least moving in my direction, so once I got my group into the paddock I was able to head back and help Beth with the aid of cracked corn. Cracked corn is to sheep like candy is to 5^th graders.  Once breeding is finished we’ll move the lamb ewes back in with the flock, where they’ll be together until the spring. We’ll separate them during lambing.

After church we got our ram ready for breeding. That meant getting him from his holding area and traveling pretty much across the farm to where the ewes are located. But all went well and he cooperated. This isn’t always the case; some can get pretty aggressive especially at this time of year. But we are fortunate to have purchased a fairly gentle ram from good stock. Close to where the ewes were I had positioned the marking paint a head of time I apply to his chest. The marking paint lets me know whom he’s been with; from there I can have a good idea when the lambs will be born.

Next week we send our first group of lambs to the butcher, and we are also lining up the following week too.

The week before last I brought in all of our egg layers (Rhode Island Reds) to an Amish family to butcher for us. We got them back Beth has been cooking them, and since the chickens are two and half years old you have to cook them a little different, actually a lot longer. In case you don’t know the chicken you eat at home or in the restaurant is about 12 to 18 weeks old. Beth has made some chicken potpie and chicken dumpling soup, and the flavor is very noticeable; nothing gamey, really a stronger chicken flavorful.

I'll be updating the weblog as winter sets in, which has been well over due. I plan on posting some pictures too.

Well that’s it for now. Have a good week.

November Ends

We got a little rain yesterday; this has been the first rain since Hurricane Sandy. Grass growth has been at a minimum, which has meant moving sheep more often and in bigger paddocks. Normal conditions in Ohio would mean we’d have plenty of grass at this time of year and the ewes would be putting on weight to get ready for breeding. So to compensate we started giving them hay. But we are way behind on grass growth. The good thing is that our ewes are at the right condition score for breeding.

Most of our 2012 lambs are coming to weight (90lbs+) and will be ready for sale. Beth sent out our 2012 newsletter, which Sean developed (it’s nice getting free marketing advice from a professional in that field), so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that will have the lamb orders all in before Christmas.

Our layers are off to be butchered today. Since we raise Rhode Island Reds for eggs, we’ll get some good meat for soups and pies from them. I’ve been behind on the next order of chicks, but we’ll have them in next week or after Christmas to get them raised for egg production, which will start again around May when they are matured.

Also we are building a new egg mobile that will be on a trailer instead of the old fashion type on skids that we currently have. Our original one will be converted into a brooder house, so that we can start raising some meat birds too. Having the hen house/egg mobile on a trailer allows us to pull it behind the sheep. The chickens get the same fresh grass daily, but help simulate the ground where the sheep have been the day before.

As for December, we’ll be cutting wood for the stove from the trees felled last spring, and couple of infrastructure projects…all if the weather continues as it has been.

A Break in the Drought

Like most of Ohio we've been experiencing a long drought this summer. Ours started sometime in mid June and continued until this past weekend, where we are getting some of the rain from Hurricane Isaac. We did better than most because it has only been a little over a week since we pulled the sheep off of pasture and put them into sacrificial lots. The tough part about the sacrificial lots is that we have to begin to use our winter hay. But I have plans to buy some round bales this week, which will allow us to save our square bales already stored in the barn.

We made the decision after our quick growth pastures were two to three weeks behind their normal growth. These pastures stay wet all year round and sometimes find I have to cut it to keep it in the vegetative stage more often than not. But walking across most of our other fields was like walking on corn flakes. We’ve never seen conditions like this and hope we never do again.

The drought though had a greater effect on our garden. Our corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, garlic and lettuce all suffered or were killed off. This has led us to re-think water and soil. We know our soil is weak and can stand to have a substantial amount of organic material added, but we really lacked water. Since we draw our household water from a fairly shallow surface collection system made up of rain collected from the roof and the ground, we couldn’t spare the water for the garden much of the summer. So this winter we’ll have to come up with a good plan to get us through another drought. Could we be in for another year of drought; that’s hard to say. Northwest Ohio has been in one for three years so it’s possible. But we’ll be better off if we come up with a plan to be able to water the gardens and not pull from the house.

A Sad Morning

It was a sad morning; Beth and I had to put our dog Lucy down. We found her this morning in a road drainage ditch and she couldn’t get out because she had no use of her back legs. In the last week we noticed she had been sleeping a lot more, but it looks like her body was failing rapidly without us knowing or seeing the signs.

We got Lucy, a Great Pyrenees, when we bought our goats two years ago from an older homestead couple, who were reducing the size of their goat herd and sheep flock. Lucy was a rescue for them, and she stayed on their pasture for about five years at that point. (This is normal for Great Pyrenees and the job they were bred to do.) The folks asked us if we wanted her because they couldn’t keep up with the demands of having five Great Pyrenees. Thinking she would be a protector of our sheep, we said yes.

Lucy was in rough shape having been on pasture for so long and we figured she was about eleven or twelve years old. The biggest problem was an infection she had in her ears and worms. However Beth doctored her up and every week cleaned her ears, groomed the long hair and got her healthy again.

Lucy didn’t bond at all with our sheep and choose instead to become a porch dog. It’s amazing how much dirt a large dog can drag in daily. But as she became healthy, and settled into our farm, we began to notice that she patrolled our property daily. It took a little while to get used to her barking at night, but we would sometimes find signs of coyotes in the morning close to the house or by the sheep and goats, and we began to understand her barking for was for a good reason.

She also had the great habit of running out to the road in front of our house and staring down the car or truck that drove past. Beth said she was like "Gandalf the Gray" in the Lord of the Rings barking at the car, “You shall not pass!” Since only three or four cars pass our house on a given day, it was a nice piece of security having her alert us.

But she was also a very gentle dog around us and our family. Great Pyrenees are exceptional dogs. We are going to miss this dog, even though we only had her for two years; she was a big part of our life here.