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.

Spring 2012 Lambing Data

Here is our spring 2012 lambing data:

Ewes bred: 11
Lambs: 21
Deaths: 2; 1 pre; 1 post
Triplets: 4
Twins: 4
Singles: 3
Rams: 13/12
Ewes: 9
Largest birth weight: 13 lb
Average birth weight: 9.4 lb

Spring 2012 Lambing Finished

Our 2012 Spring lambing was over last Friday, when our last ewe gave birth to a set of twins. It turned out well and we learned a lot this year. We bred 11 ewes and had 21 lambs. I'll post the lambing data in the next entry. Here are some pictures Beth and I took of the lambs and ewes.

Rainy day catching up

It has been raining here since yesterday and since I wasn’t going to be outside much I decided to get on the computer and up date the weblog. It’s been almost a year since I made an entry and we have continued to plug along on our homestead journey. So I’ll start off with the garden and then move on to the other subjects.

The Garden

We expanded the size of the garden this year and got in more then we did last year although our yields fell short. Our red potatoes came in fair. The problem was that I didn’t dig the soil deep enough to have enough soil to build up around the mature plants and so we didn’t get the yield that we should have. The corn did very well and both us really enjoyed the flavor. I planted two crops of 20 plants staggered with three weeks between and we had plenty for Beth to freeze. The cantaloupes were a happy surprise; while the flavor was very good, the size was lacking compared to store bought. I planted baby spinach and leaf lettuce. The first planting did very well, but once I got the second planting in I started to fall behind in the garden and the rest was lost. The cucumbers were a little late, but are still producing. The store bought tomatoes also got off to a slow start and haven’t done so well, but I didn’t have any blight like we did last year. I transplanted a number of tomatoes plants that grew wild in the location were we over-wintered the chickens and they did great. The summer squash and zucchini was a big failure this year compared to last; onions were so so, as were the carrots. All in all the bigger garden meant more work and I’ll have to adjust my time next year to keep up on it because we are going to increase by adding two new plots.

Fruit

We planted three pare and two apple trees, each of a different variety. Also we planted three grape vines, one seedless and two seeded Concords, which we'll use for jelly making. Our one peach tree did well this year. I cut back the tree in February and we had a nice amount. Beth was able to freeze a bit and has made some peach pies that were extremely good (she's a great cook).

Winter Plots

We planted two 1 acre plots for winter forage. In the first plot we planted turnips and oats, and fertilized with 50lbs of nitrogen. In the second we planted Austrian pea-pods and oats, and fertilized with 50 lbs of nitrogen. We'll post and let you know how well we did and how the sheep responded.

Plot 1 (turnips and oats)

Plot 2 (pea pods and oats)