Some of the great benefits of having animals on the farm require a bit of work ahead of time - especially secure fencing.  For us, it’s not so much keeping the animals in, as keeping the predators out.  (Not always wild predators.  Yes, lady walking by, we know your dog was in our pasture.)  We’ve been using electric net fencing since getting the goats and chickens last year.  We started with just a solar-powered energizer - for convenience and portability - but eventually invested in a second, plug-in energizer.  The main reason is that when the grass grows, the fence shorts out - and the more powerful plug-in energizer is able to maintain a better shock until we can move it and mow again. 

Until we had that, we kept the animals in the barnyard until we got home from work.  A few months ago, when we bought the AC energizer, we felt more confident letting the animals stay “pastured” all day.  The main effect of this has been that they eat a lot less purchased food - yay!

The ultimate would be to allow the chickens to roam free, but our perimeter fencing isn’t complete yet.  In the meantime, we’ve been separating the chickens from the goats when we get home from work, and allowing the chickens free range until they roost.  I encourage them to come into the garden with me, where they seem to find plenty to do.  (Warning, though - chickens love ripe strawberries, will walk and poo on small plants, and can dig a serious hole when they feel like it!  So use some sort of barrier - electric net works, or even just bird netting - if you let them in around your crops.) 

We haven’t yet been getting the full utility out of having livestock, but we’re working toward it.  The other main item we need to work on is a good system for composting the barnyard “waste.”  So far, we’ve been using the chicken manure/straw from the coop to mulch around the fruit trees.  But we would like to designate a spot where we can compost it.  Our kitchen compost area is enclosed, and too small for such bulky stuff.  The straw from the indoor portion of the goat pen we’ve mostly used as outdoor litter for the barnyard, since it’s far less messy than the “used” chicken straw.

In other news… it rained all day before last week’s Farmers Market - then the weather was beautiful!  Inspired by Willow Springs’ handmade banner, I decided to stop waffling around trying to find an environmentally-friendly banner-maker and sew/paint one myself.  By the time we took a picture at the market, though, most everything had sold.  (The first customer bought all our kale, and we were overjoyed to have a return customer who loved our eggs…)  The forecast for this week promises rain on our market day, but maybe we’ll get lucky like last week.

Last time I mentioned we will take 1-2 acres out of production next year and rotate chickens and goats on the ground. We are starting to speak a little more specifically about how that will look.  We will probably go with around 150 laying chickens and two goats (please note that these figures will definately change - I gaurantee it).   The purpose: Make more money! ... ? This year we planted more than we could care for.  We hope to get greater veggie yield out of a smaller area by really focusing… Read the rest of this article »

Late on Saturday afternoon, Logan and I found ourselves walking through the rows of august-planted swiss chard.  Row upon row yielded heavy damage to the chard plants due to leafminers. What to do? The scenario made us think about our motives and how we were to have a sustainable farm.  This year, we have way too many weeds and too many herbivorous insects (squash bugs and beetles, aphids, leafminers, cabbage whites, tomato/corn ear worm, - to name a few).   We decided to focus on the health and… Read the rest of this article »