Random thoughts from the moose cave.

You know that goat will eat everything till the land is barren right. Goats are hungry buggers..

you gotta keep 'em moving. rotate their pasture.

I have 3 separate areas now. more to follow.

and we're definitely starting with hair sheep...

dammit.

cut a tire on the mower.

gonna try to plug it and see if it will hold. mebbe...

then back to cleaning out the chicken pen.

I don't think the tire is gonna live.

I can fill it with tire slime, and it might go head and seal. or it might not, and then I will hate myself as I change a tire full of slime...

gonna go play with an old chrysler and mull it over...

sheep are worse ceili. Goats will browse while sheep will graze down to the root and kill the corm. Sheep dont have upper teeth so they drag their lower teeth on the grass and wrap their tongues around the grass and pull it up. gOats nibble like horses.

My only dislike of goats is that , if you have any bicks, they reallly stink up a place in the late summer. You need to keep the bucks waaay away from the house, unless you like goaty skunky odor, that and the fact that goats are smart makes em a challenge.

rotating pasture is mostly to keep em free of worms. In poreder to maintain pasture, you dont put too many animals per acre(based on rain and soil types). We get 44 inches of rain a year and have a long growing season so grass is about an 8.5 month free feed. Up north they only get a 6 month pasture and they only get one cutting of hay so even with abundant mositure on Maine, I wouldnt graze more than about 4 sheep or per acre. (Here we get about 6)

that won't be a big problem for a while.

gonna start with a pair, and add ewes as I can...

there is an auction coming up in 3 weeks and Ima go watch. not gonna bring any cash.

urf...

took a pain pill (hadda headache that would not quit) and as soon as I got into the zone, I tackled the chicken yard. got stuck in third gear and made a huge pile o brush. cut my legs all up, and wound up calling earl when I stopped and tried to have a drink o water.

better now. but I gotta remember I am not 22 anymore, and parts of me are still closer to 70.

done with the heavy stuff for tonight, but I'll prolly go carry brush out back for a cool down. after I do the alcohol thing on my shins and find a pair o long pants.

it's looking like a farm, by georgius maximus...

there's a part of me that sill wants to just start with goats. mr vw has an old electric fence set-up from when Kaylie was a puppy from hell. she settled down and quit bolting all the time, and he got tired of messing with it.

I could prolly buy wire and get it up and running for less than $100.

taking stock of my gates and fence posts. I have quite a lot of material to work with. 3 gates, nice galvanized pro built ones. and one large stock feeder that I think will be enough until I build a coupla smaller ones to go in individual pens.

I think my horse barn (2 stalls) will be able to be reconfigured to provide enough shelter for the first coupla years. it opens to the south and has half a pen already...

gonna hafta move my auto salvage yard area to a different spot. There are some concrete slabs way out back where the commercial chicken operation used to be. Ima use those to park my junk cars on to be EPA compliant...

I'm excited. gonna try to order my baby chicks tomorrow. they come USPS, so Ima send them to mr vw's. the lady at the post office would freak out if I had them sent to our box...

****.

apparently while I was not feeling so well, stinky was plotting his escape.

he is officially AWOL.

and I saw Neptune earlier, so there is the potential for a knockdown dragout...

Ima stay up til 1. if he doesn't show up before that, he stays out tonight. and if he gets torn up more than I can fix, it may bode not so well for him.

******* cat...

still no stinky.

but neptune is keeping a vigil just outside of the circle of lights.

it might be a very eventful evening...

gonna stay up a while and hope he decides to quit this crap.

got dang cat finally decided to come in. got hungry most likely.

sitting here like nothing ever happened...

**** head...

now Ima try and crash.

gonna be another short night. lots to do today...

.. and night night to you!

Welcome home Stinky. Relieved--for the both of you.

thanks B...

g'nite.

Urf... Glad everyone is safe.

catching up on Farmer Fred's planning

sounds good

cat's home

hopefully everyone is sleeping well

Rocky, I thought you might be interested in a gardening technique I started reading about yesterday. I believe Alberta is much like Kansas in that we have long periods during the summer that are very dry.
Whilst going through some of my favourite sites yesterday, I came across an article on Hugelkulture, or non irrigation gardening. Well, as you can imagine.. lol, once I started reading I jumped from site to site and I think I may do this, or augment my garden design to incorporate this idea.
It's basically burying logs, preferable not conifers, but one or two as a base won't hurt, to create a raised bed, then layering them with branches, dirt, manure, straw, green stuff, like cuttings or fresh fallen leaves, compost and more dirt. As the logs rot, they hold water and break down slowly and plants, from trees, bushes, vines, perennials and annuals can co-mingle and grow rather spectacularly. It's a great way to get rid of old wood or scrub brush, the piles are warmer ( for at least the first few years, than the surrounding soil and other than planning for a bit of nitrogen loss in the first or second year, spuds or plants that don't need as much, this seems like a great idea to start.
During the summer here, I can spend an hour every night watering the garden and/or lawn. This year, because we've had no real snow to speak of, it's going to be a dry one.. Apparently, this technique is an old German idea and they've been doing it for centuries with great results. I've been watching videos and people are using them to grow all kinds of things that wouldn't normally grow in their zone - because they're warm and the plants are big and healthy. Great tomatoes..
Anyhooo.. if you're interested, lots of info on google.

and the beauty is, you can build them as you go along, you don't have to dig, unless you want to either...

I dont know about prices of stuff for you or Rock but around here, weve had this **** called TREX for use in porches and decks. Apparently the stuff has seen its day because it doesnt maintain a fresh look after painting. SO we have plenty of TREX available at rock bottom prices. ALSo there a lot of it thats been dumped (TREX is a mix of wood chips and plastic and it lasts forever)

I ytried making some raised beds of TREX and its fabulous. Id reccomend the wider kind (if you can find it -apparently the latesr posrch builders werent allowed to even think about random widths of the TREX) . Ive found some 6 and 8 inch widths and Ive made several 8 foot by 3 foot raised beds for BLUEBERRIES. Works great and it last for long long time soldier boy

There's so much free wood around here.. Last year I got two pickup truck loads full of 9 ft, 4 x4 and 2x4 raw oak boards. It all comes from a place that brings in large pipes, it's used to separate the pipes on the rail cars.
I'm going to use it to build all the raised bed and now that I know about this, I'm going to go back and pick up a bunch more to do the hudgelkulture thing. I can probably get someone to drop off some tree prune cuttings as well.
I've got two big dump trucks worth of black topsoil out back, the huge pile of wood and another pile of compost. I'm going to see about buying some haybales and getting some manure. It's going to be a mucky spring. But, if all goes according to the plan, I'll have spent about 40 bucks on all the bolts and screws and another $100 on more compost, straw and manure and I'll have 4 huge framed raised beds and maybe a few well placed mounds that I won't have to water. This should change the flat, boring lot I presently live on.