grandpas1947farm

This little farm on 1.4 acres was built in 1947. The house had one bedroom and was 550sf, it had an outhouse and only grey water for indoor plumbing (kitchen sink). The bathroom/utility room and two small bedrooms were added in 1954 and it is now 900sf. The property was originally part of the old Oest ranch that was subdivided by Doug Oest. The cow barn is the oldest building, approximately 75 years by the hand milled board and batten style.

I moved here in 1972 when I was 9 years old. I grew up, I left Grandpa's place...then I moved back in 1994 when he was 85 and needed help around the place. He passed away in 2003 at nearly 94 years old and I then restored the buildings and remodeled the house, added a new septic and a new well.

The outbuildings were used as storage for 35 years. I am repatriating them to their original purposes, except the 450sf woodshed, which is now a cottage. I now live in the cottage and Mom moved into the house.

I suspect this place was built post war in the style of the "Have More Plan", little self sufficient farms near towns. Originally it was set up for 50 hens, a 100'x55' garden with compost bin, and the cow barn has stanchions for 1 cow and 2 goats, a goat pen off the side and 1 acre of irrigated and cross-fenced cow pasture. Even grapes, blackberries, and a nectarine tree. What it produced provided for a family, and the excess they could barter or trade for services and firewood, etc. The house had only a Franklin stove for heat and a woodshed. There was a 40' hand dug (6' diameter) well and a pumphouse over it, a garden shed (both these buildings are in the photo above), the henhouse with two sections and a coop and yard, and a large workshop with a breezeway for a car or tractor.

The garden was too much for Grandpa when he turned 90, so it became two box stalls and large paddocks for my horse(s). They are also in the middle of the photo above. The original farm use didn't include horses, they are too hard on pasture and really not very useful on small acreage. I have this "sacrifice area" and he's turned out on the managed pasture to graze with the cows. It feeds him 6 months of the year. Someday if I can find the time (after I retire maybe!), I would like to have a small vegetable garden again.

It is amazing what 1.4 acres is capable of and I absolutely love my little sanctuary, it is my heritage and my Grandpa loved it dearly. :)

P.S. Check out the blog for the latest happenings under the photo gallery below. You can click "See All..." to see more journal entries and photos.

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What a difference a day makes - Evacuation to wildfire!

The day after my last blog entry, suddenly the bomber planes were buzzing the house, sky turned dark, helicopter dunking in the nearby pond, explosions as neighbor's propane tanks were igniting, it was a war zone. Just before the power went out, the automated call from the Sheriff's told us "Mandatory Evacuation".

Here's a picture of my vet's clinic up the road a ways (it survived intact amazingly):

Thank you to my wonderful friends that were headed here with trucks and trailers! We got all the farm animals out, including 50+ chickens (rather like a Greased Pig Contest). I could see flames, but the wind shifted and we were spared. It is currently still at 70% contained 3 days later, but I'm currently moving back in as they feel it is safe here.

Bomber plane:

Helicopter water drop:

I have a good friend that was not so lucky. He lost his entire ranch. But he is an inspiration to me, saying that it could be worse, his family and animals are safe. He built it once, he can build it again. Whenever I think I've got troubles, I need to remind myself of how much worse it can be.

50 homes and 10 commercial buildings burned within the first few hours. Hug your family, our lives can change in a heartbeat. My prayers go to those that are devastated by this. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger was here and declared it a Disaster Area.

Thank you, God, for sparing my Grandpa's Farm.

Pumpkins, Grapes, and Blackberries

I ended up with a large pumpkin patch in the compost bin this summer. It was doing quite well and I have people that want them for Halloween. But, much to my dismay today, the cows have eaten the entire patch. I harvested 23 pumpkins today, still a bit small averaging 6-10", but I wanted to get them before the cows did. And there are 10 or so still green on the vines. But the leaves are all eaten... So I don't know if there's any hope for the remaining green ones to finish growing. Here's the culprit:

Also, the original grape arbor was torn down when the house remodel was done in 2004 (it was attached to the roof). So, this spring, I rebuilt a makeshift one of wires and cut the vines back around February. The grapes (seedless and very small and sweet, planted in the 1950's or 1960's) are always quite abundant, but this year there are only two bunches. :( I am assuming it's because I cut them back for the first time, they were growing wild up a tree and onto the roof. Hopefully we'll get tons of fruit next year again.

Last spring:

And today:

And, as much as I hate the blackberries that constantly attempt to take over the entire property, at least I get bowlfulls of their fruit in summer for my cereal. :)

Skunk problems and Edie comes home

Today Edie came home from pasture breeding with a bull at Glenn Land Farm this summer. Pray that she's pregnant or we will have to wait another year for a calf and milk!

And, of course, Cookie is a Very Happy Cow to have a friend now. No headbutting or running around. Happily grazing together immediately. This following a few days ago, after meeting Cruz the mustang in the pasture and trying to nurse from the gelding, who promptly squealed and kicked out at her. Poor heifer would still follow him around like a puppy. So now she has her cow buddy. :) See the new videos on the righthand sidebar of the homepage here.

Skunks have continued to be a problem this summer. First we caught and removed two young ones, which proved to be a Touchy Ordeal. Then they pulled a board off the guillotine door into the henhouse to steal eggs at night. A guillotine, mind you, that has been on that house just fine for 60 years or so. So, these are diligent skunks. We have a broody hen sitting on eggs in the "broody box", which is a chainlink cage with a roof. The skunks dug under the pipe panel and took her eggs out from under her in the middle of the night, even with her screaming bloody murder. They got 7 of her eggs (she has about 6 left). Then for the second time, Raven got sprayed last night. See video of him Dirt Diving right after the offense. He knows better than to approach a skunk, but he was *sleeping* at the back door and got nailed! That's it, I think I must call the county trapper. :(

Cookie has arrived!

After a cross country trip from Oklahoma, she is finally here. She is now 6 months old and a feisty little one! My Mom is actually taming her nicely and working with her daily. I am thinking that we will be able to take that halter off of her in the next few days so that we can turn her out to the pasture to graze (and catch her afterwards). Her Dam's name is Oreo and her Sire's name is Brightlites, both of AAA Lowlines. She is mostly Lowline breeding with a small amount of mini-hereford and Buelingo (belted breed).

I have added a video of her the day she arrived. She was a bit nervous. Hopefully I will have another soon of her being led and groomed and calm. Edie is still with her bull being bred, but she will have a friend when she comes home in a few weeks.

Thank you to Vicky and Sandy of Yosemite Equine Services for hauling Cookie here. wwwyosemiteequineservices.com Linda at AAA Lowlines said, "Sandy is AAAAA++++ .....very calm, cool, collected, and unflappable, and has a great way with animals." I highly recommend them. :)

Cruz is wearing a saddle and hackamore bridle

Six weeks and he's now saddled. I have actually been jumping on him bareback, as he completely trusts me. But I cracked a rib on his withers doing this a few weeks ago, very painful! Now that he's saddled, I feel I could get on soon, but not until my rib heals.

His first saddling was with a smaller english version. All was fine, cinched it up, asked him to move out at the trot in the round pen and the stirrups fell to his sides (my oversight!) and the rodeo was on. I let him move because he needed to, then calmly asked for him to focus on me and he stopped. Good learning experience for him, a bit scarey, but trusting me got him out of it. I've loaded video of it in the video section of this site.

Edie is with her bull now

She went back to the ranch she was born for pasture breeding this summer with a beautiful registered Dexter bull.

Glenn Land Mr. Tomas

Here she is out in the big pastures. She will stay until August to be sure that she's pregnant. I am hoping to have a polled red heifer calf next spring and finally be milking!

Cruz gets castrated

Since he will be my permanent horse now, and he's healthy enough to stand the surgery, it's time. My fences say that it's time! He was a good boy about loading in the trailer to the hospital, and even leading into a barn and stall, all a first for him. I have loaded video in the video section of this site of the vets laying him down after sedating him. He did great, he's a gelding now.

Rescued two 3 year old mustang stallions

This one is Tiger, named because he has dun factor striping on his legs.

This one is Cruz de Espana. They are Spanish Mustangs from a BLM herd called the Sulphur Springs HMA. Cruz has this great cross on his face.

I knew I couldn't stand to be without a horse at all for long. $100 and these boys really needed a home. Both very thin and completely untamed.

Within a few days I was able to touch them. Within a week, being stallions, they had broken down two of my fences, so one had to go. Although, I had them tamer and healthier quickly, so I feel great about Tiger getting a start to a promising future as a breeding stallion at a barn that breeds and show Spanish Horses. I kept Cruz since he was the harder one to place, had a lot of wounds, was spookier, and not as nice looking in general.

He's coming around quickly with daily work and patience. My Dad says, "Honey, once you've won the trust of a mustang, you won't ever want to ride anything else." I am hoping this boy will be my future endurance horse.

Amigo gets a new home and retirement

Times are extremely tough to make ends meet right now. I had my hours cut at work. Amigo is worth a bit of money, he's quite accomplished at endurance riding and in his prime and qualified for Search And Rescue. So, I found him the perfect home with a wonderful retired gal that wants a best friend in a horse to trailride and camp with. He's now living in Livermore on a 100 acre ranch. And I got to pay some bills. Thank you Amigo.

The cowbarn remodel is finished!

It's oiled and complete. However, we will need to finish nailing and oil one more time in a few months when the weather is truly dried out and the wood is done curing. But it is usable now. Thank you Darren! Go to the bottom of this blog to the Video Section, I just uploaded a new video of the Barn Tour. :)

I had left over lumber so, since it matches, had Randy Bravo build a small fence to create a barn paddock. He used no climb horse fence on the inside to prevent the dogs from getting in when we have a calf next year (can't wait!!). And a nice 12' double gate for the hay truck to get in.

And I had leftover flooring from my horse paddocks. It's a geo-textile felt that is soft and drains well. It prevents mud in winter and dust in summer. I put it around the building, but didn't have enough for the whole paddock. I will get more and finish it if needed, we'll see.

Removed the hedge and built a fence out front

I have enough to do watering the entire property, the hedge out front of the driveway on Miller Lane does not get watered. It's never done well and so Mom took pruners and a hand saw and hacked it out in her spare time!

Here is was:

Here it is now:

And here's the side we look at, green matches the house trim:

Randy Bravo of Bravo Fence Company did an awesome job and also removed one of the cypress trees in this row for us. It was always in my way when making the corner with the horse trailer, much nicer now!

Edie is going to get a new friend!

Edie is lonely. She lost her goaty friend, Ruth. And she chewed Amigo the horse's tail off, so had to be sequestered from him. She wants a cow buddy. And I found just the girl. Meet Cookie:

How stinkin' cute is she??? She's in OK at AAA Lowlines and not weaned yet. I am looking for a transporter if you know one. She will be ready to come here in May. She's nearly 3/4 Lowline (very small angus) and gets her belt from a percentage of Beulingo. When I was little, we called these belted cattle Oreo cows, of course. Her momma is named Oreo, and I just had to name her Cookie. I hope Edie will like her.

Edie will be gone for a few months to be pasture bred in June to a red Dexter bull. So, that will give me some one on one time with Cookie to halter train and bond, feed her in the stanchion, etc. Edie is almost grown up now and remains a very small cow. Here's a picture with my friend Laura:

Henhouse & Backyard Tour Video's and cat "Cowboy"

I just added a narranted tour video (two parts) at the bottom of the page in the Video Clip section. Get a cup of coffee and enjoy!!

Here is Cowboy, resident "evil" cat, in his favorite sleeping place, the egg basket.

Barn almost complete--learning curve

This barnwood was so green (actually wet to the touch and about 5 times heavier than dry lumber) due to being live trees the day before they were delivered. It was hard to even drive nails into at first. It did dry fast, even on rainy days! Then we ran into a mold issue, they were all turning GREEN. It was foggy and damp here for weeks, unusual for this area. Darren sprayed them down with a bleach water mixture yesterday. A lot washed off and should stop the progression. But the sun has been out for a week now, so I think it had already stopped. I just didn't want a green barn.

Second concern is that because of the new dry weather so sudden, some siding on the barn's sunny side started cupping before we got the battens up. Amazing how fast it's shrinking. The gaps in between boards went to 1/2" overnight after a windy day. And without the battens to hold them down, and the dry air on the exterior, but not on the interior side, the board was drying a percentage faster on the one side, which causes it to cup. He got the battens up in the next day or so, split a few boards, but not bad. We'll see. It's like this barn is a living being, changing daily and will continue to for probably 6 months. But it is so beautiful, I am not complaining!!!

There's two stalls inside, with a dutch door to each one. One stall has a cow stanchion in it, the other has two goat stanchions, with a gate connecting the two. There are two windows on the back side, one on the right side (behind the door), and one window on the front. The left side is the feed room that holds 3 tons of hay. The goat stall also has a small door out the back to turn them out to a pen. That pen is gone, and in it's place now is a chain link fence. We kept the door there, so I plan on cutting the fence so that it can still be a turnout, but now will go to a 1/3 acre pasture. I will get pictures of all this as it develops. The inside is stacked with construction stuff and hay, so I will get interior pictures later also. The total cost of this remodel is about $3300, new siding/roof/labor. To rebuild this barn, with the concrete floor and interior, I think would easily have been $15,000 if I had let it fall down, which it was on it's way to doing with the siding and roof leaking to the bones.

Edie will live here when she calves in 2010, she actually fits perfect on the goat stanchion/goat door side because she is so small. I can use the cow side to separate her from her calf for sharemilking. :)

Horse and Cow escape!

As Amigo gets the zoomies, Edie does too. They were turned out for some playtime and Edie slipped on the corner and slip across the grass and as she hit the fence, it just happened to be the pasture gate, which popped open. Luckily, I was watching their antics, so the second it happened I grabbed a halter and was running for her. Mom got grain and another halter and focused on Amigo, who soon followed. Amigo just stopped a few feet out to say hello to the neighbor horses, he was easy. Edie headed down Miller Lane and luckily into an empty fenced pasture. Wonderful neighbor Gino and his kids helped wrangle and block the escape route. Mom showed up with the grain bucket and she was an easy catch. All that halter training was priceless! She was half wild when we brought her home from Glen Land and I don't know how I could have caught her without using a lariat. My Dad said on the phone tonight how to throw his old lariat (from 1946 that he gave me) and break the cow to having it come at her. I will work on this with the horse and the cow, it's a nice option when they are so wound up that you can't get near them. Counting our blessings today as they are safely back home, and put a chain on the gate for backup.

Horse and cow antics on a cold morning

This morning it was a cold (for here) 38 degrees. I fed Amigo in his paddock and put Edie in the barn stanchion for breakfast, as is our daily routine. After they ate, they both got some turnout time in the middle and upper pastures. It then started to sleet/rain and boy were they frisky.

Scroll below all the way to the bottom of this website to the Video Clip Section. You can watch Edie and Amigo being their cute and goofy selves.

Barn is progressing...

Two walls, one dutch door and two windows are up. One more wall (the 4th side did not need new siding, it's in great shape), another dutch door, a small goat door, and two more windows to go, and then the battens and final oil. The whole area smells like a fresh pine forest. We are using all the old original hardware.

I spend about 45 minutes a day with a magnet collecting scrap nails, etc, from the old siding removal and from the current construction. Edie has a magnet in her, but I have gotten a 3 gallon bucketful so far! She is only allowed for a halter walk to the stanchion in the morning for her treats and then escorted to the upper pasture. It will be great when the construction is cleaned up and she can put herself in there and use that pasture without me having to worry. Ahhh, I am so blessed!

Skunk in the henhouse!

There's a live rodent trap in the henhouse as a monitor for rats. When I catch one, I know it's time to put out some poison (the only way I've discovered to manage them). This morning there was a young skunk inside! Then Mom realized she forgot to close up the guillotine doors for the night, so that explains the intruder. Cute as a button, but a bit of a challenge to think of how do you pick it up and release it without being sprayed at Ground Zero. I mean, these little buggers knock the wind out of me when I pass one within 1/4 mile on the freeway at 60mph.

After some excellent advice, I suited up in Hazmat Fashion, and took a blanket on a broom handle. Approached very slowly and as she was watching me from 5' away, I lowered the blanket from above. Worked like a charm. Took her to the river and released her without so much as a single sniff.

Sorry to see Ruthie the goat go...

I was happily milking her twice a day. The dogs, cats, chickens, cow, we all loved her sweet milk! She would run ahead of me to the stanchion in the barn, even with the walls missing and under construction daily. Cutey patootey. But, the breeder called to notify me that they got a report from their vet of a mistaken test and that Ruth is postive for a disease called CAE. She is healthy now, but will pass it to her kids unless her milk is pasteurized and they are pulled immediately and bottle fed. I am not up to this much work, so she sadly had to go back. I will focus my attention on heifer Edie now. She is doing great with halter training and going in the stanchion. I got a lot of great experience milking Ruth for a month or so. I froze a lot of her milk, so I will be learning to make cheese. :)

Ruth will go to another home where she will be happy pet, rather than a dairy goat (since CAE is passed from goat to goat through mother's milk). I cried when I dropped her off, she will be greatly missed!

Everyone getting along in the pasture a few days ago. Notice the barn coming along in the background. :)

Edie would come along to the "milking parlour" with Ruth for lessons and eat her morning treats while Ruth was milked. I think this made the training for this half wild 10 month old heifer effortless, thank you Ruthie!

Here is Edie being seen from up above looking down at her head in the stanchion feeder. She willingly walked in the first time, after only being halter broke for a few weeks, and gave a quiet tug or two when her head was locked in, but gave up easily. Took to it so well! I am new to cows, my horses would have killed themselves and took the stanchion and the wall behind them out in the process!

Goodbye old barnwood, hello new siding.

A fellow came and bought all of the longest boards of the old siding. Such beautiful wood, and the sale helped toward my cost of replacing it. Here's before and after:

And here is my friend Darren starting on the replacement. It is extremely heavy due to the moisture content, tough to drive nails into too. These boards were a tree a few weeks ago. The style of "board and batten" was developed because before lumberyards and seasoned dry wood, it would shrink after it was nailed up (as this will) and then the next year they put up the battens over the seams to seal the inevitable gaps.

This half of a dutch door weighs around 80#.

Sad to see my little barn get it's facelift, but will be so nice!

Edie and Ruth are roommates now.

The goat was lonely. The cow was lonely. I now have them together in one paddock/stall, adjoining Amigo's (horse). He enjoys Ruth too, and she actually can slip through the fence and spend time with either the horse or the cow. Happy family now. Sounds less like Old MacDonald Had a Farm, with a moo here moo there, baaa here baaa there, winnie here winnie there...

Likes playing with her ball, very brave girl, curious about all things. Notice how high her tail is? This is the way it is, breeder said it was not a problem, just cosmetic. She's the Arabian Horse of the cow family...when excited, it goes straight up over her back!

Welcome to Glenn Land Ms. Eden, our new future family cow.

She is named after my Granny, Edyth Dennison. She was an artist and signed her paintings Eden for short. She went by the name Edie, so that is this girl's name. :) Granny was President of the Cowbelle's Association many decades ago, the wives of the Cattleman's Association.

Edie is a red polled 8 month old Dexter heifer. We brought her home from Glen Land Farm yesterday (www.glennlandfarm.com). Wes and Jane Patton are the best! They answered all my questions, have her wormed, vaccinated, and DNA tested, will include her first breeding, started her halter training and included a halter. Here's a picture at Glenn Land in the calf pen.

She settled in a bit scared to her stall last night, this is a huge change for a baby girl, trailer ride, no other cows, strange people and sounds.

This afternoon I took her for a walk in the pasture, she actually does okay on a halter. Not trained, but when she spooks at something and hits the end, she stops and respects it. :) Good she's so little, cutey patootey! Still 300# or so, but very little. Ruthie and her get along. Amigo the Cow Challenged horse (embarassment to his breeding) freaked when a Dreaded Cow was in his adjoining stall, even small, he knew she was a cow! Best thing for him to finally get over that fear. And she loves to eat the Dallis grass in the pasture, one Amigo doesn't care for. :) Was too cute to hear mooing this morning while milking the goat in the barn. Call me a farmgirl now I guess...

Barn siding has arrived!

Jeff at Owl Creek Lumber (www.owlcreeklumber.com) delivered the new rough cut 1x12 boards and battens for the siding repair. These boards were a tree the day before, they are wet to the touch and, boy, do they smell wonderful. The old style of construction was the same, where a sawyer cut green wood that would shrink after it was installed. So then a few seasons later, they would put the battens up to seal the gaps in the boards. That is exactly what we will be doing in the next week or so. I highly recommend Jeff, he is efficient, timely, fair priced, and does a top notch professional job. His portable mill can come to you so that you can make use of a downed tree on your property. He also is very creative and is a chainsaw artist.

Welcome to goat Ruthie!

Named after my favorite character in the Old Testament, Ruth. She's a pocket pet and follows me like a shadow. She gave about 2 cups of milk today, which I accidently left the bucket for a moment and she turned around, drank it, and was looking at me with a Milk Moustache! But still I have dreams of making cheese. She smells so sweet, like Feta or Roquefort. :) *And* she could care less about all the grass in the pasture and loves to eat the weeds and blackberries. Is there a more perfect animal?

Today we also let Elvis and his girls out in the pasture for some grazing time.

The weather is turning and so this weekend I drained and removed all the irrigation lines. Also, fixed a broken faucet, lowered a water trough for Ruth, and burned the burn pile for the first time this season, which was huge from limbing a lot of trees. It was still very wet and I could not get it to catch with my usual diesel/gas mixture, just wouldn't burn. So, I put pure gas, and boom! I no longer have hair on my right hand/arm and singed my ankle. Luckily I am going for a hair appointment on Thursday so we can cut these frizzed ends off... A day in the life of a farmgirl!

Why I love my little barn

I look forward to restoring it to it's original purpose, like the henhouse. This is the Epilogue in my The Family Cow book. Just substitue "goat" for "pig" in the text. My little barn has a stall and two stachions for goats, and one stall and one stanchion for a cow, and the feed room, it is 340 square feet. Also, I found the private cemetary near here for the Oests that built it...

Wealth is a barn full of hay, a few hundred pounds of grain and a cow giving down her milk while cats weave restlessly, ready to spring to the dish by the door. That reminds me: Don't bother to teach cats how to catch a squirt direct from the spigot. They'll never leave you alone then. I had one cat worked into a routine where she could get a squirt if she meowed, licked her paw and bit my left arm--in that order. I had a damned sore arm before she unlearned her lesson. It served me right.

It's more fun seeing if I can squirt my son Wim when he peeks over the side of the shavings bin. There's a tough angle on that shot, but I got him the other night--got him good--and he laughed.

Tonight it's snowing, and the white triangles are pointing up the black cold beyond each window pane. Gusts of wind shearing past the north gable make the rafters creak, like winter shifting in her sleep. But the old barn's alive again within.

A pig grunts, grudging another's right to push in where the pine shavings are deep and dry. How many pigs and cats and calves has this old barn seen in her years--and women and men and boys or girls sitting here in this same corner milking? Some of their names are carved on the faces of the beams and doors around the barn. Some of the same and other names are carved on stones, erect and fallen, up there on the hill behind the house.

I wonder if any of them were "into" cows. Was it all a chore? Or were there lucky people like me who for unexplainable reasons found that raising a few animals, a garden of vegetables and especially a cow, was somehow "into" them?

--Dirk van Loon

Compost for cash and wine!

Originally the compost bin was in the garden adjacent to the henhouse. The manure pits under the roosts open up to the outside and you could shovel it directly into the bin.

But when we added the new septic system, the only place that would perc was the garden. :( So, it is now a chicken pasture. The old bin had to be torn out, but I rebuilt two bins from the railroad ties that lasted 60 years for the old one.

Today my fellow came to empty me out before the rains start. He loves the compost (horse and chicken manure, some shavings, and grass clippings from mowing the pasture) for his small vineyard and trades me for cash and wine! :)

I also asked his advice on how to save our grapevines. The house had an arbor alongside it, but it was torn down when the siding was replaced 5 years ago, the contractor also cut the grape down to a stump in summer when it was growing. We thought it was dead for a few years, but it started growing again.

It is taking over the fence, having nowhere to go.

He explained that I can tie wire from the fence to the former post left of the arbor and train it next summer to follow that. And to cut it back in February to make it healthier. Looking forward to my sweet tiny seedless grapes again.

Speaking of chickens, the golf balls seem to be working, production is up by 25%! About 6 extra eggs a day...so I did have a few lazy girls.

The floor of the henhouse is concrete, which is wonderful to keep clean, but can be hard when they jump down from their roosts, and cold in the winter. So, I line it with clippings from the pasture throughout the summer, soft *and* tasty. In the winter, I have to use pine shavings when the pasture is dormant. But Twin Peaks Orchard mowed for a Barn And Farm Tour recently and said I could have the mowed orchard grass. Mom and I loaded up the truck with 13 Hefty bags full and they are in the barn, this will keep my henhouse floor nice for the girls throughout winter.

Today I ordered my lumber for the new barn siding and posted an ad for the old barnwood on Craigs List. It is beautiful and weathered and I wish I was putting in a new floor with it... I am hoping that the sale will pay for the new rough cut pine that is being custom cut by Jeff at Owl Creek Lumber (private mill).

Master Gardner ID'd my pasture grasses

I have bermuda and white clover, which I knew. But I had two others that I didn't have an ID on. These were all planted decades ago. If anyone has additional comments, please LMK.

The two are:

Inland Salt Grass - Rough forage, cattle prefer (my horse won't eat it), commonly used for cut hay.

Dallisgrass - Used for irrigated pasture commonly in the past. A toxic fungus can be in the seedhead (as with fescue), so proper management is to graze and mow to prevent the seed heads.

Farm Update

I have reset the light's timer in the Henhouse for 3am. Early girls! Having at least 14 hours of light in a day will keep them laying, rather than stopping in the winter. It's not bad for them, hens at the equator lay year round. It's just nature's way of preventing chicks from being born in cold climates (typically where the days get shorter away from the equator).

My boss at work gave me some used golf balls to put in their nests to encourage some lazy girls to lay. I have some Freeloaders in there... we will see if this changes.

My quest for a Family Milk Cow is continuing. I've located a great breeder that is halter training weaned Dexter heifers now. I will be going to look at them in a few weeks.

In the meantime, a friend is going to help me replace the siding on the little cow barn. It is Board and Batten style, so I am getting quotes from private mills for the lumber. Need to find out how to sell the 80+ year old handmilled siding, it is too beautiful to toss.

Featured pictures

Welcome to our family farm!