From the Farm

It's not all fun and games ...

2012-01-22T13:35:00.003-05:00

The lamb is dead (stillborn) but the mom doesn't seem to realize it. She didn't go to the pasture with the rest of the mob and spent the whole day with the lamb, cleaning him, trying to get him to nurse and generally behaving like a happy new mother. I thought she would eventually realize that something is wrong but she didn't even after the flies did. We removed the lamb after several hours and she spent about 24 hours looking for and calling him but then calmed down and didn't show any signs of discomfort or stress.

Miniature prehistoric sheep

2011-12-23T13:41:00.003-05:00

Not many people know that but in the ancient times numerous hordes of miniature sheep (less than a foot tall) roamed steppes of Inner Mongolia and jungles of Amazon basin. Later most of them became extinct but about a hundred little flocks exist in various places on every continent. It seems that one of these flocks lives in a forest nearby because every once in while the miniature sheep come out and join our flock. On the pictures you can see some regular size sheep for scale. I played with the idea of starting a flock of prehistoric miniatures (they definitely would be a hit with every petting zoo there is) but the ones who join our flock immediately begin to grow (better pasture, I reckon) and in a few months look just like regular sheep.

Looking back / Biggest mistakes - Part II

2011-10-10T19:10:00.001-04:00

5." The Prevalence of Death. "

Justin, one of our WWOOFers, said that when he tried to explain to a lady who was about to start her goat farm what she should be ready for. This #5 really should be #1 - not sure why it slipped my mind. On a farm the death is everywhere - cute and cuddly sheep will kill plants or chickens (if the chickens are not fast enough). Chickens will kill anything smaller and slower than a chicken, including other chickens. Plants will kill other plants. Dogs will kill all of the above and then some, just for fun. Crows will kill newborn lambs while the mom is busy giving birth. Yes, during. How bad is to be killed while you are born? Most relevant though - a farmer has to kill all kinds of things (from trees to insects to dogs to ... whatever) on a regular basis because for something to live, something else has to die. Sounds real easy in theory, right? Better be ready to practice it before you make that first payment for your farm though.

Just when you thought it can't get any weirder...

2011-09-28T15:23:00.002-04:00

"no, [Americans] do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume foods of their choice; " - says Wisconsin judge

Full text of the decision

Looking back / Biggest mistakes

2011-09-24T14:51:00.003-04:00

Our friends started to talk about very interesting (I think) subject here - what would they do differently if they were starting their homestead now. Very good read and I'd subscribe under pretty much every line there - start small, go slow... Also, a few things that they don't concentrate on specifically but that were a big surprise for me when we started:

1) "Leading authorities" don't know that much. You'd think after 12,000 years that sheep spent side by side with humans they would be so well-researched that there is a thick book about every hair on their body. You'd think it's the same with irrigation, growing plants, growing grass, weather ... you name it. After all, we sent a man to the Moon and there is an Extension in every county. The truth is - there are some very basic facts everyone agrees on (a sheep generally has 4 legs; it will eventually die without water and food, etc.) but most of the stuff is still as mysterious as underwear fashion of aliens from the galaxy far far away. And it's about the situation in every area of agriculture. OK, I'm exaggerating but just a little. And don't even get me started on the Extensions or books on shiny paper ... not good even for compost. (I mean the books on shiny paper, of course - the extension agents would probably do great in compost).

2) Stuff is more expensive than you think. Oh, I did go to Home Depot before we started to live on the farm. I bought stuff there, sure. I even knew that funny looking metal T-posts there cost about $10. What I didn't realize is how many of them you need to fence even a little paddock, let's say 2 acres. What I also didn't realize was that a shovel for $10 won't last a month on a farm, so you'll have to pay more for better quality tool and that's true for every tool you use and also for the rest of the stuff - screws, rubber boots, you name it. I think we went through our 3-yr budget in the first 6 months. It was horrible. Who would've thought those stupid plastic thingies for sheep to eat out of can cost more than 5 bucks? Turned out, the really good big ones can cost more than 500, actually.

3) ~~I'm lazier than I thought~~ It's more work than you think and there are no weekends. Looking at our WWOOFers, I think I was in a better position than most of them. I had to do plenty of physical work in my life, I was better with a shovel in the first grade than some college kids we see here. But even for me it was a bit of a shock how unending this work is. Even though I almost never get physically tired too bad from work, just the sheer amount of it makes you numb sometimes. There is always something that needs to be done. Often, there are 2 or 3 urgent things that need to be done. There are times when you have to put on heavy jeans and boots and go outside under the sun to work and it's so hot that even a thought of having anything but the loincloth on makes you sweat. You have to get up every morning to let the animals out, and that's not that difficult to do but you have to do it every morning, year after year.

Do you see how hard we work? Well, honestly, I think we work only half as much as many people in our situation, especially when they just start, especially when they start on a shoestring budget. And no, you won't understand what I mean unless you actually try, so if you consider becoming a farmer/homesteader do yourself a favor - go WWOOF for a few months and then ask yourself if you can do it every day for 10 years. And have lots of kids, preferably boys, so in 10 years you can dump most of the work on them.

4) This one is a pair, actually - a)Having a plan and sticking to it is more important than you think and b) The best plan you can come up with will need to be changed as soon as you start actually doing it. Catch 22 and another reason to start small and slow. Without a plan you'll spent a lot of time backfilling ditches you dug out yesterday but no plan I've ever seen was so good that it survived the first few days of execution unchanged. Too many variables and unknowns, which is also the reason for problem #1, BTW.

I'll probably add some more later ...

IMHO

2011-08-07T22:21:00.002-04:00

Sheep should never be allowed to rearrange things inside of a chicken coop unsupervised. I don't mean to knock down their intelligence or attention to details but as hard as they try, they just don't seem to be able to do it right most of the time.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-05-14T15:25:00.005-04:00

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

0.5" so far

Between bad December and super dry May it was getting really, really bad. As in some sheep were about to go to the butchers early simply because there is nothing for them to eat.

***

The weather has been sultry for a fortnight now or more,
And the shearers have been driving might and main,
For some have got the century who ne'er got it before;
But now all hands are waiting for the rain.

For the boss is getting rusty, and the ringer's caving in,
His bandaged wrist is aching with the pain,
And the second man, I fear, will make it hot for him
Unless we have another fall of rain.
...

.. and another theory goes down in flames.

2011-04-01T15:09:00.003-04:00

This morning I witnessed a fight between two ewes. One was Seraphima, one of our "original 5" - by now pretty senior and dominant ewe. The other one was Freckles, a first time mother, not even 2 years old and way down on the social ladder.

I didn't see what started it (although ewes can keep a grudge for years, so I may have been watching Episode 165, who knows). After a few head-butts and threatening postures Freckles decided that discretion is the better part of valor and backed off. Seraphima, obviously still pretty pumped up from the fight, looked around and saw Freckles' lamb nearby. She took a few steps and hit him (at which point Freckles rushed back and insert herself between them, blah, blah, blah..)

Wow. And I used to think I know how sheep think.

P.S. Is it possible that the lamb smells so much like his mom that Seraphima was actually thinking she's hitting Freckles? The lamb is only a few days old, so I guess it's possible. Than the theory stands :)

Amen...

2011-04-01T13:27:00.002-04:00

“We can’t outsmart our cows, but we can sure out-stupid them.”

Greg Judy via matronofhusbandry

Dear marketologists,

2011-03-30T19:21:00.003-04:00

(or whatever you people are called)

Thank you so much for sending us tons of useless offers, "this is your last chance" letters and all that stuff. I'd like to use this opportunity to relate thanks from our sheep who love the bedding we make by shredding your smartly designed and graphically pleasing letters and publications. You also get thanks from our plants, who love the compost that the bedding eventually turns to. However, if it's not too difficult, could you please abandon the glossy paper and lead based paints? These ain't no good for the bedding, you know, and I'm guessing you probably want people to have at least some use for the results of your labor. So, plain paper and non-poisonous paints, OK? Thank you.

Very truly yours,

One of many of your junk ... err, creative materials recipients

The Woes of Wit?

2011-02-18T15:19:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, we almost lost a lamb - he got stuck in the mud and couldn't get out. His mom, in a typical sheep fashion, came close to him a few times, called him and walked away, quite sure that he will follow. You see, she just didn't understand that he can't and that he's about to die. Animals generally can't put themselves in someone else's shoes.

On the other hand - if she did, what good that would do her? She ain't got no hands, she can't grab him and pull him out. She can't put some boards on the mud to walk over to him. Basically, had she understood what's going on, her only options would be to run back and forth nearby and watch him drowning or drown with him without any chance to help him anyway.

Now, do we know how to use our hands because we have highly developed brains or have we developed those brains because we happened to have hands with opposable thumbs, so the brains can actually be of any use?

IMHO, raising animals ...

2011-02-08T20:46:00.004-05:00

- it's just like gardening on steroids, at least in terms of emotions. Remember how you felt when these tiny green sprouts raised their tiny leaves where you put some seeds in black soil just a few days ago? Well, now imagine a couple of dozens lambs running around, playing king of the mountain and doing all kinds of crazy stuff the kids do on a pasture where there was no movement whatsoever just two weeks ago. Then again - remember that morning you found your favorite plant withered and dead? Well, at least before it died it didn't look at you with great comfort and hope - "Oh, the Gods are here. It'll be OK now. They will help me - just like they always do."

Dem damn hunters ... and sad state of our education

2011-02-02T19:35:00.003-05:00

Do sheep miss gone flockmates?

2011-01-22T07:56:00.003-05:00

Another question that we get a lot. And I think it's wrong to ask this question in this way, since sheep are not people, so while they certainly have a full range of emotions, these would be different emotions than our own. Just like I have read somewhere that it's almost impossible to find 2 people who see colors in exactly the same way, so when we say "blue" your blue and my blue can be actually pretty far apart, even though it's the same word.

Sheep do form lasting social relationships. First it's with their mom and siblings, later with other lambs and even later it's usually with unrelated members of the flock. I often say our flock is a lot like all girl high school with rivalry between groups, shifting alliances, etc. In my experience the alliances do not last longer than a several months, although hatred between certain members can go on for years. I've yet to see a sheep growing restless because one of her girlfriends is missing. They will call each other while they can see but other than that it's pretty much "out of sight - out of mind". Or at least it seems this way from their behavior.

Well, may be relationship between a lamb and the mother is much stronger? Yes, for a couple weeks. It's amazing how strong mother's protective instinct is in the first few days and how fast it disappears. In the beginning your average ewe will protect her lamb from anything or anybody, make sure it's not lost, etc. But the little one better use this time to grow and became stronger, because in a week or two mom's attitude will change to "just follow me and try to keep up and if there is a danger run fast somewhere, it's not my problem anymore" (that's pretty smart actually because lams of that age are even more difficult to catch than adults but they still can't survive without milk, so mother's sacrifice would be pretty counterproductive). There are variations but from two weeks on the relationship seems to be mostly based on milk - lambs come to mother when they're hungry and mom calls them when her udder is full and starts to hurt. They still sleep together for a while but that may just because lambs don't want to miss when mom gets up so they can latch on her. If separated before weaning, mothers and lambs will seek each other for a few days but that, once again, may be just about milk. After weaning, I don't think their relationships are any different from those of other flock member.

So, in short – no, I don't think they “miss” gone flock members and it makes perfect sense if we remember how the sheep (and other prey animals) defend themselves from predators. No, not by being faster than the predators but by being faster than some of their flock mates. In the wild, almost every night someone would be eaten and sheep couldn't survive if they all needed therapy every time that happens. I'm sure there is some emotion involved and there is probably a word in the sheep language that describes this emotion but it's not “miss” or any other label we could slap on it. A group of humans lives and behaves like a pack, not like flock or herd, so it's relatively easy for us to understand and describe emotions of dogs or other pack animals but prey animals are difficult, so we tend to dumb it down to the level where we can “relate”.

P.S. I just did a quick google for "do sheep miss gone flockmates?" and the amount of the snake oil science on the first two pages is pretty amazing, as well as the depth of the male bovine excrement presented as gospel by people who are either pretty ignorant on the issue or have the agenda and stick to it, the facts be damned.

The awesome power of rain

2011-01-17T12:50:00.002-05:00

Let's say it rains and you get 2". Not unusual (at least for FL), not that much water, right? Well, actually each 10'x3' area of your roof, garden or pasture will get about 132 gal of rain.

Now, let's say you got these 2" in 40 minutes (actually happened here last summer). Each of these relatively small areas will be getting 3.3 g/minute.

Just needed to write this somewhere, so I don't forget :)

Looking back and forward

2011-01-02T11:50:00.002-05:00

Done in 2008 and before:

sheep transferred to MIG
composter & compost pile

Done in 2009 (many thanks to our WWOOFers without whom that wouldn't be possible) :

pest control responsibilities transferred to a traveling band of chickens;
many techniques for food preservation and ways to cook delicious and nutritious dishes from things we produce right here have been studied, tested and implemented;
aquaponics system has been researched and construction started;
rainwater retention system for the pastures started;
research for the master plan of the site design is about 80% done.

Done in 2010 (many thanks to our WWOOFers without whom that wouldn't be possible) :

continue to build rainwater retention systems for pastures (swales)
edible forest started
vine trellises/ shade protection for the south side of the house built
herb mound and small garden of annuals established

Plans for 2011:

improve pastures by adjusting the mix of plants toward more productive and cold-weather plants
finalize the master plan
finish aquaponics system
finish rainwater retention systems for our roofs and pastures
ducks (a must for any permaculture design … right?)
10,000 little things that would lessen our dependence on energy coming from elsewhere and close production loops that are still open.

Hapiness is ...

2010-12-20T13:35:00.001-05:00

knowing that you have enough hay.

1 round bale of alicia cow hay from George for $20 (as a back up to our own, since we had to start feeding hay 2-3 weeks earlier this year).

Damn you, global warming!

2010-12-08T09:22:00.005-05:00

We had 26F @ 7am. It's the third time we had temperature below freezing this winter and it starts to get on my nerves - that's not what Dec should be like in FL! Last year, which was the coldest winter on the record BTW, people (OK, Canadians) were still swimming in their pools in Dec!

Leaves on a young mulberry tree were all shriveled this morning despite the tarp covering and uncovered fig tree suffered some damage too. Oh well - hopefully, it's just the leaves. Surprisingly, the snap peas (uncovered) seem unaffected.

Sheep have to wait for the water facet to unfreeze before they can get their water but otherwise don't seem to be bothered by the cold, even the youngest lamb who is only 6 days old. Chickens stay in the shadow during the day, so I guess 50F is still too hot for them.

Upd: lots of damage to new growth on lemon, tomatoes (very well covered with huge green tomatoes on them) are probably dead

Chickens and sharing

2010-10-12T20:04:00.002-04:00

Paul Wheaton commenting on youtube video about feeding slugs to chickens:

The chicken that has the slug doesn't believe in sharing but the chickens that don't have it, do ...

Things learned

2010-10-09T17:15:00.003-04:00

1. Even perfectly placed head shot from .22 rifle will not stun a 3 and a half year old ram. As a matter of fact, two shots will not do it too. Moreover, they won't do anything much at all - postmortem didn't reveal anything except for a bruise.

2. There is no need to hang 3.5 yr old Katadin ram - we didn't and the meat doesn't have any funny taste at all.

3. Scythe rules! And it's easier to learn than you think it is. And the place to get is Scythe Supply.

4. Some of the stuff I wrote on this blog before is incredibly naive and I don't endorse it anymore :)

GENE LOGSDON predicts death of organic farming

2010-01-29T07:53:00.003-05:00

"Since government subsidy programs got serious about 70 years ago, the number of commercial farmers has plummeted from over 12 million to something less that one million. That’s how helpful the payments have been. Then along came small organic farmers who although unsubsidized for the most part, began doubling and tripling in number with each passing year. Whoa. Can’t have that, for heaven’s sake. That might mean that government subsidies don’t really help farmers. Maybe, perish the thought, government doesn’t know how to help farmers. Or, perish two thoughts, maybe government doesn’t really want to help farmers but just wants cheap food so the people can afford to buy more SUVs. Any trend toward farmers becoming successful without government subsidies has to be stopped. Uncle knows how to do that. Offer them money. "

You can read the full article here: http://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/how-to-ruin-organic-farming/

comments re consolidation in agriculture

2009-12-31T11:20:00.003-05:00

Dept. of Justice is thinking about may be investigating the situation in the food industry to see if may be there are a few big players there who kinda dominate the field and write the rules for the themselves (no s**t) and asked the public for comments, so below is what I sent them. I'm not happy with it, I think I didn't explain it as clear as I should have but the deadline is today and I really don't have much time on it anyway, so here it is:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We're a small sheep farm in Dade City, Florida and we're limited to selling live animals only by combination of laws and lack of infrastructure for meat processing. If we could sell the meat directly it would be a healthy, natural, low-cost and humane alternative to industrially produced or imported meat but we can't. This is how it works (or, in this case, doesn't work):

Meat for re-sale must be processed by a USDA-inspected meat plant and there are only 15 in the entire state of Florida. Only 8 of them accept animals from the public. Only 5 of those work with sheep. Only one of these 5 is less than a 4-hour drive from us and this one only does slaughter, no cutting or packaging. So, there is no way for us (or any other sheep farm nearby) to sell meat and the big companies who do it here have no competition.

And it gets worse actually - let's say someone is willing to buy an animal but they can't or don't want to do their own butchering (and that probably describes 99% of the population). They can take the animal to a "custom butcher" who is not allowed to process meat for resale but can do it for the owner of the animal. There are more custom butchers than USDA inspected ones but still too few. The closest ones to us are about an hour away and their fee for slaughter and cutting a sheep comes to about $100. The average 100 lbs. animal itself only cost about $200, so 33% increase from a butcher's fee is definitely a big turn off for many people, especially low income people, who are already in big disadvantage when it come to access to healthy natural foods. On the top of that, custom butchers are often do a rather poor job that impacts quality of the meat. The reason they're able to get away with that is because there are so few of them and because they don't have competition from USDA-inspected butchers who are few and far away and mostly don't accept animals from the public.

I'm not suggesting that big food companies somehow created this environment (more likely it was a result of the unwise drive to cheap food at any cost we've experienced in the second half of the 20th century) but they're certainly benefiting from that, as they only have to compete with each other. Whatever the newspapers say about benefits of natural or local meat - an average person not happy enough to live near a farm and USDA-inspected plant, not having extra money and not willing to butcher animals himself has only one source of meat - a big box chain store. Not only it is dangerous (as evidenced by almost weekly recalls of contaminated foods, affecting hundreds of people) but it's in no way a competitive marketplace that was always the real reason behind American success and ingenuity.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Sheep minerals

2009-11-25T12:31:00.003-05:00

Michelle from The Collie Farm did a very interesting post on sheep mineral supplements. I also always assumed that there was some sort of an industry standard for those things but it sure doesn't look like that from the table Michelle did to compare 5 different supplements.

We've been using Dumor Sheep Mineral (W) from TSC. It looks pretty good comparing to some supplements from Michelle's table:

Calcium - 10 - 12%; Phosphorous - 6% min; Salt - 16-19%; Sodium - 7.1-8.5%; Magnesium - 0.75% min; Potassium - 1%; Iodine - 100ppm; Selenium - 20-21 ppm; Zinc - 1200ppm; Vitamin A - 40,000 IU/lb min; Vitamin D-3 - 15,000 IU/lb min; Vitamin E - 100 IU/lb min.

Ingredients: Monocalcium phosphate, dicalcium phosphate, distillers dried grains with solubles, salt, calcium carbonate, cane molasses, magnesium sulfate, potassium sulfate, mineral oil, zinc oxide, manganous oxide, ferric oxide, vitamin E supplement, anise flavor, fenugreek flavor, vitamin A supplement, ethylenediamine dihydroide, Vitamin D3 supplement, cobalt carbonate, sodium molybdate, calcium iodate, ferrous carbonate, sodium selenite.

50# bag is $19.99

Updates

2009-11-16T21:16:00.010-05:00

1. I found an excellent software to keep the farm log (http://digitaldump.wordpress.com/projects/rednotebook/; although I still wonder if the old fashioned trade book would be more practical and efficient) so all boring stuff about shots and such is going there.

So, just some picture updates (especially since they are the most popular among my friends and family anyway):

Our first eggs (both extra-large - 66g and 68g)

Caruso - up close and personal

"The Guards" or "None Shall Pass"

"The pest control is here" or "Cow Egrets. Inc."

2. Caruso was making a lot of noise today. I went out a minute later for something else and saw a hawk circling around chickens and later perching on a fence post next to their coop. When I got out, most of the chickens were under the coop already and the last three were hauling tails there on the double. Caruso was standing tall and proud in the middle of the patch with his feathers all pointing out, which made him look twice as big. Not sure if the poor bastard would have any chance against the hawk had that actually came down to CQC but apparently he was enough of a deterrent/distraction to slow the hawk down until I showed up. I yelled at the intruder, he cursed me (I swear, it totally sounded like he did) and flew away. All chickens were present and uninjured. Lesson learned AGAIN (for THE FIFTEENTH TIME, I think): never ignore any unusual behavior of your animals. Yes, nine times out of ten you'll get out of a nice warm bed because of something really silly or because they just thought they saw or heard something (if you think freshly enlisted boys make jumpy sentries, try 3 dogs who sleep all day and look for whatever entertainment they can find all night long). But the 10th time you'll be so glad you actually went to investigate, it totally worth those 9 times too.

And another quote

2009-11-09T18:54:00.001-05:00

"Johnnie."

"Yes, teacher."

"If there are twenty sheep in a field, and one gets out through a hole in the fence, how many sheep are left in the field?"

"None, teacher."

"Johnnie, there are still nineteen sheep left in the field. Obviously you don't know arithmetic."

"Sorry, teacher, but I do know arithmetic. Obviously you don't know sheep."

From http://www.backwoodshome.com/

Quoting Gene Logsdon

2009-10-31T09:28:00.002-04:00

"Why do you raise sheep when there's no money in it?" I asked a fellow shepherd.

"Well, there's a little money in it," she replied. "But the real reason is that my sheep make me happy".

From The Contrary Farmer by Gene Logsdon

The amazing hardworking chickens

2009-10-20T11:17:00.005-04:00

1. This barn actually sits on a concrete pad but it sure is hard to tell because the pad is almost hidden behind many-many years of thatch accumulation. It is undisturbed when I cut the grass (too close th the barn) or when our sheep do their thing (the don't care for grass that's been dead for many years). So, there is like a mega-city of various bags, roaches, spiders and so on in that thatch. I mean - there was, until I unleashed on it hordes of my terrible minions ... err, I mean until we moved the chicken coop next to the barn a few days ago. No more thatch, no more mega-city and sure enough, not a single bug anywhere near that. That's what it looks like now:

See? There is a concrete pad. I always believed there is.

2. One more truckload of hay from WH - it was wet and went straight to the bedding . Originally I planned to cut North Meadow too but we have more than enough already. No more hay this year.

Dumb sheep?

2009-10-16T10:42:00.005-04:00

1. And once again about sheep's intelligence - Fatima figured that when the charger is unplugged, it's OK to ignore the electronet. Our dogs are not even close to making this connection yet.

2. I think Zemfira's udder is about to drop. Gotta get rid of the few remaining ram lambs ASAP.

Pictures/updates

2009-10-15T21:44:00.004-04:00

I just noticed that two lambs featured in this picture post I did about 6 months ago are also on the pictures I made a few days ago for a prospective buyer. Here they're - Asya, now very proper and seriously minded young ewe and Adam, still always ready to strike a pose.

Hay, Fall, sheep and chickens

2009-10-15T21:19:00.005-04:00

1. Sheep think it's too hot to get up. And it's a middle of October already - sure doesn't feel like it, especially with our AC dead for a week. Although for us it's more of a nuisance, not a catastrophe - the AC is never lower than 80F anyway, and we usually only use it for several weeks every year. Naturally, that last week with "feels like" temperatures of over 100 had to be one of them.

2. Unlike the sheep, we have to get up and work, heat or no heat. 10 truckloads of hay from WH (and we're not done yet, a couple is still there). 7 went to storage (it's full all the way to the roof), 3 straight to the barn. Sheep like this hay a lot - they nibble on it even though there is still plenty of green grass on the pasture. Update: 3 days later I still can't get that hay as it rains almost non-stop. It's so great that DW could help me on Wed and we got the most of it safely in the storage.

3. Chicken's life here so far has been pretty dull and uneventful, which is exactly how I want it. We spent some time one night looking for one of them who decided to roost up on a tree ... really nothing else to report. They finished a 50# bag of feed in 6 weeks (we're giving free choice now) and grew up a lot but no eggs so far. We move the coop every week or so, now with the tractor (yeah, I'm lazy).

4. One of the reasons for luck of updates is that I spend all my free time researching aquaponics system that I plan to start building soon. Our pond has a big problem of too much nutrients in it - our garden has even bigger problem of being a sandbox with too little nutrients. Sounds like a perfect combination, eh?

Cheap things, chickens and hay

2009-09-30T20:17:00.009-04:00

1. Am I the only one whose first thought after seeing this ad was "ok, what's the catch?"

I've been looking at ways to make various things recently and there seems to be an ironclad threshold or paradox of a sort: things that look like they take a lot of time to make take a lot of time to make. As a result, they're very very expensive from our Ikea-skewed point of view. You can cheat a bit by specializing and using specialized tools but still - that beautiful handmade chair will still set you back $300 or so because someone spent at least 3 days making it (and used the wood that someone else dried for 3 years or so). For me (for example) that means that I'll use a cardboard box full of old phone books or whatever for a chair, rather than paying for a nice one. That's why a 19th century family would have about 5 chairs total, which chairs were probably constantly dragged from dining room to the porch to the church for a wedding to ... you get the picture. We can do with a whole lot less but that really requires a certain mind adjustment. On the other hand, if you're not quite ready, old chairs from a thrift store could be a nice halfway point since our society has surely produced enough of excess goods recently to last us all for a while.

2. When I was locking up the chickens tonight, I couldn't quite see all of them, so I used my flashlight to push one of our roosting beauties a bit aside to get a better view and do the headcount. What does she do? Keeps grabbing the roost with one leg and gratefully lifts the other one to calmly push my flashlight aside as a random nuisance. Hey you stupid chicken, don't you realize I'm your emperor, god and master? Apparently, not.

3. A truckload of hay (according to DW, who did all the dirty work) from one 72" strip cut on Lake West. Wow. It did look like a lot though. And yes, I can't help but love that new Landpride bushhog - it does such a nice job on weeds.

4. One of the things we get asked a lot is - Sheep are really dumb, aren't they? To which I always reply - Yes, not a single one of them can beat me in chess. Sounds silly? Well, how silly is trying to measure intelligence of a different species by our own standards? It's much easier for us (omnivores) to appreciate intelligence of other omnivores (dogs) or predators (cat) than herbivores because cats and dogs are so much closer to us. For us, dogs and cats, a sudden sound and movement in the bush means "May be I can eat it or may be we need to scram but let's check it first". For the sheep it means "Let's get the heck out of here before it eats us, whatever it is". For us, cats and dogs, grass means something to step on. For sheep ... I'm pretty sure, they don't even have have word "grass" in the sheep language. They have "short sweet grass" and "long tasteless grass" and "short so-so spiky grass" and "oh so sweet and tender leaves on that weed that human hate" and so on. Probably 10,000 of them. And they remember from he last year where exactly on the pasture the best grass is. I don't.

hay

2009-09-23T09:59:00.003-04:00

One truckload of hay from Lake North, which was all wet and went straight to bedding, where it was badly needed. Cut with a bushhog, too ... yeah, I know. Am looking for reasonably priced used disk mover.

New ad campaign

2009-09-11T19:56:00.010-04:00

Their compost crock -$40 (from www.improvementscatalog.com)

Our compost crock - $0 (from Ed's cemetery of various things)

Knowing that you're a redneck and being cool with that - Priceless!

Chicken coop pictures

2009-09-03T22:25:00.007-04:00

Everything is ready but the roof.

When it's time to move, 4 bicycle wheels are attached.

Small step for Caruso ... giant leap... well, not really. Scratch that!

Harem on a daily walk.

The Chickens Are Coming The Chickens Are Coming

2009-09-03T20:39:00.003-04:00

Well, actually the chickens arrived on Sep 1 - boss Caruso and 5 pullets.The nice lady we got them from brought them all here and offered some very good ideas for improvements to the coop as well as replacement guarantee on the birds.

Caruso is about 1 yr old and the girls were born (hehe, of course not - birds can't be born, they hatch) on April 26. According to their former owner, Caruso was so named because "he wouldn't shut up" (there may have been an expletive somewhere in that sentence, too), which Caruso immediately proved. We love him though - we wanted a crowing rooster plus he starts to crow about six, which is pretty reasonable. The breed is "a cross of Plymouth Rock roo and Silver Laced Wyandott roo where mothers are Plymouth, Cukoo Maran, Silver Laced Wyandott and Australorp". So, I'm not sure what do you call it but all ingredients are good dual purpose breeds, so the result should be good pullets full of hybrid vigor. We'll see.

The whole crew spent two days locked in the new coop and was allowed to go out today. The rooster almost immediately went out to explore and crow. The girls took their time but then they went out to explore and scratch. When about 8 pm I went to see if I need to get them inside the coop, they all were already there. Smart birds.

The coop is my own design (as should be obvious from its shortcomings) but before I drew the first version I got a lot of ideas from http://www.backyardchickens.com/coopdesigns.html and The Movable Coop pamphlet by John Grogan, .pdf of which I picked up somewhere on the internet. Differences in my design are because our three major problems are heat, predators and uneven pastures, where the coop is supposed to travel. And yeah, I'm a cheap bastard and don't really care for all the niceties in some designs. I mean, seriously - some chicken coops there look better (and probably cost more :) than our house. Although in trying to make it strong AND light I had to spend more than I wanted on metal braces and store-bought PT lumber.

Yes, I said PT - it's Florida, dude. Any non-treated wood will last about a month outside and other ways to protect the wood were either too expensive or too time consuming or even more chemically dangerous than using PT wood. I checked on the raging debate about using PT wood in chicken coops and it seems that the biggest argument against it is that chemicals leach from the posts and then chicken eat that dirt with the chemicals and so on. Well, this design doesn't have posts and it will be moved, so hopefully the concentration will never get to the dangerous point. Another point (somewhat silly, I think) is that chickens get bored and start peking the wood. Really? Anyway, our chickens will only sleep inside, so hopefully they want be bored, not with all the bugs on the pasture. Also, most of the problems seems to be with old wood that was treated several years ago when they used different chemicals. Finally, as far as I can tell from their ads and pictures, all companies who sell wooden coops use PT wood. We'll see.

On quality

2009-09-02T21:33:00.002-04:00

Someone sent me an e-mail choke-full of jokes but here's the one that I liked the most:

Buying quality is like buying oats.

You can buy fresh clean oats for which you will need to pay a fair price.

Or you can buy oats that have already been through the horse.

That comes a lot cheaper.

Clouds, weeds and chicken coop

2009-08-24T09:35:00.015-04:00

1. I wanted to post Before and After style pictures showing results of sheep weed fighting effort. It doesn't look as clear on camera but here they are anyway:

Can't really see on the second picture but these are just skeletons on the weeds, all the leaves are gone, so my mower had no problem chopping it all in mulch.

Neighbor's calves came to check out the weird micro-cows chomping on weeds: "Mooooost unusual!"

2) The mobile chicken coop building is coming along although about a 100 times slower than I hoped. Still, barring any major emergencies should be finished this week and I already have 5 dual purpose pullets reserved with someone we know. The idea is that the chickens (and the coop) will follow the sheep as they move from pasture to pasture, doing parasites patrol. Sheep, in turn, will cut the grass short, so it's easy for the chickens to find bugs and whatnot, so the chickens can pretty much forage for themselves. We'll see how it works in real life.

3) Some rather dramatic clouds over our pond. The clouds (and the sky generally) was one of the things that made us fell in love with FL in the first place. And of course, it was all gone in 10 minutes and the sky were bright blue again.

4) The sheep started on DHP Aug 19.

Raising animals for food

2009-08-19T12:22:00.003-04:00

This is from my e-mail to someone and since that does come up a lot I'm gonna put it here for future reference:

The question of whether it's ethical to raise animals for food comes up a lot, obviously, and it is something we had to find an answer to ourselves at some point and it's a very interesting question, I think. At the end, everyone has to come up with their own answer, so all I can do here is to show how we see it. Of course, our vision may make no sense to you and that's fine. We can respect your decision whatever it is but this is definitely something we thought a lot about, so let me share :)

I noticed there are usually two levels to this discussion, so let me deal with them one by one:

a) Factory farms, feedlots, corn fed animals, etc. - no reason to waste any time here. Completely unethical, cruel, harmful for ecology, health and is definitely something that humans will be very ashamed of at some point. There is a good chance I'd be a vegetarian if my only two choices were to it "this" or not eat meat at all.

b) Naturally raised prey animals (such as our guys) - To me that's where it gets less straightforward. I think everybody agrees that when animals are in their natural environment and free to behave the way were designed to behave etc., etc. it's a good thing. So, for example, our sheep spend every day out on the pasture, they're not crowded there and they moved often to simulate natural herd migration (good for sheep, good for grass). They basically live the same way as they would have if the humans weren't around. And how would they die in this case? Well, they would've been eaten - they're prey animals. They evolved to be much better protected from starvation than the carnivores but naturally there is a trade off - basically, their only defense against predators is to run faster than a weaker flockmate who will be eaten that night. And that's obviously just as important for prey animals' health and evolution as it is for the carnivores but that also means that for a sheep being eaten is a death from natural causes. Falling down from a rock or being killed a lightning is an accident. Death from old age doesn't really exist in nature, certainly not for prey animals.

Now we add humans (in this case, the two of us) in the mix. Strictly speaking, we're predators. We're similar to the coyotes because our ultimate goal is the same - use some of that proteins that sheep have extracted from the grass to fuel our own bodies. But that's where the similarity ends. Unlike coyotes, we make sure our sheep are never thirsty or hungry or scared to death night after night as it happens when coyotes find a flock in the wild and come every night to kill and eat another animal. Unlike coyotes, we don't kill them when they're most vulnerable because of some temporary sickness, young age or pregnancy - we take their lives when it's time, when this particular animal reached what we believe was it's purpose in life (more on that later). And when it's time for them to die, they die much more painlessly than they would from the predators. So, all in all it seems that a sheep in the wild would have shorter, much more stressful and cruel life than a sheep on our farm while enjoying the same natural lifestyle and that means that it's actually good for them that we're around, even though they will be eaten at the end just the same.

Also, back to animal concentration camps, a.k. a. factory farms - it would be great if all people on the Earth would stop eating their meat and they all went bankrupt but that's probably not going to happen. By giving people who want to eat meat a choice, I believe we're taking (even if it's a tiny fraction) away from those factory farms and I believe anything that's makes these factories stop or slow down is good for the Earth, the animals and the humans. Or put it another way - there are people who will never give up their lamb chops. If we can give them their lamb chops by making an animal suffer a little, it may be not perfect but it's much better than if another animal has to suffer all its life in the concentration camp style farm to provide the meat, right?

Another (may be a bit strange) argument that I see is that huge majority of butchered sheep are rams (male sheep) - highly disposable material in the nature. Except for the selected few, they're born to die fast. One in may be 15 would survive, the rest would kill each other setting the pecking order or be killed by the predators because they tend to be bolder and wander farther from the flock or injured in a fight or forced from the flock by stronger males. So our eating them simply substitutes them killing each other.

Of course, all this does not change the fact that we have to play Gods for our sheep. We must decide who will die and when, not to mention a million of minor everyday decisions. This is the part that actually troubles me much more than the eating but that's probably a topic for another discussion. Is it ethical to substitute the Russian roulette of natural selection with our planned selection?

Hay and canned wisdom

2009-08-15T09:07:00.004-04:00

1. One truck of hay from Barnyard (went straight to bedding) + 3 trucks from Lake East (this year we compacted it though, so it probably equals 4 or 5 last year's trucks). I really need to come up with some standardized system of measurements here :) About 1/4 of the last year's hay is still in the storage. The commercial guys are baling too.

2. A week or so ago, the sheep completed their pasture rotation cycle. We'll start at DHP again in a week or so, after a couple of weed-fighting missions. So, the pastures had about 8 months of rest this year - not bad at all.

3. “There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors.This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third is by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle...as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.” Benjamin Franklin

just pictures

2009-07-11T13:42:00.005-04:00

The camera is still broken but a couple of people from a local college newspaper visited us a few days ago to talk about sheep and my wife's life story (she graduated from that college). They emailed us some of the pictures they took here and I thought they were pretty cool, so here it is:

Glucose, the white ewe with yellow #7 tag that you see on a couple of pictures is definitely the most photographed sheep on the farm - she's the friendliest and when she was a lamb she would just follow me everywhere like a dog and bend her neck so I could scratch her under the chin. Now she's an adult and I have less time to spend with them but she still approaches me sometimes even when she knows that I have no grain to give her.

Rain barrels test

2009-07-09T08:20:00.005-04:00

I set two first experimental rain barrels under downspouts next to the back porch last night. Before joining the green movement and being promoted to rain barrels, they were regular pickle barrels, between 55 and 60 gallons each, I guess. A pretty average (that is, not strong at all, just a bit more than a drizzle) rain filled them in about 15 minutes this morning. Wow. That's a whole lot of water :)) and a whole lot more than I expected. Of course, I could do the math first but where's fun in it?

Now I'm waiting for the rain to stop so I can measure how fast dripping irrigation hoses connected to the barrels will empty them. Then I can calculate how much water we need to catch.

By the way, it's been raining almost non-stop for 2 or 3 days now. This is not how it's supposed to be in FL in the summer.

Excellent site on rain barrels and other water related projects BTW - http://www.watershedactivities.com/projects/spring/rainbarl.html

On townfolk and death - Update

2009-07-06T21:45:00.003-04:00

Well, two out of three baby birds are still alive. My city friend was up all night feeding them pureed yellow jacket larvae, which he got from a nest he shook down just for that. And he actually found an organization that will take the chicks and raise them. I have to say - I'm officially impressed. He actually put his money where his mouth was. As I said earlier - a very decent human being, we need more of those. I hope he'll move to the country one day :))

On townfolk and death

2009-07-05T20:15:00.006-04:00

So, a buddy of mine was here today to help out as a way to return a favor for something we helped him with. A city guy. He's a strong fast guy and was a lot of help (we took care of a few trees that fell down since beginning of the summer). Then the weirdest thing happened -

We're walking by a very dead tree and I have a chainsaw in my hand. Naturally, I want to fell it before it goes down by itself and God forbid lands on something or somebody. I felled it down and he notices a nest there, with a few baby birds, probably a day old or so. Miraculously, 3 of them survived the fall. Oh, crap. I feel pretty bad about that but what can you do? There was no way for me to know that there was a nest but what can I do now? So, I suggested we leave them where they are and hope that the parents will come back and help them. Not sure how they can help such young babies though, but once again - are there really any other options?

Well, this guy puts them in a box and starts calling various rescue services and naturally they all closed but even if they weren't - what could they do? Why would they want to? Anyway, he keeps that for a about 30 mins, than takes the chicks home to care of them. Huh?

Don't get me wrong - this is NOT a story about what a silly bird he is. He's actually a pretty smart guy and very decent human being. To me that just shows how successful humans were during the last few decades in creating a bubble separating them from the real life.

Real life has death as its major part - there is no life without death. Something must die for something else to live, no exceptions. When you live on a farm you're always aware of that because you're basically in the middle of 24/7 killing spree that is the nature but in a big city it's possible to lock yourself in a made-up sanitized version of the reality, where death doesn't exist. Up to a certain point when you're rudely awakened, of course.

Another thing that is pretty much lost on many modern people - life is a lottery. You can be good, and you can be innocent and you still can die horribly - shit happens. That's the way nature operates - these woodpeckers decided to make the nest on this very tree and I happened to walk by with a chainsaw. By the way, if my friend didn't come today, I probably wouldn't get to that pasture with the chainsaw for another two months. Or like that time when I was going somewhere with our dogs and they almost stepped on a wild rabbit family but didn't notice them. 3 dogs - what were the chances of that? The momma and 2 babies sat tight right there in short grass and each dog almost stepped on them, literally. If the dogs saw them, they'd be dog food in about 0.5 second. The dogs didn't see them, they didn't smell them ...

It often seems that there is no higher sense or purpose in the nature (or may be it's hidden too well) - it looks more like one huge lottery. Like that squirrel who was may be the best mom in the world and fought like a tiger to get to her babies but she just happened to build the nest in the wrong place in the wrong time. That was not her fault - she had no idea these weird contraptions were lambing jugs and she had no way of knowing the spring lambing time was coming, so a big scary human will walk in there (for the first time in a few months!) with his big scary jack russel who will ony need about 10 seconds to find her nest. Certainly the baby squirrels were not guilty of anything. Didn't help them any.

People can somewhat isolate themselves from that lottery for a while but I think it's mostly imaginary isolation. We all are part of it. We are drawing our tickets every minute whether we like it or not. And we all will die at some point, which is perfectly natural (and is great, actually), and the only thing you can do about it is to produce lots of babies and make sure they survive and develop to be successful in their environment.

Well, isn't it funny - I had to study philosophy in college just to come to what fish, insects and animals of every kind have known for millions of years... I think I'll go out to the pasture and see if I can get some more secret knowledge from the sheep :)

Update on update

2009-07-04T21:00:00.004-04:00

I think our animals decided to help me with the kids - animals analogy from the previous post. I'm walking out of the house, where do I find them? The sheep fight for the right to stand on the top of a pile of mulch and _be oh so tall!_ Volk sits in the bed of my truck pretending he's going somewhere. Arghh...

Anyway, I went to the pasture where the sheep are to fix a leaking pipe. Of course, they all gathered around me to see what I was doing. You know how you can keep a baby endlessly entertained by hiding something in your pocket and then taking it out? Well, it's the same thing with sheep ... I almost can hear them talking among themselves - "Did you see what he just did? - Yeah, wow ... There was a flat ground just a second ago and now there is a hole there? Wow ... - Yeah, he can do things like that ... amazing."

Sheep have very pleasant smell, by the way. Most people when they think about sheep's smell think of the smell of their manure. Nope, not that. When they're out on the pasture and they clean only then you can actually smell _their_ smell. It's kinda similar to the smell of a clean dairy cow and there is a hint of how small children smell but there is also smell of wool mixed into that. In short - it smells like home.

Mornings on the farm can be difficult but I sure do love the evenings.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Updates

2009-07-04T12:18:00.006-04:00

1. The sheep are back from WH. There is lots more grass left (probably another two or three weeks) but the coyotes are getting bolder and hungrier this time of the year and I don't feel good about leaving the sheep there by themselves even during the day. It's pretty empty area too - we're probably the closest alive people to that area (yep, it borders an old cemetery) and we're a good half a mile away. BTW, for the last week or so we brought the sheep home to their barn every night and drove them back there every morning. Turned out, you can't do much during the day if you only get 4 or 5 hours of sleep every night and that's what I was getting between wild animals, my dogs chasing them, cows jumping the fence, calves crawling under and mosquitoes. It also turned out, driving the sheep there and back not half as bad as I thought it will even though we need to go through 3 closed gates and cross a road. DW helped. I probably could have done it myself but the road was a concern - it doesn't get a lot of trafic but people are speeding sometimes, going 2 or 3 times the speed they should begoing. The sheep are on DSP today.

2. I tried to use Volk to help us drive sheep and it went reasonablt well a couple of times but we had to stop when Paul (our ram-in-chief) decided that he needs to protect everyone else from the dog. These two had a lot of fun sorting it out but that made driving a bit too difficult.

3. I know this blog needs more pictures (it's amazing how much the lambs have grown) but our trusted camera died. Do they even fix them nowadays? It's about 6 or 7 years old. Need to find out.

4. We had visitors with who brought their toddler to see the sheep and pet them. Watching the kid and sheep interacting once again made me think how similar animals are to little kids. A one year old is pretty capable of hitting you on the head with something heavy (and don't get me started on hits in the nuts) and they will do it on purpose, too. But they don't really understand what they're doing, so there is no sense in getting mad at them. The analogy works the other way, too - many animals depend on us for very basic things. They will quite literally die if we don't do our jobs. They will never understand why you kicked them to improve your bad mood and they will forgive you for that immediately - just like kids. So, yeah - there is something to the idea that people torturing animals are probably just a chance away from doing it to anyone weaker then them.

Pallets

2009-06-21T09:23:00.001-04:00

No more free pallets for us - now our feed store returns them to get their deposit back. As much as I'm happy for the success of their recycling program .... Need to find source of wood.

Updates

2009-06-21T08:50:00.007-04:00

1. We moved the sheep to WH pastures on June 19, so I'm sleeping there now as well. It's like 90F every night, so I'm soaking wet until about 4 am when it's 75 or so, and that feels like 32 when your clothes are all wet. The mosquitoes like it though as my sweat washes down the repellent. They don't like taste of repellent in their mouthes. Lots of nice grass there, so I guess we'll be there for a couple of weeks or so. That is, unless I go crazy before that. The sheep are homesick, too.

2. Mag is getting old - she breathes loudly, she snores, she can't run, she is now more stupid than the lambs (and that says a lot). But it was her who spotted bloody E.'s cow jumping the fence last night. I spent what felt like half of the night looking for the hole and getting the darn cow back, but it least it didn't have time to do any damage. The sheep tried (rather successfully) to chase her away - they got in a tight formation and pretended to attack. The cow retreated. That was funny. Oh, and BTW - just to make things more fun, I guess, E. now has some huge weird looking naked bull on that pasture (next to where we're), too. I don't like bulls. Especially with 200 yr old falling apart fences they have on that pasture. Need to talk to him.

3. The tangerine trees are covered with tiny green tangerines. I gave them some food.

4. We turned on AC yesterday. 85F feels like Arctic comparing to 100 plus outside.

5. The mower is fixed (had to buy a new battery). Lots of hay on DHP and Lake West. North Border Meadow has not gone to the seed yet (we grazed it 1.5 month ago).

6. Volk is sick - it seems that he ate something he shouldn't have. So he pukes and generally looks like crap. He still tried to help us with the cow last night though.

There's a Hole in the Bucket ...

2009-06-16T20:46:00.006-04:00

1. This is probably the best description of what life on a farm is like.

2. Grass is on the offensive and we're losing - the areas that were completely grazed down 2 weeks ago look like a sheep has never set a hoof on them. If the grass grew like this year around, we could feed 150- 200 sheep just on grass, easily (although worms would be a big problem then, not to mention soil compaction and a few other things). Since February we've grazed every pasture except Lake East, DSP and White House area (going there day after tomorrow and will be spending the nights there too). About 1/6 of the hay from the last year is still here.

3. Alchi, Alexa and Anthony got CD-T booster shots 6/15/09.

4. Right now would be a perfect time to cut hay (would be because the starter on my mower decided to die). To be fair to poor thing though there were warning signs for a couple of months, which I kinda ignored with very predictable results. In my defense, I was going to trade the mower for a nice little Kubota, and in these cases fixing things never pays off really.

Rain ... and more rain

2009-05-26T22:51:00.005-04:00

1. Wow, that's an official record - rain for 13 days straight and counting. We're still 20 something inches behind because of the 3 years of drought but it sure doesn't feel like it - everything is wet and soggy. And that's a big problem - here in FL we usually have a strong rain for 30 minutes every day but it's so hot that it gets completely dry 15 minutes after. So, we never really bother about things getting wet - they'll be dry before they rot or rust, no problem. And now we have many days with 8 hours of rain back to back and all the holes that water can get through are suddenly obvious and dangerous.

2. Paul attacked me on May 24 (I mean, it was a serious adult ram attack, not games and fun as before) . Congratulations dude, you're a man. Although it also means that you'll be going to freezer camp sometime in August.

3. As it turned out even perfectly executed roundhouse kick in ram's head will probably hurt you more than him - don't do it. A slight tapping with the end of the crook on eyes or lips will do the trick and show him who is the boss though.

4. Everyone except for a few (who will get their treatment tomorrow) got a proper dose of Ivomec and hoofs trimming. We didn't finish them all because we basically gave up after 3 hours or so because they fought a lot and it was hot and humid and I realized that those poles don't really dance - it's all in my head. We never bothered with general hoof trimming before - the ground and bedding were always stone dry so foot rot was never a problem and only those with limping problems were getting free pedicures. Now I have to worry about that. We also weighted a few - spring lambs are about 60lbs, moms and yearlings are 100 - 125 and Sr. Sister (of course!) and Paul are over 150 lbs. Man, that's a lot of superb quality 100% grass fed all natural meat walking on my pastures :))

5. The grass grows up very nice though - I think we should be OK this summer. We're on the Central Hill now, which is one of the worst pastures and even that gives us 2 days from 2 rolls of electronet area. And DHP, which we've grazed this year already is ready to be grazed again (but hopefully we won't be there until beginning of August).

6. I understand many people now want to go work or live on farms. If you're one of them, here's the best way to piss off a farmer - open every closed gate that you see and close every open one. Surely you know better which ones should be open or closed, right? And those funny signs "keep closed"? Of course they are not for you. Yeah, and do us all a favor - also ignore signs like "LGD in use, don't approach livestock". I mean, dog food is expensive nowadays and you will be really helping.

CD-T

2009-05-17T22:39:00.000-04:00

Alchi, Alexa and Anthony got 2 ml CD-T on May 17, 2009.

Well, the rails are washed out north of town ... (c)

2009-05-13T09:16:00.005-04:00

1. I asked for rain, didn't I? Well, we got it - 4.5" in about 1 hour. That's Florida weather for ya - after doing rain dances for weeks, 20 minutes after the storm began I was dancing for it to stop (well, I was actually trying to fix a downspout but it looked a lot like dancing) because I was afraid we'll be washed into the lake in no time. At the end it all turned out OK though - a bit of good pasture did get washed out but the rest is growing like it's on steroids. When I came to move the sheep to a new place this morning I couldn't believe how much grass grew on the lot they were yesterday during the night. That's always amazes me about Florida - stick a T-post in the ground and it'll sprout leaves in 15 minutes as long as there is enough water.

That storm was a lifesaver. We had only about 2 weeks of pasture left (Steve's place, which usually is a great pasture was all empty, except for some dried out weeds that E.'s bloody cows brought there when they "accidentally" got in there last summer). After that we'd have to go to feeding hay and my hay is really better suited for bedding. Anyway, I'm sure we'll get a lot of new grass now and even if this is not the beginning of regular summer rains yet, that should help us to get by until then.

2. Scenic Almanac calendar rules - not only they predicted all 3 freezes this winter, they were spot on with this T-storm, too.

3. I liberated our lucky bamboo yesterday. It wasn't doing good for some reason and generally it looked as ridiculous on the porch as it looked nice when I had it in our apartment when we lived in the city. So, I used some compost (that's the first compost I got from new barrel composter ) and planted it in places where I need some water slowing power or where it has nowhere to spread (apparently, bamboo can be pretty invasive; I'm not afraid though - it's a grass and there isn't a grass our sheep can't deal with). Also, it's supposed to be edible - we'll see.

The llamas escaped!

2009-05-06T10:56:00.004-04:00

Very often people who dream about living on a farm say that they want to "get away from nerve wrecking office work" and so on. That puzzles the heck out of me, quite frankly. What's the worst that can happen if you make a mistake in some report? Well, your boss will yell at you. The worst case scenario - you're fired. Now, what will happen if you forget to close the barn with chickens, sheep or other live creatures that depend on you (and who you depend on for your food and income) and a family of coyotes happens to visit that night? Or you forget to open windows in a greenhouse and your crop is cooked?

A case to the point - last night I woke up in terror and cold sweat, grubbed my trusted Persuader and almost ran outside, because llamas somehow escaped from their pen and a pack of wolves was killing them now. The best part? We don't have any llamas and the closest wolves are about 50 miles away, safely locked up in their cage at Lowry Park Zoo.

A sick sheep is a dead sheep

2009-05-06T08:08:00.004-04:00

People say that a lot and usually assume it means that sheep can die from sickness easily. Since this is very much not true, I've always just dismissed this saying as one of them stupid things that everyone repeats without thinking. Recently after reading on a sheep mailing list story of a lambing that went wrong I realized what it really means.

Being prey animals sheep are very good at hiding any signs of weakness, be it pregnancy or decease. So, it looks like business as usual until the very last reserves and defenses of a sheep's body are overrun, then she just drops dead. Kinda similar to the way their pregnancy is going - no signs at all until the last weeks, very few signs after that, then you just see an extra lamb or two coming back home from the pasture. So, the saying is actually true - by the time you can see that a sheep is sick, it's probably got so far that she'll be dead very soon. The only way to catch it before it's too late is to check healthy-looking sheep and generally know their personalities, so you can see that something is wrong before it's obvious for casual observers and coyotes.

The sheep are amazingly tough actually. Back to the story I read - a sheep there had a dead lamb in her womb and her uterus was torn during the lambing but there were almost no signs, she was doing her regular stuff and taking care of two alive lambs for a few days before she died very quickly (I assume from either blood loss or intoxication/infection from the dead lamb's body decomposing or both).

We usually have lambs born in the pasture and in the evening they come (running!) home with their moms just a few hours after they're born and they almost never even slow them down and the distance may be anything from a few hundred feet to half a mile. I've seen lambs head butted by adults flying a few feet through the air then slumming into a wall, at which point I was sure that tonight we will, unfortunately, have a really young lamb for dinner. They would just get up on their feet, dust themselves and keep on bugging the same mean ewe!

I mean, really - I can think of hundreds of examples of how tough the sheep are but listing it here would be boring and sometimes pretty gross, so I'll just say - a sick sheep is a dead sheep.

Quotes

2009-05-02T10:24:00.001-04:00

"Any dumb SOB with a Dog and a Winchester can be a Sheepherder"

---old west cowboy proverb from Midland Agrarian. Not sure why I think it's funny but I do. Lots of interesting thoughts on his blog by the way.

Yee Haa! Cowboy livin' is a life for me ...

2009-05-02T08:33:00.004-04:00

1. Or something like that. Still no signs of rain whatsoever, so the grass is bad, so the sheep don't want to go where I want them to go (they want to go back to places they recently were that have a little new growth instead, which I can't allow because a) that would kill the grass and b) it's probably full of worms). Also, they can't eat older dry grass as fast, so being on the grass 24 hours really helps. So, they've been spending last few nights out in the pasture and so was I, sleeping there in the bed of my truck (I can't trust Volk with the sheep without supervision yet).

It wasn't that bad, actually - the stars were bright, the air was fresh, there were very few mosquitoes and my loyal wife (poor thing!) came there to sleep with me after she's done with her work. But it was sure good to sleep in the bed again last night :)) The sheep spent the night in the barn for a bit of check-up and selective feeding. They were not happy, I can tell you. Spoiled brats :)) Well, it's back to the pastures tonight, cause the moms losing weight a bit faster than I'd like to and lambs need a lot of food at this stage, and I try to use as little feed as possible.

2. So far, we're done with with Dead Horse Pasture, all areas near the lake, except for Lake-East and finishing up the North Border Meadow in a couple of days (yes, I came up with all those names myself :)) So, about 70% of our best pastures has been eaten once this year already. We can probably last a month before coming back to the DHP again, so it's not that bad (but not great either). Lake-East will not be a big player this year, I'm afraid - tree people did a lot of damage there while hauling away the oaks. We need rain.

3. We had an underground fire yesterday - a #2 underground wire shorted and about 10 feet of it just disappeared - all that's left was a form from baked sand created around the wire by the heat. Aluminum wire itself - just gone. The electric company said if the ground was wet, there would be a little explosion and circuit breaker would be tripped but because it's so dry it just formed a welding ark, which was probably going on for a while. It was really weird to see the sand form though - reminded me of all these people in Pompeii.

Late and over budget ...

2009-04-26T22:31:00.009-04:00

1. Nope, I'm not building a highway here - just tried to weatherproof the decks in the main house before summer with its daily rains is here. Easy one day project, right? You power-wash one of them, while it dries you power-wash another, go inside, read your e-mails, cover the first deck, which should be already dry by that time, with some nice oil-based sealant (OK, nice ones cost a lot, so medium-quality stuff from big box hardware store will have to do), cover the second one, touch up a few boards inside the covered porch* and you're done. Right?

Wrong. Surprise number 1 - the guy who used to take care of the place before me used oil-based stain in some places and acrylic in some others (knowing the guy a little I think he probably just run out of oil-based stuff toward the end of the project). OK, no problem, I can sand the acrylic down, since it's only in a couple of places and pretty old and bubbling anyway. Will just add another hour or so, right?

Wrong. Surprise number 2 - I poke a board with a putty knife and it goes right through. This is exactly why I don't like stains that form a film - they can look fine on the outside but if there is a hole somewhere, water gets under the film and everything inside rots for many years and all this is invisible until it's too late, like in this case here. Well, OK, I won't finish it today but it's just one board, no big deal. I can remove it very fast, make a new one and continue with sanding, right?

Wrong. Surprise number 3 - I lift the board and see these two nests there. Being trained by the yellow-jackets before, I drop the board faster than a bank drops their customer of 30 years after he loses the job, and go inside to get some poison, bee veil, gloves, etc. Slightly shaken, very happy that I saw the nests before yellow-jackets saw me and very mad at our pest control guy. I've been telling him for two years that there is a nest somewhere next to this porch and he kept telling me that all them yellow-jackets just keep coming to our porch from far away lands because they like it so much. Arrrgh.

Note that it looks like they ate (or somehow got rid of) the insulation to make space for the nests. Weird.

Anyway, after spraying the nests I'm trying to continue with sanding other boards when I realize that the way they were nailed makes a pretty efficient rain collector, and they all sealed with the same old latex film, so there is a very good chance there are some rotted ones too, so I really need to take half of the porch apart to make sure it's OK, and if I do that I might as well fix the insect screen and install some hardware cloth and the bottom to keep the rodents away. At this point I officially abandoned any hope of finishing the project on that day or the next day. Oh, and did I mention that it all happened two days after I started moving the shop from one outbuilding (small and farther away; will be used as storage/cold weather animal shelter) to another, so half of my tools is in the boxes and I have no idea where the other half is?

To make the story short, the new shop is almost ready but the porch is in the same condition I left it after day one. Although we have no rain in the forecast, so it's OK. And speaking of surprises - what do you think this is? That's right, old snake skin. And where do you think I found it? That's right, it's hanging from siding under the roof. So, the snake somehow went up there to change the skin. I'm glad it didn't fell down ... just as someone was walking under.

2. We have no rains, so we have very little grass. Sheep finish the area that normally would last them 4 or 5 days in 2. Lambs get unlimited feed and growing up nicely. Lactating ewes each get about 1 lb of feed a day. That seems to be just enough for them to maintain their weight, except for Maria who went into 4 and Fatima, who is 2. But her lambs are almost ready to be weaned, so it should be fine.

* Yes, we have 2.5 porches in the main house and one is huge ... I think the porches combined are probably the same square footage as the house itself ... but hey, it's Florida - we practically live on those porches.

Ron Parker - THE SHEEP BOOK

2009-04-16T21:40:00.005-04:00

"Lambing is a time when sheep and shepherd are most closely associated.
...
With the farm flock some overdevoted shepherds may literally move into the barn with the sheep to be sure to be there in time of need. Some small holders do the reverse and bring ewes into the house."

Errr..... no comments... :)) A lamb in distress in the house I understand ... a pregnant ewe ... or even a few of them?? :)) I guess, I'm not a small holder in the spirit :))

Weird small holders aside, this is a great sheep book, avaliable for free with authors' knowledge and consent (big YAY! for Mr. Parker). If you like it, please consider buying a paper copy. First, it'll be nice and second, when you're running to the barn in the middle of the night a book is much more convenient to take with you than your computer. And there is much in this book you will need when you're out there saving that half-dead lamb.

In the interests of full disclosure - there are things in the book that I disagree with but that's mostly because our circumstances are very different - we raise hair sheep in the South and Mr. Parker mostly writes about his experience with the woollies up North. So, the very structure of his book build upon seasonal cycles of the ewes doesn't really apply to us, as our girls do it whenever they feel like it, summer or winter. And we're very lucky to not have to face many difficulties he has to struggle with, like the need for time-sensitive breeding, winter confinement, wool quality, etc. Also, the book was published in 2001 - they probably do some things differently by now. Nevertheless, out of all sheep books I've read (and that's more than 10) this one is the best on many topics, particularly diseases and real life treatments.

Five feet high and rising ...

2009-04-14T09:58:00.012-04:00

1. Severe thunderstorms! Tornado warning! I hate those but I sure like the water they brought this time. First rain since I don't remember when (2nd rain this year, I think). Sheep complain a lot about being wet and look all miserable but they got so clean, it was worth it. I forgot their natural color is white, not gray! And the lambs all scared and quiet - What is this crazy water falling from above?

2. Someone asked me if naming sheep makes it more difficult to view them as food. Since I'm asked that all the time, I decided to put the answer here:

" I think pretending that using "#41" instead of "Alchi" somehow make him less of a living creature is pretty hypocritical. Will #41 feel less pain, fear or joy than Alchi? I seriously doubt that. Yes, he was destined to be eaten - he's a sheep. They were born to be eaten long before humans got involved in it. That's part of who he is and there is nothing to be ashamed about. I do my best to make sure that he has a good life and easy death and in exchange I get to eat or sell the meat. It's a whole lot more than he would get in the nature from the coyotes and such, not to mention the agri-factories horrors.

Several years ago there was a research and they found out that cows that have names produce on the average a lot more milk than those that don't. It looked totally puzzling until someone realized that cows with names obviously lived on small farms. If someone took time to think about and remember your name, there is a good chance they will take better care of you, right?

Hmmm, I think I just convinced myself that 2 new freezer lambs need names too. "

Something I just remembered - I was talking to a sheep farmer some time ago and there was a bunch of lambs running around. Then his kids came out of the house and started to play with the lambs. "Kids, don't play with your food" - he said, jokingly. May be it was a bad taste joke but I was cracking up and still think it's pretty funny. Rather twisted sense of humor, eh?

3. Lambs' version of Playstation - 1. Dig an anthill and sniff inside. 2. When ants start to bite, jump like a bison till you shake them off. 3. Repeat until completely exhausted.

4. I'm sure sheep know all the answers. May be they will tell us ....one day ... when we're ready.

Volk's first real job

2009-04-12T09:20:00.005-04:00

1. Yes, Volk had a chance to pay back for a little bit of his dog food by actually working. Two days ago I had problems with the electronet - there was no charge in it at all. That wouldn't be a problem with our sheep since they learned to respect the net long time ago but 2 new ram lambs I got from L. and our own lambs are not there yet, and I could see that they won't wait even a minute for me to fix it - apparently, leaning and jumping on the net is a lot of fun. So, I let Volk out, he started his patrol routine, the lambs got away from the fence and I was able to find and fix the short.

Also, he managed to grip a few sheep over the last few days, in each case without puncturing the skin, just a perfect grip. Can I be so lucky that he has the instincts for the proper grip or was it just an accident? A few times before when he was doing so good I couldn't believe it, he would go and screw things up later, so I'm cautious. He did learn a lot though about how to control the sheep by presence and body language. There is definitely a sheepdog blood in him.

2. Everyone (except for 2 freezer rams, Alchi, Alexa and Anthony) got 2 ml of CD-T on Apr 10, 2009.

3. Out of all pleasures known to me, having a beer while watching the lamb squad frolics after the day's work is done is definitely on the Top 5 list. May be even Top 3.

New arrivals

2009-04-08T23:15:00.005-04:00

1. Alchi (don't ask) was born today, 3,200. The first white lamb born from Paul.

2. Got two ram lambs from L. today. I thought of may be using one for breeding but they both have horns. IMHO, horns do not belong on Katahdins, so they both will be heading for the freezer after packing on some meat (they're 4 months now, we plan to keep them around until July and September). Oh, well ...

3. Speaking of the freezer - we'll give the Sr. Sister another couple of months, I guess. But she'd better use them to deliver some nice healthy babies.

Another lamb and bunch of pictures

2009-04-03T20:44:00.018-04:00

1. Anthony was born Apr 3, 3,900 g. No pictures yet.

2. And a picture story for little children from the recent past:

- Do you think we should help him?
- Nagh... Let rookie do the legwork. He's got a lot of energy, too.

- No, mom, I don't want to sleep ... I don't need a nap. I told you, I'm ... not.... sleepy..... zzzzzzzzz

- Arrrh! This bird threatens our flock! Lambs to the rescue!

- Chaaaaaaaarge!!!!!!!!

- And don't you dare to come back!

- OK, now they gonna make my victor's statue ... I better strike a pose ...

- Hey, little guys ...
- Live them alone, you monster!

- Run along, you two! This guy is up to no good!

- Outta my way, you stupid sheep! Do you want to meet my teeth?
- Let's see how they work after I bash them in your stupid head!

- Let's get a little bit closer - then he jumps! I'm telling you, it's so much fun ...

- Hey, didn't I tell you two not to get close to this guy?

- Good morning, Alexa! Welcome to the world! Don't play with the twins, they're troubles!

- But mom .... they're such cool kids ... and they know so much about stuff and things ... I'll go hang out with them.

Belated updates

2009-03-22T15:28:00.005-04:00

1. Everyone got 2 ml of CD-T on March 12, 2009.

2. Alexa was born on March 21, 3,330 g.

3. Going back to managed grazing tomorrow, starting from DHP and moving counterclockwise.

A thought for today

2009-03-11T22:45:00.002-04:00

There are only two emotions that belong in the saddle; one is a sense of humour and the other is patience. - John Lyons

This is so-so-so-so very true. Except, of course, that "the saddle" should mean "anything you do with the animals".

More winter? [expletive deleted] !!!

2009-03-02T09:23:00.005-05:00

1. I knew I shouldn't have removed the heating lamb setup from the creep yet! But it's March ... oh, well. now I've done it - 34F last night, supposed to be 29F tomorrow morning, with wind-chill dropping it another 10 degrees or so. Arghhh...

2. 78215 on the el. meter last Sun - don't have time to analyze now.

3. Was very pleasantly surprised by the TSC last week - great selection and prices (sheep mineral block for $10, plastic (but sturdy) wall mounting grain feeder for $14, etc.). They do it to me every time actually - as soon as I'm ready to give up on them, the store is full of good stuff. For the next 6 months it's often poorly stocked and generally overpriced, until I almost decide to take my shopping elsewhere.

R.I.P. Mukha - 11/?/08 - 2/23/09

2009-02-23T22:52:00.002-05:00

Nature doesn't care if it was a mistake. Sure, you can say “ooops” but the result won't change.
Nature doesn't care if it was youthful inexperience. Even you're not even old enough to get your rabies shots yet.
Nature doesn't care if we all loved that mischievous streak in you. That streak that likely contributed to your untimely death.
Nature's judgment is simple and swift. Very swift. There are no lawyers and no death row, where you sit for 20 years. As soon as you make a mistake, the judgment is made and executed. In about 5 seconds or less.
I know you don't need any consolations now. We do. If it's any consolation, while you were with us, you were loved very much. Rest in peace, Mukha. You are missed down here. A lot.

2009-02-21T11:56:00.009-05:00

1. And yet another freeze this morning - 29F. I do hope that was the last one. Otherwise, the spring is officially here - new grass, new weeds and new leaves (that all started about a week ago, actually). The weeds grow especially fast, so I've abandoned my managed grazing for a few days and let the sheep roam, hoping that they will do a little selective weeding around here, as they almost always go for the greenest.

2. My dog food experiment proved that the good stuff is actually cheaper as well - 5 caps a day is enough for Volk. Yay!

3. Gave 2 pills of wormer (Drontal Plus xlrg) to Volk yesterday. Boy, did he needed it... I wonder if he came with worms or picked them up here? The rest of the gang doesn't seem to have them, so I hope they're from his previous home.

Electric meter reads

2009-02-15T09:22:00.005-05:00

78078.

Which means that either we produced 770 kWh during the last week (and that's unlikely, as we don't have any means to produce electric energy*) or there was a mistake in my initial reading (can easily happen with our crappy old analog meter with tiny dials) and it was 77848 kWh not 78848 kWh. In that case we used 230 kWh last week and that sounds strange, too - we didn't use either heat or AC this week and according to this (I don't have time to verify, so I'll trust them for now) average US household uses ~ 179 kWh per week and there is no way we are above the average, especially since this meter is only for the house and the pump - he barns are on a separate meter.

Am curious now, so I'll keep monitoring that.

* Except for the standby emergency generator, which doesn't count as we didn't use it last week.

Update: Some stats from our electric company - 1,176kWh used from 12/26 to 1/27; average day in Jan 2009 - 37 kWh, in Dec 2008 - 29 kWh, in Jan 2008 - 21 kWh. Still doesn't make any sense - in Jan we had heat on and last week we didn't ....

Lambs and hay

2009-02-14T21:53:00.013-05:00

1. OK, so I'm not crazy - Fatima was pregnant, she was just very good at hiding it. She also was smart (or lucky) enough to wait for the warm weather. And she turned out to be a good mother, even though it's her first time, so when I came to let the sheep out this morning two lambs were already almost clean, almost dry and sucking away. And she can count to two (not all sheep can). It's a boy and a girl. Each weights about 1,800 gram (but we only weighted them in the evening, so this is weight at about 10 hours). Fatima got 3 scoops (about 350 gram each) of feed today.

2. I let the rest of the gang out on the pasture initially but Fatima was looking somewhat nervous in her lumbing jug, so they all were back in the barn, where they spent the whole day today. During the day they ate 2 full carts of hay. I didn't realize they need so much hay when they don't go out on the pasture; we should be OK - the new grass is starting to grow already and we still have more than half of what's in the storage. They lost some weight, by the way, which is good for them.

Shopping

2009-02-12T10:34:00.005-05:00

1. TSC is about 10% cheaper than local feed stores and sometimes even cheaper than Walmart. The key word here is sometimes and the same is the case with TSC and Lowes, althouth as a general rule both Walmart and Lowes are cheaper by 10% or so. The chance of getting a crappy action model of the tool you need in TSC is slightly higher than in Lowes and slightly lower than in Walmart. Generaly TSC 20 - 30% more expensive than specialized internet supliers, such as Premier 1 but on a few ocasions it was cheaper. To sum it up - they don't make it easy for us, do they? The good thing is that now you can check the prices in all of those locations (except for the feed stores) before even leaving your home.

2. It feels rather weird when you got all you need from a TSC store and your total bill is only 20 bucks. Then again - with all the money we left there over the last two years - that's well deserved.

Dog food experiment

2009-02-09T21:55:00.007-05:00

Cheapest dog food at Sam's is $19 for 50# bag; River Run Pro 27-18 is $25 for 50# at Farmer's Feed. Sam's is a better deal, right? Well, may be. May be not. Volk, for example, needs 8 cups of generic stuff a day but only 5 cups of 27-18 (that's according to the labels; in reality 7 cups of generic stuff was plenty; we'll see how it works with 27-18 (just opened a bag today). What I can see right away is that the dogs, who were lukewarm on generic stuff, obviously love 27-18 - Volk even missed the evening sheep run for this.

Right tool for the job

2009-02-09T08:43:00.004-05:00

I've learned a long time ago that having (and correctly using!) the right tool for the job often turns the most nightmarish task into painless or even pleasant experience. But when a T-post driver costs $30 and you basically only have one T-post ( it's used as a perch for a solar energizer and support for the the loose end of electronet) that you need to move, it can take you a few months before you cave in, shell out the money and retire your trusted hammer (yep, not even a sledgehammer) from this job. It took me about 5 months, I think.

I had to move the post again this morning, using my brand new driver with the price tag still attached. It took me exactly 4 hits and 8 seconds. Wow. Remembering the great lengths I would go to to avoid moving the damn post in the past makes me sad. Designs for pasture rotation balancing between crazy and ingenious, additional fences, etc., etc. Wow. So much waisted time, good grass and opportunity just because driving T-posts with a hammer is a major pain in the neck, which I tried to avoid so much without even realizing it.

So, it occurred to me - may be the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer not because of some mysterious economic paradox but simply because the rich can afford right tools for the job? I mean "tools" in a very broad sense here - from a T-post driver to college degree to a nice suit to belonging to the right alumni association and so on. Case to the point - I know at least two people who couldn't make it to the interviews because their junk yard cars broke down.

Well, just a though ... :)

Electric meter reads

2009-02-08T09:52:00.001-05:00

78848 kWh

Amazing sheep

2009-02-05T22:17:00.004-05:00

It's 33F outside right now. The sheep pushed the bedding aside and sleep on the concrete. Huh?

Even more winter, hay and compost

2009-02-05T09:03:00.008-05:00

1. Well, it looks like everyone survived 19F that we had this morning, with possible exception of the water pipes that bring water to far pastures. They were frozen this morning but I hope they will come back to life when it's warmer. The dogs and the cat were inside, as were a few potted plants. Our philosophy generally is that if something can't stand the local weather without a lot of help from people - well, may be it shouldn't be here at the first place; so the only plants we need to worry about are 3 potted flowers that my mom gave to us despite our polite attempts to avoid it (she actually gave us 5 but it was a year ago and now we only need to worry about 3 :) and my lucky bamboo that I had as an indoor plant for many many years and that began a new life as a porch plant when we moved to FL. The sheep were outside but they seem to be OK too, just very hungry this morning. The only reason I worried about them at all is that Fatima may be very pregnant. If she is, I'm sure glad she decided to wait - the warm weather should be back by Sun. I don't think newborn lambs would survive 19F. Actually, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't and it's not much we can do - our barn is pole barn. I have an electric heater ready just in case but last night she didn't look like it would happen in a few hours, so I slept through.

2. The sheep are on the new strip to graze today. I think I figured just the right size they need for 4 days - they pick it up clean but even on the last day they have a little bit to eat. Oh, and the hay they refused to see as anything but the bedding? Now they love it as food, too. Since my last note on that I probably used a half-truck, all for feed except that I made a nice new bedding in the lambing jug. The new grass should be here in 3 months or so, so we should be good. By the way, I really don't need to add more hay to their bedding now - because of the weather, I guess? The hay just stays there without disappearing but the poop does disappear somehow. Weird.

3. We bought the new composter on on Aug 22, almost half a year ago. At that time I filled both chambers with sheep manure to about 3/4. Since that day, all our leftovers go to the composter, nothing has come out of it yet and the chambers are just about under half full. OK, we don't have that many leftovers (although we do eat lots of veggies and fruits, so lots of peels, leaves, etc.) but imagine the volume of all our leftovers for 5 months ... It all just disappeared. The nature is pretty amazing, isn't it? And the best part is that we don't have to worry about throwing the garbage every day or every other day anymore - all "time sensitive" stuff is in the composter, which is just a short walk away, unlike the dumpster to which we need to drive about half a mile.

Winter, Volk and tough life of FL sheep

2009-01-21T20:36:00.011-05:00

1. The winter is here and I hate it! Please don't laugh, strong people of the North! I know - you think "cold" is when trees in the forest pop open .... but for us "cold" is when you need to wear long sleeves in the morning. And when you see this in the morning - it positively throws us Central Florida folks in the state of mild shock. The weather channel said it was 22F last night ... the plants are doing OK, so I guess it was 22 for just a short while. We took the dogs inside (the look of horror on their faces when they saw me pulling the doghouses inside was truly priceless - "But great master ... we do need those ... especially now... it's so freaking cold!") They understood right away though that they're invited inside too - very quick for farm dogs who spend inside one or two nights a year on the average.

The sheep, on the other hand, look like they don't care - one morning there was frost on the grass, frost on the bedding, their water turned into ice - the sheep didn't even bother to get together for warmth. All in their usual places, eyes half-closed, ears back, cud-chewing poster children of happiness. And their barn is a pole barn, mind you.

2. I was too busy to write about Volk, so I'm correcting it now. Say Hi! - here he is:

We took him in about 3 weeks ago - his family couldn't keep him anymore and the coyotes were getting more and more of a problem here plus our ladies were getting pretty strong minded sometimes (you know - there is aways this one ewe who knows better where the best grass is), so I do need a sheepdog. It's just all come together. Except for the fact that Volk has no good experience with sheep and thinks they were put on the Earth so he can chase them down and tear to 10,000 pieces. Oh, well ... we're working on that. He is a shepherd dog, after all. On the plus side, the coyotes were not not seen or heard about since Volk took up a residence here.

3. The sheep finally admitted that the winter is here and they can't expect the grass to be green and young all the time. May be my telling them how lucky they are comparing to their sisters up north worked. Or may be it was that there is not much of young and green grass around anymore... anyway, they reluctantly agreed to turn their attention to the last year's growth. And as anyone who knows their grass will agree, that's pretty good grass, too. They're spoiled, I know.

4. Our ram, Paul, challenges Volk to fight every time he sees him. Poor delusional bastard - he wouldn't last 30 seconds without the electric net between them. Still, I can not but admire his silly bravery. He still hasn't learn how to do his job though ... so, someone will be taking over soon. C'est la vie, n'est-ce pas ? Or, as we say here - Boy, you better get your act straight.

Energizer

2008-12-28T13:54:00.003-05:00

Before I forgot - the energizer I got back in September was S17 Solar (G344404) Gallagher. It's 6 volt/0.17 joules and according to the manufacturer should be good for up to 10 acres/1 mile of multi wire permanent fence. So far I had no problems with it - everything works as expected, it's simple, robust and sits nicely on the top of a T-post.

However, if I was doing it again, I'd get a model with more power. I'm using it to power up 328 feet of all-hot ElectroNet and I do get about 3kV most of the time but our soil (well, the sand that we call "soil" around here) is often very dry, so I'm not sure this energizer would be enough on a longer net. (Yes, I plan to experiment with pos/neg, too.) Also, there is no such thing as too strong a zip, right? Especially with coyotes and raccoons and such - you want it to be strong enough to stop any exploration attemps on its tracks. For grounding I use 2 cooper covered steel rods 4 feet each; I'm usually able to hammer all but 1 foot in the ground.

More hay and other statistics

2008-12-27T21:34:00.006-05:00

1. Two more truckloads of hay from the Dead Horse Pasture - wow, I didn't even know grass was so long there. My back will hurt tomorrow. Added 1.25 truckload to the bedding.

2. D-day - Dec 25. And next day I saw this: http://www.attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/parasitesheep.html . Makes a lot of sense - I guess we'll wait and see if we really need de-worming before doing it next time instead of following the schedule. With our pasture rotation and abundance of grass we should be OK ... I hope.

3. The sheep have been at the DHP since about Dec 12. They've been complaining about it for about a week now but I think they're just bloody ungrateful animals, they are. Why? Well, for one thing they all are 3+, 4 and B. Sr. and Fatima are actually 5s. Malnourishment is clearly not an issue here; obesity, on the other hand, starts to look like a problem. And they say Bahia is a poor feed!
P.S. They also like acorns and acorns make them fat and me nervous (oak is supposed to be poisonous for the sheep and that's pretty much the only tree we have around here so the acorns are everywhere).

4. I ordered 2 more rolls of net from Premier and as soon as they're here we should be able to actually do a proper pasture rotation /intensive grazing. Soooo looking forward to it.

5. Our young ram still doesn't know how to do it. Two possible solutions - invite someone to show him how (all our friends suggest a certain Irish friend for some reason) or get one that know how and eat this one, which solution will also provide the added benefit of mixing the blood even more. Well, our freezer will have enough space in a month or so ... Paul, you really should figure it out quick, dude.

Busy, busy, busy ...

2008-11-20T18:03:00.005-05:00

Lots of interesting stuff is going on but I've been so busy with my "real" job ... Anyway:

1. There are 3 new members in our flock - I brought them from Orlando to add some fresh blood (and they were pretty cheap). The young ones are just about 3.5 months old. Our ladies (well, mostly the oldest one, who's almost a year) gave them a bit of hazing initially but I think it's all settled now.

2. Another 3 truckloads of hay from West side of the lake... and I had to add another truckload to the bedding because what was there has largely disappeared. So, we need about a truckload a month, we have 8 in storage - we should be good till July and we should have new hay by then. It's nice to be able to provide for yourself instead of buying.

2008-11-12T10:51:00.002-05:00

Hay bedding that I put down around Oct 20th is still good
Opened two bags (100 lbs?) Nov 10th
Brought 3 new sheep Nov 9th
Moved sheep to North pasture from Lake-West Nov 10

2008-10-17T20:22:00.001-04:00

1 truckload of hay from Northern side of the lake, 3 from East; both have been cut once this year already.

2008-10-16T22:03:00.001-04:00

Got 3 truckloads of hay from WH (cut one time this year but the cows were there for about 4 months).

2008-10-09T20:39:00.003-04:00

Cupcake was attacked by coyotes last night around 1:30am. Most likely he was able to escape because Meg and I scared them away. Lessons learned (again) - trust your instincts and make sure your rechargeables are always charged.

2008-10-08T01:35:00.001-04:00

Yellow #1 is limping on the left hind leg; we checked it but didn't see any problems, except a strange little hole that may be a puncture wound on the hoof. The rest of the flock is problem free so far. The hoof was trimmed. Will wait and see a couple of days.

The bag of Swan's feed is over which means that at 2.5 scoops a day it lasts about 26 days.

I finished coyote-proofing the pole barn yesterday; the sheep spend the night there since 10/06/08.

Am so sleepy now.

no time to write my own

2008-10-06T19:44:00.000-04:00

“I read [in the USDA brochure] that the quickest, most humane way to kill chickens was to hang them by their feet and run an icepick from just under the lower mandible up into their brain. Ridiculous. You have to catch them, string them up, grab them by the head, then probe for the brain like a flustered medical technician trying to hit an elusive vein in patient's forearm. Chicken brains are small and hard to find, but they are large enough to tell chickens that a man grabbing them by the feet and hanging them upside down from a chest-high limb on a red maple tree is up to no good."

Living Wild and Domestic: The Education of a Hunter-Gardener by Robert Kimber

2008-10-05T09:24:00.000-04:00

Yellow 1, 2 and 4 came in heat on Oct 4. Not sure about the Older Sister.

Local feed stores and other thoughts

2008-09-27T22:15:00.000-04:00

Ok, first I need to do what I promised, I guess -

1. Local feed stores - so, about 6 weeks ago I paid a local feed store (that happens to be a Gallagher dealer) good money for a solar energizer and some Electronet (interestingly enough, neither component is on their website anymore, so I guess detailed review is not needed; I'm pleased with both though). Now, why didn't I get it from Premier 1? Because the price was about the same and I always try to support the feed stores around here. After all, they're clearly on the endangered species list - it used to be 20 or so 5 years ago, about 7 now and only 2 of these 7 are doing good. The rest looks like business ICU patients - half empty, dark and dusty. Anyway, after many weeks of lying (yes, we shipped it; Tracking number? Oh, we'll call you right back ... ) and delays I got my wares. As I said, I'm completely satisfied with the quality - but about a month's delay did ruin some of my plans. The verdict? I think, I'll stick to supporting the two best feed stores around here. The rest should probably just die. After all - the demand is clearly down.

2. Compost- yes, it was all about water and Ni, which were missing. As soon as I started to add them, both chambers went into the magical vanishing compost stage again. Actually today I even noticed mold in there, which indicates too much water but otherwise the reaction is going as planned. It'll take longer than I initially thought but we'll be there. Am thinking of getting some chicken manure (supposed to be extra hot) from the neighbors to help our cold chambers.

3. Grass - as I thought, the sheep got rid of the jungle mess in our future garden in just 5 days (here's the "after" photo). The dates on the pictures are 7 days apart but 2 days we weren't here, so the sheep spent them in their old paddock. Now they're out free to pick up whatever choice vegetation that's left anywhere before I turn everything in the hay.

4. Coyoties - according to our game camera, no visits so far. Just for the laughs here's a picture of a raccoon couple (see a piece of raccoon butt at the bottom? That's the second one) that visits us almost every day at the same time - 6:45. Another funny thing - they're never both completely in the picture, one is always only partially in.

Electric net is here!

2008-09-18T16:26:00.001-04:00

Electric net - $150
Solar energizer - $250
Seeing how sheep jump after trying to push the fence down - priceless.

Don't shoot! I'm not an evil person and I love my ladies dearly. But after all the countless things they have destroyed I'm entitled to a little revenge. And I'm happy to report that they learned to respect it very fast, even though we only have 2kV there now (the battery is not completely charged yet). So far it's installed inside of the fenced area (our future garden), where they will spend next week to make sure they respect the electric net and to help us get rid of the grass. Between our health problems and unclear plans for the future this last summer we let the grass grow just a little bit taller than it's acceptable in a garden. This is the "before" picture :

Let's see how long that will take our girls to trim this jungle down to manicured 2" lawn. I say - 5 days or less.

BTW, the grass is very dry now. Serious growth was over by about 3 weeks ago but now it's going to sleep for the winter. Commercial hay guys have the same opinion it seems - They started to cut on Monday and now all hay on the fields around us is in bales already.

In the next episode: (don't have time today :) - disappearance of the local feed stores - good thing or tragedy? and The compost mystery solved.

2008-09-13T20:22:00.000-04:00

Opened a bag of feed from Swan's Sep 11th.

On tags, pallets and other things

2008-09-13T13:08:00.001-04:00

The crowding pen has been tested in action twice already - when we drenched the sheep and on Sep 10th, when we put tags on 4 ewes we got from M&D. That was about time - as they're gaining weight and all taking on the same color (I suspect it's dirt) some of them become very difficult to tell apart.

Now it's not a problem - left ear (it's a girl), yellow tag (born in 2008) and the number so we know exactly who this is. Yes, you can get a lot more elaborate with that but I think that should be enough for our tiny flock. We used Y-Tex All-Americans small sheep tags and their Y-Tex Ultratagger, both from the TSC. The sheep do not seem to be bothered by the tags and even attaching them was relatively painless for both them and us. Thumbs up to Y-Tex.

By the way, the crowding pen looks much prettier now
when it's painted - hurray to Ed's paint cemetery and Weather All and their Robin Hood Green, TS860 012, SGW-N Neutral Base, 100% Acr Latex, Semi-Gloss House & Trim paint that looks good and holds well despite being past the expiration date.

The hooks and cattle panel set up also works well so far - the sheep tried to get through it many times but it held.

Compost - now I'm sure that cold manure is the reason composting does not go as well as I expected. Also, it's only two of us now and we do not produce nearly enough food scraps for the amount of manure, which is a bit more like a neutral component than a part of an active mass. This is very different from the problems we had with the micro-composter - the problem there was always too much nitrogen and water. Now, it's the other way around and I actually have to add water. That takes some getting used to but the reaction in the first chamber is going again. It will take a lot of time though unless we triple the amount of the watermelon we eat.

And in the end - a bit of philosophical observations. I picked a few pallets in the feed store on 301 - they give them away for free and I'm actually surprised they don't have more takers - lots of good wood there. Anyway, while taking them apart, I quickly noticed that there were two types, probably coming from different places - same design but on some pallets the wood was better and every joint is connected by exactly two perfectly straight nails. On the others, for each joint there were 5 or 6 nails andt the one in the picture had 9 (!) nails where two would do just fine. Usually, 2 or 3 nails would go through the board and the rest were just crooked under it, sitting in the 2x4. It almost looks like someone did that on purpose to waste the nails. The only explanation I can come up with is that it was assembled in a prison or something. I wonder if these pallets are still cheaper than the better ones if you factor in the wasted nails and problems from the pallets giving way in the worst time possible because of their lower quality.

2008-09-05T22:10:00.000-04:00

Ivomec (0.08% ivermectin) - 10 ml

Crowding pen, compost and excuses

2008-09-04T17:17:00.001-04:00

Between me being very busy with my day job and my old friends Mr. Arthritis and Ms. Knee Problems coming to stay for a week or so, not much was done since the last update. However -

Grounding rod was successfully and easily sown with a good old hand hacksaw. Sometimes less is better. Unfortunately, it's still not used and the sheep are still on the old pasture because electrical nets from Gallagher that should've been here 2 weeks (!) ago still in transit. This is the last time I buy anything from them.

Game camera didn't take any pictures of the coyotes after spending a few days and nights at various locations around the sheep pen. I know that camera works because it did take a few pictures of our dogs, so either the coyotes visit was a really freak accident or they're afraid to get closer to the house, where the pen is. I moved the camera to a pasture farther away today - we'll see. By the way I was a bit worried that the camera (Moultrie Game Spy D-40) is too cheap to be anything but an action model toy (I paid $90 and I didn't want to buy one of the more expensive ones because I only need it for some very light use) but it seems to be just fine for what I need it for. The worst thing about it is that it's very slow waking up from battery saver mode, probably 2 or 3 seconds. The best thing is that you can see whether it took any pictures without turning it off and if it did, you can just pull out and take home the SD card, so you don't need to take down the whole camera.

Also, a good news - I was able to salvage enough boards from Ed's lumber cemetery (he called it a lumber storage, for some reason) to build 2 solid walls of the crowding pen:

They still need to dry a bit more, then I plan to paint them, install hooks for movable wall, etc. So, we should have a good crowding pen in a few days, which is great because we need to de-worm the sheep.

The pen is a part of the ambitious plan to close the whole pole barn with woven wire to make it predator-proof, with portable lambing jugs and creep feeder and so on.

I want to keep my options open for the future, so the walls are held in place by steel corners and can be taken down in about 15 minutes without leaving any bad traces:

And finally - compost. Next day after my post about the process going great it almost stopped for some reason. My first guess is that the cardboard I used for carbon supply needed to be cut into smaller pieces (I wanted to see what I can get away with, so I used pretty big ones). Also, our manure is pretty cold, since 90% of our girls diet is Bahia and similar grasses, which have many good qualities but is sure not known for overloading sheep with nutritions. Anyway, I closed the first chamber on Aug 30 and using the second one now. The first chamber heated up again a bit so the process is going, just very slow (a peak I took today supports this theory). It'll definitely take longer than 2 weeks to compost, at least a month probably, which is also not so bad. We'll see.

The blog proves to be useful

2008-08-27T09:43:00.000-04:00

It's been just a little while but this blog already does what it was created for - because of it I know the precise day when I started composting. Which, by the way, seems to be going all right - it's very hot in the chamber and I think it has reached the magic vanishing garbage stage by now - it stays approximately half-full despite the daily additions. It is actually quite amazing how much volume the garbage loses after composting - some stuff (watermelon skins, for example) takes may be 1% of the space it needed before. So, our food scraps are definitely nothing for this monster and even the daily portion of the sheep manure doesn't seem to be choking it. If it holds for another week, I will close this chamber and start adding stuff to another one. After two weeks I will open the first one again, hopefully to find there several pounds of nice compost.

Other than that not much is going on - I hurt my knee again so I'm saving all heavy duty projects for later. Also, someone was supposed to come and help me with the fences on Monday but he never showed up. And the el. netting is still not here - hopefully, Friday.

The stubborn grounding rod

2008-08-23T16:23:00.003-04:00

More rain today and yesterday. Compost started to cook really nice - it was very hot when I opened the door to add today's portion of waste.

Mag (our lab) adopted a few sheep and licks them clean every time she has a chance:

She cleans their eyes, ears, noses - pretty much the whole face. The sheep used to freak out but now seem to actually enjoy it, even Serafima, who has a very good reasons to be afraid of canines.

composter

2008-08-22T10:57:00.000-04:00

The new composter arrived a couple of days ago. We had composted before with a traditional pile and electric Nature Mills one but now we'll be doing it for real, hopefully. For real in terms of volume and high temperature.

This review will be moved to epinions when ready:

I was searching for composter 1) big enough to handle on a daily basis all of our food scraps + ~ 2 pounds of sheep manure + miscellaneous organic waste, 2) hot enough to kill parasites' eggs in the manure, 3) with two chambers, because form experience I know that this is the only way to have good quality compost when you add stuff every day, 4) with easy mixing (no more pitchfork aerating for me, thank you very much, 5) with v. low maintenance requirement (so, no electricity or worms) and 6) not costing arm and leg. On the other hand, we leave on a farm, so space, neigbours and even a bit of an odor every once in a while is not a concern, really.

After researching about 10 different models I think I've found one that's perfect for us - JK 270 Composter (the photo from the distributor's site). In the US it's offered by a few companies, but when I ordered I found the best price + shipping combo at Green Only Distributors.

Their customer service so far was pretty good also - they actually called to see if the composter has arrived (it hasn't ), tracked it down and nudged FedEx to bring it next day.

When FedEx guys unloaded the two boxes (one small, one average size) it came in, I asked him to check if there is more - I couldn't believe they managed to pack it in there. They did. And actually the engineering design (is there such a thing?) is so good, I immediately fell in love with it. It's just beautiful in its simplicity and efficiency. And that's a lot coming from me - I usually not a big fun of European way to do things.

When I unpacked the box, I noticed that some parts were slightly damaged, mostly bent. I almost send the composter back but I really wanted to start composting so I decided to try to fix them. It was a risk, but it worked. Still, the manufacturer/distributors really need to do something about it. Due to very efficient design, they use very thin metal, which is more than adequate for composting but doesn't resist attacks of elefants aparently living in cargo compartments and storages very well. I was able to fix but someone may not be so lucky. Another thing I liked about the design was that it gives some wiggle room, so I didn't have to make the parts perfectly straight, un-bending the corners and such was enough.

Another thing I noticed when I unpacked is a label saying "Designed in Sweden, made in China". That looked odd but I soon understood why designers wanted to be so clear about that - the quality of some parts were less than stellar. Not a big deal, a couple of milimetres here and there, threads that needed a bit of help on some nuts - this type of stuff. Not a deal breaker but a big contrast with crispy design.

Another thing that kinda threw me off was the assembly instructions. Not only it was probably also written in China (hey, I still don't know if what I fugured about Part G is right - it's not mentioned in your instructions!) but it was apparently translated to English by a computer. A bit puzzling at times but again - nothing deadly. It's actually pretty difficult to assemble it wrong anyway. And to finish with complains - I expected to find inside a broshure about composting or at least a link to a website with the broshure - nope, nothing. Doesn't matter that much to me but I can see how it can be a deal breaker for people who just trying it out.

Assembley took me about 30 - 40 minutes and when I was done, I was completly happy - that was exactly the composter I was looking for. We'll see how it works (I think, 2 weeks to a month) but for now it looks like we've found our champion.

More rain

2008-08-21T21:02:00.000-04:00

Fay decided to circle us it seems so more rain today, which is good. Rain is always good when you're on a farm in Florida. Well, almost always.

Sheep kept eating the salt until I took it out of coral. What's going on there? I thought they should be getting enough minerals from the grass? Lazy bums :)

Also, when I locked them down for the night, I noticed that the cage door is skewed. Interesting. Could that be because sheep use the walls to scratch themselves?

Serafima is using her voice again, first time since they were attacked by the coyotes. It's still very coarse and weak but she's getting there. I think the older B. will have to prove her leader's position again once Serafima is back to her normal self. I also saw Paul hitting one of them today with considerable force - hopefully, he's coming back, too.

Submitted application for new health insurance - price for the current one has gone through the roof since I bought it 2 years ago.

Shopping trip

2008-08-20T21:15:00.000-04:00

Today is the first time we saw M. and D. since after the coyotes attack. We stopped by their farm to buy some eggs and chatted with M. a bit. Turns out, they didn't think Paul will make it. M. suggested we use Cutheals for wounds on Paul and Serafima (they are not covered yet).

On the way back we stopped by a few stores and got 8' cooper grounding rod + hardware (I plan to make to rods out of it to use with the portable el. fence), mineral block for the sheep (which I didn't see anywhere else), seeds (veggies), etc. The feed store on Rt. 50 is probably the best that I know of around here.

More rain, the pump is still off.

2008-07-21T18:42:00.000-04:00

Coyote attack on the North pasture - 2 young ewes (about 6 months).

2008-07-19T18:38:00.000-04:00

Got 2 rams and 3 ewes from M&D - quarantine started.