Calf Number 2

Calf number 1, AKA Sir Loin, showed up on a Monday morning two weeks ago with little warning and zero work from us. Calf number 2, AKA Meatloaf, was much the same way, Arial's udder was super full on Friday night, and Andrea told me she was going to calve the next day. As is frequently the case, she was right.

Meatloaf presented both legs, and then his head about 2:00 PM on Saturday, Andrea and Sophia left to go work the school Fall-fest, and by 2:30 Meatloaf was on the ground. By 3:00 he was walking and nursing. If only they could all be this easy! His belt is almost identical to his father's along with this curly coat. With the late summer we're having, I'm not sure he's going to need that thick of a coat.

Arial is a tremendous mother cow. She's attentive, protective, and nurturing of her calves. She produces a ton of milk, and if I had a squeeze chute, I'd be very tempted to buy a bottle calf and see if I could get her to adopt him. Everything they say about Dexter's being great mothers has been proven true by this cow.

Every Day Carry - Leatherman Surge

Leatherman with Bit Kit and Extension

I picked up the Leatherman Surge before my deployment to Kuwait in early 2013. I didn't know how I'd feel about it since it was so much bigger than The Gerber Multi-Tool I was issued almost a decade prior for my first all expense trip to an equally exotic locale.

I went to Kuwait this time thinking I was going to be the Comm Guy for the Delaware and Texas Air Guard (I filled a slot for Delaware). Much like my last trip to the desert this one wasn't exactly as advertised... I ended up being a jack of all trades this trip. Was there a lot of computer work, yes, but I was also the building custodian, cell phone guy, bird predation Alpha team member with SMSgt B (best gig ever, BTW), Plaque Maker, and the First Shirt's Officially Designated plow horse. I had a blast this deployment. Part of it was the fact that no one was trying to kill me, and the other part of it was my attitude was ask me and I'll say yes! Weird what age and perspective will do for you.

At my going away dinner the Colonel described me as the Chewbacca of the Squadron, didn't say much but could fix anything. Computers, plumbing, raining death from above on pigeons, metal work, scrounging semi-truck wheels for the Shirt to turn into a bitching barbecue pit. So what does any of this have to do with the Leatherman?

I used the heck out of that Leatherman, the extension, and the bit drivers. Need your reading glasses tightened Chief, I'm your Huckleberry. Need to tear apart a computer so that you can prove to a Lt. Col. that there aren't scorpions in their computer stealing their reports? Check. Adjust water flow to a sink whose Hadji handle has broken off, Sure.

This piece of kit has been used every day, and it's on my belt at work and home. The bit kit gives you Torq bits, flat heads, Phillips, Robertson, and Pozi bit heads. The extension gives you a screw driver without having to get the Leatherman clear of the case, and combined with the Leatherman slot allows you a ton of torque on whatever you're working on. ***Update I've switched to this pouch and couldn't be happier with it, worth your money for this Leatherman.

The Leatherman itself has been a workhorse. The finish has held up to a lot of hard use and remains tight to this day. Can't recommend this piece of kit enough. Are they cheap? No, but short of carrying a full on tool kit around with you everywhere, you can't be anymore prepared.

Unabashedly Pro-American Ideal and Anti-Statist

The idea that is America, isn't dead, though it may look as though it's been through a couple of biker bar room brawls. The hope of being able to chart my own course, make the most of the talents I have, and make a living by bettering the life of others may not be unique to the American experience, but it has managed to weave it's way through the American mythos.

Having lived in both L.A., Portlandia minor, and Rhode Island I've seen first hand how much contempt is held for the folks who live in flyover country. Rednecks, white trash, Deplorables, call them what you will, I think more of those Deplorables just want to be left alone. If folks in Portland don't want to have plastic bags in their stores, so be it. If folks in L.A. want to mandate only Prius, Leafs, and Teslas be sold in their town, good for them. If folks in the North East want to disarm so that each and every large city eventually becomes a hybrid cross of Chicago and Detroit, knock yourselves out. Just don't think for a minute that the folks here in Flyover Country are going to go along any longer.

Contrary to popular opinion, we can read, and do so voraciously just of books different than the Cloud People on both coasts. We read Plato, Aristotle, Hemingway, Joyce, and Dumas believing that the classics still matter. We make things, we fix things, we change our own oil, and shoot our own food. If you don't we simply don't care, run your life, but understand we're done being micromanaged by do gooders who couldn't survive a week without chai tea and vegan restuarants.  

If you don't like guns, don't buy one, but until Chicago gets rid of gun violence, until San Francisco solves its homeless problems, until Flint figures out how to produce clean water, and until NYC can conquer rats don't think we'll listen when you tell us how to live. We've read Alinsky, and the more the Cloud People try to control us, the more we'll resist in ways you're powerless against. The Founders understood that the moment you lose the Consent of the Governed you have lost. We're closer to that point than any of the Cloud People can see, and more and more of us are withdrawing that consent each day.

Thoughts on the Presidential Election

If you don't have pictures, it didn't happen. So here's my call on this fall's election.

Clinton wins more than 300 electoral votes, but will have no mandate due to the Wikileaks treasure trove of questionable decisions she's made. She'll present and have confirmed very anti-Second Amendment judges, yet doesn't understand the "Deplorables" that live in Rural areas will no more disarm peaceably than their great grandfathers stopped drinking/manufacturing/selling moonshine during Prohibition. If all Deplorables are to be made criminals they'll begin to act as such and treat law enforcement as the enemy.

I think the House stays firmly in Republican hands, while the Senate is a toss up, but anything less than 60 Senators for either side can be kept in gridlock. Drug prohibition will be knocked down in California which will finally mark the beginning of the end of the War on Drugs. Where will all that energy have to be turned to keep law enforcement employed and engaged? My guess is a War on Guns, that will not have the effects that D.C. planned.

Seeing the "Ferguson Effect" on policing, that has been only exacerbated by the murders in Dallas and Baton Rouge, I can only imagine what would happen if the Deplorables feel attacked and marginalized in the same manner as their poor brethren in the inner cities have been for so long, I hope I'm wrong.

To paraphrase my guy Jack Spirko about Self-Reliance, it's for making a better life, if times get tough or even if they don't. Regardless of who is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in January 2017 our plan for the farm won't change much. We'll continue to our quest to be debt free and more self reliant each year.

Belted Galloways Versus Their Full Size Brethren

So Andrea and the girls wanted to go the State Fair of Texas this year, and I was lucky enough to get some free tickets at work. To be honest, I'd rather pour hot sauce in my eyes than willingly go to Dallas, much less go to Dallas and wander through huge crowds. Love makes men do stupid things.

After spending the last two years with the Dexters and Belties it was wild walking through the beef cattle exhibits and seeing the yearling steers double the size of our full size cattle. I'm an honest 6 feet tall, barefoot, and after getting used to towering over our cattle it was odd to be looking at the backs of cattle at eye level. It definitely made me more sure that the smaller cattle are right for our little homestead.

I can't imagine, after 2 years of working by myself with the cattle, of working with full size cattle now. If a Beltie steps on your foot, you're hurting, but if a 2000 pound cow steps on you, I can't imagine the damage it will do. The females are easy on fences, the bull on the other hand is not. I can't recommend enough the Belted Galloways for your homestead.

Finding a Feed Store

You'd think that as much as I read that finding a dedicated feed store would have been obvious, but the thought didn't occur to me until AFTER we'd taken the FrankenChickens to the Butcher. For this first batch of broilers we bought 100% of their feed at Tractor Supply. Running the numbers after stopping in to get a quote we would have been able to cut our total price per pound substantially.

To be honest $2.79 a pound raising our own chickens wasn't a good deal. For considerably less we could just go to CostCo and fill the freezer with whole chickens someone else grew. To be truly self reliant we have to get the price down to LESS than what we'd pay retail. The reality is that I have to have these systems in place before we retire if we're going to be able to continue our standard of living post jobs.

I'm going to look at feeding spent brewers grain and non-soy non-GMO feed next go round just to see what the total costs would be. I have to get a tractor built between now and next March to get them on grass to supplement feed and keep them from laying in their own filth as they're prone to do.

First Calf Born and Bred on the Snow Compound Arrived Today

I noticed that one of the Belties udders was taut yesterday and mentioned to Andrea that I thought the heifer would be calving soon. I went out this morning to feed the hogs and let the chickens out to roam before running into town for jury duty and what do I see? Tito with a calf by her side out by the little barn.

I'm not going to lie, I was giddy. Not normal giddy, think 10 year old, two Red Bulls in on Christmas morning who found a pony under the tree. I tried to get close to Momma and calf, but she didn't want anything to do with me. The belt on the calf was blacklight neon bright white, it's a beautiful animal.

Time will tell what kind of mother she is, hopefully this calf will make it. I'm not going to press my luck for several weeks to determine whether it's a boy or girl, but you'll know when we know. If it's a boy he'll be in the freezer in about two years, and if it's a girl, we'll transition that much quicker to an all Beltie herd.

A Chicken in the Oven is Better Than Two in the Coop!

I'm not ashamed to admit that I was nervous about how the Cornish we raised would taste. Anything that's new always has a little apprehension involved, right? I can now say we will definitely be raising the Cornish Cross again. It tasted great, the Reds loved it. and Andrea was happy with it. We also had enough chicken left over to feed us for the week.

I have to build a tractor to move them twice a day next time, and I have to track down a place that we can buy organic non-soy, non-GMO feed in bulk as well. We may also try finishing them on spent brewer's grain as well, and see how that works out. Another proof of concept here on the farm, and moving forward we'll look to move the price per pound down as much as we can.

Same, Same. But Different

We cut the cord for satellite TV a few months ago. I spent a week TDY and had a TV in my room, and thought I'd enjoy watching ESPN again. I love sports, and spent almost 20 years of my life either playing a sport or coaching, but the politicization of sport is crazy to me because sport, at it's foundation is a meritocracy.

My wife and I were talking last night about a the amount of grief high school coaches put up with (Andrea played 4 years of college basketball, and was a varsity coach after that for a while). In 8 seasons I attended or watched well over 1,000 high school games. I may have seen 120 kids that could start at the JuCo level or NAIA level or higher. The rest of those kids? I hope they were learning lessons of how to COMPETE, because that's what life is.

You're going to compete for a mate, for a job, for advancement, for your kids attention and respect. Every day you have to put on your boots and charge once more into the fray. You're not owed a single thing, but if you work your guts out each day. encourage those on your team/tribe/family to keep going you'll be amazed at what can happen.

How do we compete with ourselves though? By trying to be a better version, if not the best version of ourselves. Set goals for each week, month, and year of things you want to get done. They can be projects around the house, the yard, working out learning how to change your oil, etc. A big to do list. Leave it up, as you check those things off a sense of accomplishment in getting stuff done will start to be a habit.

How does getting rid of $70 a month in TV bills equate to this post. It's a habit, paying for something that we didn't really need that we broke. A few months later I don't miss it and wonder why we didn't do it sooner. The house is more peaceful. I'm reading more, I'm doing more around the house. In self reliance, everything comes back to how we spend our time.

So You Want Independence?

"The greatest act of rebellion in America today is growing a garden."  I can't remember who said it, or where I first heard it, but the further I get away from the first time I read it, the more it rings true.

If you just looked at the meager 45 or so posts I have up, you'd never know that I spend the last 8 years getting ready for this homestead. I failed spectacularly more times than I can count, but each one was on a small scale, and each time I walked away a little smarter.

Google Fu is your friend. Learn how to use a search engine effectively. If you're writing articles to help folks learn how to label them to be able to help the biggest number of people possible.

I started my journey after watching my 401k get halved in value. I, wrongly I might add, listened to "experts" who told me to leave my money put and "invest for the long haul". It was a valuable learning experience. I knew, in my bones, that something wasn't right in 2007, and by the spring of 2009 I was planting my first garden. Something I'd denigrated a previous girlfriend for wanting to do only a few years prior.

I had some moderate success that first year, thanks more to wonderful Idaho soil, and free irrigation water. I was hooked, and the more I grew the more I shared, the more I gave away the softer my heart became. That little garden fixed my soul as much as coaching wonderful girls at The College of Idaho.

From the garden I moved to fruit trees in 2010, then onto raspberries, strawberries, goose berries, currants, and a failed attempt at arctic kiwis. By the time the first fruit harvest really came on two years later, I had moved into a few chickens and ducks in the back yard, breaking several city ordinances at the time. My neighbors were kind and my closest neighbor said she liked to hear the ducks as it reminded her of home.

I learned about predators, and that if your wife, who's more or less blind without her contacts/glasses drops a skunk with one shot from a pellet gun in the middle of a dark night with no light, you'll never hear the end if you ever miss another shot. :-) Andrea is a fierce protector of her children, myself, and the animals in her charge.

If you dream of a homestead, you have to communicate not only the whys, but also the HOW it's going to work. Be gentle, be realistic, be honest, start with the piece of land you have now. and start showing that you really can produce things that feed your family that are of higher quality than what you could ever afford at Whole Foods.

Why Homestead?

I've been at this homesteading, self-reliance, modern survivalist thing now that I see a more people making a conscious decision to do the same.

As I've said before, this self-reliance thing is hard. It's early mornings, late nights, praying for rain, and praying for rain to stop. It's the heartbreak of losing animals, crops, and time invested in both, balanced by the joy of a newborn calf, frying up an egg still warm from recently being laid, and the juice of a tree ripened peach running down your chin.

For my friends that realize, somethings not right, many of them say they can just feel it. It's not that they know the total amount of American debt, or even what a derivative is, but they know somethings coming. I remember the feeling of going down more and more rabbit holes, realizing how precarious our situation was in 2008, but here I am 8 years later as testament to you that anyone can do this. Here's my attempt to help you on your way.

1. Breathe. It's going to be OK. Empires fall, Markets fail. As King Solomon said 3,000 years ago, there is nothing new under the sun.

2. Debt. It's a soul crushing burden. Here's the Dave Ramsey plan in a nutshell. Make a budget. Cut up your credit cards. Sell everything you have of value, Pay off the smallest to the largest of your remaining debt each month. Pay cash, on payday put it into envelopes for rent, gas, etc (or debit cards as cash is harder and harder to use). Get a second job. You aren't owed feeling good, spoiling yourself, pampering, etc. until you're doing it with your money and not the bank's at 24% interest.

3. Skills. Once these two things are handled I see so many men rush into the firearms world and blow a ton of money there.
   a. Learn to grow a garden, there are so many great resources out there to help you. Ask me if you want!
   b. Plant fruit trees, there's not better ROI on the planet than a healthy productive fruit tree. Think about it $25 investment, some vermiculture compost, and for the next 3 to 50 years you'll get hundreds of percent return in fresh fruit.
   c. Learn how to change your own oil. For less than $25 and 30 minutes of my time I keep full synthetic oil and a high mileage filter in my vehicles every 5000 miles. Your car will last longer, run better, and you'll get to know your vehicle.
    d. Preserving food. Learn how to can and dehydrate and your garden and fruit trees will start to save you money.
     e. Learn how to cook. It's a skill, find recipes you like and make them once a week until you understand them. After you're out of debt by a KitchenAid mixer and large high quality food processor. You can feed a family a high quality inexpensive meal and the more products that you produce the more self reliant you're becoming.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. Do all you can do today, sit down on the couch exhausted, love on your family, go to bed and do it again tomorrow. You'll feel like you're swimming in concrete for a while, but eventually you'll look back and realize how far you've come.

Kitchen Island

I'm a degenerate for gadgets, be they electronica or for the kitchen. We were running out of counter space and we also wanted some additional food prep space. There's plenty of space for everything, and everything is now close at hand. 

The parts cost just over $100, though I did add a jigsaw to the farm's inventory as part of this project. The side rails are aluminum, and initially I was concerned if they would really be strong enough to hold everything and still be rolled around on a tile floor. I've been pleasantly surprised at how rigid it is. 

I took a single board plan from an Anna White plan, doubled the boards, lengthened it, added 1 x 1 in the center and on both ends. Easy, peasy. 

So You Want to Be a Successful Homesteader? Marry Well.

I have mentioned my beautiful, smart, kind, amazing wife from time to time in this blog. What I haven't put into words what she means to me and the success of our little homestead.

Folks, if you're serious about self reliance, getting out of debt, raising children who turn into kind adults, it all starts with who you marry. I got so lucky. She is 100% in to what we're doing.

How did we get here? To marital bliss involving long family talks about the best way to manage intestinal parasites in a cattle herd? Communication. (And a sense of humor about how much I talk about intestinal parasites.) When she gets repeatedly shocked by an electric fence and still speaks to you the next day, you know you've found a keeper.

From the day we started dating, I had fixed in my mind what I wanted. A small homestead, with permaculture intertwined into the Joel Salatin method of raising Beef, Chicken, and Pork. I asked her her thoughts, bought books that I read and then offered up to her. I'm not perfect, while she's very close, but after buying the little farm I've worked hard to DO what I say and not make any of the homestead a burden on her.

When I'm out of town she picks up the slack on feeding and watering the animals. When I'm in town, I'm out feeding before I head to work, and feed again as soon as I get home. It works for us. I have never been so happy as I am right now.

We've seen the first of our animals graduate to the freezer. That 137 pounds of meat may not seem like a lot to most folks, but in it's own small way, it's proof of concept that yes we can feed ourselves in a financially viable way. With a half a hog going into the freezer soon, it should add to that feeling. By this time next year we should have another half a hog in the freezer another 20+/- chickens, a half of beef, and another couple of our own born and bred cattle halfway to maturity as well.

Who knows what the future holds, but there's no one I'd rather be sharing it with.

Finally, a Harvest!

My wife gives me a hard time because the last half dozen or so times I've gone hunting I've done exactly that hunting with no killing involved. So it felt great to come home with 137.4 pounds of meat today.

As I told the butcher, all my hesitations about raising Cornish Crosses evaporated when I saw how beautiful they looked naked... :-) I mean that honestly, the Cornish were not good looking birds when they were alive. About a third of them hadn't finished feathering out yet. We'll see how they taste.

Here's the breakdown on costs:

30 Cornish Cross Ideal nursery day old hatchlings delivered to our door: $48 (Caught a good sale.)

Feed: 14 bags at $18 per 50 pound bag, $252 (This is an area we can do better on next time.)

Butcher, vacuum seal, label, etc. $84

Total cost: $384. Price per pound $2.79. 

Takeaways: The snake losses, 3 birds, 2 chickens had wounds found by the butcher and condemned there, and the 4 birds that just died of no apparent reasons really hurt the overall price per pound. Assuming we could have kept 4 more alive and made average weight, it would have cut the price per pound by right at $0.50 per pound. That's a big deal.

The moving Salatin tractor is a must. The chickens didn't do a good job of keeping themselves clean. I've never seen chickens content to never scratch, eat laying down, drink laying down. I think being forced to move onto new grass will help considerably. 

Practice better predator control, the tractors are going to be built with hardware cloth, and we'll focus on snake proofing them each day until they're out of the danger zone.

I've got to do a better job next time breaking down feed costs. This time if anything I way overestimated our costs. Still we have to get our costs under $2.00 a pound if we want to be competitive. 

Feed costs themselves. I bought all of our feed this go round at Tractor Supply. I didn't know how much we'd need. I know there is a farm in Waxahachie milling their own non-GMO, non-soy feed for $14 a bag when you buy in bulk.

If we're going to do this it makes sense to do some geese and turkeys at the same time, then separate them as they get bigger. I think we might do a half dozen turkey's next year as well and see if we can create a market for those as well. 

Cobb Creek Farms

My best friend once told me if you're going to raise cattle, don't try to raise hay as well. Do one really well and let someone else raise great hay for you. It is sage advice if your farming for a .

As a homesteader though, we really are working towards being as self reliant as we can be. That said I frequently think of Adam's advice and when it makes sense I seek out folks who are great at what they do. 

Cobb Creek is a Joel Salatin style farm not too far away from my little homestead. My USDA Extension Agent, after telling him about my hopes to paddock shift, and follow with chickens, didn't mock me. Instead he said a couple years priors he would have, but after seeing Cobb Creek he thought they might have the best pasture in the county. 

Today was my first time I had the chance to visit, and it was awesome. I was told they're raising and processing 1,000 chickens of their own each week. Their chicken tractors are impressive, and look much more like what I want to build and pull around with a four wheeler than they look like Salatin tractors. In addition to processing their own, they also open their facility up to the public. 

I was the second guy to show up and I was lucky enough to watch the fellow in front of me so I wasn't totally clueless. He had his own fancy crates (you can see the 18 he brought in above), but they had crates available for me to use since we'd just loaded out chickens up like the Clampots moving to Hollywood, right in the back of the cattle trailer. Thankfully the Frankenchickens have zero Houdini in their DNA and we made it safely to the facility.

The slaughterhouse itself was awesome. Super clean, no smell, friendly staff, I couldn't have asked for anything more. 

What an amazing resource to have 20 minutes away! If you live nearby and you're thinking about growing broilers, give them a call. The price makes a lot of sense once you're over 25 chickens, but even if you're under the vacuum sealing, plucking, gutting, and disposal of if it all is a tremendous value in exchange for your time (and your wife's sanity),

Crazy Night on the Farm

You're probably expecting a story about feral dogs, or rabid raccoons, or even adventurous armadillos, but you'll get none of that today.

There I was deep in slumber ready for my early morning alarm when I was awoken by my wife. "I think someone wrecked their car across the road," she told me. I go to the door and hear a horn stuck and head lights still on in the truck. I head across the street to find an older gentleman spread out on the ground, moaning incomprehensibly.

I get up to him with a flashlight to find him bloody, and by the way he's laid out I'm thinking he was ejected in the wreck and has serious back or leg injuries. "My doag, my doag, you can't let my doag get hit, she's my whole life," he cried out desperately. Having recently lost my dog, my heart went out to him. I told him I was going to call for help and go round up his dog and that I'd be back as quick as I could.

I had Andrea call 911, found his dog, got her safely in the yard, and pulled my first aid kit out of the car. All this took maybe 5 minutes, but as I was going back to the scene of the wreck I was half expecting to find him unconscious or deceased. Instead I found him propped up in his car trying to make a call. He asked about his "doag" and started rambling incoherently about how he was sorry and lost. I quickly realized he was pretty drunk.

I told him there was an ambulance on the way and that I'd found his dog. From the time of the call until a State Trooper showed up was almost 20 minutes, so probably a half hour had passed since his wreck. Andrea and I watched the Trooper from beginning to end, and as hard as I can be on bad cops I must say he was kind, professional, and efficient throughout. An ambulance and fire truck showed up, then another Trooper, and finally the tow truck. Finally the driver's girlfriend showed up to pick up the dog about half past midnight.

The After Action Report looked like this, we need another 3 D cell flashlight so that Andrea and I can both have one. I need to put together a better first aid kit for the house, and one for Andrea's car. We have to plan for up to a half hour response time from emergency services, and the realities that entails.

Everybody Roots for the Underdog

I think every farmer has a runt they secretly root for. I've been around farming long enough to know that most runts won't make it. Nature is cruel and honest at the same time. Survival of the fittest usually involves being bigger, stronger, and faster than the others in their group.

I write this because one of the little 236 hens is about half the size of the rest of her brood, but man is she fearless and plucky. (She's in the top left of the picture.) She fearlessly scoots in and around the hogs picking up loose hog pellets and table scraps. She negotiates the older Rhode Island Red hens with ease and is smart enough to give the rooster a wide berth.

Who knows if she'll make it to laying, but I'm rooting for her, and I'd be lying if I didn't own up to throwing her extra scratch grains from time to time.

300 Blackout on the Farm

If you're a backyard homesteader, this post may not be for you, unless of course you ever think about home defense...

The pistol above is a .300 Blackout in an AR platform. I put in a heavy buffer and attached a hog light (it's just a green LED flashlight, but hog light sounds way cooler). It has a Geisel two stage trigger, Magpul grip and BUIS, and the red dot is the best value I've found from Primary Arms here in Texas. I've put several hundred round through it, and it has become my go to platform on farm for when I walk the fence or respond to bumps in the night. That platform used to be a suppressed .22, but after the "Skunk Incident" I transitioned to the Blackout. You can see the disaster that was my encounter with a skunk here.

The .300 Blackout on skunks has been a one shot affair. It's made it's name here in Texas by being able to be easily suppressed and also capable of dropping 300 pound hogs with one shot. I shoot a 220 grain Hornady Whisper round that has made short work of feral dogs and is what I have loaded for the home defense round as well. Anyone who supports a 10 round mag ban has never had 8 feral dogs tear through their livestock or seen the damage feral hogs do in the Southeast.

There are a ton of things left for me to get done on the homestead list, but buying a suppressor for it is on my short list.

Thoughts on Hogs

Bacon and Chorizo enjoying pancakes.

I love bacon, but besides that, raising hogs has been one of the more straight forward endeavors here on the homestead. They've been healthy, thrived in the heat, rain, and even managed to turn up hard black clay soil for me. They don't attack live chickens, but have turned the snake victims and Cornish Cross chickens that succumb to growing too fast into sausage and pork chops. If that ain't magic I don't know what is .

It has been awesome having 0 food waste go out in the trash, and the lack of guilt over throwing food away or not seeing some left overs in the back of the fridge is pretty sweet as well. Interestingly enough the hogs don't find every morsel and crumb that we throw to them, but the little 236 layers come through their pen a couple times a day and make sure nothing is going to waste.

The Red Wattle Duroc cross is showing typical hybrid vigor and is probably 30 pounds heavier than his litter mate that arrived on the farm on the same day. Both have been castrated, but the bigger one is using his bulk to bully the other out of the food trough. I've bought another trough and think this will take care of that problem.

I'll do the pigs again in a heartbeat, whereas I'm really questioning doing more Cornish Cross as they seem so un-chickenlike. My next step is to find a place to dumpster dive or a ongoing source of cheap higher quality food than the hog pellets, supplemented by table scraps, that this pair have had. Cheaper food would make the hogs a very viable income stream for the homestead since pork is so popular here in Texas.

A Texas Welcome to the Wife

Towards the end of May I was finally able to move my wife down to Texas. I wanted so much to impress her with a thriving, squared away homestead. Complete with a clutter free home and a swept out barn. Alas, reality once again kicked me in the twig and berries.

That said, after two hard days driving across the Rockies dragging a trailer and an elderly pug dog (not in Christmas Vacation style, mind you) it was really, really good to be home. The house still looked like a gypsy safe house, and the barn was worse. We settled in for the night happy to finally be in the same place together.

Around dawn the next morning Katniss started barking. Katniss only had two reasons she ever barked, the postman was dropping off something from Amazon at the door, or there were other dogs on the property. Eliminating FedEx making a pre-dawn drop off, I grabbed a rifle and headed out the door. The sound of squawking hens and barking dogs filled my ears, and I was sprinting out to the barn.

The four feral dogs, a bigger problem than you’d think, came tearing out of the barn. I missed both shots I took, made the rifle safe and went back to sprinting after the dogs. In the heat of the chase, and low light of the morning I forgot about the electric fence I’d started the week prior. So there I am, clad in boxer shorts, muck boots, and a rifle slung over me running full speed when I went ass over elbows in to knee high, chigger infested grass.

Two chickens had been more or less eaten and already dead. While another two were chewed up, both of whom would later succumb to their injuries. It was a tough day on the homestead. The two surviving Production Reds have thrived since, and started laying shortly afterwards, blessing us with around a dozen eggs a week since.

For those of you who wonder why the chickens aren't penned it comes back to two reasons one, the economics of how much less feed free range chickens require from me, and two how much healthier free range is for the chickens, minus of course the occasional feral dog attacks. :-)

Average Size

While I was moving Andrea down to Texas, our house sitter, who’s a country girl from Oklahoma called and said, “Snow, there’s a snake eating your eggs, and it’s huge. I tried to kill it but it got away.”

I was expecting to find a 3 footer, maybe 4 foot on the outside snake when he came back next. On arriving home I went out to the stall in the barn serving as a coop and saw a big snake head peering out of the old hay bales. I ran back into the house for a shotgun, seeing as how that seemed to be the best tool at hand. I emptied the 00 Buckshot out and threw in some 8 shot and headed back to the barn as quick as I could.

The egg thief was still periscope up when I came around the corner. I put a round of shot through his face into the ground and ended his reign of egg terror. I dug him out with a shovel from underneath the hay. It was then I realized how big he was, measuring in right at six feet long. It was only the beginning of our attempts to outsmart the snakes.

*For the record, yes I understand how many rats, mice, etc that a rat snake can eat, and when I come across them in the pasture, I’m happy to see them. Once they start eating eggs I’m really left with no alternative other than to dispatch them.

Rangeland Management for Fun and Profit

Eventually I'll get a picture of the plan for the paddocks for the rest of the pasture. As it stands we have 6 paddocks that are very irregular in size. I was expecting to see better grass in those paddocks, but I've been really surprised by how evident the improvement is. After a couple of rotations through I'm convinced it'll be the best thing we can do for the rest of the pasture.

For the back part of the pasture we're going to put a main line straight down the middle of the pasture and probably start with another 8 paddocks in the back. They'll be much bigger than the ones in the front, and with the number of cattle we have now each paddock will probably see two weeks of grazing each. This will also give us enough time to over seed half the pasture at a time keeping the cattle off of it for 3 months when you figure in another month for the front paddocks.

The plan now, after learning a lot is to run 1/2" irrigation hose the length of the middle of the field. We'll run a 1/4" hose off to a water trough that can be easily dumped and moved as we shift the cattle. The 50 gallon Rubbermaid set on 2 pallets has worked really well for us. The pallets came into play because without them the Belties were using the trough as a wading pool. The plus side to this is I can still empty the trough easily when it's time to move it. The down side is that when something malfunctions, there's a lot less water there for the cows until I discover the empty trough.

The Zareba electric fencing has been fantastic to work with, but only time will tell how it holds up in the harsh Texas sun. As we get this stuff figured out, we'll try to make it more attractive versus the Redneck Special Needs paddocks that we're rocking right now.