Crushed Egg Shells

With my latest garden was a mixed bag. The onions grew great. Lots of cucumbers before it got hot, the okra did well, but then I remembered why I didn't like okra (the taste), and the peppers did really well-so well in fact that I just gave another twenty away the first week of December. That said it was another atrocious year of failure for tomatoes in the garden. The watermelons yielded a single misshapen melon that found it's way to the hogs. I had a Celebrity tomato plant that did pretty well in a pot. So during the calm of winter it's time to get serious about next years garden.

We eat a ton of eggs, and I've been saving egg shells since last late summer. If you want a new way to annoy your wife, trying having all your broken eggshells just chilling in your fridge for months. I promise, it'll work. Anyway, I finally got around to processing them in the food processor. What you see above is roughly 100 egg shells, about 4 cups worth that will be part of the amendments in next year's tomato transplants. I think we'll probably be able to add another 100 or so egg shells to the cause by March planting time.

Hopefully between the horse compost, the chicken compost, rabbit manure, and the soil amendments I'll get more than a handful of tomatoes in return.

Garden Beds Ready for Spring

The picture above does not do justice to all the laying out of cardboard, shoveling, and raking it took to get ready for next spring. I'm hoping to put another two beds down this winter to quadruple the size of the garden and perhaps actually get more than a dozen cucumbers and ten thousand jalapenos. I'll be adding red wriggler worms to the piles as they outgrow the vermicompost bin to get the horse compost jump started with worms.

I'm still torn between bringing in a tiller for a one time jump-start and digging in each of the transplants with a post hole digger and backfilling the hole with compost, egg shell, epson salt, etc. Don't be surprised if I do a bit of both to see what works best. I'm also going to mulch with paper like I did on everything in Idaho to keep the weeds down. Another project just waiting for spring.

I left a path between the two beds, we'll have to see if the we can keep it bare. 

I also have a hundred yearling fruit trees coming for the Missouri Extension Service that are going to go into 4 gallon pots, somehow we're going to work that into the garden to maximize water usage.

Don't Tell Me Your Plans, Show Me Your Results

When I was coaching men I heard all the things they were going to do. Rarely did their visions of grandeur match up to the reality. It seemed the ones who told you least about what they were going to do were the ones who accomplished the most.

In my old age I've come to realize that I can't affect much outside of my family and maybe 20 friends. That's it. That's all I can try to help, save, change, influence, call it what you want. All I can do is take care of my family and do my best to plan for them to be taken care of them.

I have friends that span the gamut politically, as I'm sure everyone does. I find the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the only person elected to nationwide office just as useless this time as the last two time the current President was elected. The day to day effect of the Obama administration on my life was almost negligible, as I'm sure President's Trump will be. Do I feel less threatened by the upcoming Trump administration? Yes, but government, at it's core, is political power exercised at the end of a gun.

The F-You vote that was Trump will be fun to watch, that I can't dispute, but how much it's going to change my life I just don't know. It looks to be a reprieve, a few years to continue to finish getting out of debt, pay off the house, install solar, the ponds dug, a well put in, and the food production ramped up enough to feed us and have a bit to sell and give away.

I hope your family is striving each day to be more independent, more self reliant, and more loving to one another.

Prepping the Spring Garden Beds

You thought your job was crappy....

Part of homesteading for me has been simply returning to natural rhythms. The farm revolves around the seasons, not arbitrary dates on the calendar. I put down grass seed after a rain, not on a certain day. There's a lot of work, there's always 10 projects that I'd like to have done, but the beauty of the farm is things can also wait. 

On Veteran's Day I had to work in the morning, but took the afternoon to go pick-up a load of compost. The joy of finally finding a compost supplier is beyond words! Compost, loads of really high quality compost, are what have really been missing the last two years in the garden. Due to the recent rains, I only brought home about half of what I could have, I didn't want to get stuck! A full trailer will grace the trees next February, if not sooner.

Saturday we spent down in Waco watching the Baylor Women's Volleyball team dominate West Virginia, followed by dinner with some great friends at Catfish Plantation over in Waxahachie. It was amazing, if you ever get close, you have to eat there. Split a cajun plate with someone you love.

This also meant that the compost didn't get touched. Strangely enough it was still waiting for me.

Sunday morning I finished cleaning out the grass clippings that I'd used as deep litter bedding in the chicken coops. I put it on top of cardboard (the theory being that it'll help kill the grass underneath, yet break down by next spring). I spent the rest of Sunday, with the trusty scoop shovel pictured above, putting down about six inches of horse manure on top of the 3 inches or so of chicken manure composted with grass clippings and nitrogen rich feathers. 

We're going to double the size of the garden space for next year, and I'm hoping that the addition of the compost will help increase our yields. I'm also really excited for the asparagus beds. Next year marks the third year they've been in, and will also mark our first harvest.

It was well after dark before I finished, but I'm sure I'll post the final product along with my vermiculture experiment soon. 

Putting Your Free Range Chickens to Work

Cow Patty

So the basis of Permaculture is minimizing inputs, and maximizing outputs, while improving the earth, and giving a reasonable . Joel Salatin routinely says that his egg laying tractors and broiler chicken tractors following his cattle grazing are there to spread cattle manure, add chicken manure, and lightly turn the soil, the eggs and meat are just a bonus.

Chickens at Work on a Patty

It's just been the last couple of weeks that the Ideal 236 layers have really started to go to work on the cow patties, but it's been a revelation. The cow patties within a couple hundred feet of the barn have all been reduced to the photo below.

Fertilizer and Soil Amendments 

It seems that each day the range of the layers increases a bit. We're doing our best to minimize predator pressure, and though I'm sure we'll lose some to hawks and feral dogs, I think that we've finally got things figured out to be sustainable moving forward. Right now the 27 chickens we hve on site are being fed roughly 3 pounds a feed per week, in a mix of cracked grain/corn at night to encourage them all to come to the coop daily, and a bit of the feed that I had left over from the FrankenChickens.

All in all I'm really excited about the layers coming online in early February for the eggs, but I'm also trying to find a couple of broody bantams to raise replacement chickens moving forward. The tractored chickens next spring will continue to help spread the manure and improve the soil on the homestead.

Learning From My Mistakes

There are so many learning opportunities on the homestead, and it seems as though I have one almost every day.

On electric paddocks with new born calves, I learned that I should have put the bottom strand closer to the ground.

I've learned that calves can get out of an electric paddock on a fairly regular basis, but rarely, if ever find their way back inside.

Whatever you tools/items you think about buying but don't you'll immediately need as soon as the store is closed, it's raining, dark, or a combination of the three.

Snakes will find your eggs, and your hatchlings. Wooden eggs will end your egg snatching, but it won't bring back your hard work on the hatchlings.

If you're buying a calf to introduce into your herd, always try to buy two instead of just one, they'll integrate a lot easier into your herd, and they won't be lonely. Nobody likes the emotionally needy.

Hogs are easier to raise than you think, don't be afraid of raising them.

Cornish Cross chickens are weird, but man they're tasty.

Finding a local butcher that cares as much about your meat as you do is like winning the lottery. Ask around, and listen. Start at the feed store, they hear directly from the farmer who does good work and who doesn't.

Growing Soil

Even after living for years in both the desert of Idaho and the lush greenness of the Pacific Northwest I still forget the joys of rain after long periods of dry. After three days of drizzle intermediately mixed with short periods of heavy rain it's been amazing this last week to watch the lush green sprout from the earth. It's always comforting to see the green return.

As I was putting out the rye grass the sprouts of life waiting on the rain were already appearing. The grass that had gone dormant has already put about three inches of growth on. Enough so that we've been able to turn the cattle back into one of the paddocks during the day to supplement the cattle pasture. Nursing has really increased the cow's appetites, and where last year a bale of hay lasted two weeks, they've burned through a whole bale this week.

We'll see how it goes, my neighbor still has quite a few bales of hay, but the overseeding will hopefully supplement their forage this winter. Last year I put down a few hundred pounds of winter wheat, not nearly enough to fully seed the field, but saw a lot of sprouts. This year I put enough seed down to hopefully really make a difference.

Winter Forage for Cattle

Today's project was overseeding the 8 acres of non-paddocked pasture. Last year I put down 450 pounds of winter wheat with a yard push mower. I've done a lot of stupid stuff in my life, but that exercise has to rank near the top. My little walking app on my phone said I walked 14 miles that day, it felt like more...

This year has been so dry that I had to wait until the second week of November to put out annual rye grass seed. I bought 200 pounds this year, along with a 50 pound sack of winter wheat that I overlooked last year, and spread it behind a 4 wheeler, it was night and day how much faster and easier that is.

I'll update pictures in a few weeks to show progress. Our hope is to supplement the hay we bought for the cattle, along with building the soil. Looking at this as a building project between now and 2020 finally gives me a reason to look forward to the next presidential election.

A Calf Named Smore

It's been almost a week now since we welcomed Smore into the world, only to see her almost slip away. I was terrified she was going to die on our floor. Then I was sure that her mom wasn't go to take her back. I fully expected after she walked into the night with her mom, that I'd find her lifeless body the next morning.

Each day has been a joy to see her alive and growing. Her mom doesn't have a large udder, or a lot of motherly instinct, but she's trying.

I learn something everyday, be it at work or here on our little homestead. The Reds amaze me everyday, especially when I don't think they're listening, they'll pull a line of wisdom I thought they'd ignored and use it at the appropriate time. I don't understand why or even how my wife loves me so unconditionally, but everyday I fall a little more in love with that woman.

The farm has taught me to love deeper, to know that it's not me in control but that what I do matters, it's the doing that really matters. Do I work hard at work? Do Iove the people I work with? Do I put my wife and family first? Do I continue to hope and dream? Those things matter.

Honestly I think I have a half dozen friends reading this blog, and I hope you all know how much you each mean to me. Thanks for being a part of this journey.

Salad Bar Beef

So the calves above are doing well and growing nicely. Thanks to their Scottish roots the rain we've received in the last couple of days has brought nothing but cute frolicking and the calves seem none the worse for wear. Which brings us to the next step, wait, what's the next step? I'm glad you asked.

We grow soil. It's the most important thing that we do, improving the soil so that each year the farm's soil is a little richer, a little deeper, and a little better. We're doing this through paddock shifting our cattle and letting our chickens spread the cattle manure while leaving behind their own. Each year the soil should improve and hopefully we can have a lush pasture year round by year four or five and cease buying hay.

So what are we going to do with the excess fertilizer plants? Out of the three bulls above, our hope is to be sell them to families looking to fill their freezer with grass fed beef. Our plan is to let them graze from 20-24 months before they graduate to the freezer. Right now we think $3.25 a pound hanging weight will be our goal price. When combined with processing fees final price per pound will be around $4 a pound. We're hoping that the steers will be around 600 pounds hanging weight.

If you're interested in trying Belted Galloway grass fed beef send me a message in the comments or snow.farms.tx at gmail.com and we'll get your family on our list.

Every Day Carry - Maglite 3 D Cell Flashlight

Most mornings when I feed, it's still dark outside, and from mid-November until early spring most nights it's dark by the time I get to the barn. I carry the 300 Blackout a lot, but with the addition of the hogs and the FrankenChickens I went back to a Glock and a big flashlight, the Maglite 3 D cell LED. 

I bought this light back in mid-May of 2016 and changed the batteries the last week of October after using it at least twice a day 5 days a week over that 5 month period. Battery efficiency, check. It has an aimable beam that goes from flood to spot. It's water proof, and if need be you could brain several would be prowlers and keep on working.

Yes, it's $23, but for something you're going to use daily for years, it's cheap. Don't hesitate, pick one up today!

Giving Thanks for Great Neighbors

It's said that good fences make good neighbors. I think it takes a lot more than that. You have to engage, share, be friendly, give space, and treat them the way you want to be treated. I'm by no means perfect, but I've been really blessed with awesome neighbors everywhere I've lived, and Texas has not been an exception

Today we had the last heifer give birth. She, like all teenage mothers, was not ready to be a mom yet. The downside to running a bull with your herd is that nature is in control  of when your heifers get pregnant. Sophia and I were out this morning looking at the dun full blood Beltie that was born overnight when we realized that Rosy, the young Dexter heifer (+/- 19 months old at the time of this writing) was about to give birth.

I always get nervous with first time Mommas. You don't know how they're going to handle the birthing process, and in this case she's still growing and not yet to size. My worst fears were realized as only one foot appeared while the calve's head was more or less out and things had come to a standstill after 2 hours it was time to act. The presentation of the head and one leg out is called, simply enough, "Leg Back" though I didn't know it at the time.

I knew we had to get Rosy tied up and help pull the calf out. My neighbors saw the circus going on out in the paddock and Andrea, Sophia, and I were trying to get Rosy restrained. Comedy ensued, as Rosy bolted through the electric fence into their previous paddock. I had left the gate open back into the pasture this morning anticipating moving the cows back later this week, and Rosy saw that open gate and thought she was making her escape.

My neighbor Joe was in the field, along with his wife, George made his way over, Andrea, Sophia, and even Emma made their way into the field to herd Rosy into the barn. We got her into a stall and here's where my neighbors went above and beyond. We got Rosy into a rope and tied her off on a stall bar. Joe, George, and myself took turns trying to find that leg and get the poor little calf out, to no avail, we just couldn't find it. After about 5 minutes I sent the girls out of the barn, because we'd decided that we had to pull the calf out.

As I'm writing this I don't know if the calf is going to live, and to be honest it'll break my heart if it dies. That said, there's simply no way Andrea and I could have pulled that calf out, my neighbors and I are all over 200 pounds and it took everything we had to get that calf out. I don't think we hurt Rosy, but only time will tell.

Calf Number 3 in 2016

With first time birthing heifers, you never know what you're going to get, but so far both Belties have had their calves without incident, and both at night strangely enough. We think that this calf is a heifer, and if so the girls have decided on "Smore" as her name. She's Dun colored and really is a good looking calf.

Today she did give us some excitement as she kept escaping the paddock and chilling just out of reach of Momma. She doesn't seem to mind us at all, unlike her half brother from the other Beltie who is skiddish as all get out. Hopefully we can get the electric fence grounded well enough in the dry conditions we're facing to help discourage her from roaming about.

She will be the foundation of our homegrown breeding stock moving forward, provided her genetics look right. The cuteness factor at the Snow Compound has gone up considerably this week!

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.

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.

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.

Paddock Shift Rangeland Management

So the paddock on the right had the cattle on it for 4 days, the paddock they're being moved onto on the left hasn't had any cattle on it for just over a month.

It's interesting to watch from one paddock to the next what the cows eat versus what they leave untouched.

The new 1.0 joule, 25 mile Zareba energizer has done a great job in teaching the cattle to stay off the fence. Our herd bull, who has figured out, to my chagrin, that he can pretty much walk through 5 strand barb wire doesn't want anything to do with the electric fence.

This paddock shift has a two fold purpose, first to rest the main pasture for a month going into fall and second to give the Belties and Arial as much good grass as we can before they start calving in October. I can't quantify it, but I expect the manure run off into the swales will also encourage the trees' growth. I'm hoping in the future as we free range the chickens they'll help with spreading the cow paddies.

We've seen a continued improvement of the grasses in the paddocks, and hope that continues on in the future. We'll probably run them through one last time in November, then let the ground rest until March.

I've attached a lot of pictures below of this paddock shift.