The Harvest Begins

Today we harvested 2 heads of broccoli, 3 heads of lettuce, and 30 round bales of hay. Actually, the hay came from a farm down the road, but my neighbors and my son and I harvested and loaded it to the farm. Each bale weighs 1500 to 2000 lbs, and will be fed to our livestock during the winter months in hay rings. Even with the rings, at least a third of the hay will be wasted. It is amazing to me that one can buy a ton of hay, delivered to your barn, for $25. Think about that. How much would you have to pay some one to cut a ton of hay by hand, load it into his ox cart, and bring it to your farm and load it in your barn? Somehow think it would be more than $25, and I bet we would find very ingenious way to not waste so much of that hay.  (My son and I and our 3 legged dog, T-bone.)





We are going to use our horses to pull a Doctor's Buggy for transportation as well as a dump cart for work around the farm, and they need to spend time pulling something that we can jump out of if necessary while we train them. The trick is lots of walking, not trotting or cantering, as you MIGHT be able to stop them if they are just walking and get spooked. Being broke to ride and being broke to pull are 2 different things.

Being self-sufficient means pulling stuff with animal power, not my 1974 Ford 4000 tractor. Our farm is too small to support all of our animals with forage, so we are working on finding a bigger place and buy hay for the winter months, though I think it could support the minimum amount of livestock to be self-sufficient (we have 14 acres).

A farm is the ultimate DIY environment. Besides the obvious things that must be done during the planting and harvest seasons, there are many projects one can apply themselves to. My 16 year old is in the process of refurbishing this old training buggy for horses (and drivers - namely us). We have not decided what kind of axle or wheel we want yet, and will first refinish the metal, and fashion new seats. He has never done anything like this before, but it is a good cerebral exercise in problem solving for my son.





This is our hog "Wilber". We have moved him to an enclosure in back of our garden which is overrun with weeds and tall grass. The hope is is that Wilber will root up all of the weeds and grass, eat the roots and seeds, and fertilize the area for next spring. I have been told that this will work, and have seen reports on the web of others doing this, but this is my first time using a hog as a garden tractor. I will post pictures of Wilber's work and progress.


This upcoming weekend we are going to do a couple of "dry runs" and practice canning now for the upcoming harvest season.  I will let you know how that works out.

Yours for a better world,

Greg