The Jeffers Family Farm

Back to the Farm

2010-03-10T17:12:00.000-08:00

We will be heading back to the Farm next week. We have a great deal planned for this year:

Rainwater Catchment System to collect water for livestock and emergency supply from the roofs of the barns with metal roofs. In the future an underground cistern... but for now an above ground ferro-cement tank.
Slaughter 1 steer and 1 hog (we'll keep half and give half to the family that takes care of the place during the winter. We have a huge coffin freezer, which along with a couple of big BBQ's will take care of this windfall 1,2,3. Raise 10 bottle calves.
Set cheese. This year some nice, hard cheeses.
Buildout beehive and instill colony.
Grow "the mother of all gardens." Corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, beans, squash, lettuce, spinach, onions, garlic, artichoke, brussel sprouts, carrots, tomatoes (several kinds), kale, beets, string beans, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe. The garden is 80' by 177' and I am going to fill it up.
Hatch out and brood 200+ chicks.
Repair the house deck, barns, and fencing; build out farrowing huts for potbelly cross hogs; buildout new "goat barn".
Put up a couple hundred mason jars of produce from the garden.

I've had a 350 pound hog living in the garden since last year's harvest. I had read that some folks did this for weed control (as well as fertilizer). I have not been there all winter so I don't know if this worked out as advertised... but my farmhand says it looks like the garden has a had a tiller run through it.

Pictures soon (pray for rain this summer).

Reason for Hope

2009-06-20T19:08:00.001-07:00

I went for a ride in my "neighborhood" in rural Tennessee the other day. There were 2 kinds of homes - "development" or tract homes, like any you would see in American sprawl, and old timey homes (wealthy and poor), occupied for people that have lived here for decades, and their family for generations.

At the tract homes I found the usual accoutraments... imported cars, useless landscaping, slate walkways...

In the "old timey" homes , I found gardens, chickens, goats...

Here's a shot of a hillside garden.

This garden was across the street and down the road a little bit from the one above.

The owners of this last garden have vast gardens beyond this photo and hold classes locally to help people preserve their garden produce.

The world is not going to come to an end if every other home has a garden like these.

Self Sufficieny Revisited

2009-06-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

A movement toward self-sufficiency has taken hold on the Web - if not in the real world. People visit a plethora of sites to get their fix - and that's ok. You gotta start somewhere.

I try to approach this in a very practical way, and to report back that way, too.

So... if you really want to be "self-sufficient"...

Well, you can't be 100% self-sufficient, and you don't need to be. You can produce most of your own, food, but not all of it, and you don't need to - and you can do it and still have a life and a job.

The first misconception is that you can garden your way to self-sufficiency... egh! wrong, thanks for playing! You can grow most of your own vegetables - growing spinich, brocolli, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, kale, carrots, etc... sufficient for a family of 4 or 5 is no big deal (preserving it all IS a big deal). Of course, if you tried to subsist off just this you would be dead or pretty sickly pretty soon (if you either have to earn money or farm full time that is... I guess sedentary couch potatoes could get by with just veggies, though their teeth and bones would certainly miss dairy in their diet). That produce is easy for a kitchen garden to produce.

Corn, potatoes, and beans in sufficient quantities to sustain your family is going to take a bit more work. Actually, a lot more, but still doable.

I get nasty emails from vegetarians on a semi regular basis lately. I always point out to them that they kill more animals with their consumption of fossil fuels than I do by feeding my family, but never mind hard facts - we are talking sensitivities here.

You see, I am a card carrying member of PETA... no not that PETA, the other one: People Eating Tasty Animals (and their milk and eggs, and using their manure for fertilizer). Animal protein is an absolute necessity in agrarian cultures with little fossil fuel inputs (try getting Omega-3 in your diet without animal fat), and as I TRY to do everything with as little fossil fuel input as possible (just look at my pictures... does it look like I cut the grass very often? NAFC.) they are necessay here, as well.

(I wonder if vegetarians consider the road kill from truck and trains carrying their grains and vegetables to them, or killed by climate change and pollution caused by operating farm and transport equiment, producing chemical fertilizers, pesticides used on the crops (bugs are animals, too), animals killed by farm equipment (rabbits, birds, snakes, toads, etc... call those fields home), I could go on and on but a "true beleiver" Vegan would not have read it anyway. Am I the only one to notice that, well, let me rephrase... I have NEVER met a vegan that was not pro-abortion. How's that for being STUNNINGLY full of sh*t?)

If you were looking for politically correct self sufficiency, you came to the wrong blog.

But I digress...

Organic Farms need animals for fertilizer and food - simple like that. Not want, should-have-if-possible, or ONLY for the manure (what would you do with all of the excess bulls, billy goats, roosters, and Boar hogs? They would quickly destroy your home and fields, eat every blade of grass, and injure and kill your children (think I exagerate? Leave your children in a field with a bunch of Bulls and Boar Hogs for an afternoon, let me know what you find when you come back), etc...

Let me repeat: Organic farming means animals for traction, for food, and for fertilizer. No animals, no organic farming - and no organic farming means continued factory farming and long distance food transportation, and that means climate change, pollution, etc...

It takes time, effort, and practice to be self-sufficent. You cannot learn it on the web. You could still be a doctor, lawyer, or indian chief - whatever it is you do for a living - and still produce most of your own food at home (if you live in the country or the burbs, that is). You don't need a lawn whatsoever. Every inch around your home can grow something edible. Fruit trees and berry bushes instead of ornamentals. Grapes instead of fences or hedges. Raised beds instead of a front yard. Housing 20 chickens and 2 dairy goats instead of a dog and a cat will give you eggs and milk rather than hookworm and dirty kitty litter, and the chickens and goats have a much better carbon foot print... it ain't even close. (I have a dog and barn cats... but they are working animals).

You would have to have the cooperation of your wife - good luck - and your family. Why do I say "wife" and not "spouse"? Because, there will be damn few single women, or men, moving to the country to start a self sufficient homestead, and even fewer single mothers. Nope, the demographics say it will be married people with children, with Dad providing and mom feeding the family and raising and educating the children - who'd a thunk it?! (Nothing is absolute. We have some lovely gay women neighbors (they describe themselves as "bull dykes" among other things... I love people that can laugh at themselves) running a self sufficient farm, and they are a hoot!)

So why'd I say "good luck"? I live half the year in Boca Raton, FL, where the poor people have a million dollar net worth, and the rich quite a bit more than that, and I should know - I manage their money! I hear their concerns like a priest in the confessional. Any of those guys even TRYS to move his family to a small holding homestead or ditch the landscaping for a productive garden, or try's to downsize the familY'y consumption... and it is off to divorce court for his troubles (I truly wish the "Real" American Housewife were more like Sharon Astyk but that that just ain't the case - America is fascinated by the Reality Show "The Real Housewives of Wherever" precisely because it is, in fact, REALITY). Sorry, but "family law" has left the successful "king of his castle" nothing more than a neutered figurehead, a laboring eunich that, if he so much as steps out of line, will lose his home and life's savings in addition to the family jewels he lost to the marriage/divorce industrial complex by marrying without a prenup agreement. What is the point of marriage in a society that promotes divorce?

(I am sure to get some winning emails and comments with that. Funny thing about the "truth", it gets people's piss hot. If I were to speak untruths, no one would care because we all know they simply were not true.)

There is good news, though. The Great Recession AND Peak Oil, in addition to making people poorer and requiring them to be more self sufficient, is going to demolish the marriage/divorce industrial complex. People (men - I mean, come on, have you ever heard of "GROOM" Magazine?) are already:

Putting off marriage

Not getting married, ever (over 40% of American children are born out of wedlock)

Those that do marry are Engaging a pre-nuptual agreement more often to level the playing field

These were the unintended consequences (along with our SKY HIGH divorce rate and destroyed families) of Gloria Steinem, et al, and their Feminist revolution (one whose putative benefits went to 30 to 50 year old women AND THEN SPLIT WITH THEIR LAWYERS at the direct expense of 0 to 20 year old women (girls) and men (boys). The Great Recession is going to remove the incentive to divorce that was an unintended consequence in the 1960's and 1970's revisions of family law here in the U.S. People are going to NEED their family in a world without Medicare, Social Security, and Food Stamps.

Back to Organic Farming... So what does the previous couple of paragraphs diatribe have to do with Small Holding, Homestead, Organic Farming, whatever...?

There was a reason they were called "Family Farms"!!! Family, as in a husband and wife and their children. Not that that is necessarily what a family has to look like, but it was themost successful model for the building blocks of "community" for Millenia prior to the industrial age.

In an agrarian society do you know what women without husbands DO FOR A LIVING?? I'll give you 2 1/2 guesses, and a hint: It is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, professions around. If Peak Oil means we are going back to an agrarian system and the collapse of industrial society - why is it verbotten to discuss ALL likely outcomes.

Don't like the political commentary with your victory gardens and dairy goats? My apologies, but it was politics that got us into the mess we are in, politics that writes the nation's laws (including family law) and it is the analysis of those political errors that might lead the way out of it. Besides, this is my blog.

Yours for a better world (by starving out divorce lawyers)

Greg

Milking

2009-06-10T13:02:00.001-07:00

See that blue strap on the back of the goats legs? That is the "goat hobble" I mentioned in my last post. This was this goat's first time EVER being milked. She is just 2 years old, and just had her first baby. This goat was not bottle raised, and so is not comfortable with people. Still, her first time being milked literally took me all of 5 minutes (not including catching her, just the "hands on" portion). See that container I am holding? That is a 1/2 gallon, and she probably could have given a full gallon judging by the size of her udder, but I am leaving the kid on her for a few more days and will only milk her once per day.

I had to secure her leg with that orange string to keep her from leaning and falling of the stand, but, all in all, with the goat hobble and and a milking stand and stanchion this was a breeze. In 2 weeks I will bet you that this goat will hop right up, get a snack, and not require the hobble.

This batch was for homemade yogurt, and we plan to make some homemade cheese this weekend. Plus, I like goat milk in my coffee.

It takes me less than 15 minutes to go "out" for milk and eggs. My older son helped lead the goat to the stand as my 5 month old daughter looks on.

After a tough day of milking we put up my 2-year-old's tree swing. A couple of neighbors came by to help. I have to say that Country neighbors are a whole different animal than one's neighbors in say, New York City. The 11 year old girl in the picture usually stops over every day when I am in my garden to fill me in on her day, and that handsome young man in the hat is a most gifted country music singer and song writer. I am going to put one of his songs on youtube.com tonight and I will link it here. He is unbelievable.

The Harvest Begins

2009-06-08T18:18:00.001-07:00

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

Goats & Steers

2009-06-07T17:54:00.001-07:00

The first of our bottle calves have arrived. We expect at least 10 and as many as 20 over the next couple of weeks. It is quite a job feeding and caring for them all. Bottle calves are usually from dairy farms that need their cows to bear calves in order to induce milk production but have no interest in raising the calves. They are taken away from their mother after 72 hours, and sold to operations like ours that will bottle feed the calves twice a day, often by hand. Each calf consumes 1/2 gallon of milk replacement twice per day, for roughly 45 days, depending on the calf.

My son is feeding "King Lear" the (soon to be) steer (we will castrate the calf tomorrow).

A nice shot of a head of broccoli from the garden, on its way to tomorrow morning's omelette...

Sorry back to goats and steers...

Here is a shot of my goat milking stand with built-in stanchion (with my 2 year old playing nearby to give you some sense of scale, and yes, those are Zebras in the background... my neighbor raises them along with Camels and Kangaroos... go figure):

This is merely a knee high bench my son and I made from old decking and some 2X4's, and then a stanchion has been fashioned from cheap pine with a jig saw (you could use a coping saw, too) with one side complete stationary and the other pivoting on a bolt on the bottom that closes with the hook and eye hardware typical on outside fencing. This holds the goat's head while you milk. I always give the goat a tasty snack while I milk to keep her occupied and happy.

Some goats kick, especially those that are new to being milked and were not raised on a bottle by people. See that blue thing on the platform? That is a "Goat Hobble" (click the link to see more about the hobble). This hobble will make your life a whole bunch easier - if you want to have a milk goat I highly recommend it.

By the way.... while milking as somewhat of a commitment, it ain't all that big a deal. Once you get good at it, milking 15 minutes twice per day will keep you in all of the milk typical family needs... speaking of which... we pasturize our milk... don't listen to those back-to-the-land jag off's that tell you that pasturizing kills off all the nutrients in your milk. Not a shred of truth. It DOES kill nasties, like Listeria, and other bacteria, and the vast majority of the nutrients remain.

Our goats are raised 100% on pasture, so the milk ewe collect from them is very high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Here they are enjoying a beautiful Tennessee Spring evening:

While we do eat our animals and sell others for human consumption, we make sure that that they live a very comfortable, stress free, cruelty free, free range life. This is no factory farm. The animals have access to fresh pastures free of herbicides and pesticides, water and shelter, in a completely organic and perma-culture environment.

But I digress...

Back to the bottle calves. We can rotate several batches through the farm each year, and actually make a decent profit doing so. The best thing about a bottle calf operation is that you can decide when you want to raise a herd and when you want to sell them all and go on vacation. That is not true of many other farm operations, like dairy. A small holder bent on self sufficiency would still need a "cash crop", and these bottle calves will be 450 to 500 pounds in 6 months or so and ready to go to the feeder and finishing market.

Bottle raising dairy goats makes milking and handling them a BREEZE. I recommend it highly. It is a bit more work than bottle feeding calves, as goats need to be fed 4 times per day for the first 3 or 4 weeks, and twice a day for an additional month, but they are as cute as a new puppy at this age, so it ain't all bad.

"Live Long and Prosper"!

Greg

2009-06-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

The Vegetable garden is coming in gang-busters. Here is the Zucchini, with the beefsteak tomatoes, cabbage and broccoli bringing up the rear.

This is the only way to garden, square foot gardening. This is the first year I tried it and this will be the only method from now on in my garden. Weeding is the nightmare the ends most gardening hobbies. I planted a 36 foot long, 4.5 foot wide raised bed with Roma Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Artichoke, Cabbage, and Broccoli - but packed them in very tight. The only place I have a problem with weeds in this bed is where a plant didn't make it. The vegetables crowded out the weeds. I have 30 tomato plants, 20 Cabbage, 24 broccoli, 6 pepper, and 6 artichoke plants in the bed. I could have packed in a few more.

Notice the black ground on the next bed? I lost my spinach and carrots to a weed infestation and had to start over. So I placed dry straw very thickly on the bed and burned it. No more weeds OR weed seeds. I may have to do this several times to get ahead of their cycle seed production.

From the other side:

This is one of those potato circles planted in 12 inches of straw 6 feet in diameter. City folks may have forgotten but potatoes are a ROOT vegetable. Those leafy green shoots you see are the top side of the potato plant. I expect each patch to yield 30 to 60 pounds of excellent organic potatoes. A patch of Tomatoes, hot pepper, and sweet corn is behind it.

My wife gave me this sign as a present today, and we hung it at the farm entrance:

The vegetables that I started indoors are coming in very strong, the pole beans had to be restarted, and the corn is just poking through. I grow field corn for the chickens and sweet corn for the table and freezer.

Tennessee has the worst soil possible for vegetable gardening. Hard, red clay, baked to a brick like texture and consistency by the sun and reduced to clinging cement like slime when it rains. If you look at one of the shots of the raised bed you will see my "compost pile" covered by a tarp in the background. The "compost" is literally tons of manure and wasted hay (hay the horses littered the ground around their hay ring with and excreted upon), it was well over my head a couple weeks ago (and I am 6'5", or nearly 2 meters), and was 20 feet wide and 12 feet thick at the base. My neighbor helped by using the front end loader on his tractor and moved the pile 30 feet from the winter corral to the garden. This compost will fill 2 raised beds when mixed with some course sand and soil that has been sifted through a "screen" of sorts. Without that compost and other amendments, I would be wasting my time trying to grow things in earth better suited for building pyramids. I expect to be able to use that compost in the Fall.

I cannot imagine how one would do self sufficient, organic gardening capable of feeding a family without animal manure - and LOTS of it. Composting grass clippings, "humanure", leaf litter or kitchen compost just wouldn't cut it. I am talking TONS of organic matter here... what is one to do, bring in 6,000 pounds of leaf litter in the family car?

Once your beds are established with a high content of organic matter it is not too hard to maintain their fertility. But that is just a kitchen vegetable garden. Keeping your farm fields fertile without chemical fertilizers requires a great deal of effort - and manure.

Most urban folks don't know that hay, grass grown for livestock, is America's third most valuable crop (just google it). If a farmer continues to take hay off of his fields and NOT return the manure from the animals he fed it to... it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what is happening in his soils. Yes, he can continue to fertilize those fields with chemical fertilizer (he would have to, or he would not be able to grow hay in a few short seasons), but he is on borrowed time. If you remove soil nutrients, they are gone and unavailable for future crops unless you replace them or "recycle" them. Crop rotation really means letting your animals graze on your fallow fields, letting them "fertilize" as they go, as well as planting legumes.

We are buying 20 "bottle" calfs to raise this summer and sell in the late Fall/early Winter. They will come to the farm at less than 100 pounds and leave just under 500 pounds in weight. They will leave us with no shortage of Manure. They will be my 16 year old son's summer job.

Fun fact to know... most of the Nitrogen from animals is in the urine, not the manure. The manure provides the organic matter, the urine provides the N (not to worry, the animals will be happy to mix it up for you). Unfortunately, N is easily lost in evaporation or in transport into the atmosphere, so it is better to have the material coming right out of your barn or corrals.

Lastly, we are expanding the garden, and rather than fight with the weeds and grass in the new area we are expanding our hog's area. I have been told by others that in less than a couple of weeks a single hog (Wilbur is about 225 lbs) will turn over a 1/4 acre and eat every root, weed seed, and blade of grass. I will let you know, and will try to take before and after pictures.

The Right Stuff

2009-05-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

Having the right stuff - tools, animals, seeds, soil, etc... is the key to successfully running a self-sufficient homestead.

Animals were domesticated for a reason, and each animal had its own particular reason.

Ducks, and chickens, and guinea fowl are all birds - and that is about all that they have in common when it comes to what they bring to your farm.

Guinea hens are not really domesticated. They will set up shop on your farm, but if you make it uncomfortable for them AT ALL, they will move on. Yes, you can eat them and their eggs, but chickens were bred for that purpose and accomplish it with less work. No, Guinea fowl are for bug control.

When we moved in here we had a monster bug problem. You could not walk in the barn without dozens of fleas jumping you, we had to search one another nightly looking for ticks, and I was even bitten by a brown recluse spider - which made me sick for several weeks. Now we have a half dozen Guineas roaming the barn and environs - and here it is mid-May, prime tick season (especially with the wet weather we have had) - and not only have we not seen a single tick, our DOG has not seen one either (we used to pick several off of her per day, and that was WITH Frontline).

We have a breeding pair of Muscovy ducks. The hen is setting on a dozen or so eggs, so only the Drake has been working the place for the past 3 weeks, but we have been told that they are the answer to the slugs - the bane of our garden - and we have not seen a one.

Don't get me wrong, chickens are pretty good bug hunters... but we would have chickens no matter what... and chickens also eat the vegetables while on the vine, like having a fox watch the hen house. We have the guineas only for bug control. I have had duck at restaurants in the past and enjoyed it - but I would not raise duck for this purpose alone. But if they are going to keep bugs from destroying the garden - they will have a home here.

We are entirely organic - no pesticides, no herbicides, no chemical fertilizers. If "no pesticides" means you gotta have fowl on the property, "no herbicides" means you gotta have goats, and no "chemical fertilizers" means you are going to use manure. That is, a kitchen compost pile just ain't gonna cut it.

If you have horses or cows - we have both - these guys are "grazers", and that means they eat grass... giving a competitive edge to broad leaf weeds in your pastures. A couple of years of this, and absent the herbicide D 2,4, your pastures will be NOTHING but weeds. This is where goats come in. You need 2 acres of pasture per full sized head of cattle, but if in addition to the 1 head per 2 acres you add 2 goats, meaning a 10 acre spread will support 5 head of cattle and 10 goats comfortably (you will need to supplement hay in winter months), and the goats will level the playing field, so to speak, between the weeds and the grass. Not that the goats don't eat some grass, too, they do, but they will lay into your broad leaf weeds with gusto, allowing grass to grow in its place.

By the way... for a small homestead I recommend miniature cattle. They aren't really miniature - the cows weigh 700-900 lbs and the bulls about 1,000 lbs - but they are about half the weight of most cattle. Many of the miniatures are being bred to be "dual purpose" - milk & meat. Yes, you could milk ANY cow, but those bred for dairy are far more productive for milk than beef, and vice a versa for the beef breeds.

A little fun fact to know... Today's miniature cattle are the same size as the cattle were in the American West in the 19th century. Over the past 125 years we have bred them into the behemoths that populate American farm's today.

Miniature cattle gain more weight and produce more milk per pound of feed consumed, and do not destroy your pasture the way the full sized cattle does.

Goats are also excellent dairy animals. A 90 lbs goat can give you a 1/2, and some a full, gallon of milk per day. They are easy to handle, and won't break your foot if they step on it.

Driving 1o miles each way to the Farmer's Co-op or Home Depot or Tractor Supply for an O-ring, or a screw, or some other piece of hardware is not really an option. You need to have a working idea of what you are likely to need in the future, in terms of maintenance and repair as well a equipment and facilities. Knowing this requires several years of experience running your place. Knowing how to use the tools and gaining the skills to use them properly is also a time consuming affair.

I am working on learning how to use hand tools for fine carpentry and will include pictures of my projects when they are worth looking at. Right now, I am practicing hand dove tailing, hand planing, etc... with rough cut lumber.

Back soon,

Greg

Spring 2009

2009-05-08T08:05:00.001-07:00

There is a lot of down time on a Farm. But not Spring. Spring time is when you make your investment. Fall is when you cash it in. There is a rhythm to it that was completely foreign to me when I began this project. Now, I seem to hear it clearly - and I enjoy it in ways I cannot seem to explain. Nor do I guarantee that this will satisfy forever - maybe sailing around the world is next. But at the moment...

The garden is 77 by 135 feet of planted space. This is a view looking NE after it rained like the Dickens. Not much to see at the moment - I wanted to show the "before" picture. To the left at 6, 6 foot diameter hay mounds that will yield 50+ pounds of potatoes each. In the foreground at right are my pole beans. In the distance are 2, 35 X 4 foot raised beds. We have planted: Roma tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, onions, garlic, artichoke, hot and sweet peppers, sweet potatoes, potatoes, sweet corn, broccoli, cabbage, egg plant... I can't emphasize enough that there is no such thing as "gardening". The garden will take care of itself. There is only "weeding". I am not a "gardener", I am a "weeder". Raised beds are easier to weed than flat beds.

Here is a shot of the "potato circles". I would not grow potatoes any other way. 2 to 3 pounds of seed potato per straw mound yields better than 50 lbs of perfectly clean, easy to harvest potatoes with absolutely NO digging. I put down an inch of straw, place a piece of see potato every 1 foot, in 3 concentric circles. Cover with 12 inches of loose straw, and over the next couple months ad another 12 inches of loose straw (don't worry, the rain will compact them down to about 6 inches, and your job is to keep it above 6 inches...total per circle is 1 bale per circle: at $3). Make sure the sun never hits your potatoes and keep them watered. I harvest what we need for the kitchen all through the summer and fall, and then in October I harvest the remainder and store them in my cellar in moist sand. I save 35 lbs for see for the next year (which with evaporation condenses down to less than 20 lbs of seed potato for the next planting season.

We have a 150 egg capacity incubator. Our 35 to 40 laying hens give us all of the eggs we could possibly eat, and then replace themselves every year. After 21 days the eggs hatch, and I move the day old chicks to the "brooder" - a 75 gallon cattle water tank with a heat bulb, water, feed, and some soft wood shaving bedding. After 2 weeks, the chicks have "feathered out" enough to move them to the next growing station before I put them in the regular chicken run. We have enough land so that most of our chickens food they forage on their own. We have begun to eat our "excess roosters", harvesting them at 120 days.

We have 2, 5 acre pasture paddocks that, when you think about it, are really just very large solar panels that "charge" our livestock with meat, milk, and eggs. This is a shot of our "backyard". We move the horses around to harvest the grass so I won't have to break out the lawn mower, in between the backyard and our pasture is our chicken run, so any bugs, ticks or fleas that want to come and invade our home must first make it through a gauntlet of very hungry chickens.

This is my 4th spring on the farm, and I must say that those gardening books on the "doomer porn" web sites are not very realistic in providing any real insight into being "self-sufficient". This is a LIFESTYLE. Either you have the land, the good health and physical strength (mental health is no problem on a farm - depressives should be prescribed heavy farm labor), and the will to learn over a several year period... because going "Amish", as I jokingly refer to this, is much more of a commitment than anything I have done other than parenting.

I will post "During" and "After" pictures, along with data on actual food production for those of you so inclined to attempt this.

Greg

Excess Roosters

2009-04-26T08:55:00.000-07:00

My brother Wayne collecting the morning's eggs. Just get some chickens, keep them well fed and contained in a run, and leave 1 laying box for every 7 or so chickens, and Voila`! Eggs Benedict, fried or scrambled, and quiche for "girlie men"...

Dropping roosters off at the local food kitchen. Poor folks do not look gift roosters in the mouth nor do they practice vegetarianism.

My son Will bringing a rooster to the chopping block. The butchering table is the right, and the meat container is at his feat.

If you breed chickens to lay eggs for you, you are going to have many, many, many roosters running around. Either you eat them, sell them so that someone else can eat them, or they will kill your chickens (by accident) and eat them (chickens and roosters ARE cannibals), not to mention poop all over your barn.

Simple Like That.

Ever hear of the french dish Le Coq au Vin? (literally old rooster cooked in wine.)

(Here is a little fun fact to know. IF you eat commercial chicken you are actually eating rooster. Commercial poultry houses destroy the female chicks at birth (except those they need to lay eggs) because they do not gain weight fast enough. It is tough being chicken.)

Cleaning fresh poultry at home is about the same amount of effort as cleaning a fish. Fish require filleting and chickens must be plucked. Plucking is easy.

On "harvest day" we catch the roosters to be processed the night before. No food or water for 18 hours or so we slaughter them by decapitation. To make the plucking job easy we dip the bird in 160 degree water for 30 to 45 seconds, after which the feathers come out easily in handfuls. Then we gut them, same as a fish. There is an extra step of removing the neck and gizzard. It is easy to cut yourself badly, so be careful.

Roosters should be slaughtered at 16 weeks if you are after a roaster or fryer. Older birds are suitable for stews, soups, and any dish that requires that the meat not fall apart.

Free range poultry and eggs taste like the stuff you get from the store, but with much more power and flavor.

One simply cannot feed oneself out of a garden. The most efficient means of gaining nourishment is to eat animals and animal products. Think about the average American breakfast. Eggs, (animal) bacon, (animal), toast (plant, wheat), butter (animal), coffee (plant) with milk (animal) and sugar (plant). Eggs, meat, and milk comes from animals.

Chickens

2009-04-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

We never have to run out for "milk and eggs" while on the farm. Our milk and egg factory runs night and day, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 day a year. You cannot believe how much time you spend going to the grocery store, shopping, and driving home - until you are not doing it anymore. We still go once per week for things like olive oil, coffee, tuna fish, etc...

We have 40 layer hens that provide nearly 30 eggs per day during the spring and summer, and half that in winter (hens lay more during the longer daylight times as they only eat when the sun is out or artificial lighting is supplied). I keep them in a 1/4 acre chicken run during the spring and summer (that is when we live at the farm). I let them free range completely during the winter (see pic above). They have a coop to get out of the rain (see picture above... that is without the walls, I wanted to show you the roosting beams so that the chickens can huddle together off the ground) and weather, and the grass and bugs in the run supplies more than 1/2 their food for over 6 months per year.

I keep 1 rooster for every 10 chickens. If you have too many roosters per chickens, the roosters will literally kill the chickens through "over servicing", if you catch my meaning.

My family eats 15 eggs per, day. The rest go into the incubator to make new chickens, or go to our friends and neighbors. Yes, I do eat my excess roosters (my wife refuses but recently had some "homemade" chicken soup). All farms create "excess males" if they have animals. Cows must have calves to produce milk, and half of those calfs are male... if we did not eat these excess males there would be bulls, and billie goats, and rams, and roosters as far as the eye could see EVERYWHERE in America. Millions and Millions of them. The vegan argument has never lived on a farm...

Back to the incubator. We have a 150 egg incubator and it will turn out an 85% hatch rate every 21 days. Chickens can be incredibly self sufficient if you give them a big enough run, and growing food for them is a snap. Corn, wheat, sorghum, hay, from the farm and some table scraps (did I mention they will eat each other? If one dies in the run, they clean it out before I notice usually).

We give the excess chickens and rooster to a nice lady that butchers them for needy families at her church. We could never eat all that we could produce (I figured our family will eat 2 to 3 chickens per week... 100 to 150 per year).

Un a non chicken subject...

We have a milk cow, and she is due to give birth in 3 months or so. If it is a heifer, we will keep it and breed them to a miniature bull. If it is a bull calf, it will be castrated and butchered just before winter.

Spring 2008

2008-03-08T08:45:00.000-08:00

Spring Planting 2008

I have not posted all winter as there is not much to say about a small holding during the winter months.

We had a very tough year for goat kidding. Many of the goat kids died as a result of very poor planning on our part.

Goat gestation is 153 days, more or less. We let out buck begin to work the herd in August, which meant many of the kids were born during January, and unfortunately for us, they were born during a particularly cold snap at a time that we were away from the farm. Kidding can be problematic in good weather, at 10 degrees fahrenheit it turned out to be a disaster. Next year we will keep the bucks separated from the herd until the end of October.

Still, we had 12 surviving kids, and that means plenty of goat milk this spring and summer.

Most of our 35 chickens survived. We had a few predation casualties from a local hawk but what can you do. We free range our chickens and would not kill a bird of prey to protect the flock even if it were legal. The chickens were relatively safe in the barn as the hawk could not swoop in and out with the doors closed. I think they figured this out but I left this between the hawk and the chickens. I am looking forward to some new clutches of chicks this spring.

Our heifer and next year's meat steer did well this winter. We penned them in the garden area for the Winter to let them manure it and they performed the assigned task quite competently...

Speaking of the garden... This year I plan to "plan my garden and garden my plan". We will grow the usual suspects with special emphasis on the staples: Corn (both sweet corn for us and feed corn for the chickens), potatoes, and sweet potatoes in volume as our "calorie crops". For veggies, tomatoes (several types), cabbage, broccoli, spinach, garlic, onions, lettuce, kale, beets, beans, bell peppers, hot! peppers, cucumbers, carrots, zucchini, and egg plant. Last year we transplanted apple, pear, plum, and peach trees, and I expect a decent plum harvest with little coming from the others... it will take another 2 or 3 years to get the fruit growing going strong. Raspberry bushes are going in this year.

I hope to grow enough veggies to freeze enough broccoli, can enough tomatoes and corn, and store enough potatoes and cabbage in the root cellar to make it through to the following year... I will let you know. That means one big freaking garden and a lot of work, but that is the plan and I will let you know. BTW, I do not plan to use any fertilizer or pesticides in our garden.

Taking Stock

2007-08-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

My younger son feeding the chickens (he is about 16 months in this shot).

Time to take stock of our project

The growing season is over and it is time to take stock of our project, and of us.

Although we are not as close as we would like to be to our original goal of providing most of our foodstuff’s from the farm, in retrospect, the education we gained through trial and error was more than worth the price of the effort.

Herewith (and in no particular order) are some of the important points we would like to share with others:

• It takes a MUCH bigger garden than we had expected to furnish a family of four with 80% of the vegetables they would normally consume in a year. Although it seems like simple math, i.e. if your family consumes 2 heads of broccoli each week you need to harvest 104 heads, and plant somewhat more for insect damage and loss. Well, 104 harvested heads of broccoli takes up a lot of space, and requires a great deal of weeding, watering, and manuring of the soil (to be self sufficient really means no commercial fertilizer). Now do the same exercise with tomatoes, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, beats, radishes, cabbage, etc… and this does not include the much bigger ground area needed for your “calorie crops” corn, potatoes, and wheat. We grew enough vegetables to feed us for just over 2 months – not exactly self-sufficient. We are expanding the size of the garden and are leaving 2 horses in the area with hay bales to feed on (they can dung up an acre pretty well over the winter, but will need to be removed around the first of March to allow time for their manure to compost in early spring before we turn it under).

• Speaking of soil, you can screw up just about everything else, and if you have composted and properly amended your soil you will still do well – but if you plant, water, weed, double dig, etc… perfectly, and you don’t fertilize your garden’s soil, your yields won’t be worth a darn. The problem is that it can take several years to get a garden's soil to the point of top production.

• Fruit trees take several years to produce, so unless you buy a place with mature fruit trees… it will be a while before you are self-sufficient in this regard.

• Self-sufficiency also means growing your livestock’s feed. This is relatively easy for cattle and goats – they are quite happy with hay and grass – but it means you need enough land to grow it. We had too many horses and could not support them, so we had to cut back, and besides, our horse are for pleasure - they don't help us to be self-sufficient at all as they ae not draft animals. Chickens will provide more than half their own feed in the warmer months if allowed to free range. The problem is finding their eggs becomes a Ground Hog’s Day Easter egg hunt every day. We compromised, and built a moveable chicken coop that I can drag over new pasture every day (more like twice per day) and this resulted in them getting a 1/4 of their feed on their own and ¾ from commercial feed. Next year we hope to grow enough field corn and wheat on the property to care for 50 chickens. Each chicken will need 100 lbs. of food per year (and will give you 50 pounds of eggs); I expect them to forrage for ¼ of that, so we will need to grow 3,750 pounds of corn and wheat. That is one full acre of corn at 70 bushels per acre (a bushel = 56 pounds) or some combination of wheat and corn. Or I can spend $550 on feed, which sort of defeats the purpose. If you don’t eat your chickens (we have not) a family of 4 only needs 15 or so laying hens to keep you in eggs. Or I can build them a one-acre chicken run and let them forage as much as possible… I’ll let you know.

• It is relatively easy to produce all of the eggs and milk a family of 4 will need. 2 dairy goats and 15 laying hens should do it (Goats only give milk for 9 or so months per year), and you will never have to run to the store for milk and eggs (or bread, if you grow wheat and have a grinder). If you want to grow your own meat you will need more or different animals depending on your preferences.
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• You need water on your property. Either you have it, or you have to dig a pond. No water, no animals. (A well works, too, but is a lot less convenient. A rain water catchement system works if you live in an area with sufficient rainfall.)

• Food preservation is as important as food production. It is easy to keep the fridge full at the end of the growing season. February and March are another story. Some things are easy and safe to can - like tomatoes. I do not yet feel comfortable canning meats. We have not made cheese yet, but will begin doing so this spring after our goats have fresshened (gave birth).

• Truly self-sufficient means animal power traction, not my Ford 4000 diesel tractor. I have met several folks who actually farm using draft horses, and the Amish and Menonites in the area ONLY farm with animal power (fascinating folks, I bought our tack from them). That is next year's project.

• One needs to be in good physical shape to be self-sufficient. The more so the better. Animals don’t always cooperate, round hay bales weigh over 1000 lbs. and do not walk out into the pasture for you…

• While doing this, I worked my day job from the farmhouse as much as possible. Not needing to commute, not commuting to restaurants (and waiting to be seated, and waiting to be served, and waiting for the check, and waiting for the valet… these things we think of as normal or convenient… if they were ever subjected to an impartial time/motion study would not make a great deal of sense) nor go grocery shopping more than once per week left us with a great deal of time on our hands (even though we had an infant to care for). At first we were somewhat lost, and then we polished off several good books, practiced our musical instruments, learned how to bake, I learned to draw (a little, anyway), and I learned about gardening, and carpentry, and animal husbandry, etc… it was delightful - once we got over the “I am bored I need to be entertained now so I will turn on the TV” mentality. It is hard to comprehend how much time commuting, dropping off dry cleaning, fueling your car; etc… takes up – until you are no longer doing it.

• Did we feel isolated? Sometimes (It is a big change from living in downtown Boca Raton, FL), but as time went on we felt less and less so, to the point that we did not really relish leaving the farm after the summer was over. Still, one had better have an ability to entertain oneself, and an ability to gather interests, or I would imagine a less satisfying outcome. Still, we have not “over wintered” at the farm yet, and I would imagine that that would be the true test. Still, we are only 35 minutes from a major American city if we were jonesing for some sushi.

• We derived a great deal of satisfaction from little things; like my first pot of homemade spaghetti sauce with 100% of the ingredients coming from the garden, collecting seeds for next years garden, repairing the barn, unloading the hay into the loft, raising day old chicks into laying hens, and watching our animals give birth and raise their young. Cool as can be.

So next year we need to scale the garden up, build a rainwater catchments system for the garden and the livestock, and maybe for ourselves, and try using animal power instead of a diesel powered tractor.

Cya

Time

2007-07-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

(Your's truly with Bonnie the cow (we ate Clyde last year), and our ducks John and Yoko.)

Time

It has been just over 1 year since we bought the ranch/farm, and we are more than halfway through our second growing season. What I am most impressed with, if I can use the phrase correctly, is how much time it takes to get significant food production on a small holding.

It takes several years to amend and compost a vegitable garden, which in our case is about 100' x 100' (does not include the corn, wheat, and potato plots - these require MUCH more ground). Give this some thought: to make a 10,000 sqft garden plot fertile takes about 4 inches of composted manure plus another inch or 2 of wood chips, leaves, or straw. That is 5,000 cubic (not sqft, we are talking volume here, not area) feet of organic material. This takes some time, and then the material has to react with the soil before it is bio available... Say 3 to 4 years for optimum fertility - and you must continue your efforts or production will decline.

For the most part you have just one growing season. Here in Middle Tennessee it starts April 15 and ends, in stages, from July 15 to September 1. If you make a mistake, have a storm, suffer a pest invasion, disease... well, that's it till next year. This is why most farmers prior to WW II maintained 1 full year's food supply in their larder - in case something bad happens to the crops. Even if your growing season is successful, your food preservation needs to successful, too, or you won't be self sufficient for long. During harvest season it is EASY to keep the table well supplied, how well you do so come February or March is the real issue.

Fruit trees don't produce for their first few years, even if you buy dwarf (I recommend them) trees. You will need at least 3 trees of each kind of fruit you plan to grow, so I would plant 5 or 6 as you will lose 1 or 2. That means 30 or more trees to be dug in and planted (apple, pear, plum, and peach all will grow in much of the lower 48), so in addition to time you better have a strong back... Say 3 to 4 years for fruit production.

Cattle, sheep, and goats for meat consumption and milk production take several years to breed and grow. Chickens, rabbits, and pigs take less time but still their feed supply is at least 1 season, and probably 2, away.

Provisioning your homestead with tools and implements will take more than 1 year, unless you make it your full time job, and learning how to use them all is no small feat.

If you are thinking of providing any important amount of food for your family, the preparations take much longer than many might think, and I think the "time to prepare" element must fit more prominently in your calculations.

2007-06-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Vegitables

The broccoli, spinach, and cabbage are coming in nicely, as are the tomatos and peppers. The problem is quantity.

A family of four will consume 2 heads of broccoli per weak, 104 per year. Since you get only 1 true head per plant, it follows that you will need 104 broccoli plants, at a minimum as you will lose some to bugs and disease, or about 10 raised beds with 10 plants per bed. That is a lot of digging. (We define a row as 15 feet long and 3 feet wide and raised about 8 inches before settling.)

Tomatoes? Same problem. In order to supply our family of four with all of our own tomato sause, pasta, salsa, ketchup... we figure we need 64 plants. Another 8 rows with 8 plants, and several more for losses.

Did I mention you will need several hundred jars to can all this stuff? Actually we freeze the broccoli after blanching but you will need to can tomatoes...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... So you need a 35' by 30' foot garden area just for the tomoatoes, more for the brocolli, slighly smaller for the spinach, 15' x 15' for the peppers and another for the cabage. Carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, egg plant, etc... each will take an additional 15' x 15' area.

Potatoes for a familiy of 4 will require a minimum of 50' x 50'. Wheat requires a 100' x 100' plot and Corn requires 40' x 40' (and that does not include animal feed).

Again you must prepare all of these items to store over winter.

I hope that I am not discouraging you by posting this but it takes A GREAT DEAL OF WORK to grow most of your own food, and several acres of land. How much land? I will have a better idea next year but for right now I would say that a minimum of 5 very productive acres for a family of four.

Pigs!

2007-05-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

(My lovely wife Masako, our infant daughter Kate, and Wilber the pig.)

Pigs!

Every family should have a pig. Well, any family that eats meat (pork) should have a pig.

We have 3 pigs and they are now about 75 or 80 lbs, up from 25 lbs on March 21 - Incredible! But the cool thing with raising a pig is that table scraps and food refuse from a family of 4 will provide more than 3/4 the feed for 1 pig. If you think recycling glass is efficient, it does not come close to a pig. The amount of household garbage that is food refuse is much more by volume than you might imagine, and your pig will happily consume it all, and give you some very fertile soil in the process. One 240 pound pig will give you about 160 pounds of meat when dressed out, certainly enough pork for a family of 4 for 1 year.

Pigs do smell pretty bad - actually really bad. Our pigs are 300 yards from our house and we can smell them if the wind is right. They really could not be rasied in anything other than rural country side. But they do have their advantages for the small holder, self sufficient farm. Besides eating all our food waste, our pigs are digging up and fertilizing a significant portion of next year's garden better than any garden tractor. We move them by rearranging metal hog panels and fence posts that we bought from the local farmer's co-op. After a couple weeks on a 16 x 32 foot area we move them, and they leave behind well loosened, fertile garden soil.

Pigs are not for everyone (my sister keeps a kosher home), but they are incredibly cheap and easy to raise.