Monday night we spent a couple of hours loading yearling wethers. They were destined for the slaughter the following morning. A fairly straightforward operation, Cindy pointed and I grabbed, hoisting the hundred-pound castrated ram lambs off their feet, the two of us then carrying them out of the barn. A better chute system would help, but we work with what we have today.
Wednesday night, in a rain just above freezing and a mud just below boot tops, we loaded a hog also earmarked for slaughter. We slid and stumbled in the muck, cursed and shot accusatory looks, then laughed with relief when she finally walked onto the trailer unassisted.
Thursday night, during a late season arctic blast, our newest sow farrowed 11 healthy piglets. We provided her an ample bedding of hay in an improvised stall in an open shed, adding a sheet of plywood to block the brutal north wind and a heat lamp for warmth, and, beyond providence, we trusted in the maternal instincts of an experienced mother to keep the newborns comfortable and well fed.
By Saturday the late-winter chill had begun to abate, and we were gifted with a rare sunny day and highs around 50 degrees. I spent the day crossing the smaller lamb paddocks on foot, oversowing a mix of oats, rye, and turnip seed that will hopefully provide some fast-growing early-spring forage for the sheep.
Early afternoon I took a break to help Cindy welcome 20 guests from the area Master Gardeners club. They were on hand to conduct a pruning practice in our half-acre orchard, which had been seriously neglected since the last big pruning two years ago — a pruning that is needed annually. In a short couple of hours, armed with pruning knives, loppers, and tree saws, the crew had cut away the deadwood, the water sprouts, and a host of unwanted branches.
Pruning crew gone, we retired to the front porch for a beer with friends, who afterward pitched in and helped with chores, then we all caravanned to another farm and joined in unloading some newly arrived weanling pigs.
I find that as the years go by, the rhetoric of conservatism and liberalism mean less and less to the life we live. Rhetoric aside, no candidate or party speaks for the rural farms or communities. Left or right the language is of the city: eternal growth and happy days (past, present, or future).
As a farmer I know a couple of truths. First, that the manure I sling has real value. Second, that growth is a part of a larger cycle and is never eternally sustained; that the wheel turns and winter always follows spring, summer, and fall.
So, green grass must be carefully harvested and stored. Orchards must be pruned of deadwood, a diseased peach tree ruthlessly cut down and burned. Lambs serve a purpose and must be sold and eaten when that day comes. Sows will farrow, cute piglets will grow to 300 pounds before being butchered, and gardens will be tilled, planted, harvested, and prepared for the fallow months.
Manure needs to be conserved and used with care. Seed must be sown in order to grow. Resources must be nurtured. Infrastructure must be repaired and improved. And it is partnership and cooperation, not partisanship, that sustain connections in a rural community and on a farm.
And if adequately prepared for, the winter is traversed relatively unscathed into spring.
How are you hand-sowing the forage mix into pasture, Brian? Just scatter handfuls taken from a bucket? And do you do any preparation such as scarifying? We’re thinking about sowing clover seed into some of our paddocks. This used to be common practice for the dairy farmers in the area but they tend to focus on rye grass these days. We’d like to have a lot more clover as the bees love it, less mowing and if we cut hay, we can sell clover hay at a higher price.
David,
I use a tooth harrow to scarify the pasture. On these small pastures (an acre) I use one of those little seed sowers you can pick up for cheap at the hardware store. They are on two wheels and better suited for a lawn than pasture. We may purchase one of the more durable models soon (upgrade). But on the larger hay pastures I use one of those cone shaped spreaders, holds about 100 pounds of seed and is run by the tractor’s PTO. This afternoon I spread about 75 pounds of fescue, should have added some clover for all the good reasons you spelled out.
Cheers,
Brian
Thanks for that. A local contractor can scarify and spread seed with a tractor on larger areas but I was thinking for smaller paddocks it might be easier to sow by hand.
The other thing I should have mentioned for any of your readers unfamiliar with clover is the leguminous nitrogen fixing benefit.
David
Some fascinating material in this old reference to growing clover:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19905/19905-h/19905-h.htm
The author mentions the art of hand sowing was being lost in 1906!
Great link, you have given me a new rare book to search out. I’m betting I can find it for under $10.
Now Brian… I think you’re showing off – betting you can find it for under $10 (and in hard cover with jacket, signed by the author…) But from the Gutenberg project it’s free no?
I was just a lad in 1966, but we seeded an alfalfa field by hand (18 acres). Dad used a horn seeder for the alfalfa, and I used a seeder with the little flywheel on the bottom that spun as you cranked a handle to spread orchardgrass seed. The field had been worked lightly to prep and we rolled it with a small compactor for soil seed contact. I don’t know anyone who uses a horn seeder any longer, but at least my generation got to see it done.
If anyone has a chance to visit Lincoln Nebraska they should get close enough to the downtown to have a look up at the state capital building. There on the very top is a statue of The Sower – the man is handplanting from a satchel on his side. He is spreading the seeds of good fortune to all the people of Nebraska which is cool in itself, but the image of a bygone agricultural process of seeding by hand is also worth a peek. And that dude is pretty persistant. He’s been up there in rain, shine and blizzard for quite a long time.
As the kids would say, “I am so going to Lincoln, Nebraska.” That sounds like an excellent statue. There is obelisk in a park in Gainesville, GA with a rooster on top. It commemorates the birth of the vertical broiler house and industry. Somehow not as inspiring as the man sowing the fields.
I wish every one of our politicians would read this and take it to heart. Well said.
Thanks Jean,
How are you and Paul getting on these days? Stop by next time you are out in the sticks.
Brian
My favorite point:
“And it is partnership and cooperation, not partisanship, that sustain connections in a rural community and on a farm.”
Partnership v. Partisanship… one wonders how such similar words ended up with such disparate meanings. In a sense I suppose I don’t really have too much animosity toward a little partisanship. The level of partisanship (and lack of partnership) in today’s politics is what seems so inappropriate.
Thanks, Clem. It is always about balance, eh.
Rural wisdom at its finest.
Some of the best conversations I ever had with my father were when we were forking manure and contemplating the mysteries of life, while doing hard physical labor.
Unfortunately, as farm people and manual labor has been replaced by machinery and massive debt, rural wisdom has been on a serious downward trajectory.
Our economy is set up to reward the least productive portions of society, money lenders, stock brokers, lawyers, and others who add nothing, but merely skim a portion of the efforts of producers. Yet, if this present system fails, and it will, the farmers will suffer the longest and hardest, as it was in the 30,s.
Thanks for the comments. It is a problem, in my estimation, that we as a culture devalue honest labor. We do ourselves and our society any favors in that regard. I do think, in reference to the Great Depression, that the small diversified farms fared a bit better. Their income had always been more modest, scaled more towards self-sufficiency than the markets.
Although, I’m not comparing our lifestyle, with all of its updated creature comforts to life in the ‘30’s, we do try and balance the income portion with a “provide it for yourself” ethic. Hopefully that will make us more resilient.
Cheers,
Brian
It’s not uncommon for preppers, doom and gloomers etc to think they need to be capable of doing everything for themselves. This is a bit demanding in terms of expertise, time and equipment and also deprecates several million years of hominid evolution where we’ve worked together as groups and more recently in settled communities. You’re in a nice position, Brian, in some ways as it sounds like you have a community around you with at least some vestige of this co-operative tendency that’s been bred into us. Similar situation in at least some rural communities in Australia. And you can grow a lot of your own food which is always a plus.
An interesting topic is what can be done effectively on a farm, what’s best done within a community and what makes sense to bring in from further afield. Many farms in Australia had a forge into the last century. Is that something worth doing again? There’s a bit of equipment required and some basic training after which it’s possible to bang out simple stuff. But getting good at blacksmithing is a 10,000 hour pursuit.
Making good quality soap on the other hand – particularly by the cold method – is relatively easy to learn although it does require care to avoid injury. And it gives you control over a product that’s used daily.
Carving spoons is a skill that can be picked up quickly but it takes ages for inexperienced carvers to make a spoon.
All these activities are a balance between what needs to be done, available resources and time and individual proclivities. Upper middle class and aristocratic estates and houses in Victorian times in the UK used to be self-sufficient for many household requirements but they also had large numbers of servants. Which allowed some degree of specialisation and they were cheap labour.
Steering that path between what to do yourself and what to obtain from elsewhere is a challenge. I dithered for ages on how to handle grass in coupes where the trees were too young to let stock in. Contractor with a slasher, walk behind slasher, scythe, 4WD rideon slasher, onfarm 4WD tractor with slasher. All had pluses and minuses. Ended up going for the 4WD rideon slasher.
It is amazing how much a household can undertake with little effort and much pleasure in the effort. I always read with great interest what you and your partner undertake to do on your farm in Australia. We’ve been making our own lye soap for about eight years. With five pounds of lard and just slightly under 11 ounces of lye we make enough soap to last two years. Total time on soap making is couple of hours. We usually scent it with a concentrated oil added at the finish.
Making soap is very rewarding. I’d like to use lard as you do but Maree is a vegetarian so we use one or another vegetable oil. I’d like to have a go using woodash as the alkali but it’s a lot easier using sodium hydroxide. We know someone who makes beautiful soaps with all sorts of ingredients which she sells for $5/bar or so at markets. We call ours scientist soap. It’s just soap!
Sharpening is another one that takes a bit of effort to get on top of but is very handy. Maree is giving our fruit trees a working over today so I’ve just been sharpening secateurs etc And I have a load of firewood to cut so I’ll sharpen the chainsaw and an axe. As I’m sure you would know, jobs with wood are much easier using tools that have the right edge. And it saves money and hassle getting chains sharpened commercially. I made a mess of sharpening to start off with but I stuck at it using good texts, internet references and advice from arborists and so on. I can do a reasonable job now and perhaps in 20-30 years I might get quite good at it 🙂
Glad you liked the clover reference. Hope you find a hardcopy. IMO these older texts can be valuable as they speak of farming at a time when they used a lot less off-farm inputs and a lot more from the farm. But much of their knowledge was vernacular whereas we now know a lot more about how stuff works. See the discussion about nodulation in the text, for example. Again, I think what’s interesting is how we can combine elements from the technology stack available to us to deliver low-footprint farming systems combined with a livable income.
Not sure if you saw Ruben’s suggestion, for a knife sharpening celebration? Very cool. As for technology, I’m all for it. But I find I’m naturally inclined towards the simple. I tried to #tilling…nothing happened.
I forgot to ask earlier, but is that Petunia with the 11 piglets? Does she still have all of them? Sounds like she’s a keeper. Would I be wrong to imagine Delores was the loadout in the mud? Culling is tough, but has to be done.
Yep, Delores was a cull. She had failed to take two different attempts at breeding. Petunia is due in another eight weeks, successfully bred by a neighbor’s 3-way cross. This sow was picked up from a farmer who had gotten two big too fast and was getting out. That has actually become our best small farm business model. Look for bargains.