General update: rain, compost, & cows

It’s a beautiful spring on the homestead. We’re keeping busy, of course. There are always more projects to do than it seems possible to get done.

There is still a lot of gardening to be done. We got in some early stuff a few weeks ago like potatoes, salad greens, onions, and peas. I’ve been waiting until May to put in the other things like tomatoes, peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, etc. We had some much needed rain(three inches) a week and a half ago. This last weekend we received another 11 inches of rain, 8 of them during the day on Sunday. That was more than we needed in such a short period of time. We didn’t have any flooding here, but the small river in the local town flooded several places.

One of the blessings of the flooding in town has been a lot of extra composting material to be hauled from the sale barn. They were underwater, five or six feet deep in places, on Sunday. So, they’ve had to clean out everything. They called me yesterday morning to ask me to help haul away wet hay and manure. I hauled yesterday afternoon, all day today, and will be hauling more tomorrow. The guy who regularly hauls off their manure and bedding brought out several loads today, too. So far, I’ve put together a nice little compost pile.

On April 28 Josey, our Guernsey, had a calf. She was due to freshen by the end of April, but she just didn’t look pregnant. Even though she hadn’t been in heat, I began to wonder if she was actually going to have a calf. She had a little bull calf. We let it nurse for the first 2 or 3 days and then took it off to bottle feed it. It still gets milk from Josey, not milk replacer. I would have left him with Josey, but I don’t want weaning problems later on. She never weaned her last calf, and he was 20 months old when we butchered him. Ramiah named the new calf Smokey.

I also finally got the cows out of the barn and back on grass this week, Monday evening actually. I was regularly cutting them fresh grass to eat every day for a while while they were still in the barn. One of the things that made it so late for getting them out was preparing the milking shed. I don’t want them coming back to the barn to be milked. It’s too far from their pasture and creates other problems because I need to be able to drive where the fence would need to go.

I had already built a shed to use as a milking shed a couple of years ago, but I had never put it to that use except for a brief period of time last summer. I’ve fenced in a small area to hold them at milking time and constructed a milk stanchion. It’s worked pretty well so far this week.

One of the things I’m doing this summer is rotating the cows onto new grass each day. In fact, my goal is to rotate them twice a day. Since I have to milk them twice a day, I will bring them into the loafing area, milk them, and then put them in a new paddock. I’m going to make use of fenced corridors from which they’ll access paddocks I’ll fence off. While they were in the barn, I fed them hay twice a day, morning and evening. It seems to make sense to give them fresh grass to each on the same schedule, kind of like green hay still on the plant.

One of the challenges for me in terms of intensive rotational grazing has been water. This summer I’m going to haul water from the pond in a tank to fill a trough for the cows. Their water trough will be in the corridor so that I don’t have to move it and so that they will have access to it.

So far, Josey, Tilly, and Buster (our beef steer) have been on four different paddocks. You can see how they grazed today’s paddock (photo to the left). They were happy to have fresh grass this evening. Moving them twice a day won’t create much more work than moving them once a day since I have to bring them in for milking anyway. I’m hoping that it’ll work out well.

It rained!

We’ve had about three inches of rain since Friday night. That’s nice. We haven’t actually had much rain since January. I’ve heard it reported that we had been about eight inches behind for the year already. This recent rain has really helped. Everything seems to have grown tremendously in the last few days with all the moisture. The trees are leafed out. It’s so nice to see all of the green.

Around here we enjoy several different flowering trees during the spring. The redbuds and dogwoods are basically done blooming now, although there are still a few dogwood blossoms hanging on. The royal empress trees (non-native) are blooming now as are the locust trees.

I’m late getting the cows out on grass this spring. They should’ve been out two or three weeks ago. I left them in the barn to help make chores simpler for my dad while we were gone last weekend. I’ve also had to get a little fence work done in order to put get them out. That is just about complete now. So, I ought to be able move them tomorrow. I’ll still feed them hay at night for a few days in order to transition them to their new diet. They will be thrilled to have fresh grass. Once they’re out, I’ll see about getting a couple of pigs to aerate the bedding pack in the barn.

Cleo is going to a new home. She’s almost four months old now and has grown very well. In anticipation of putting the cows out on grass, I thought it would be a good time to sell her. So, I put an ad on Craigslist last night, and she’ll be leaving an just a little while. She ought to make a nice milk cow in a few months for her new family.

I have a hankering to haul some composting material, but that’ll have to wait a day or two. It might be a bit too wet in the bottom right now. Maybe on Thursday it’ll be dry enough. . .

Work on the cistern

Currently, we are connected to city water, but that’s something that we want to change. It’s been our plan for quite some time, but the municipal water has been convenient. There is a shallow well down the hill on which I have a hand pump and have used for watering livestock. There’s also a spring that flows about 9 months of the year. We also have the pond now. So, there are alternative water sources available.

We also want to cistern rain water that we can catch off of our house roof. In September of 2008, I decided to start constructing a cistern inside the shed portion of our garage. The garage is a pole building that has an original area of about 24 feet by 40 feet. The previous owner built the garage and also added some space on one side that is about 12 feet by 40 feet. We used this shed portion as a goat/chicken barn for a few years. With gutters we should be able to harvest quite a bit of water off of the roof. Additionally, locating a cistern here would allow us to let gravity provide water pressure to our new house, because there is about a 50 to 60 foot elevation change between the two.

It is inside the shed that I began the construction of a ferro-cement cistern. The basic idea for ferro-cement construction is to build a metal framework that provides strength and structure. This framework is then plastered with a cement-sand mixture that makes it so it will hold water.

The first thing to do was to provide a level space for building the cistern. I used hand tools: a shovel and a grub hoe mainly. I hauled the material that I dug out outside and dumped it on the hill behind the garage.

The next order of business was to begin building the metal framework. This consists of welded wire (re-mesh) and reinforcement bars (re-bar) that are wired together. Essentially, you create a sandwich with the re-mesh on either side of the re-bar all rigidly tied together. Here are two photos of the work I completed in September 2008:



Sadly, after getting started on the framework, I did not get back to the construction of the cistern until Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. We decided about two weeks ago that we should go ahead and get the cistern constructed and start using it sooner rather than later. So, I enlisted the help of a good friend who came over this week to help me.

The first day we worked on finishing the metal framework for the floor. We had to add another layer of re-mesh and a layer of chicken wire on top. Wiring all the layers together takes time and quite a bit of wire. The end result is a framework that is strongly joined together and that will make for a strong cistern. The different layers are offset from one another so that the spaces between the wires and re-bar become smaller and smaller.

The following two photos show the floor ready for to be poured:



We finished the framework on Tuesday after a full day of work. On Wednesday we began with the concrete. I bought an electric concrete mixer for this project and later projects, including plastering the straw bales on our new house this summer. I already had sand and bags of cement that I had bought in 2008 for the cistern project. The sand was fine, but the cement had absorbed some humidity.

We carried the concrete mix into the shed in buckets and used trowels to force it into the framework. We had to build it up at the edges to the point that the walls would later extend from. I also put in a drain line and an outlet pipe. It took a full day, but we got the concrete finished for the floor (sorry about the dust spots on the camera lens).

At this point in time, I’m not sure that the concrete is going to set up hard enough. I think the cement didn’t work properly, probably from having absorbed moisture during the last year and a half. At first, it seemed like we had nothing more than wet sand, but it is hardening somewhat. I just don’t know if I will be able to trust it for completing the cistern. The dimensions I designed for the cistern would provide about 5,000 gallons of water storage. That’s a lot of weight and pressure.

Our current thinking while we wait on the floor to cure completely, is that we may put in two 2,000 gallon poly water tanks. They will sit on this floor with no problem. I can add some wire around them which will attach to the stub wall that is already framed. Then, inside this wire, I can insulate around the poly tanks with sawdust or some other material. We are not sure yet which way we will proceed. The poly tanks would cost a bit more, but they would save a lot of time and labor. We’ll decide for sure in the coming days.

Our new pond (part 5)

By the end of September, we’d had enough rain to have several feet of water in the pond. I’d also used the time before the pond filled to work on the dock. It’s at the same state now as it was then: all finished except the deck boards. The week before completing the dock framing, I seeded fescue on the dam and in front of the house. It was raining while I broadcast the seed, and it rained lightly during the following days. It sprouted and started growing very quickly.

On September 26, we had 2.5 inches of rain. This, of course, contributed to the water level in the pond, as can be expected. The last inch came in a storm during the afternoon, and it added more than the previous showers because most of it ran off rather than soaking in.

The following photos show the dock, the water level at the end of September, and water flowing into the pond.

Looking out from the land-end of the dock. It is 6 feet wide and 12 feet between posts reaching about 30 feet out into the pond. I intend to deck it with oak boards from a local sawmill in the spring.



The water hadn't reached the shallow end (it has now – photos later), but it's 6 feet or so deep in the right corner from this perspective (I didn't measure it, just guessed).



These two photos show the water flowing out from under the trees at the bottom of the two hillsides it drains off of. It then moved through grass for 40 feet before flowing into the pond. Both of these photos were taken over two hours after the rain stopped -- the water doesn't all flow into the pond at once, thankfully.





I stitched the following two photos together looking from the bank near the woods:

Our new pond (part 4)

I worked the two full days in order to add height to the dam. The most tiring part was associated with the stress of driving my truck, my tractor, and a backhoe on top of the dam. I especially don't like when the backhoe leans to the side and when I got it into some of the soft topsoil on the back slope. I decided I didn't need it up there.

The method that seemed to work well for me was to load clay into my truck from a couple different places in the floor of the pond. Then, I drove this onto the dam and dumped it where I wanted it, spreading it out some as I dumped. After several loads, I switched to the tractor and blade to move the material where I wanted it and to pack it some more (the truck tires were doing a pretty good job of packing).

After getting enough clay built up, I took a few loads of top soil to put on top and spread that around. It went fairly well.

 
This photo shows the outcome of my efforts. I added enough material to put the top of the dam two feet above the primary spillway (the 12" culvert). This also allowed more freeboard above the emergency spillway, which is a good thing.

 
A little closer look. The section I built up looks darker because of the topsoil I added.
Digging clay and soil out of the pond bottom helped to add some more structure for fish. Structure is basically variation in depth, especially differences within a short distance There is a fair bit of variation on the bottom.

 
This is a view looking toward the dock from the dam. I was trying to show how the dock is on a ridge with drop offs on either side. There's also another elevation change going into the shallow end of the pond which is a result of digging out clay and top soil to raise the dam.

 
Looking a little to the left toward the shallow end. One of the things I wanted to do but haven’t done yet is to make a small beach area toward the house where I drove in and out of the pond hauling material.

 
This photo looks past the pond from below the dam toward some of my fields. Shortly after finishing the dam height project, I seeded the dam with fescue. At this point, I needed to finish the dock framework and then wait for rain to fill up the pond.

Chucky’s Pond

Using a single wire connected to a solar fence charger, I’ve fenced a corridor from the barn to the alfalfa field. Josey spent two weeks in the field which I previously fenced with a single electric wire. Josey and Tilly are now together, and they seem to get along fine. They’re grazing the corridor. In a few days, I’ll fence another paddock for them in what has until this point been a hay field. I’ll still cut and bale hay on it because it’s bigger than they can keep up with, but they will have plenty of green grass to eat as I rotate them through the field.

I fenced another area for Chucky. I’d love to let him be with the others, but even though he’s a year old, he thinks he needs to still nurse. Josey is enough of a doting momma that she’ll let him, too. She wants to baby him. So, they’ll be kept separate. They can see each other and sniff noses over the electric fence, though.

In the paddock Chucky’s in, I dug a small pond before I put him in it. Later this summer, I’d like to have the whole area made into a pond. I’ll move Chucky before then, of course. For now, I wanted to provide a drinking hole for him, and I wanted to see if there was clay under the topsoil. I dug down only about four feet, and there is clay. It’s not red like the clay near our house site, but it’s clay. That’s good. Clay will help the big pond hold water when we have it made.

I dug Chucky’s pond the day after we had a fair bit of rain overnight. It only took about 15-20 minutes to dig using the borrowed backhoe that’s been here for about three weeks. In about three hours, the hole was full of water. We’ll see how it does as far as holding water is concerned. Right now, we’ve had plenty of rain and more forecast for later in the week. The real test is for when things get a bit drier, whenever that will be (we’ve had rain nearly every day for a week and a half).

A hole full of water

I want to move Josey and Chucky Joe (the cows) out on grass on an area away from the barn. It’s easy enough to make paddocks for them with electric fence. Neither one of them wants to mess with an electric fence wire. There is one difficulty with moving them any distance from the barn: water. They both appreciate being able to drink during the day and night. Near the barn I have a hand pump on a shallow well from which I carry buckets of water to them. There is no readily available and easily accessible water near the area I want to pasture them. I do not desire to carry 20 gallons of water in five-gallon buckets 1,200 feet from the pump every day. So, what to do?

One idea I had was to try driving a well point somewhere in the vicinity. So, yesterday afternoon I drove the backhoe I’ve borrowed for working on the root cellar on the new house down near the pasturing area in order to dig down a ways before trying to drive the well point. I dug down about seven feet but had to stop at that depth. I hit solid rock. I didn’t fill the hole back in because there was water running into it about three feet down. Of course, we just received rain the last couple of days and it’s spring, so the ground is kind of wet.

This morning I checked on the hole. There was six feet of water in it. It would be nice if I could count on four or five feet of water in it during the course of the year, but I would be surprised if that would be the case. During the summer when the rains are less frequent, I expect the water level to drop significantly, leaving an empty, dry hole.

This evening I scooped out most of the water with the backhoe to see if the hole will fill up again tonight. There was water running back into it before I left. But, the ground is still wet, so I don’t know if any of this will really tell me anything. I expect I’ll be filling it back in soon.

I would like to solve the problem about how to easily water my animals in that location. I’ll keep pondering. For this summer, I’ll probably end up hauling water in a 325 gallon tote. Hopefully, I can harvest water off of the barn roof rather than use chlorinated water from the tap.

Playing in the dirt

We’ve had some nice weather the last few days. The temperature has been very nice – in the 70s the last couple of days. There was a chance of rain at the end of last week, but thankfully we didn’t get any. I’m thankful because that allowed things to continue to dry out enough so that we could work on the gardens.

Three weeks ago I was able to disk the garden areas, including the new ground in the turkey pen I tilled last fall. This particular spot is within a fenced area where we’ve grazed goats on a rotational basis in the past. For the last year or so, the turkeys have enjoyed it as their main paddock. That’s why we call it the turkey pen. It’s a nice, level piece of ground near the main garden area. It’s grown some nice clover during the last six years since we’ve lived here. I worked it up because of its apparent fertility and because it’s already fenced. We had problems with deer eating things in the garden last year, primarily sweet potatoes. Although deer can easily jump over the 4 foot fence around the perimeter of this area, the existing fence will make it easier to keep them out. Adding extensions above the field fence will not be too difficult.

Last week I hauled two truck loads of manure from the stock yard in town and dumped on the turkey pen garden. Each load was approximately 3500 pounds and consisted of a lot of saw dust. I spread it out with a shovel and rake as evenly over the ground as I could after dumping it – completing this task on Sunday of this week.

On Monday, I borrowed some equipment from a friend. He’s a very generous and kind person who we are truly blessed to know. I borrowed his  sub-soiler, tiller, broadcast spreader, and field cultivator. I had hoped to use the spreader to put lime on the garden areas. However, it didn’t work for spreading lime (it’s designed for broadcasting seeds). So, Dad and I threw lime out of the back of the truck onto the turkey pen ground. We dumped what was left over to be added to other garden areas as desired (we didn’t want to throw it by shovel over the other garden area which is much larger).

I used the sub-soiler on both garden areas and two other small fields. It helps to open the ground up fairly deep – about 18-24 inches with this single-shank sub-soiler. We actually spread the lime after doing the sub-soiling. After that, I tilled both areas, preparing the ground for planting.

It’s still early in the season, but weather like we’ve had starts the itch to play in the dirt. The things that can be planted at this time are the early-season, cold-hardy crops. While I continued working on the other fields that needed to be worked, Dad pl anted onions and potatoes yesterday and today. We usually don’t grow enough onions. So, we have purposely set out to change that this year. Dad bought 5 pounds of onion sets a week or so ago, and he set out several in his garden near his house. I bought 6 pounds of onion sets last week and another 10 pounds on Monday. Dad planted all that I bought and what he had left over – about 18 pounds of onion sets (about 1,000 feet in 20 rows). I hope they grow well so that we can have enough onions this year!

Dad finished planting the onion sets this morning. After lunch we sorted out some of the smaller potatoes we have left over from what we grew last year (we planted 100 pounds of Kennebec potatoes last year). Dad put these in the ground this afternoon. I don’t know how many pounds we had to plant, but he planted 13 rows (each row is 40-45 feet long – so about 500 feet of potatoes). We will plant more Kennebecs and some Yukon Gold (I bought 50 pounds of Yukon Gold seed potatoes on Monday).

 

Our idea is the to try to grow plenty of the staples: onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. I made a hot bed for starting sweet potato slips. I dug a 2 feet by 3 feet hole 12 inches deep, added about 5 inches of fresh cow manure, and put 3 inches of sand on top of that. I’ll lay out sweet potatoes saved from what we grew last year and cover them with more sand. The manure will heat up, keeping the soil warm (sweet potatoes need warm soil to sprout). The sweet potatoes will send up multiple sprouts. When they’re big enough, these slips can be twisted off and planted in the garden (once it’s warm enough outside – they don’t like it cold). I hope to put out about 400 sweet potato slips with the primary variety being Georgia Jet (these did the best for us last year out the five varieties we grew).

I’ll be starting tomato seeds soon. We saved seeds last year. We grow open-pollinated and heirloom varieties so that we can save seeds. There will be a lot more things to get started and planted in the next 6 weeks or so, but it sure is nice to get started on the process. There’s just something about playing in the dirt.

General goings-on

Spring is approaching. Or, at least it sure has felt like it. We’ve enjoyed some nice, warm temperatures during the last couple of weeks. This winter has been different (they all are, though) in that we’ve had some frigid weather with temperatures near zero and some warm weather with temperatures over 70. I had planned on tapping some maple trees and making syrup, but the weather hasn’t cooperated to make that really doable. We’ve made syrup the last two years. Maybe next year will provide cooperative weather.

Wednesday of this week we had a windy day. The storms that moved through the central part of the country mostly missed us, except for the wind. Other places got it worse than we did, though. We only received about three tenths of an inch of rain, and all of that seemed to come within 15 minutes. That’s alright, though, since the ground is still plenty soft from the previous rains. Winter time is like that though; around here it seems that the ground doesn’t dry out until summer. It does somewhat, but it sure seems like we have mud from November to May.

Anne and mom took the opportunity to run off to Glasgow on Wednesday to do some treasure hunting. They both enjoy spending time looking for bargains in thrift shops and antique shops. Dad came over so that he and I could go over our garden plans for this summer, mainly determining if there are any seeds we need to order. There are only a few like onion seeds and some seeds for winter squash. We saved a lot of seeds from last season’s gardening, including tomato, corn, squash, okra, green bean, pepper, arugula, and basil seeds along with some others. We grow open-pollinated and heirloom varieties so that we can save seeds. We also have potatoes to plant and will start some sweet potato slips.

Yesterday, dad and I worked on pulling some cedar logs out of the woods. He wrote a post about it on his blog and I wrote one on my Cedar Ridge Farm blog. It was a great day for working outside, and the previous day’s rain didn’t make things too wet and sloppy to get the job done. I’ll have some more logs to cut and skid out of the woods.

With the nice weather, I’ve been able to work on some house projects. It’s kind of nice to be able to focus some attention on it. I’ve actually been motivated to spend some time thinking about the project and planning for different aspects of it. So, I’ve posted a few times to Cedar Ridge Farm, and I expect there’ll be a lot more posts on that blog in the coming weeks and months. It is my hope to get a great deal of the house project completed this year. So, keep an eye on my other blog, too. 

Spring and summer are busy times of the year, but there is such a richness in living the life we do. We count it a blessing every day that we have opportunities to work together, to grow good food and not be completely dependent on that which is called food but really isn’t (standard grocery/restaurant fair), and to be surrounded by such fabulous beauty as can only be found in God’s glorious creation!
     

The rains of winter

Winter officially began just a few days ago. Growing up in Central Illinois, I have memories of some winters with sub-zero temperatures, lots of snow, and incredible ice storms. This is our sixth winter in Kentucky, and they have all been mild in comparison to the winters I remember on the plains of Illinois. Usually, the ground doesn't freeze except temporarily and only a few inches deep. The major form of precipitation we receive is rain. Lots of rain, usually. At least, it seems that way. Slogging around in mud is a usual thing, because until later in Spring, the ground stays wet.

Last week brought cloudy skies and rain. It also brought wind. All week. I was going to spend several days in the woods hunting deer as it was our late muzzleloader season. The weather was less than ideal for it all week except for two days. So, no deer. I'll try not to complain about the wind we've been having. Generally, we don't have too much, at least not like in the flatlands where there are few trees and no hills to stop or slow down the wind.

After our coldest temps yet this year (5 degrees Monday morning), we had more rain yesterday, last night, and today. Dad said his gauge measured over two inches of rain today. At times it came down quite heavily. The temperatures have been up, though. We were in the 60s today. A chance for more rain is forecast for Friday and Saturday with more 60 degree temperatures.

When the rain comes down hard, the creeks rise and really flow. All that water has to go somewhere. Rain on hilly land is a different experience than it is on flat land. It's amazing how much power water possesses when it flows downhill. I've had to fix my driveway after storms several times. The water will move the gravel quite a ways if given a chance.