I fear this blog has gone the way of many, which start out strong, fueled by the excitement of the moment, only to be forgotten in the midst of life. A lot has happened on our homestead on the last year. I want to share some of these things to the extent that others might benefit from our experience, ideas, and mistakes.
We had a very good growing season overall. We had a tremendous crop of potatoes and carrots. Our homestead is basically divided in two pieces. Around the house is our main garden and about 2-3 acres of hay and open land. On the other side of the woods is another 3-4 acres of hay, garden, and pasture. Of that, about 1 1/2 acres are tillable. This spring we had three loads of high quality manure spread on that land, which has been conventionally farmed until a few years ago and mostly fallow since then, so it was in need of a nutrient boost. The results were excellent and definitely warranted the cost of the manure (about $50/load).
We had 4 beef bulls/steers on our land this summer. The first year we did one steer and I quickly learned that cattle don't do well alone. He grew fine, but was kind of a pest, especially when I was around him, and he would often look for ways to go through the fence. Last year we bought two bull calves and they did much better as a pair. This year we purchased 2 more, and so had two sets of pairs grazing around the property all summer. I had hoped that the older two would be ready for slaughter this winter, but they simply need more time (they'd be about a year and a half), and so I'm going to feed them through the winter and probably in to the early summer to try and put more size on them. It may mean we'll have to buy some additional hay, but not too much.
We finally got fed up trying to keep the old Ford tractor running, and so recently picked up a 1964 Case 430 tractor with loader. It's around 34-35 hp, about 10 more than the Ford. It's so weird being able to walk out to the shed and not wondering if the tractor will start today. I'm in the process of trying to get the Ford up and running again so I can try to sell it and be rid of it forever.
The most recently project has been upgrading our root cellar. This will be the third winter we have tried storing food in it. The first winter we leaned the hard way that the cellar leaks (it's an old water cistern) and so swamped the first load of potatoes right after we put them in in late October. Last winter we set blocks in the bottom of the cellar to keep the barrels up off the floor, which helped, but still wasn't perfect. We still had some heavy rains that tipped some of the barrels over. Plus, you had to access the cellar by crawling in through an opening on the top and down a ladder, which wasn't always easy if there was water in the cellar. So, we finally did what we've wanted to do for awhile, and dug a whole in the side to make a walk in doorway. We'll be adding an en 8 foot long insulated entrance for an air seal to really protect the cellar from the winter. We dug in a drain line to allow water to naturally flow out of the cellar when we get rain. This will be a huge improvement, and make it much easier to get potatoes, carrots, and other items out of the cellar during the winter.
Here are a few pics of our projects over the last year.
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| Introducing new calves to the electric fence |
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| Rotational grazing |
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Fall grazing hay field
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| First crop of hay (about 250 bales) under plastic |
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| Carrots and squash |
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| Hilled potatoes |
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| Raspberries and little boys |
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| Digging potatoes |
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| New(er) tractor with potato digger |
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Digging out the root cellar
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Adding drain line to cellar
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