Foster Farm

Very good day

2012-01-20T12:48:00.000-08:00

I am very excited and wanted to share this with people. Here is a couple pictures of the progress I have made with the 2 Haflingers. A couple months ago these 2 guys did not know each other and I knew close to nothing about driving a team (still don’t but the learning curve is very steep). Tank (on the left side of the hitch) was very “hitchy” and, at 6’4”, I still had a hard time walking fast enough to keep up with him: as soon as you gave him slack in the lines he would keep cranking up the pace. Arnie (Arno) is barely 4yo and was green broke to drive. He was, is, pretty jumpy about things and his and my first experience working together consisted with him dragging me 100’ by his mouth when I tried having him drag a tire down the gravel road. I quickly saw the error in my ways and went to building up from just ground driving in a round pen to eventually dragging that tire all around. Now Arnie is MUCH more comfortable with noise behind him and I think I am better at introducing new noises to him. I worked with Tank to get him to be more responsive to the bit, I think what helped the most was concentrating on communicating with him with only the bit (I read some things in “Farming with Horses” that really helped).
A couple weeks ago I ground drove them together in the round pen and gradually built them up to dragging a tire together. I set them up with a yoke and a butt chain. With the help of Paulette I opened up a panel on the round pen and drove them out into the GREAT BIG WORLD!! All I could think about was how easy Arnie pulled me when he spooked, I had no hope holding these guys if they decided to run. Paulette had a lead rope on Arnie’s halter and we all walked around the outside of the pen and across the field a couple times. The next day we hooked them to the forecart. With Paulette on a lead rope we successfully made a couple laps around the field. It was not a well oiled machine if you know what I mean. Tank was way out front and I could not get him slowed down, Arnie continued to wiggle all over the place, it appeared to me they were as nervouse as I was. Let me say I had so many things in my head I was trying to keep strait; I am sure I was 90% of the problem. How is it that something that most people would see as boring can border on terrifying?
Yesterday i decided I wanted to have them pull the stone boat with the water buckets to the barn, by my self. I ground drove Arnie around a little, hooked the 2 together, with a butt chain and a yoke, ground drove them around, dragged the evener and finally hooked to the stone boat and hauled the water to the barn – we took a couple laps around the field on our way to the barn. They stood really well while being hooked as well as when loading the water buckets, didn’t
spook at the stone boat breaking the ¼” ice crust all the way as we went across the field; what made me smile the most was Tank was staying aligned with Arnie, I felt like he was taking pace control from light pressure of the bit. I have to say I am very pleased and feel like, with work, these 2 will be nice ponies to work with.

Arnie and Tank tied to the barn waiting for me to unload the water buckets.

White Christmas

2011-12-27T04:49:00.001-08:00

It almost didn’t happen but we got snow at the last minute and enjoyed a white Christmas this year. The day before Xmas it snowed just enough so I needed to plow. This was a very travel intensive Christmas for us this year. We all were going to different families on Saturday Sunday or Monday but Today (Tuesday) we will all finally be home and be able to celebrate together. Here is a picture of as close to a one horse open sleigh as we can get at this time.

Paulette and Mack taking tank out for a ride in the snow.

The Team

2011-12-13T04:50:00.000-08:00

It was a great weekend. We picked Tank up at Wayne's house on Friday night and both he (Tank) and Arnie were busy all weekend. Paulette, Ben and Emma all rode Tank on Saturday and Paulette had a great trail ride with Arnie on Sunday. Arnie is still not sure about all the scary things in the world and he and I are working on getting him used to them. He took me on a little high speed ride Saturday morning when he got scared trying to pass another horse, a dog and a couple trucks when we were driving in the fore cart down our road. he calmed down and we went right back and drove the road again so he could see that it was no big deal. Arnie is not yet 4 years old and very green, he needs time to learn to trust us and realize the world is not so scary. Tank is another story. tank is 9 years old and has been used to pull a wagon for years. Sunday, after adjusting the harness out to as big as it gets, I worked Tank gradually from ground driving to dragging his trace chains to pulling a tire then to the fore cart finally hooking the snow machine trailer to the cart, putting a couple kids on the trailer and bouncing down the back skidder road. He was Great!! i was so pleased that he took all this in stride. I really wanted to have a horse that I would be able to get right to work with and it looks like Tank is going to be perfect for that.

Next step to Sustainability

2011-12-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

One of our biggest farm goals is to run it sustainably. The other big goal is to actually turn a profit. This summer Paulette and I started wondering if using horses, instead of a tractor, could decrease our overhead and get us closer to our goal. Yes I know horses are not cheap and you have to feed them even when you are not using them but they run on something we grow here (grass) and they produce something we need very much (fertilizer) also they will not be "parked" to often so it is not like we will be feeding them for nothing.
Fuel for engines is not getting any cheaper neither are the parts needed to keep them going. We have one tractor and if it continues to get used the way it has been we will be needing to buy a replacement in a couple years. After some research we decided to make this next step

Besides using the horses for work we wanted to be able to ride them as well. Paulette really missed trail riding. While her horse Libby was a really nice dressage horse she was not the kind of horse that could be just ridden around for pleasure. Paulette decided to sell Libby, and buy a working hose that she could just jump on and go for a ride without the worries of riding a high energy warm-blood. After looking at different horses and talking to people about what we want to do we decided on getting a couple Haflingers. Haflingers are a very hardy draft pony. They are a versatile breed that the Amish use regularly and are know to be very easy keepers. during our research we got to know a teamster named Wayne that uses Haflingers and he agreed to sell us a 3 year old named Arnie. Our goal was to have a team but we were having a real hard time finding what we were looking for in our area, Paulette found a few nice looking teams but they were 5 or 6 hundred miles a way.

Arnie came home last weekend and Paulette and I have been working with him almost every day since. It is almost comical as one of use is getting done working with Arnie the other one is standing there with their "stuff" too get the pony and do their thing.

Yesterday Wayne called to tell us a friend of his had a nice pony for sale and he could hook it next to one of his horses if we wanted to come over and try him. We agreed and this morning we went to Wayne's to check it out. Short story is we now have the second pony for our team. Tank is the horse on the right.

Paulette has been enjoying working with Arnie and will be seeing how tank rides very soon. This winter I will be using them to pull logs up from the woods for firewood and in the spring we plan on using them for everything from spreading manure, planting a very large market garden, road grading and a lot of trail riding

Some more pictures

2011-11-08T03:31:00.001-08:00

Here are some pictures I have taken over the last few months.

We got about 1 1/2 feet of snow from that storm last month.

Ben and Emma made a pumpkin snow man, I guess it was there way of protesting the snow :-)

Here is Morgan holding the flock on a big patch of clover. Sheep can bloat from eating to much clover at a time so I would have Morgan hold the flock in the clover for an hour or so every day until it was well grazed down. Morgan is a great dog. I tell Paulette I would not have sheep if I had to do it without the help of dogs like Morgan, Midge and Dante.

Here is the Lucy's drive road crew. I fenced the flock along the road I maintain to clear back the brush. When they were done I could get in there and cut out the big trunks. This area is completely
open now.

The ewes would get pretty high on the bushes and the little lambs would wiggle inside and get the leaves the ewes could not. Sorry I don't have an after shot, I will try and post one.

This is a very old orchard that never really used pesticides. I have gotten permission to graze the sheep there. It is a really pretty spot with the apple trees and the sheep laying under them eating drops.

I am making the first passes with the brush mower to clear a fence line.

The flock chewed a lot of the old growth down and then I mowed the entire pasture (about 10 acres). The grass came back really nice and I have the ewes back onto it right now (nov 8th).

BT hiding from the sun on a hot July day

Another shot of the sheep in the orchard.

Midge sure likes to have her belly scratched!

I hope everyone is doing well and are all set for winter. I still have plenty of work to do before the snow flies...well flies again. We are really enjoying life up here, this years garden was pretty much a success, the flock is healthy and we will be breeding around 20 ewes this winter so if all goes well we should have around 30 lambs racing around this spring.

This Summer

2011-08-17T03:47:00.000-07:00

This has been a busy summer for us. We have been working on lots of projects from working on the house to putting up hay to moving sheep (a lot of moving sheep). So we finally got the permanent certificate of occupancy for the house. There are still things to be done but it is really looking like a home. Paulette has done a great job painting the trim, doors and windows. We still love the solar and I am in the process of wiring a propane stand by generator into the system that will start automatically if the batteries get below a certain voltage. I almost forgot: Paulette’s father, he is a carpenter, built us a deck off the back of the house. It is about 10 x 14 and it has become one of our favorite places to sit at the end of the day. Paulette has also done great job keeping us well fed. Her garden has been doing really well. The feezer is getting full and we are eating a LOT of fresh veggies.

We put up all the hay for the winter, we had an opportunity to get it all done in one week and just went for it. We bought around 300 bales of first cut reed canary grass and 300 bales of second cut reed canary grass. The second cut is really nice and green and should do a nice job keeping the ewes fed though the winter. We finally got “real” rain for the first time in a long time. We were VERY dry up on the hill and the grass stopped growing. I tried adjusting the size of the paddocks and moving the seep faster though them but the forage just was not there. I ended moving the flock to an abandoned field down the road to get them by until we got some rain. It was kind of un-nerving having them out of site. We could hear Dante and Midge at night barking every once in a while. I strip grazed them though fairly quickly so they could eat what they wanted but didn’t force them, I am thinking about getting weight on the market lambs as well as starting to think about getting the ewes back in shape before winter. It may seem like winter is a long way off but for us it will come very fast. Getting weight on the sheep before the winter is a big deal; skinny sheep have fewer lambs and will never gain the weight back over the winter. I heard a saying from a shepherd “a fat sheep going into the winter is like money in the bank”.

I have the sheep trampling in a cover crop of rye, oats and turnips. I am only planting an acre to try it out but this should extend the grazing season for the ewes which will save me money. The big expense for raising sheep is the hay costs over the winter. If I can do things to decrees the time I have to feed hay I can increase the profit I make on lamb sales.

It is really working!

2011-05-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

last year I wrote about how I was going to confining the sheep to small paddocks and move them every day or two. Before I moved them I would though out some grass and clover seed so they would trample it in seed they browsed off the leaves, weeds and what little there was for native grasses. The reasoning I had for doing this was to put the nutrients on the ground were the trampled in seed could use it. The sheep would also do a better job cleaning up the brush since they were under pressure from the other sheep to get what they could before someone else did, so they were less picky. Here are a couple pictures of how it is going.
This picture was taken 11-10-2009, it was just after the loggers left. here is the post I wrote about it in http://uponthehillfarm.blogspot.com/2010/02/foster-farm-finds-home.html

This picture was taken last June. you can see the Timothy coming up, it looks promising! At this point the sheep had been over it 2 times and I had thrown out seed once in the spring. This is a spot that stays moist longer than most of the clear-cut so the grass is doing the best here compared to the entire clear-cut. below is the link to the post. http://uponthehillfarm.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html

This was yesterday May 26th 2011. The Timothy and red clover are so thick I am concerned about letting the sheep have free choice of it since I worry they could bloat. As I said this is a wetter area so the grass is coming in best here but the rest of the clearing is definitely growing grass.

I am moving the sheep almost every day now. Lambing is almost done and now we will be busy keeping good grass in front of the ewes and lambs. This year we weighed all the lambs when they were born so we will be able to track the pounds gained per day for each lamb which will help us choose which animals to keep for breeding and which go to market. I am not going to say anything that will jinx the situation but so far so good :-)

Some pictures

2011-05-25T05:09:00.001-07:00

I am having some trouble with my camera. Emma has been taking some pictures around the farm, here is what Emma finds interesting.

I finally was able to get going on planting the pastures. It has been SO wet and dark I have not been able to get grass seed down.

A couple pictures of the inside of the house. Paulette has been doing such a nice job painting. It really is looking nice inside. Always more to do but she keeps working on it and little by little it is getting done and the result is really beautiful.

A picture of "Flop" and her single. We don't really give the sheep names but this one is missing her ear tag and she has one ear that hangs low so when the lamb was put in the records I put "Flop" and it it stuck. Her lamb seems to have larger than average ears, maybe that is why Flop has an ear that flops.

Some twins playing on a pile of rock, these two must be less than a day old since they gain fat cover within a day or two after being born.

This is the remains of an old hunters cabin that is out in the woods behind the farm.

Busy with Spring

2011-05-11T06:44:00.000-07:00

I am just chiming in quickly to say I am still here :-). We have all been really busy trying to get the finishing touches on the house, getting the pastures planted and lambing has started. Everyone is doing great. I will get some picture of the house and lambs up soon.

WE ARE IN!!

2011-04-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

I just received a call from the code enforcement officer and we were given a temporary certificate of Occupancy (CO). A Temporary CO simply allows one to live in the house while they finish the odds and ends. Can't wait to spend the first night in our new house!! Very exciting.

Mack's Latest Accomplishment

2011-04-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

Many of you know my son Mackenzie. He has always been a very responsible young man. I value his help to me here on the farm, I can give him a task and he just does it. If I ask for him to haul brush or clean a fence line he doesn't whine about it he just gets to work. He wanted some money when he was visiting his grandparents down in Groton long point CT so he started a bike repair business and earned enough to by himself a $300 Ipod touch (this was when he was 12yo). Now at 14 he is planning on what it will take to get his learners permit so he can get his drivers license. Here on the farm he has his own P/U and he uses it to help with his chores. I got an email yesterday from his school announcing he was awarded Citizen of the month. below is the message got.... GOOD JOB BUDDY!!... MMS Citizens of the Month8th Grade: Mack Foster is new to MMS this year. He has been such a positive addition and brought great talent to the 8th grade. He has volunteered to help with our many projects and activities like the Fall Breakfast and the International Cafe. While doing this, he exhibited a sense of responsibility and self-direction. In many instances, Mack has exhibited caring and kindness toward his fellow students. Though quiet, he has a sense of humor. We nominate Mack with great pleasure!Mack Foster is a great selection and a member of the 8th grade band - He plays trombone and has volunteered to play percussion on one selection for the Spring Band concert and also plays bass guitar in the morning Jazz Lab Band. Kind, considerate and respectful come to mind as labels for Mack.

I think this is actually true.

2011-04-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

It is April 2nd and the snow is still here. I am beginning to think that the 10" of snow we got yesterday was actually not an April fools joke! Just when the road was starting to dry up and the ground was getting exposed. I actually thought winter was over . Bad news is the code enforcement officer couldn't come up to inspect because of the weather so we are not in the house yet. She is going to stop by Monday and take care of it then. Meanwhile Paulette and I had the day off because of the weather so we were able to get a jump on the weak ends projects. Today the Sun is very bright and the it sounds like it is raining from all the melt off from the roof. It is not all bad, I don't have to worry about checking the dogs for ticks :-).

Kitchen Cabinets

2011-03-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

This weekend we focused on getting the kitchen in. I was able to install most of the cabinets and make the counter top. I still need to do some more sanding as well as put several coats of tung oil on the top but the hard part of making it is done.

Paulette milk painted and polyurethaned the upstairs bathroom floor. It looks really nice. We kind of think we would have liked to have painted more of the floors, oh well to late now.

The first cabinets to go in.

Gluing the pine boards for the counter top.

The plywood back board for the pine counter top drilled and ready to go. I glue and screw the plywood back board to the pine boards to give it strength

After a lot of measuring and re-measuring I made the final cuts to the sink opening. I ended up using a skill saw to make the final cuts so it was a fairly tense few minutes until I had it done -- the potential to mess a days work up was pretty great i.e. "measure twice cut once, not "I cut it three times and it's still to short" :-).

I used cut nails and glue to hold the edging on.

A couple late night pictures of the finished counter top. I am going to make a back splash and glue it to the wall. I will finish installing the rest of the cabinets during the week and Paulette will put the doors back on.

Making progress

2011-03-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of the work we have been doing. If all goes well we should be moving in by April 1st, no joke :-).

Here is the wide pine boards ready to be distressed.

Emma working on making the floor look 200 years old, kids are good at this. She is using a mace like tool that has pieces of metal tied to the stick so marks can be put in the floor before finishing it. The final product looks like a floor with many years of use on it.

Here is part way though the staining process. Paulette came up with a layered staining method that really looks nice when it is done. Here she is putting the second coat of stain on the floor. She will wipe this off and let it dry for a couple days before coating it with 2 coats of satin polyurethane.

Here is a bad picture of one of the finished floors. I will take some more pictures that do them justice.

Some of the kitchen cabinets Paulette is in the process of milk painting.

The window in the entryway. This is the first window we have finished and it came out great!! We are very happy with how all the pieces have come together and the look is just what we were going for.

Mud season is here really bad. The road is a mess and the weather has not been making it much better. It may be spring in some places of the country but we are still enjoying winter up here. Yes that was sarcasm.

The ewes are getting big and are due to start lambing in the beginning of May. I will need to give shots and shear them in about 3 weeks.

Ice storm!!

2011-03-09T03:29:00.000-08:00

We had a little ice storm up here Monday and Tuesday. It was very isolated to the hills so we could drive 2 minutes down the road (~200’ elevation) and there was no ice. Lots of branches and some trees came down. But the Foster farm never lost power!!! Good old P&B light and power.

The house is coming along great. We should have hot water today (3-9-11) and all three bathrooms should be done by the end of the week. Paulette and I picked up the new kitchen cabinets at the cabinet makers yesterday and this weekend Paulette will start milk painting them. They are going to fit in very nice with the “old house”. I finished installing all the floors on the second floor and have started in the first; Paulette has been painting and finishing floors. It won’t be long now. The goal is to move in by the end of the month.

update

2011-02-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures we have taken over the last couple weeks.

The view out our master bath window!! (very cool)

The boards came for the wide board flooring, I am using rough sawn lumber planed on three sides and face nailing it with cut nails. This is exactly the same way it had been done in the 17 and 18 hundreds. Here it is being stacked inside to let it acclimate to the temperature before laying it down and nailing it.

This is about half the load, all total we got enough to do 2000sq ft (the entire house). I am going to use some for wainscoting in the dinning room and entryway as well.

P&B light and power is on-line!!!!! We made the final connections to the system and we now have power. The first picture is of the inverter which is the piece of equipment that converts the 48VDC power stored in the batteries to 24oVAC power that we use to run the house. The second picture is of the battery bank. The third picture is the screen on the charge controller. The charge controller is the device that regulates the dc voltage coming in from the PV panels. This screen shot is telling me that at that time we were charging at 10.7 amps at 56volts or 600 watts (remember ohms law, volt x amps = watts). The screen is also telling me that at that time we have stored 1700 watts of power in the batteries.

Quick Update

2011-01-12T04:21:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures just to keep everyone up to date.

The house has some siding on it and if all goes well the insulation will be up by the weekend.

Mack and his friends up on the hill playing with Dante

Meet Midge. She is a sweet girl that I got from my new friend Justin, A sheep farmer from Pennsylvania. We traded Mable the Llama for Midge.

She and Dante are new best buds :-)

My favorite ewe lamb. She is so well built. I can't wait so see what her mom produces this year. This is that surprise lamb born last March.

back to work!!

power

2010-12-19T15:03:00.000-08:00

My good friend Jeff helping me install the panels.

I have started to install the photovoltaics. The array is mounted on a 6" well casing that was installed by the the well drillers when they were here drilling the well. The 6" pipe is sunk deep into the granite ledge so I am sure it is not going to budge. On top of the pipe is the array rack and panels. I was really impressed with the ruggedness of the rack. It was made by DP&W Power-fab. All the welds were clean and even the paint job was nice. I have no questions about the sturdiness of it. The panels are Evergreen ES-A 210 panels. I installed 8 panels for a total of 1680 watts. That means for every hour the sun hits the panels 1680 watts of electricity are stored in the batteries. To understand watts just think of a light bulb. A 100 watt lights bulb uses 100 watts in one hour. if you use it for 5 hours then you have consumed 500 watts. So in Mainer we have about 5 hours of peak sunlight, that means for five hours we will be generating 1680 watts. the rest of the time the efficiency is reduced. That means on a sunny day we will be storing over 8400 watts in the batteries.

Progress is steady, but slow, at this point. I am afraid the weather has not been cooperating. At this point the plummers and the electrician are doing their thing, I am installing the solar and the builder is starting to install the siding. If all goes well we should be able to have the insulating and some heat by new years.

Pictures

2010-11-22T05:35:00.001-08:00

Here are some pictures of the progress. We have been SO SO busy but things are going well and if everything goes as it should we could be moving into the house mid January.

Here is the house as you come into the land from the drive. The piles of dirt will be gone and it will all be pasture.

Here is the barn stained. Paulette and I were able to get it done in about 2 days. The roof is obviously not finished but I used "zip system" sheathing so it is actually weather tight. The sheets are coated with fiberglass and the black lines are the tape that seals the whole thing together. I also have a couple of doors to finish, all in time :-)

View of the side yard, "look no stumps"

Front of the barn with the JD sitting inside waiting for the first snow. You can see the water buckets outside, I am still hauling water to the animals BUT we have a well!!!. Good news is we have over 3 gallons a minute of nice clean water, The bad news is they had to drill to 700' to get it.

View of house and barn. The rocks and dirt piles will be gone and entire area around the house and barn will be pasture.

I took this picture with my phone. The rainbow is real. I love this place!

Another picture of the sideyard.

Close up of the house.

Progress

2010-09-23T04:49:00.000-07:00

Things are moving along here. I have posted some pictures to show the progress

I keep posting pictures of the clear-cut and sheep and I imagine to most people they all must look the same. My point is to show some of the progress of the change in vegetation from woodland to grass/clover and the mechanism of its change, i.e. target grazing. I realize the progress is slow and may not appear that apparent. In this post I have a picture of what looks like sticks and fairly bare ground. The purpose of this picture is to show how effective the sheep and goats are at removing vegetation. The second picture is showing a before shot of that same area. This before and after occurred in 2 days. The idea is to take the animals and put them in a very small area for a short time (about 60’x60’ per 20 head for 1 1/2 to 2 days). In this short time they will not over graze the good “desirable” grasses and clover they will however remove a fairly uniform amount of vegetation. This vegetation is then deposited on the ground (yes poop!) where the desirable plants can access it instead of it being tied up in the growth of brush. Grasses and clovers have evolved to be grazed and to grow back afterwards, brush and forbs have not. Little by little the woody plants are being stunted and the grasses and clovers are getting an advantage. Another point that is important is distributing the seed of the desirable grasses and clovers. Before the sheep are moved to another spot clover and timothy seed is broadcast by hand onto the ground. As the sheep work around the small area there little hooves are pushing the seed into the ground. You can imagine that combination of removing vegetative cover, applying manure and working the seed into the ground makes for a very good environment for the establishment of a good grass/clover field.

We have broken ground on the house!!

2010-09-07T11:19:00.000-07:00

The cellar hole was dug this weekend and the foundation is being poured this week into next (it does not look like much of a hole since the house is slightly on a hill so we can have a daylight basement). It has been a long process to get ready to build this house, and we still have a long way to go, however it is good to finally be moving ahead. I am working hard to get a roof on the barn so we can get some hay in before winter. The target grazing / pasture project is going well, I am learning a lot about target grazing and I am now able to move and fence the sheep to have a dramatic impact on the unwanted vegetation. I am getting patches of clover and Timothy popping up in different places where I have moved the sheep through. I think in another season the clear-cut will look very different than it does this year. The animals are doing well but I think Paulette's horses are tired of bing in a little paddock for so long.

Took the day off and look what it led to.

2010-09-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

We went to a friend’s house in New Hampshire for a Labor day “red neck” party and look what it led to. We were supposed to dress up like a red neck. This group was able to play the part very well. What does it mean when you realize the your red neck costume is just some clean work clothes?

New Addition

2010-08-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple pictures of the new ram. There is a debate over what to name him; he didn’t come with a name. Mack wants it to be Gigantor, Paulette wants it to be Mojo and I think it should be Business Time. I bought him along with a few ewe lambs from Wayne Fields. He has some really nice animals. I was varying happy I made the 2 hour trip. I will put him with the ewes December 1st.

The Barn is still coming along and I am hopping to have the siding up and the roof on by the end of the month. I am not complaining but things go much slower than I would like since I am just a “one man band”. Paulette helps out when she can but she has her hands full behind the scenes keeping everything going. Besides if she ever did manage to get a full sheet of 5/8 plywood up the wind would take her away for sure.

The sheep are doing a nice job chewing down the brush. It is impressive to see the areas they started on and how much grass has filled in. I have come to realize that what I am doing with the sheep, using them to establish a pasture, actually has a name it is called target grazing. I have been doing some reading on it and some people have actually started business using sheep and goats to graze off brush and invasive plants. I have found quite a few resources on it and have made some changes of my method for the better.

Steady progress

2010-07-21T05:41:00.001-07:00

It has been crazy here since the move. All the animals are comfortable and we are happy to be in the rental house so close to them but life has not let up. We have been busy getting all the bank and contractor “stuff” done so we can get building the new house. I have been siding the barn, moving sheep and taking care of the other animals. There always seems to be more to do that I could ever get done (Mack has been in CT with his mother for the month of July so I am a one man band, he is a great worker and I miss his help). I figure as long as I keep my work focused I will continually make forward progress. The grass is really growing well.
I have been moving the sheep around forcing them to eat the stump re-growth. I have been confining them to small areas and broadcasting more seed before putting them on a new spot. There little feet do a great job working the seed into the ground and I have been surprised at how fast the new grass and clover starts to grow.
One really great thing that has happened is I was able to get a guard dog for the sheep. The coyotes around here are pretty active. You can hear them talking to each other right on our property. I really lucked out when one of my friends (Jocelyn B) found an ad for a free livestock guard dog (LGD). I spent bunch of time learning about them and what makes a good LGD. The short story is he is working out wonderfully. I am so relieved to have him out there with the sheep.
I have posted a bunch of pictures, just a sampling of what is going on. If all goes well we should be breaking ground for the new house in a few weeks.

We did it! Foster farm is now a farm!!!!

2010-06-28T04:54:00.000-07:00

This weekend we moved everything from Paulette’s place up onto the hill, sheep, horse, dogs, equipment, and hay, all of it. The house we are renting is perfect. It is hard to believe we are actually there. It is perfect, I can work until it is time to eat and just ride the 4 wheeler to the house, ~500 yards, and after dinner am able to pick at some chore for an hour or two and still have time for a beer and some TV with Paulette before bed. She is happy that we are so close to the animals as well. I will get some pictures but I just wanted to post a note saying we had made the move.

Holy (….) it is really happening!!!!

2010-06-15T03:41:00.001-07:00

Well The barn is in the process of being built, Paulette’s house has sold, and we need to be out of there by the end of the month! It has been crazy to say the least. Paulette and I have been working hard to get all the pieces in a row so that we can start building the house as soon as possible and get all our belongings and loved ones packed up and ready to move by the end of the month. Our plan is to start building by mid July and be in the house by Christmas. In 2 weeks I need to move all the animals, sheep, horses and dogs, up onto the hill. Most likely the barn will be done and a well drilled by the end of July so I will only have to deal with hauling water for a little while. The animals will be in hoop shelters for the month – not a big issue since we have been using them in the pastures for a couple years now.
Here is the really great news: we are renting the house at the end of the driveway to the land. We will be about 1000’ from the animals. The people that own the house live in Florida and they are excited to have someone watch the house while they are gone. This is great news since 1. We found a great new neighbor 2. The house is in Poland so Mack can get on and off the bus, 3. It is close to the land 4. It is solar electric so we are going to be able to learn all about living with solar electricity before designing our system.
Oh and the grass is starting to come in patches. I think it is going work but I think I will have to use the animals to graze down the scrub and step in new seed before it is going to really take off.

Sorry for not posting in a while

2010-05-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

I know I have not posted in a while. Spring time sure brings on a lot of work. Lately, at the end of the day, I have been more focused on getting to bed than getting on line.
Everyone is doing well. The horses are finally out on pasture full time and the lambs are all thriving. Here is a picture of that lamb that was born in March. She is doing really well. I am very impressed with her growth. She is a singe so she is getting all the milk she wants, it is said that 60% of the lambs growth is based on the amount of milk they get. I imagine this is giving her a big boost. I have decided to keep her and put her with the ewes this fall. She is a healthy ewe lamb and I do not have a lot of ewes to breed that are of the type I want to keep. Normally I would only keep ewe lambs that are twins but since my numbers are down and this lamb was born by herself at 20ºF (tough) I am making an exception. One of the criteria I am working toward is a 100% independent lambing flock. I have said it before, I want tough animals that require minimal input from me and that thrive in the environment I give them. This little girl is just that, tough, she is from a ewe that is doing a great job taking care of her, and by the looks of her she is going to mature at least as large as her mother.
The grass is growing. The weather has been pretty dry so it has been growing very slow. Most of the growth looks to be native species, not the timothy and clover I planted. I was afraid this would happen. Since I did not till the soil the seed bank --native seeds sitting in the soil waiting for sunlight – were ready to sprout and are doing much better than the seed I broadcasted. The seed I spread is not staying moist enough to sprout. All is not lost but I will have to try something different to get some better grasses growing.
I started digging a well for the animals, “man” those old timers most have either been worn out or muscled like steel. I am about ¼ of the way down and then I will have to start stoning up the sides. I am not sure how to set the stones so I will have to do some research.
I guess that is it for now. I really love this spot. It is so nice up there. I can not wait until we start building a house up there.

the clearing is seeded

2010-05-03T03:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I seeded and fertilized the clear-cut. I can’t wait until the grass comes in so I can stop calling it a clear-cut and start calling it a pasture. It is supposed to rain in the next couple days which will work out perfectly. The rain will set the seed down onto the soil and start breaking down the fertilizer/lime so that it is accessible to the seedlings. The tractor broke down 3 times while trying to get it done. I sure need that old piece of junk and I sure am getting tired of spending as much time working on it as using it. I really wonder if the money I put into parts to keep it going would be as much as taking out a loan to get a good used one. Probably not but spending 3 hours in the truck running for parts, and then performing the repairs makes me wonder if I am not being stubborn about making this old machine work. I really do not want a farm that needs equipment to operate. My goal is to manage the pastures with the animals not mowers and fertilizer spreaders. I imagine in the end it will be a compromise of both.
Mack has been a big help. He hauled fertilized bags with his pickup – for those that didn’t know I got Mack an old Mazda 4x4 to use while he is working. He has been working hard hauling brush and getting the open area ready to seed. I am continually impressed with how well he just gets to work and doesn’t complain. I can give him a job and he just does it. I swear if I didn’t tell him “we are done” he would just keep working. I make sure I tell him to take plenty of breaks and I always make sure he has water and food. He is definitely a big help. He did have a little drivers ED experience the other day, notice the shadow UNDER the right froint tire.

Well I suppose that is it for now. The barn foundation is poured and we are backfilling it so the slab can be poured, a few lambs have come since the last post as well.

The Before Picture

2010-04-13T03:35:00.000-07:00

I suppose with every endeavor their is a before. Well here is the before picture for the Foster farm. This past Sunday Mack and I went for a ride in our dentist’s airplane -- the dentist that Mack and I see has his pilot’s license and offered to fly us over the land. It was really great to see it from above. The world looks so much different from up there. From the air the clearing looks more like a gravel pit than a field but that is going to change soon. I will be getting about 5000lbs of lime and fertilizer delivered in the next couple weeks. After that goes on I will seed the whole thing. If all goes well I will be seeing the new growth by the beginning of June.

Spring has sprung and I am busy!!!

2010-04-06T03:32:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to post some pictures to keep everyone up to date. The grass is just starting to grow and the pace of everything else is picking up. I have been working on the road and a friend of mine is digging the footings for the barn with his excavator. The concrete work is supposed to begin next week. I sheered the sheep this past Sunday. It is a lot of work but I am definitely getting better at it. I am not sure what I am going to do when the head count is over fifty. It is one of those things that depend so much on technique, I heard a sheerer say “it gets easy after the first one thousand”. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

2010-03-22T06:11:00.001-07:00

They are sheep again!!!!
The pasture at Paulette’s is finally dry enough to put the sheep out. They have been in the barn all winter. I have vowed that this is the last year I am going to confine them to a barn. The more winters I raise sheep the more I realize that sheep belong outside. They just don’t seam to do well crammed into one spot for months at a time. The benefits for keeping them outside all winter far out weigh the slight benefit feeding them in a barn provides. On pasture the manure can be dispersed over the entire area since I can feed them in different areas throughout the winter. Sheep standing in their own waste all winter can cause big problems with their feet but on pasture they are moved around so that doesn’t happen. Disease is spread by an infected animal being in close proximity to another. Keeping the sheep inside is creating a great environment for the spread of disease. If one animal has some bug it is most likely going to be passed on to more of the flock. If they are dispersed outside on the pasture there sheep to sheep contact is greatly decreased and the air they breathe is not stale like in the barn.
I am sure people think they need shelter, and they do, but not like we would think. When I say I want the sheep outside all winter I am not trying something new. This is commonplace in many pasture based operations. I am not trying to reinvent the wheel but follow the example of some successful sheep operations. I am doing this for the better of the sheep not my convenience. Sheep have a great fleece that is so efficient when it snows they get a buildup of the white stuff on their backs, it doesn’t melt. All the sheep need is some place to get out of the wind. It could be as simple as a stone wall or being able to get into a wooded area. On the hill the wind does get blowing pretty good in the winter but there are a lot of places for them to take cover and the sheep I am breeding are what are considered a hill breed, they are bred to be tough and thrive in that type of environment.
Well winter is hopefully over and next year is a ways off. A lot has to happen before that hill will support a flock of sheep. This week (03-22-2010) an excavator is being mover up there to start digging the foundation for the barn. I have been working at cleaning up the ground so that May 1st, a safe date to plant grass by, I can spread some seed and begin the process of turning that “bomb site” into a pasture.

2010-03-09T06:12:00.000-08:00

Better sooner than never.

Sorry I have not posted anything for a while. Like everyone I have been busy trying to get a head start on spring. I have been working at getting all the pieces for building the new barn together before the ground is ready for digging. I have been thinking that I should post something but didn’t think that anyone would be interested in the progress of my building permit or the meeting I had with the concrete “guy”. This morning I found something that I thought would interest people.

Right now my sheep are at Paulette’s place and when I went out to feed the sheep and horses I was greeted by this little girl. The surprise was that this is about 2 months early. I put the ram in with the ewes in the beginning of December. Sheep have an approximately 5 month gestation so I expect lambs around the begging of May, right about the same time the grass really starts to take off. I had bought a couple ewes this fall and put them in with the rest of the girls. After a couple cycles with the ram one of the new ewes did not get marked (the ram has a marking harness on his chest to mark the ewes he has bred. I called the farm where they were from and told them I got a dud. He said we will make things right in the spring. About a month ago Paulette noticed that the ewe looked like she was bagging up (udder developing). I gave the farmer a call and his response was “well a ram jumped the fence a while ago but it was only for a few minutes”. I guess that was all he needed. I thought that was impressive until I heard another shepherds story. She saw the ram jump the gate. It took her about 20 minutes to go back to the house and get the dog. In that 20 minutes she got 12 lambs!!!

I guess spring is finally coming. The snow is leaving fast and the wet ground is starting to dry up in places and their are new lambs.

Back to work

2010-02-22T03:40:00.001-08:00

It is starting to look like spring is coming. The snow is almost gone and the sun has been warm. I am sure we will still get a snow storm or two before it is all over but in my head winter is over and I need to get back to work.
On Friday I had a few hours to go up on the hill and do some burning. There is so much debris from the cutting and the more of it I get cleared up the better the grass will take. As the snow leaves the ground exposed I am reminded of what a disaster area it looks like. I know it will eventually be a beautiful pasture I just need to keep my vision and move ahead. Sometimes the forward progress is slower than I would like but I guess as long as it is always forward I will achieve my goal. I actually won’t be planting the seed until May so I have some time but I know that, with all the other things I have to do, I will be still seem like not enough time. I told myself I will broadcast the seed and fertilized by early May even if all the branches and debris is picked up. The longer I wait to get grass growing the longer it will be until I can get animals up on the hill.

Foster Farm finds a home.

2010-02-19T03:47:00.002-08:00

For the last 5 or 6 years I have been raising market lambs. I discovered very quickly that a pasture based system was what I wanted to use to raise them. The problem was that I didn't really own any pasture. I had a little grass but not nearly enough to raise the 8 to 10 lambs that I consumed every year so I was left having to borrow pasture. For the past few years my sheep have been transient. I can not say that this experience has been a waste. I have learned a lot about sheep management in a grass based system. Some pastures have been better than others – all have been greatly appreciated. Last year I even switched to pasture lambing where the lambs were born outside on pasture in late spring. It was a great success and this winter the sheep will be kept on pasture thought the winter. I have learned enough though all this that I have decide to have a go at raising lambs on a bigger scale than just for my own freezer.
Last August I finally bought the farm, well kind of. I bought the land that will be the farm. It is a 43 acre woodlot on the top of a big hill in Poland, Maine. This is a beautiful piece of land that used to be part of a farm back in the 1800s. It is lined with bold stone walls, has a view of the surrounding mountain tops and it even has a spring, did I mention this land is in Poland Maine i.e. Poland Spring? The one problem was that it is a woodlot, not a pasture.
11 acres of the land has since been clear-cut and it is sitting frozen solid waiting for spring when it will be scratched up, fertilized and seeded. I have decided to not stump the area but to let the stumps rot instead. This is an idea that my friend and successful dairy farmer thinks is not the correct way to move ahead. This guy definitely knows his stuff, he is still in business so he is doing something right, but the bottom line is I just do not have the money. I would love to have a nice tillable field that I could plant a nice clover timothy mix and not have to spend years battling the native species of brush but I have to build a barn, drill a well and put up fences and my dollar is only going to go so far.
I know that a woodlot can be turned into a pasture without being stumped because the settlers did not have excavators. I will have to use the same tools that shaped the plains of the Midwest, the grazers. I have done a lot of research (a phrase that congers a queer look from my dairy farmer friend) and in short if I fertilize and lime the soil to what grasses like, plant varieties of grasses and legumes that grow quickly in the climate I am in, and use the sheep to “mow” the area, the pasture will develop. The big negative to this is it will take a few years before it is a productive pasture, 20 before all the stumps are gone if they are left alone. Last month I bought the lime, fertilizer and seed that I will use in the spring to start this process.
The time to plant grass is months away, I am having a hard time being patient. Lambs aren’t due until May, It seems like I have been planning forever and spring is still so far away.

First blog.

2010-02-19T03:47:00.001-08:00

I have wanted to have a place where friends and family could go and see what I/we are up to. It seems like something is always going on and very often it is something that I think friends would be interested in. The posts will most likely be about the Foster farm but we are always busy so don't be surprised to read about something else.
Note: You will discover very quickly that I was not an English major.