power

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

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

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!!

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.

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

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

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!!!!

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!!!!

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

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

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

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!!!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.