Rotational Grazing

For years, I researched intensive rotational grazing systems and their benefits for improving pasture. Rotational grazing stimulates plant growth, improves soil through natural fertilizer and reduces parasite loads. We tried to implement this system on our farm for several years with limited success.

Our challenges:

  • Fencing. Electric net fences are necessary for rotational grazing if pastures are not cross-fenced (expensive!). They create grazing pens and are moved frequently to rotate animals from pen to pen. Net fence needs to be hot or animals will reach through and become entangled, causing fence failure and potentially death. Dry hard ground and sheep’s natural wool insulation created challenges keeping net fences hot enough to deter sheep during the dry season, so breaches were common.
  • Infrastructure. Sheep require water and shade in every section of the pasture, but we didn’t have the resources to install water lines and build multiple shelters.
  • Poor forage. Our property was commercially farmed for decades prior to being seeded for hay in about 2009. The hay grass did not get well established and the soils are very friable – turning to dust with very little disturbance. Intensive grazing, we have found, actually does more damage than good with our current soil and vegetation conditions.
  • Drought. Rainfall ceases from July – September in normal years, but with extended drought conditions prevailing for the past decade, even less rainfall occurs in the growing season.

I adjusted my thinking and realized light rotational grazing instead of intensive might work. Fewer animals per pasture and less grazing time in each pen would provide the benefits of rotational grazing while preserving our fragile land. I decided to test it on a non-productive hayfield this season.

I upgraded to an 8 joule fence charger and installed it in a semi-permanent location. It is housed in a waterproof tote with a 7 watt RV solar panel and 12 volt lawnmower battery. I have ground rods, but have not installed them and have used the metal square wire fence as a ground.

For shade, I installed 3 t-posts in each of the pasture segments and use a 12 x 15’- 90% shade cloth tied to the fence and then to the t-posts. When I move sheep, I simply untie the cloth and move it to the next location. The little black sheep love their shade.

Our 250 gallon plastic utility carboy with a hose attachment provides water using gravity flow. We place it on a pallet in an uphill location where it can serve two sections of pasture and is moved with the tractor as needed.

The flock of 12 ewes are moved every 6 days to break the parasite cycle and preserve the forage and soils. So far, this system has worked very well for us.

New Year, New You – NOPE!

As a rule, I do not make personal NY resolutions, but I do set annual farm goals. This year we have some big ones!

Revamp the Coop

We built the chicken coop in 2016 and although we built it to last, weather has taken its toll. With almost ten years under our belt, our original design needs some updating. Plans for improvement include: replacing worn out OSB with metal siding, finish the interior walls and insulate with waste wool, build new nest boxes that function better, move the automatic door opener outside and make it weatherproof, re-attach existing and add new perches, replace chicken wire separation wall with OSB to at least chest height, same thing for the interior doors.

Move the garden

The garden was installed in 2016 also. We had intended to build a house between the barn and the garden, so it is quite far away from our current living space. We have since decided not to build a full-sized house and just live in the barn apartment. Having a bit more experience with weather patterns and soil concerns, our existing garden isn’t very functional due to its slope and clay soils. It is too far from the house to be convenient for maintenance or harvest, and it tends to be very exposed to the prevailing winds (50mph is common). Our plan includes a fenced area in a more protected area closer to our barn and build raised beds for easier access.

Enrichment for the sheep

Very early on, we sourced 9 tractor tires for free from a local farm with the intent to use them for raised beds. Given the potential for toxins leaching from the tires into our food, we chose not to use them for that purpose. Instead, we plan to install them in the sheep pastures for climbing, scratching and rubbing purposes. We won’t use all of them but we plan to bury 3 or 4 of them halfway oriented vertically, leaving an opening that sheep can fit through. We will also add scratching rolls for the sheep. We have learned that itchy sheep are VERY hard on fences. To provide them with the relief they need and save our fences, we are giving them an alternative.

Begin shop construction

It in unlikely we can complete the entire project this year, but we want to get a good start on it. I’d love to have my farm store/studio open to the public by the end of October. If you know me, you know I LOVE Halloween. I would be so excited to have a Halloween themed grand opening!

Continue rejuvenating our pastures/hay fields

This one is kind of perpetual. Regenerative farming doesn’t have an end point. We burned two areas in the fall which we will be frost-seeding for improved pasture grass. The sheep won’t have access to them for a whole year, so we probably will be feeding a lot more hay. In the end, productive pastures will reduce our annual feed bill, it is just a matter of getting there and we needed to really buckle down and start somewhere. We also chose one of our least productive hay fields to try some cover cropping. We are planting triticale (wheat x barley) and oats that will help improve the soil and can be harvested for hay. In the fall we will plant back with a good pasture grass mix. We fortunately we able to find an old school, pull behind manure spreader last year and will be employing that along with our homegrown fertilizer to improve all the pastures and hay fields.

What do you think? I believe this will keep us busy! Follow the blog for updates to these projects as we work on them.

Expectation, anticipation and letting go

This is a picture of our house from about 5 ½ years ago. We had a pretty strong start on building it, but as the farm grew and needed more attention, the house languished. Building occurred in spurts when we had either time or money to push ahead. It has been a long haul. Neither one of us are builders by trade, so we have been learning construction by trial and error, mostly error. There are only two of us, both middle-aged and broken from working or playing too hard. We aren’t the strong young 20 year olds we once were, or 30 or 40 for that matter.

Through the years of building, I have set expectations in my head for completion dates. By Christmas of 2021, fall of 2022, maybe May of 2023, July of 2024, surely by December 2024…..

As each time mark came and went, my frustration grew. I want to LIVE in the beautiful home I designed. I see it in my head daily, most of the finishes I purchased years ago and have waited a long time to see installed.

Don’t get me wrong, for two middle-aged, broken people with full-time jobs and a working farm, we have come a long way. But the anticipation of being in a beautiful comfortable home along with the time stamp expectations began to ruin the experience for me. I am ready to be done building so we can get out and have adventures!

I found myself thinking a lot about death right around the time of Samhain, which also marks the anniversary of losing Angus. I am not afraid to die, and I am not planning to anytime soon. My thoughts centered on living before death. Our life has been on hold for nearly seven years while every extra moment or scrap of physical energy goes to some building task. The last time we did anything adventurous together we went to Iceland in 2018.

Then it occurred to me….maybe building the house IS the adventure for this space and time. Maybe the more I fret about getting done and when it will be done so that we can start living – the longer it takes. Could this be the lesson from the Universe? For around 30 years, I have consulted the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes. The underlying themes within the lessons are patience, acceptance, and non-action in the face of difficulty. Applying that concept to my frustration over the house construction – I realized setting time expectations creates stress. It doesn’t need to.

I shifted my thoughts to letting go of expectations and anticipation, accepting that the house will be completed when it is meant to be – enjoying the ride instead of trying to rush through it…..

I don’t need to wait until it is done to live. Building it really is an integral part of our life now, and the life we are creating for the future. So I need to just relax and take it as it comes. Enjoy the projects we work on together. Maybe taking some time here and there to do something unrelated to building and not mentally beating myself up for all the other things we SHOULD have been doing. That’s my strategy going forward. Life is way to short to be on hold for anything.

What a long, strange trip it’s been

A long strange trip really is the only way to describe our fence journey. To quote the Big Lebowski – ‘lots of ins, lots of outs, lots of what-have-yous’.

We did A LOT of research about fencing before we decided on what kind would be appropriate for our sheep. The horses were pretty easy – we had lots of experience keeping horses contained (until Calypso the escape artist arrived). Sheep – no idea! After much research and conversations with experienced shepherds, we decided on New Zealand predator-proof fencing. Sounds great, right? Basically this fencing consists of many (7-9) strands of electrified smooth wire spaced at particular distances. We painstakingly built our fence during the hottest, driest time of year to prepare for the arrival of our starter flock.

In addition to fencing, we installed water lines and an adorable barn that could be split into two sections to house the ewes separate from the ram and wether. We felt so confident that we were ready for our flock!

The day had finally arrived! We drove to Whidbey Island, picked up our adorable lambs, and after a long day of driving we got home. We decided to leave the sheep in the horse trailer for the night since it was dark when we got home. As it turns out that was a very smart decision.

The next morning, eager to begin our sheep journey, we gleefully opened the horse trailer and let the lambs out into their pasture. A few things we hadn’t accounted for occurred in very quick succession. The sheep panicked, the extremely dry ground wasn’t conducting electricity, and they sheep went through our carefully built fence like it wasn’t even there. Four little black lambs loose on literally thousands of acres of farmland and forest. No fence to contain them and they RAN. Into the horse pasture they went, our lead mare tried to stomp them, they ran for their lives, I ran to put myself between them and her, chaos literally erupted.

Several hours of chasing them later, they were exhausted and overheated as were we. I decided to phone a friend and called in some backup in the form our neighbor shepherd. He arrived with some net fence and we managed to corral and convince the exhausted little lambs back into the horse trailer. I was devastated. What to do?

It started with a wheel

Once the mares and foals were settled in and happy, we started to focus on what our farm would eventually look like. We attended a course hosted by the University of Idaho extension and Rural Roots called ‘Starting a sustainable farm in Idaho’. This was a series of six Saturday sessions where instructors guided us through developing a whole farm plan.

The whole farm plan was a comprehensive description of all the parts of the farm. The plan is meant to be a living document updated regularly and we have done that. Through this process, farmers draw up a site plan with infrastructure, set goals, and decide what products the farm will grow/raise. There are financial assessments, asset and need descriptions, and long, short and medium term goals.

For our main product, we chose sheep. There were several reasons for this choice. With sheep, you get multiple products from a single animal – wool, meat, breeding stock, dairy, horn. But the main reason we chose sheep was because of a spinning wheel.

I have been a knitter for many years. My husband bought me a spinning wheel for my birthday in 2015 or 2016. A Schacht ladybug which is the wheel that I still use. I really wanted to have my own fiber from my own sheep to spin into wool and then turn into clothes. From sheep to sweaters so to speak.

Being a lover of rare breeds and black animals, I began to research sheep breeds. I found Black Welsh Mountain sheep and fell in love. More than that – they were a good fit for our homestead. Small, sturdy, hardy, easy lambers, good mothers, multi-purpose sheep. They are also elegant, kind, smart, silly, and endearing.

I found a lovely flock with lambs for sale in Washington state and bought my starter flock of two ewes, a ram and a wether. Now we needed to build a sheep barn!

In the beginning…..

There was just land.

We purchased bare ground in October 2015. We had 9 horses, two of them were pregnant mares due in April.

There was no shelter, no water, no fences. But we had to move because our farm in Southeastern Idaho sold. We quickly put up enough fence to hold the horses over the winter, had a well drilled, stacked our hay under a tarp (more on that later) and called it good. Three trips with the horse trailer and all the horses were relocated to their new home in North Idaho. We bought a small house in town to live in for the short term.

Miraculously, it was warm enough (and the ground was solid enough) in February to start building a shelter for the girls to foal in. Just in time. Calypso arrived on April 3 and Bijou on April 28. And so it began. This little shelter is now part of our big barn which houses our home and future farm store.

We’re Back!

After losing my entire website earlier this year and not having time to fix it – we are finally back online. Stay tuned for the rebuild of previous blog posts and new ones!