Beyond Organic Pasture Raised Chickens

Our New Lake

On the farm, we plan out our regenerative grazing well ahead of time to ensure that the soil, plants, and livestock all benefit from the sybiotic relationships that exist from temporary peridic grazing between all three.Sometimes though the weather has other plans and we have to adapt. Haha case in point about two weeks ago we got just under 9 inches of rain in 36 hours. Now on our farm a majority of the rain still just soaked into the ground through healthy root channels and pore spaces from years of planned regenerative grazing. For farms for miles around us though most of that water quickly ran off and into creeks and rivers. This caused a creek on the back of our farm to flood well outside of its banks. When I went down that morning to check on the sheep I was quite surprised to see that we had a new lake on the farm!You see we have a 60 acre area of bottom ground (low elevation ground with deep soil near to a creek or river). When I got there about 25 acres was underwater!!! This was just part of it but you wan see the sheep's watering trough is underwater - haha they certainly weren't thirsty!Thankfully as the water rose the sheep just slowly meandered to the north to higher ground.  They do not like water at all and will not willingly ford even a shallow stream so I was quite glad they had not gotten cut off on one of the now islands of land that had just the day before been the higher areas of the low bottom fields!Later that afternoon, Judah and Ephraim went to look at our new lake and reported that they could not see the watering tank. I thought that was kind of strange but figured they just missed seeing it as it hadn't rained at all that day. As I pondered it for a few more hours though I got to thinking that they are actually very reliable little scouts and they know what it looks like. On a hunch I went back down there only to discover that upriver flooding had continued to pour more water into our bottom and we now had a 55 acre lake!!!!Everything in that video and pictures  that had been still land was now underwater and the sheep were at the very top of the field. A gate was promptly opened and they were let out of the low bottom fields completely onto the much drier upland fields. Thankfully everything was fine and stunningly the next day all the water had receded and our lake was gone. A new layer of top soil had been deposited on our thickly vegetated bottom fields as well which will be nice for long term fertility but in the short term made the forage quite muddy so even though we had originally planned for the sheep to graze those bottom fields for about two weeks (split into several 3-4 day subdivisions) they in fact only spent two days there. Well on the farm sometimes you just have to adapt and that's just what we did. We made a new grazing plan, skipped the rest of the bottoms for a few weeks until some rain could wash the dirt off of the grass and things could dry up a bit. Haha basically adapt and improvise. Thankfully the bottom does not flood very often (this is the first time in about 8 years) but when it does we can get a very large lake overnight + ducks :)I hope things aren't too wet your way.

Cutting Against The Grain

A Template For Family Christmas Tree Cutting Success

A Tale of A Farm Christmas Not Too Long Ago"We grabbed all four boys (yep we had another one :) ..... and with a hard 1 hour deadline before we had to be somewhere else we set out.  Aided by the knowledge that we needed to find a tree and fast, I set off in the truck for an area of the farm I had never looked for a tree in before....Well finding a tree underneath the water hydrant in the field was admittedly very unlikely but we had to make an emergency stop after Levi (who was sitting on my lap) deposited a fermented version of the milk he had slurped over the last 3 hours or so down my hands.....Having washed off Levi's contribution to the adventure, we continued on and thankfully found a tree rather swiftly afterwards. The discussion about the tree in question went something like this - Mariah, Judah and Ephraim in rapid conversation about how the tree was or was not too small and about how it probably wasn't any smaller than previous trees.....Me - pointing out this tree was the largest one we had ever considered and might not fit through the doorway. After several minutes of discussion, I took initiative and began cutting down the tree. The noise of the chainsaw drowning out the sobs of "Daddy that tree's too small!" You will note that the top of the tree is not visible in the picture.....Guessing it might touch our tall ceiling in the house, I actually cut about two feet off of the bottom of the tree - to the sounds of even more tears, wailing, and great consternation. Haha, that last cut was also important when it came to getting it on the truck - it was almost too large for the truck bed and I could barely flip it onto the back - for some reason there was a lack of volunteers to help lift "the smallest tree ever onto the back." The highly concerned members of the family had calmed down some as we drove back to the house and thankfully the tree did fit through the front door - just barely :)And it didn't quite touch the ceiling! Afterwards the boy in question who was crying because the tree was too small came to me and apologized of his own accord..... as he strolled away he commented " that's the biggest tree we have ever had!"He was right. It was probably 2-3x bigger than the previous biggest tree! Next year I'm thinking something knee high. There was a little tree that would fit the bill over by the hydrant......"