30 degrees, snow flurries
Now that we are past the turkey butchering it's time to start getting the farm tucked in for the winter. I've got all the chicken field pens moved out of the field and just to the east of where the snow fence goes up. I am hoping the snowfence will help to keep the pens from blowing away.
For the most part the livestock that we carry over the winter will just hang out and wait for the return of pasture. The cows are in the cowshed eating hay, although I do have 10 beef heifers I need to go pick up on Saturday from Elmira, NY. I got my new to me cattle trailer inspected last week. I need to decide if I have enough hay to carry the 8 or so dairy steers I have through the winter, or if I should sell them. There are 7 pigs going to the butcher in January. After that the boar, who is living in the lower barn now, can join the 3 gilts I am saving to breed. They are living in the "calf barn" which is a barn I built a few years back to raise dairy replacement heifers in. It has 6 foot high side walls and a greenhouse plastic roof. It is the nicest building to be in in the wintertime. It warms up in the daytime with the greenhouse effect, and there is plenty of light. I also have my 60 or 70 laying hens in there.
Today is the kind of day that makes you think about firewood, snowplows and snowfence, all of which are going to need some work. Last year I put up a high tensile electric fence on the line where I put up the snowfence, so putting that up is just a matter of unrolling the snowfence and tying it to the electric fence. Our lane that runs from the house to the barn is about 400 feet long and runs from north to south. To the west is an open field, with the closest windbreak about 40 miles away, so the snow continuously drifts the lane shut. We have had 3 foot drifts resulting from 1 inch of snow falling on earlier crusted over snow. Even with the snowfence I end up leaving the plow on the truck all winter and plowing down and back from the barn. The funny thing is, there is a ridge about 30 feet east of the lane which is almost always windswept bare, so I guess the lane is in the wrong spot, or needs to be built up about 2 feet.
This is all I have time for now,
Pete
Now that we are past the turkey butchering it's time to start getting the farm tucked in for the winter. I've got all the chicken field pens moved out of the field and just to the east of where the snow fence goes up. I am hoping the snowfence will help to keep the pens from blowing away.
For the most part the livestock that we carry over the winter will just hang out and wait for the return of pasture. The cows are in the cowshed eating hay, although I do have 10 beef heifers I need to go pick up on Saturday from Elmira, NY. I got my new to me cattle trailer inspected last week. I need to decide if I have enough hay to carry the 8 or so dairy steers I have through the winter, or if I should sell them. There are 7 pigs going to the butcher in January. After that the boar, who is living in the lower barn now, can join the 3 gilts I am saving to breed. They are living in the "calf barn" which is a barn I built a few years back to raise dairy replacement heifers in. It has 6 foot high side walls and a greenhouse plastic roof. It is the nicest building to be in in the wintertime. It warms up in the daytime with the greenhouse effect, and there is plenty of light. I also have my 60 or 70 laying hens in there.
Today is the kind of day that makes you think about firewood, snowplows and snowfence, all of which are going to need some work. Last year I put up a high tensile electric fence on the line where I put up the snowfence, so putting that up is just a matter of unrolling the snowfence and tying it to the electric fence. Our lane that runs from the house to the barn is about 400 feet long and runs from north to south. To the west is an open field, with the closest windbreak about 40 miles away, so the snow continuously drifts the lane shut. We have had 3 foot drifts resulting from 1 inch of snow falling on earlier crusted over snow. Even with the snowfence I end up leaving the plow on the truck all winter and plowing down and back from the barn. The funny thing is, there is a ridge about 30 feet east of the lane which is almost always windswept bare, so I guess the lane is in the wrong spot, or needs to be built up about 2 feet.
This is all I have time for now,
Pete
posted by Peter comly at 11:25 AM
1 Comments:
. . . but who's that scary guy in the photo?
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