Pitchforking the Hay Provides a Good Morning Workout

I fed the cows by pitchfork this morning. It was about 20 degrees fahrenheit, but by the time I had made several trips from the barn carrying a load of hay on my upraised pitchfork, I was shedding layers of clothing because I was working up a sweat. It certainly is more work to make and use loose hay, the primative way, or semi-primative way like I make it, but it gives you some exercise.

I go back and forth on to bale or not to bale hay. My John Deere 24T let me down this year, and was in the shop for enough time to make my hay season a failure. I have it fixed now, and it is waiting in the barn for next summer. I think I will keep it and give it another try, because it is a lot easier and more convenient to have small square bales around here, but for a small herd you could do it loose and your equipment costs would be minimal.

I made hay this year with a Farmall M, an old Woods 5 foot pull behind rotary mower, a New Holland Rollabar rake, my 5x8 utility trailer and a pitchfork. It wasn't as back breaking as you might expect. Now if you are thinking that sounds like a lot of equipment and it must cost a bit, you would be surprised how inexpensive some of this old working-condition farm equipment is on Craigslist and at local auctions.

For that matter, you can also get an old square baler like my 24 T for a pretty reasonable price, but while the other equipment seems to always come through the baler sometimes doesn't. I remember making hay on my grandfather's farm as a kid, and we spent a lot of time working on his Oliver baler.

Most farmers used to have a back-up baler, but for the small-herd or part-time farmer that is a big expense, and it also takes up a lot of space to store them. You need to keep your balers in a nice dry shed or in the barn, safe from the elements or you are just about guaranteed to have it fail. The rake and the rotary cutter can sit outside for decades and still work fine if you grease them up as needed.

Well I am going to end it here. I had a nice morning feeding the cows, and when I was done I enjoyed my coffee and eggs (fresh from the chickens) a bit more after my loose hay workout.

A Reason to Quit Feeding Grain to Our Cattle

We recently had some problems with our John Deere 24T baler and a field full of hay. We didn't get to make the hay, so I had to buy some to make up for the loss. In order to pay for the hay, in-farm, I decided that I was just going to quit feeding the cattle their sweet feed ration that I give them each day. I had toyed with the idea in the past, because many folks will say that the cattle are ruminants and just don't need any grain, but it's hard to break with tradition.

So basically this hay loss gave me the impetus to try something that I was unwilling to try in the past. The cows were not real happy with me for about a week and gave me a mooing more than usual, but they seem fine and have pretty much given up on coercing a feeding from me. 

I did add a selenium/trace minerals salt block to the field in addition to the cheaper - just trace minerals block that was already out there. This is because we have two cows who are nursing their calves. There are minerals in their feed which is a mix of corn, soy, oats, molasses and mineral, so I wanted to compensate for them with the new salt block.

I have been gving out at bit of the feed that I have left to them, about half of their usual scoop a-piece ration, but not every day. I am just using it as a come when I call type of thing, because if I call, they come, which is a nice thing. So I probably will keep some on hand for that purpose.

I know that grass-fed operations have strict guidelines for what their cattle can eat because some of their customers will not eat beef that has been fed grain. My philosopy on this has been that my cattle are mostly grass and hay fed, and that a little bit of grain is good for them. This was the way my grandfather fed his cattle. I think that this is a lot different from feed lots or farmers who bring their cattle in off of the grass and feed them nothing but large quantities of corn and/or other grains etc... to fatten them up for market. It think that is where the grain-feeding may cause some issues.

I also need to think about winter and their grain ration. Some of the farmers I know say that the cattle need a bit of grain each day in the winter. This I will need to research. However, if this works out, I will be saving a lot of money, because feed is my single-most input cost with the cattle. The grass grows whether I want it to or not. Prior to getting the cattle I had to mow the fields on a regular basis, so if managed properly the cows can be a good deal if all they are eating is grass, and hopefully hay that I produce once the baler gets out of the shop.

The Black Raspberry Patch

The black raspberries are ripening. This is our favorite crop we grow on our farm. I grew up picking these in the wild with my grandmother from the time I was big enough to carry a bowl. She was a dedicated picker and pie maker. We picked a lot of black raspberries together, and they have always been my favorite berry. When my kids were young I would take them with me picking in the old patches that my grandmother and I picked, and when we finally bought our farm, I planted our own patches.

At first the plants didn't produce much, but now we have so many black raspberries in patches around the farm, that we really struggle to pick them all. We are still finishing up last years frozen berries in pie form, and this year's crop is coming in strong.

We also have about 30 blueberry bushes that are starting to produce a good bit now, but the birds compete with us for the blueberries more than the raspberries. The birds do eat some black raspberries, but there are so many of them that we still have more than we need.

The thing I like about the black raspberry patches is that every member of our family just goes out to the gardens whenever they like, and they eat as much as they like for about 3 weeks, and in spite of all of the eating, we still froze about 100 quarts for pies last summer.

Now the 100 quarts also includes the red raspberries that come in right as the black raspberries are finished, and they last for about another three weeks, but we don't have as many of the red raspberries as the black ones.

And finally when the red and black raspberries are finished we have some patches of wild blackberries that we pick. These are the only ones that can survive the deer around here without a fence around them. Their thorns are terrible, and for some reason the deer do not eat the new growth on the blackberries like they do with the raspberries.

We planted the beginnings of a new patch today in an area we fenced in for gardening this spring. The berries around here generally will replace themselves each year, and spread into as big an area as you will give them. They require no pesticides or fertilizers, at least in our area of Pennsylvania, and the only maintenence on them is pruning. The black raspberries need a winter and a summer pruning, and the reds require only the winter pruning.

Well I am going to close for now. Hopefully I will be picking some berries tomorrow. I am going to put a few links here to my pruning videos from my YouTube channel so you can see some of our patches if you like.
Jim

Summertime Pruning of Black Raspberries

Winter Pruning of Black Raspberries

The Baler Failed

I was looking for a picture for this post, and I just liked this one that one of my children took of a young hen next to our John Deere 24T baler as we were greasing it up for what we expected to be a great haul of hay. That didn't happen, and I am trying to be philosophical about it. It's 1 AM and the pouring rain just stopped. This means that my hay that was prime and all raked into nice windrows is now a reclamation project, and my baler is going to the shop.

We could not get one side of the twine to tie. This was puzzling because the baler worked fine last season, and it was kept inside the barn all winter. My son Michael, the "farm mechanic" changed the twine and tried multiple rethreadings with no success. He then found the problem. A small piece of the knotter was broken off - end of story at 5 PM on a Saturday night in Western Pennsylvania.

We took a bit of the hay off using pitchforks and our small trailer, just to get the broken bales off of the field, and we were hoping that the 51 % chance of rain wouldn't come to fruition, but it rained for about an hour near midnight.

I have considered getting rid of the baler and using the Gene Logsdon approach, or a modified version of his "Cheapskate Haystacks" - rakes are much more reliable.

Last year was the first year we had baled hay in a long time. I had baled it about 15 years ago, and then just gave it up along with the cows when the kids were young. Since we've brought back the cows, about four years ago, we have bought hay, but we also have just cut it with the tractor and mower and brought some in by hand with pitchforks and the trailer. This would get us about half of our hay needs for 8 cows, and if done right it's kind of a fun family project.

Last year we bought this old baler and a New Holland rake for very reasonable prices and made some hay for the first time in a long while, but right now I kind of wish I had cut about 1/3 of the field and we had brought it in by hand.

However, this stuff happens when you are making hay. The baler is the lynch-pin to the operation. I spent many hours of my youth helping my grandfather to fix his Oliver baler with a field full of hay raked and ready. We got rained on some back then, too. And come to think of it that Oliver baler and his New Holland before the Oliver were decades newer than my old John Deere is now.

The "lost" hay

Upsizing the Garden

I have deciced to give this blog a restart, and kind of use it as a farm/gardening journal, which will make it more useful for myself and hopefully for others. This post is going to be a past couple of days post, and then I am going to try to do this much more often. I don't know if it will be a daily, but I am going to try to write down what I am doing on our farm as it happens. I have gotten more involved with YouTube and it has kind of taken the place of my blogs; I also have a history blog, but I want to write some more, and I think this is the best venue for me to do so.

We expanded our garden with a 25 by 100 foot addition of fenced area to an existing garden back behind the house. We did this because we have added so many black and red raspberries and rhubarb, and strawberries, and asparagus - in other words perennials over the years that we don't have enough space for our annuals - tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers etc.... . It will take us a while to fill this new area in, and I will mow it and till it and plant it when I/We get a chance. My two youngest children are interested in gardening, and they spurred me on to upsize the garden.

So far the kids have planted red onions, beets, radishes, dill and parsley on this newly tilled area, which is actually a lot longer and wider than it looks in the photo.

I am going to sign out now because I am hoping to make some hay, but the weather predictions are now - emphasis on now saying there is a chance of rain tonight instead of three days from now as they were saying yesterday. I cut a field of hay on Thursday and Friday, and now I am going to rake it to see if I can perhaps speed along its drying. I'm pretty sure my New Holland 55 rake will do its job, but I hope my John Deere 24 T baler is going to cooperate.

Cargo Gear Sled Review

My son was using one of our Pelican Gear sleds this morning to haul hay to the cows. We have had two of these sleds for about ten years. We bought them at Dunham's sporting goods store near Johnstown Pennsylvania. I think they were about $50 a piece back then. Probably a bit more today, but I'm pretty sure they still make them, an I know they have been very useful on the farm in the winter.

I initially bought them to haul logs out of the wood when I was cutting deadfall wood in the winter time. This makes me think that I may ahve had them for a bit more than 10 years, because when we first moved out to the mountains I did not know how much snow we would get, and how much wood I would burn, so I used to load my chainsaw, axe, sledge, wedges, gas, oil, etcectera into this sled and just pull it into the woods looking for wood.

There were a lot of old oak trees killed by gypsy moths in the seventies still standing or down on the ground, and I would cut them down and up and haul the wood out to the house, and burn it when it was still frozen. It would hiss for a while when I put it onto the red coals in the wood burner.

I haven't gathered wood like that for a long time. However, as you can see the sleds still get used a lot. For a while I would stuff three Brute garbage cans into the one designated as the garbage sled and pull it up our quarter mile drive to the curb, and then ride down in the sled through the field to the house. I still occasionally do this if my cart that I hook up to the Suburban can't make it up the driveway due to deep snow.

The other sled was designated as the wood sled, and it was used in the woods to gather logs and kindling which we stored in the barn.

Nowadays, one sled is known as the wood sled. It is primarily loaded up with logs that are stored in the barn and taken down to the porch to use in the woodburner in the family room. We pretty much heat the whole house with wood. We supplement it a bit with baseboard electric heaters. The other sled is used for hay and feed for the cows, as seen in the video.

These sleds have been well worth the money. They are durable and can haul a good load of wood. The ropes are strong and have never broken or pulled through after years of use.

Wood Ashes in the Winter Garden

I have a good supply of wood ashes from heating our home with a woodburner so I try to find ways to use them around the farm. One way to use some wood ash is in the garden.

First, don't just indiscriminately use them as they will harm some acid-loving plants like raspberries and blueberries, potatoes, tomatoes etc... . However they are helpful for some plants, especially those that like a neutral or slightly basic soil.

Also, I only use wood ashes. No garbage or coal or whatever. My wood is what my son cuts and splits on our property, so I know what it is and where it comes from.

The way that I distribute the ashes is I just pull our ash pan out of the wood burner, and let it cool down somewhere for a while. Then I walk out to the row or spot that I want the ashes, and I just tip it as I walk along to make a fairly even coating of ash. Sometimes I dump a pan or several pans depending on what plant I am taking care of. Make sure you know which way the wind blows when doing this.

I always add wood ashes to the spot in the garden in which I am going to plant my sweet peas. I coat the ground with the ashes after I till it and then just let them soak in for a few weeks or days depending on the weather. I used to have trouble with peas because our soil is naturally acidic, but an Amish friend of mine told me about using wood ashes years ago, and since then I've always had nice crops of peas if the rabbits don't get them.

I put ashes around my rhubarb plants each winter or spring. I just spread them around the crowns, where you can see the plant coming up. I never cover the plant. I spread it around fairly thickly. I also add some cow manure later on to the rhubarb.

Asparagus beds also benefit from the ashes. I spread them around the beds like I do with the peas, not real thickly. I also put some cow manure down for the asparagus.

I put some ashes between the rows in my strawberries. I don't put them on top of the plants. I also put leaves between the rows on top of the ashes after the ashes have washed into the soil a bit. I usually don't completely cover the strawberries with the leaves, but I really heap the leaves up around them.

The last place I use them is around the black walnut tree. I just dump out the ash pans around the tree within the drip line of the branches. I don't pay much attention to amount with the walnut trees because they are large and can take a lot of the ashes. I don't coat the whole ground around them, but I probably put 5 to 10 pans of ash around a large tree throughout the course of the winter.

Well I am going to end here. I have to provide taxi service for one of my children in a few minutes. I'm trying to restart this blog, and this is the first post in a while.  I'm pretty busy so I expect the posts are going to be a bit shorter, but hopefully they will still be worth reading.
Jim