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

Summertime Pruning of Black Raspberries

We have been picking Black Raspberries for a few days now, and it is also time to do the summertime pruning on the new canes. This is much simpler than pruning the black raspberries in the winter, but that's not too tricky either.

For my tools I use Corona bypass pruners. The smaller ones you can operate with one hand, the other ones, the mini loppers, require two hands. Either pruner works fine, the smaller ones make the job faster, but the larger ones have more reach, and they are easier on your hands in the long run. Also, the Coronas are relatively inexpensive, and they work well.

The general rule for summer pruning of black raspberries is to use the old adage - waist high on the Fourth of July. You just simply top all of the new canes, the ones that do not have berries on them, at the height of your belt buckle. Obviously this is not an exact measurement, but if you are of average height or close to it, this should work for you. If you would rather measure it, anything close to three feet is fine.

Most of our black raspberry patches grow to prodigious heights, close to eight feet, if left to their own devices. We have a some spots that are the perfect environment for them. We also have a few spots where they don't get so big, but most of the patches grow like crazy. You can grow them in rows if you cut the new shoots in the spring and keep after them, but I prefer to let the rows turn into patches and pick my way through them. This is probably because I grew up picking wild black raspberries with my Grandmother on their farm near Pittsburgh. When I've waded into my biggest patch I feel like I'm back there picking with her again.

I usually prune my black raspberries near the end of June, because ours grow so much quicker than most. I just stared pruning today, Remember that you are only pruning the new canes in the summer. Leave anything with berries on it alone. Right now we are beginning to pick and I have just begun to prune. I wear thick gloves and top one cane at a time and then throw the cane aside out of the patch. You do not want to just snip and let them fall especially when the berries are on the other canes in the patch.

On my larger patches I will sometimes let the center of the patch get taller than the edges. You can do this by just topping them a bit higher each time you move closer to the center, kind of evenly graduating them from the lowest ones at the sides of the patch to the highest ones in the center. Occasionally I will just leave the canes in the middle of the patch untopped.

People say to remove the canes and burn them. I usually don't do this. I tend to just throw them in the paths along the patch and eventually I mow them with a mulching mower. Occasionally I do collect them and burn them, depending on how ambitious I feel. This year, I believe they are getting mowed. Some people are concerned that you may create insect or disease problems if you leave the canes near the patch, but I have never had any problems just throwing and mowing them.

So to sum this up, in the Summertime, near the beginning of July top all of the new canes at about 3 feet high. The old waist high on the Fourth of July adage is an easy way to remember this, though I would modify it to say about waist high near the beginning of July. You have to watch your patch and see how they are progressing. Once you top the new canes they will begin to send out side shoots near the top of the cane,  and this is where next year's berries will grow. If you miss some canes, it's not the end of the world. They still will produce berries, but if they get too big they tend to lean over unless you provide some means of support, which I do not want to bother with.

In the late winter you will have to prune your raspberries again, but this is not just topping them. Check out the second half of my "Berry Pruning Time" post on this blog for detailed instructions on the winter pruning of black raspberries. Or you can also watch this video from my YouTube channel.

Black raspberries are probably our favorite crop we grow. We love them fresh and in pies. We freeze enough to have them all winter. Another nice feature of them is that they are easy to grow organically with very little problems. We have never sprayed or fertilized our Black Raspberries. The only thing I do with them is prune them and pick them.

Scottish Highland Bull Proof Water Trough

Regular water troughs do not work for our Scottish Highland bull. He drank out of the Rubbermaid 100 gallon trough when he was a calf, though he always liked to push at it. Now that he is a full grown bull, and a daddy he has had enough of flexible troughs.

He split our trough by continually pushing up against it with his head and horns. We went down to Tractor Supply and asked them if there was any warranty on the Rubbermaid troughs, and they said bring it in and they would replace it, which was really nice of them.

So we got a brand new 100 gallon trough and we thought that maybe the other one was just defective, and this one would be able to take the abuse that our bull was going to give. We were mistaken. Within a week he had caused two cracks in the rim of the trough. We immediately took it out and consigned it to collecting rainwater from the roof of our garden shed. We had seen the same splits before on the old trough. However, with the old one we left it in a bit longer, and the cracks ended up going down to near the bottom of the trough, and that was the end of it.

After this we tried one of the smaller Rubbermaid troughs, I think it might have been about 50 gallons. We did not put it up against any posts or boards like the 100 gallon tank. We thought that the bull wouldn't bother with it if it didn't resist him. He did not crack this one, but he just continually flipped it over and up in the air with his horns. He pushed it against the electric fence, and I thought that he was going to break the wire with it. It acted as an insulator and kept the fence from shocking him. So that trough did not work.

We decided that our only option was to get an old cast iron tub and see what happens. So we found one on craigslist and hooked up the trailer and went on a journey. We bought an ancient tub that required four adults to load onto the trailer for $25 and brought it home.

We were kind of at a loss on how to plug it up to use for the cows. We thought about buying a solid rubber stopper and pounding it into the drain, but we were afraid the cows would somehow work it loose and end up eating it or choking on it.

What we ended up doing to plug the tub was to use PVC pipe and end caps. We cut an inch and a half pipe about four inches long. Then we glued an end cap to it using Oatey All Purpose Cement. It comes in a metal can with a brush attached inside on the lid. It is for PVC and CPVC pipes. We then slid the uncapped end up till the cap was flush with the bottom of the tub and then put the pipe cement on the pipe and slid another cap on top. We pushed it till it was about flush, but there was some wiggle room. Finally we caulked all around the top of the pipe between it and the top cap and all around the drain, about a quarter inch around the pipe. This was in the trough and would be underwater. We let it cure for a day or two.

We then framed in the tubs, we have two now, with wood posts and Poplar fence boards. This way we figured the Dun (what we call our bull) would realize that this tub wasn't going to give, and we hoped he would give up on bending and breaking it. This worked. We have used the first tub for over a year with no problems from the Dun and company. They do like to scratch on it, but it isn't going to break. The picture below is our first cast iron trough.

We just put a new one in today in another part of the field. We bought two tubs from a friend up the road, and we set up the stopper the same way. We had to put two pieces of 4x4 lumber underneath this one because it had smaller legs than the other one. We didn't want the bottom of the PVC cap to rest on the ground, because it might crack the caulking, and we would lose water. This tub is pink and we are hoping the bull won't mind. The cows haven't come down for a drink yet.

We just use five gallon buckets or the hose to fill these troughs. My son actually prefers the buckets and he is the one who waters the cattle. If your tub has a crack in the enamel just put silicone over the crack, even if it will be below the water level, and it will be fine. This prevents more of the enamel from coming off. This is just for cracked enamel/porcelain. We don't have any cracks in the cast iron, so we haven't had to figure out what to do about that. I wouldn't buy one with a crack in the cast iron unless I had to, though I imagine it could be fixed one way or another.

To clean it out every once in a while I just use an old plastic ice cream tub, Blue Bunny, to bail out the water when it gets low. I then use some rags to wipe it out, adding a bit of fresh water to clean it out. I then bail it out again, and wipe it dry. This is pretty quick and easy to do. I just wait till the cows drink it down pretty low.

These tubs seem to be pretty abundant and inexpensive around here in Western Pennsylvania. I bought 3 for $50, and I got another at an auction for $20, and that one was a nice claw foot tub with perfectly intact porcelain. Our cows will be moving up in the world when we put in that trough. I think we are going to put it up near the road so all the neighbors can see it.

Rhubarb a Unique Flavor From Your Garden

I had never tasted rhubarb till we moved to our farm and I discovered something that I thought might be rhubarb growing under some concord grape vines. I had heard of it and seen it, but I literally had never tasted it or even contemplated tasting it. I suspect most people are in the same boat with regard to rhubarb. Well after some research, which included calling the farm's previous owners, we decided that we did have rhubarb and tried some.

On first try we ate it in a strawberry rhubarb pie, which we really did not like that much, so we tried the straight rhubarb pie. This was a success. It was also a taste that I had never imagined existed. It is unique. Right now there is about a third of a rhubarb pie in the fridge, and I really want to go get some, but I already had my piece and do not want to be a rhubarb hog, because the whole family loves rhubarb in one form or another.

We have three types of rhubarb growing in our gardens, Valentine, Victoria, and our own "Farm Found" variety that no one really knows from where it originated. The Valentine is a solid dark red color, the Victoria is generally green but has some red in it, and this varies from plant to plant. I have one Victoria plant that is almost all red. Our Farm Found variety is mostly all red, but the red is not as dark as that of the Valentine.

The Valentine is the sweetest of the three, but still has a bit of tartness to it. The Victoria is the tartest of the three. You need to add some extra sugar if you make a pie with all Victoria, especially if it is mostly green. The Farm Found reminds me of a candy I had as a kid, Sweet Tarts, because it is a bit sweet and a bit tart. If I had to pick just one variety it is the one that I would pick, but since I don't have to pick just one we mix all three into everything we make with rhubarb.

You eat the stalks or stems, they kind of look like celery stems with leaves on the end. The leaves are a bit poisonous. The have a high oxalic acid level in them, but don't get worked up about this, just throw them away. Don't mix them in your compost. I just throw them in a particular spot on the edge of the woods. I believe you would have to eat a whole lot of them to do any harm, and I doubt you would want to eat a whole lot of them.

You can grow rhubarb from seed or from pieces of the roots. The root planting will give you an exact copy of the plant you divided it from, this is probably the best way to get the particular characteristics you are looking for. If you plant seeds you will get varying characteristics in the plants, which is okay. You might get a really great plant, or you might not be so lucky.

If I want to divide a plant to get a new plant, I do it in the spring. I just use a shovel and put it straight down through the plant where I want to divide it, and lift out the part of the root and the dirt. You only need a piece two or three inches wide and the length is as far down as you want to dig. Usually the pieces you get if you order from a nursery are about 2 inches wide on top and about three to four inches long. They call these pieces crowns. You can tell the top by the beginnings of the curled up leaves on it.

We live in Pennsylvania in the Allegheny Mountains, and our growing zone is on the colder end of zone 5. The rhubarb we plant is definitely hardy enough for our climate. It always comes up no matter how cold the winter was, and I do not mulch it for winter. Rhubarb is a perennial which is one of the things I love about it. No planting required each year, and I get to eat it with very little effort.

It grows well in full sun, but it will also do okay in partial sun or filtered sunlight from some light tree cover. I have never had anything bother it except deer. I now keep it all fenced from the deer, though I did have some out in the open for a while before I fenced it in, and they did not bother it that much. There are not insect, fungus, or other problems that I know of. It is a zero spray plant.

It does need fertilized though. I just start putting cow manure around it once I'm done gardening in the fall. I also put some wood ashes around it, just dumping my ash bin along the row with the manure. Before I had cows I just bought 10-10-10 fertilizer and sprinkled it around the plants very early in the spring. It worked fine.

My wife makes delicious pies and cookies with our rhubarb, and she also makes a sauce that is great on breakfast crepes or pancakes. I love crepes made with our own eggs and our own rhubarb sauce. I feel like I'm in a fancy French restaurant when I eat the crepes with rhubarb sauce. It is outstanding. A thing that surprised me about the rhubarb was how our kids loved it even when they were babies. They prefer it to maple syrup on pancakes, and we have awesome real maple syrup.

We harvest ours when they get about the size of a medium stalk of celery. You don't cut them. You just pull the stalk out/away from the plant, and they break off just like celery does from the bunch. The plant will keep growing more for a month or two as long as it has water and it doesn't get extremely hot. We have harvested ours through most of the summer, if it is a cool one. We watch though, because we don't want to over-harvest it and weaken or kill the plant. We also let it grow out once fall approaches to built up energy in the roots for the spring.

It is good to keep it fairly weed free, but a little bit of grass or whatever will not hurt much. I weed mine from time to time. You have to be careful not to pull off the young stalks when you are weeding. They are delicate and will break off easily.

One issue is the seed heads or bolting. Some plants like Victoria are prone to produce seeds. Others like Valentine or our Farm Find usually do not produce seed heads. I have heard to just ignore the seed heads and keep harvesting your stalks, and I have read to immediately cut the seed stalks down to ground level.

I have tried both ways. I think it is best to cut them off unless you want to collect some seeds. You seem to get more stalks to eat and for a longer period of time when you cut off the seed stalks. This year I kept two plants in seed, a Victoria and a Valentine. This was my first Valentine to go to seed. The rest we cut, though a bit late as you can see in the video. However we had some rain after cutting the seed stalks, and the rhubarb are growing like crazy again.

Rhubarb is a great plant to grow. It is easy to grow. It can be grown without any pesticides or fungicides. Once planted it can last for decades, and you just split it to get a new plant whenever you want one. I like having different varieties. I like the mixture of tastes in our rhubarb pies, cookies and sauces. For us it is usually the second "fruit" of spring. We get it about a week or so after we start getting asparagus. We usually are eating rhubarb by about the third week in April. If you have never tried it I think you are in for a pleasant surprise when you do.

How to Grow Your own Asparagus; It's the First "Fruit" of Spring

We did our first picking of asparagus yesterday afternoon. It is nice getting a fresh vegetable before the middle of April up on our mountain in Pennsylvania. It's been a bit cold lately, our local weather forecaster Punxsutawney Phil the Groundhog was right when he said we were getting six more weeks of winter back on Groundhog Day not too far from here in February. However, spring has finally arrived and so has the asparagus. The rhubarb is up too, but it is not quite big enough to start harvesting yet.

Asparagus is becoming my favorite vegetable. You don't have to replant it. It isn't that difficult to weed, because it is coming up before most of the weeds, and a big plus around our area is that the Whitetail deer do not bother it much. They occasionally will step on it, but I have never seen them eating it. Also, I have never had it mowed down like the deer will do to practically everything else if you don't fence it around here.

An asparagus patch or row whichever you prefer to call it is a nice spring project to undertake. And the seed and tree catalog nurseries that I purchase items from are usually going to put some on sale soon.

The first thing in planting your asparagus is to pick a nice sunny spot. It will do okay if it gets a couple of hours of shade a day, but not much more. I have some that I planted near some old jack pines, which I eventually removed, and it did well with a little shade from them, but they were pretty old and sparse and for the time they were shading the asparagus, it was more like filtered sunlight. So I would stick to a full sun area if it is available.

You want to pick an area with some nice deep topsoil if possible. Don't worry if you don't have this option; the asparagus will do well in any soil except heavy clay, and even if you have clay it will work if you fix up the bed properly. The further away from good topsoil either in the clay or sandy direction, the more important it is to dig a bit deeper and create your "own soil" for your asparagus planting. What to mix in to fix up your soil is covered next.

Once you have your spot you are going to dig a trench where you want your asparagus row. If you have great soil, then just dig it about a foot wide and six inches deep for however long you want it. If you start to hit some clay then dig it down about a foot or so and add some rotted cow manure or some good topsoil to the bottom of the trench.

You can also use finished compost, and you can mix a bit of peat moss in with the manure or other materials if you want to. I would not use a whole lot of peat moss though. Add whatever gets you up to the six inch trench needed. This is all you need to do for site preparation. You also want to have enough topsoil ready to fill in the trench once you have placed your asparagus crowns.

If digging a trench sounds like too much work you can also plant it using my "shovel hole" method. Which is explained in my YouTube video. I honestly have given up the trench method for this one. It is a lot easier and I get good results from it. However, if your soil isn't that great and you want to really fix it up before planting, I would use the trench method. Whatever way you choose to plant it, this post gives information that applies to both methods of planting. And you can use my easy maintenance method with either trench or shovel hole planted rows or plots.

The asparagus roots are often just called crowns. This is because they have a crown like top and the roots come down from the crown kind of like hair. To me though they kind of look like teacup size spiders with the roots coming down like legs. The teacup size may be a bit big, as they are going to vary in size, but they will be close to the size of a teacup.

The next step is planting the asparagus crowns. Place them in the trench with the crown up and the roots spread out around the crown and facing downward toward the bottom of the trench. You can space them as far a eighteen inches apart, but I usually put them about a foot apart. That way you get a more continuous row in a shorter amount of time. Once you have the crowns placed, just fill in the trench with your leftover topsoil. I would do this by hand around the roots/crowns until I have them covered nicely, and then I would gently shovel in the rest of the soil into the trench.

Now come the delayed gratification part. They will grow and look and be eatable the year you plant them, but don't cut them and eat them the first year. Just let them grow and keep them weeded. The will get to be huge airy fern-like plants, some with red berries. Mine get as high as four feet tall when I stop cutting them and let them grow out at the end of the harvest time. The first year they probably won't get that big, but they'll at least get to be a foot or two.

Now depending upon the variety you plant, you may or may not be able to pick some for about two weeks beginning the next year after planting. Make sure you look into this when you are selecting your variety and your supplier, because you are going to want to eat some of these next year - no doubt. With older varieties you may not be able to pick till the second year after planting. The year after your first picking, as described above, you can pick for about four weeks. Then the third spring after planting you can pick as much as you want, but I do not pick them for much more six or or eight weeks.

When I say pick, I really mean cut. To harvest your asparagus use a sharp paring knife to cut the spears a little bit below soil level. I sometimes cut them right at soil level, either way no digging is involved, just cut them close to the ground.

All of the asparagus that we have planted and eaten to this point is the tried and true Mary Washington variety. We like its flavor and size, and it has been a very reliable producer. Last year I planted some Jersey Giant and Purple Passion varieties. They both did well on their first season, and both are coming up now, so I am thinking that they will be good for the future, but I can't say so for sure yet.

After the picking period, you want to then let your asparagus grow out for the rest of the summer so that it can nourish and build up the roots to survive the winter and provide you with more good eating the following spring. What is nice with asparagus is that it gives you something really early from the garden, and when it is time to quit picking asparagus you have other vegetables and fruits ready to replace it.

At the end of fall, or the beginning of winter when your asparagus has become dried out and a light brown or golden color cut them back just a bit above ground level. You can use bypass loppers to cut each stalk near ground level, or you can just set the mower level at about 3 or 4 inches above the ground and mow them. You can just straddle the trench with your riding mover and mow them down. This is usually how I do it. I make sure that my blades are fairly sharp, and I also make sure that I don't mash the asparagus with my tires. If your row is rounded up or is not quite level, err on the side of mowing it bit higher, so you don't break up the clumps of asparagus too much.

About a week or two after I cut the stalks for winter, I begin fertilizing the rows. You should fertilize your plants for better yields. I use cow manure to fertilize my asparagus. I do not put it right on top the the stems. I put it all around them and along the edges of the rows. I put it about 6 inches deep. You do not need to use as much, but I have it available from my cows so I use it. Another thing that I do is I put wood ashes down the whole row, on top of everything about two or three times during the winter from our wood burner. Only use wood ashes, no other kinds of ashes, like coal or paper or whatever.

You do not have to have ashes or manure. I have them so I use them. You can use compost, or you can just buy fertilizer. If you buy fertilizer just use 10-10-10 and make sure it is approved for vegetable gardens. You can use fertilizers of other numbers, just double check to make sure they are okay for asparagus. If you can use organic fertilizer that is probably better. If you do use commercial fertilizers, organic or non organic, try to mix in some other organic matter if possible, but the commercial fertilizer will work too.

I have found that it is very hard to keep the asparagus from coming up, even when you don't have the time or energy to plant it properly it tends to make it anyway. I had ordered too many plants one spring and was just tired out and did not feel like planting the asparagus that I had left to plant. I felt like if I had to dig another trench they would be throwing me in it instead of the asparagus crowns. I just dug shovel size holes, choppped up the soil in the hole with the shovel, pulled out enough dirt with my hands to put a crown down in there, and covered it up. I then repeated this every one foot till I was out of crowns. This row turned out fine. We have been eating it for years now.

I think I have just talked myself into planting some more. I am going to check out the Stark Brothers website to see if they have any on sale yet. They generally have good products, and that is who we got the new varieties from last year. Our Mary Washington was bought from Miller Nurseries, years ago before they were bought out by Stark. I hope this post gets you thinking and perhaps doing and then eating some of your own asparagus.

Jim

Cows Get out of the Barn for the Spring

Red and Doggie the Angus Cross Steer on their first day out for spring.

We finally let our two Angus-cross steer out of the barn for the spring. We had hoped to get them out a few weeks ago, but we had two concerns. One was mud. We have had a ton of rain in March and now also in the beginning of April, so parts of the pasture have just seemed too squishy to add these two guys to the environment. The other was our four month old Scottish Highland calf, Monty. He made it through a rough beginning and through four months of winter, and we just were concerned about what would happen to him. Our friends who have farmed much longer than us said that the calf will be fine, but we kept putting off the mingling of the herds, hoping that Monty would have a better go of it if he was a bit larger.

The two guys pictured above are Doggie and Red. They are Angus-cross steer, who are about a year and a half old now. They are sometimes called Baldies. They are identified by their white face and black or red body. They are a cross between an Angus bull and a Hereford cow. If the bull is Black Angus you get a Black Baldy. If the bull is Red Angus you get a Red Baldy.

These two guys are really well mannered steer. Doggie, the black one, loves to have his ears scratched, hence his name. He really acts like a big dog. He will come when you call him, and he always wants to be scratched. Red is a bit more standoffish. He won't bother you, but he doesn't like to be scratched or petted. He does like to lick you and chew on your coat or hand if you let him.

Well these guy were in the barn for four months. They ate our loose hay, made the old-fashioned way, and good for jumping into. And we gave them some all-grain feed, fresh ground from our local mill. It has corn, oats, soybean, vitamins, minerals, and molasses. They love this stuff. We gave each of them two scoops, standard scoop size, in the morning and two more in the late afternoon. They did quite well and were looking pretty sleek. We have had some wet weather, and their loose pen was starting to get a bit sloppy, and so were they, so we decided to get them out. It is time anyhow. The grass has begun to grow.

We really were concerned about how big a disruption/danger these two guys were going to be for Monty our four month old Scottish Higland calf. He has been out all winter with his mom and dad. They could go in and out of the barn as they pleased. They are very hardy, and Monty has done well growing up in the cold on our mountain this winter. We figured he would be all right, and so far he is okay. It was a bit wild though when they all met up in the top field this past weekend. Monty ended up going head to head with both of them; he lost since they weigh about a thousand pounds more than he does, but he did not get hurt. There were some close calls in the general melee, but he is pretty nimble, and obviously he is a pretty tough little bugger.

Monty and Doggie after things settled down.

Today all five of them are peacefully grazing, but this weekend it was a bit interesting. We may buy a few cows at an auction this weekend. We will keep them away from the others till we make sure they are healthy, and then we will get to do this again, although I am hoping that it will be calmer with two new heifers or cows than it was for the steer, Doggie and Red.

Here are some of the videos I took this weekend on the day we let Doggie and Red out to be with the Highlands. The first video is Monty on the day before we let the Angus out. He had gotten separated from Annabelle and the Dun Bull. We think he ran into the electric fence and got a good shock when they were going up the chute into the top field; because he was down below, and they were up above, and the one wire was knocked out of the insulators. Also you can notice in the video how wary he was about going back into that chute before he made it up to his mom and dad. The other videos show some of the socialization going on as things got mixed up a bit.

Multiple videos:

Six Roosters out In Winter and Pig Pen Preliminaries

The snow finally started to melt off a bit today up on the mountain. It was pretty sloppy outside so we didn't want to let the egg layers out. They get their feet muddy and we have to clean out the nesting boxes so the eggs don't get dirty. So we let the six roosters out instead. They roam around and eat some grass or some feed that the cows have spilled or whatever else they can find.

We don't let them out if the hens are out, because they just chase and bother the hens all day long. When the weather gets a bit nicer they will get out in a small movable pen that is open to the ground beneath it with chicken wire on the sides and a roof. This way they can be outside when the hens are out without all of the commotion.

The pen just gets moved around the fields/yards and the roosters "free range" inside it. This way they get outside, get some sun, bugs, and grass, but don't run around too much and get tough. They have water and some grain in with the in the pen too.

We keep these young roosters in their own pen away from the laying hens and also away from the immature hens. They don't fight each other as much that way, and they also don't bother the hens and pick fights with our rooster Pab, the grand old man of the hen house. We feed them grow ration and scratch grain in the pen, but the key to flavor is for them to get outside. The more these roosters get outside the more they taste like game birds. Their meat gets darker and more flavorful.

If you just let them run wild with the flocks their meat gets even darker and a bit tough, but they are still better than meat from the grocery store. It almost tastes like another species of bird, and though it can get tough from them running around it still is good. Keeping them in the mobile pen gives you the best of both worlds, tender and flavorful.

Here's a little video of these guys when they were out today. They were mostly standing around so I just put the camera down by them and started walking/herding them around the yard.

My son Michael has been preparing some beams, his hand hewn ones again, and he had them all laid out in the barn today. I asked him what he was planning on making with them, and he told me a pig house/pen. He told me that it needs to be eight foot by sixteen foot for the two pigs he wants to get soon. It will be sided on three sides and open toward the south. It will have a shed style roof. This is what he has told me. It will be a lot of work, is what I have told me. He is my chief outdoor/farm helper but this entails a reciprocity agreement on my part.

He wants it in a dry place with some shade and some acorns. We walked around the place this afternoon and located a logical spot for it. So I guess we are getting some pigs soon. This should provide me with some interesting blog material in the future.

Berry Pruning Time

We have some red and black raspberries on the farm. They do quite well here as our soil is a bit acidic and the climate must be just right for them. We do nothing for them except fence them because of the deer and prune and pick them. We do not fertilize or spray them, and they produce a ton of berries every year. They also are very easy to propogate. They are basically a crop that costs us nothing but our labor, and that is a good crop. Also the berries you buy in the grocery store cannot compare; I don't want to ruin your store-bought berry experience, but you should plant a few bushes in your backyard to see what you are missing.

Well that was quite a lot for the first paragraph, now on to the real topic, pruning these berry plants. My sons and I pruned a good bit of our red and black raspberry plants today. I am going to go through both of them in a few steps for you.

First you use the same equipment for both types of berries. You want to get bypass pruners. I use a pair of hand-held Corona bypass pruners. I call them spring-loaded, because they have a spring that opens them for you after the cut. I'm not sure what the proper term for that is. I also use pair of Corona Mini Bypass Pruners. To me they should be called mini bypass loppers. They require two hands to use them. The hand held ones are faster, but the loppers are easier on your hands. I use them both depending on the circumstances. I usually end up using the loppers for the red raspberry patches and both types for the black raspberries. If I am in a hurry though, I use the hand-helds.

You can buy whatever brand you like. The only caveat I will offer is that whatever brand you buy make sure the back, non-cutting blade is about a quarter inch wide. If it is thinner it will cut into the plant and make a messy, disease-prone cut, instead of the nice, clean cut that is made when only the blade does the cutting. The Coronas are not at all expensive. Both types that I use cost between 20 and 30 dollars, depending on where you buy them. Also, always clean your pruners before use, and between patches. I just use some rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab. This helps to stop the spread of disease.

Today I did what I call my winter pruning, though it is done in either late winter or early spring. You have to judge the weather so that you get them before their buds start to grow and open. Here in the Allegheny/Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, I usuallly do them some time in March. Today was a bit earlier than usual, but we have had a warm winter, and it is going to warm up this week, so I wanted to get started in a big way today. Actually, I wanted to do this yesterday, but I did a number on my back yesterday morning tending to the cows, just a freak back attack, but it was good enough today to get back to work. I am afraid next weekend might be too late. It is always best to pick a day when the temperature is going to get a bit above freezing when you prune. I like a nice sunny but a bit chilly day for pruning.

For the red raspberries this is the only pruning you need to do, and pruning them is a lot easier than the black raspberries, because of the simplicity of the cut and the lack of thorns. I just take the bypass loppers and cut every cane so that they are about two and a half feet high. This is a bit below belt height for me so I know about where to hold them and just do it. I never measure them when I am cutting. This all you need to do. You are now done for the year with these berries, except for the picking. We do not spray or fertilize them. The one thing you have to watch with the red raspberries if you are going organic is that you need to pick them every day when they are ripe. If you keep the berries in the patch from getting overripe, you will avoid the bugs that like to share your crop.

The red raspberries will grow new canes in the spring and early summer. Do not top these canes. Just let them grow. You only need to do a winter pruning with the red raspberries. If you want to start another patch just dig up a few of the new canes and transplant them.

The black raspberries require two prunings and the winter pruning is more complicated than the one for the red raspberries. You also will want to wear some thick clothing and gloves unless you enjoy serrating yourself. The time frame and temperature for pruning is the same for the black raspberries as for the red raspberries. However, in the winter pruning you are not topping the black raspberries. You are only cutting the side branches on each main stem. You cut each side branch down to about six inches in length. This is all you need to do in the winter. You do not want to top them, unless you want to cut a few that have gotten way too high, but I wouldn't do too much of that.

In the spring and early summer you will get new canes growing in and around your black raspberry patch. You want to keep these as they are going to give you your berries in the following year. You may thin them out as much as you like, and you may dig some and plant them to start another patch if you like. The ones that you are keeping in place need to be topped when they get to be around one foot in height. This is usually around the beginning of July, depending upon where you live. My plants grow like crazy, and I sometimes end up cutting them a bit earlier and/or a bit higher, but don't let them get too high or cut them too late, or your canes may be a bit thin, and you won't get as many side branches.

Like the red raspberries, it is best to pick your black raspberries every day to avoid bugs, but it is not as critical for the black raspberries, in fact sometimes we skip a day if we have done a good picking the day before. The black raspberries come earlier than the red raspberries and just don't seem to get the bug interest that the reds do. We basically get perfect black raspberries with zero spraying and fertilizing.

Now that I think of it. I have been putting some cow manure around a new patch that I am trying to get established, but they are in a spot where the soil is very dry and rocky, and they are also in a tough wind-blown area. They just did not do much when I transplanted them there, so the cow manure is helping to fix up the spot. The other patches that I have planted in richer soil have grown like crazy with no amendments to the soil. But generally, all we do is prune, and transplant some new plants if we want another patch.

Red and Black Raspberries are a good carefree crop, and they really cost nothing but your labor once established. Our kids pick and eat bowlfulls for most of the summer, and my wife makes some great pies from both types. An all red raspberry pie is a unique taste treat. Pies with both kinds of berries in them are also good, and the black raspberry pie is the taste I grew up with from when I picked these berries wild as a child with my grandmother. We also have plenty for the freezer. I have seriously been considering expanding the berries into a commercial crop. They really do well up here on the mountain.

My daughter filmed these two videos this morning for me. She is getting very good at this, considering the camera I have for her to use, and she was very patient as we did multiple takes on both of them.

Using Wood From the Farm for Winter Crafts

Two of my sons have found some ways to use some of the smaller pieces of wood that are available or accumulate around the farm.

James uses some of the smaller branches when we cut firewood to make coasters for our glasses around the house.

First he picks a branch of the right size and starts cutting blanks that are about a half inch thick.  He keeps them around for about a month or so to get rid of the ones that develop cracks. Most of them are usually okay.

He has tried freezing them as a means of keeping them from cracking. And he has tried putting them into a zip-lock bag to keep them from cracking, because this supposedly keeps them moist and makes them dry out more slowly with less cracking. Both of these methods really don't work any better than just letting them sit for a while.

Once he thinks the wook will be okay,  he breaks out the wood burner and gets to work. After the design is burned into the wood he usually coats them with some polyurethane clear coating.

Michael likes to carve thngs from wood he finds around the farm.

He uses knives and other hand tools to make his creations.

When he is finished carving he usually coats them in some type of oil. A lot of time he just uses canola oil. Sometimes he uses olive oil.

He also makes handles for knives, hatchets and axes.

Most of the time he makes something functional, but sometimes he just carves something whimsical.