A Much Greener Fall on the Farm

There are so many signs of fall around the farm right now, but one thing is certain: we are a lot greener than last year at this time, when we were in the midst of an epic drought.

And that means there’s a lot more for the cattle (and all the other livestock) to graze. Every year, the more rotations we make around the farm, repeating the pattern of disturbance and rest, dropping more manure and coaxing the soil back to life, the better the forage gets.

This week the cattle moved through the sections at the end of the property and there were a few times they were bellowing because this part of our land has been worked the least and the forage quality reflects that.

So in those cases, we often keep them an extra day or two with supplemental feed so they drop more manure and help, in time, to improve the soil and grow better forage in the future.

Similarly, the chicken paddocks are SO much greener and lusher than last year at this time. We got a little rain on Friday (not as much as the Southshore), and it is wild to think that it had been three weeks since the last rain fell — during Hurricane Francine.

Of course it would be nice to not get over 8 inches at once and then be totally dry, but given the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina and now Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida, we’ll count ourselves extremely lucky for the fall weather we’re having.

The goats cleaned up so much brush in the woods sections near our tiny house over the past two weeks. They were pretty much finished with everything they could reach and everything Grant cut down for them, so we shifted them back into the acre paddock with hay for now.

We’re about to sort off the market bucks for fall processing and the corral in this paddock is the easiest to do that in.

Once that’s done, the doe herd and the herd sires will begin making another rotation around the rest of the farm. We do expect a round of fall kidding in a month or so. I don’t know how many does took when the herd sires broke out of their separate area in June, but there’s at least a few that should be having some fall kids. And based on observed breeding behavior, the majority of the rest of the herd will kid in mid January through February.

Another round of pigs went to harvest this week. It’s always bittersweet and I’m proud to be able to have a bunch more delicious pork in the pipeline for you all.

The other half of that group is scheduled for next week and then we’ll be down to just three sows and one set of feeder pigs that will be processed in January and February. We planning to breed the sows in a couple weeks for February litters.

The goldenrod really took off this week and the bees certainly love it. Goldenrod gets a bad rap for causing allergy problems, but it’s actually ragweed that’s responsible for this! The swamp sunflowers are taking off, as well, and the light purple wild asters. I always things of Louisiana fall colors as green, gold and lavender!