Feast Week for the Goats & Pigs, Fall Grazing and Continued Hurricane Cleanup
It was a definitely a banner week for the goats! We brought them back to the field where our tiny house is every night, but during the day, they grazed a section of a field between the blacktop road and that paddock that was very overgrown with brush, vines and saplings, including some of their favorites: tallow trees, privet and elderberry.
Later in the week, Grant did some chop and drop on some of the taller tallow and privet they couldn’t reach. They would eat every single leaf of the branches and then sit down for a rest and to chew their cud in the remains of the branches!
I did my part holding down and snapping some smaller branches that they couldn’t reach, too.
One evening when I went to collect eggs, they were already back in their nighttime paddock and couldn’t resist not only coming to greet me, but then jumping on the truck. As if I solely brought it their as a jungle gym. Goats will be goats!
And then last night or early this morning, they went through the internal fence along the ditch and let themselves into the woods paddock near a group of pigs. They’ve pretty much got that area cleaned up (though I let them to a thick section of elderberry) and likely this week we’ll set up some temporary fence to clean up some brush by the farm entrance before getting them back on their regular field rotations.
Both groups of feeder pigs also had a great week, moving to new sections to forage and being treated to some excess corn and pears. One neighbor had two super sacks of whole field corn cobs left from last year that he gave Grant when Grant returned a wild hog trap we had borrowed.
And another soil customer brought a load of pears from their tree that weren’t great for human consumption, but the pigs happily scarfed down.
The cattle rotated through one of our best fields this week and were certainly eating well, too. There’s great grasses like Bahia in that field (which benefitted from rotating a flock of chickens around it for three years), but it’s impressive how much other plants they also eat like Morning Glory.
The grass growth is absolutely slowing down though, even with all the rain we got with Francine last week. So it goes as we move into fall.
We will make the most of the final stands of warm season grasses and get ready for cool season cover crop seeding in October and November. It was an excellent year for cutting hay and we have a bunch in storage. While we may try to keep some to hedge against whatever next year it like, we also may do more bale grazing this winter to help continue to boost soil health and grass growth in the parts of the farm that need it most.
The youngest flock is still figuring out laying in the nest boxes and staying inside the fence and the swarm me and jump on me pretty much every time I’m out there. But they are laying machines, so we’ll put up with their antics as they continue to learn.
The older two flocks are still going strong, as well, but we will see a decrease in production as they start to molt and the daylight continues to decrease.
Flock 3 was moved to a new paddock right before the Hurricane, so they still have their super sacks strapping down their coop. We’ll dump out the coffee grounds for them to spread in the next paddock once we shift them over this week. And hey, if another storm were to hit before that, they’re already set to go! Thankfully it’s looking like the storm currently in the Gulf will dodge us.
There’s also more and more beautiful fall flowers blooming right now, including plenty of swamp mallow (in the hibiscus family and the blossoms look just like okra flowers) as well as wild maypops or passionfruit.
My parents have been here this week helping with final house projects like installing flooring and baseboards, but I’ll share more progress pictures next week! We are so close to moving in now!