Fall on the Farm: More Goat Brush Cleanup, Grazing Cattle, Cozy Pig Pigs & Fall Foliage

Plugging along at the farm this week! After two butcher drop offs last week, this week was about catching up a little before Grant headed up to Shreveport to speak the the LSU Homesteading Conference on Saturday. He stayed at our friend’s farm, Sample Farm, and had a great time at the event!

We’re getting ready to doing some sorting of the goats, so their home base was our acre paddock with the corral this week, but we had them do some clean up of a few adjacent fields, too.

I even let them graze behind one of our barns, which is fully outside of the perimeter fence and I didn’t set up temporary fence, just stayed out and supervised them for a bit. There was so much to eat, they barely made it 30 feet from the perimeter fence the entire time!

I couldn’t resist including a picture of Heidi the goat covered in stickers, she wasn’t going to let that stop her from getting the good stuff.

The cattle were cruising through their rotations at the end of the property and there’s been more and more signs of fall with the bright holly berries starting to pop up this week. While we don’t get a ton of fall foliage in the leaves of trees, we still get plenty of beauty in the fall Louisiana landscape!

Both of our little calves are doing so well. And right now they are back in the field where the surprise black calf was born, having made one full rotation around the farm since mid August when his momma had him and kept busting through gates to get back to him before we even knew he existed. She hid him well! Here’s that whole story if you missed it.

The youngest pigs got their cozy on this week with the temperature drops. I love coming out my door in the morning to see their pig piles!

Meanwhile it’s still warm enough during the day that their mothers at the other end of the property needed a hose off. It’s wild how dry it’s been since Hurricane Francine, so they don’t have any wallows. Certainly not complaining about the lack of additional hurricanes here, but at this point we could definitely use some rain. The ponds are almost empty again and it’s getting crispy!

The swamp sunflowers are fully popping off and I love them so much! And then hens are making their pasture rotations as usual, although things are definitely less green than even last week!