Making Adjustments As the Drought Settles In
Just a few weeks ago, I was mentioning how much greener the farm was compared to last fall’s epic drought.
Well the eight inches of rain from Hurricane Francine has completely dried up (the storm filled the empty ponds up and now they’re totally dry again) and we’re looking at a 10 day forecast with still no rain in sight.
I have some PTSD too much rain in really wet years like 2018 and 2021, so it takes me a bit longer to register that the lack of rain is a bad thing. While it’s more pleasant to work in and there’s fewer parasite issues and other bacterial illness to contend with in the livestock, and no complications for newborn goat kids or piglets in the dry weather, the simple fact is that we need moisture to grow forage!
The hogs certain don’t mind their cozy paddocks with hay without the rain, though they still need wallows filled to cool off when it’s in the 80s during the day.
With another set of pigs “graduating” into pork last week, we are down to one group of feeders, plus our breeder sows and boars. It’s the fewest pigs we’ve had on the farm in quite a while and it feels good to have so much pork in the freezer and time to reset some things with out pig systems.
The goats are still back and forth between the acre paddock in the center of the original farm and grazing nearby fields. We are overdue to sort off the market bucks and separate the doe herd from them, but we’ve been so busy finishing our farmhouse build and getting ready to move, that it keeps getting put off.
But hopefully we will get there this week. And then we just have 2.5 to 3 weeks until some of the does start kidding again!
The two older flocks are unfortunately are just beginning their fall decline in egg production as the decrease in daylight continues in earnest. The older flocks will also start molting (losing their feathers and regrowing them before winter), and they take a break from laying at that time.
Combined with increased demand from restaurants as they get busier and our produce farm partners starting their fall CSAs, it’s always to tricky to balance the egg demand with the realities of fluctuating production from outdoor flocks.
Commercial hen houses use a consistent amount of artificial light to keep hens laying as much and as long as possible in their first laying cycle. We prefer to keep things natural and let them take breaks when needed and be able to produce in their second laying cycle as swell.
The other challenge with the hens right now is as the fields dry out, we need to balance the hens moves to fresh pasture with the forage requirements for the cattle and the goats.
When it’s dry, the regrowth behind the chickens is minimal. So we will likely be holding them in place a little longer and bringing out compost and mulch to add organic matter in place.
And as we move into winter, we are aiming to play around with growing fodder in place for them, to be able to let the fields rest and grow cool season annuals for the cattle.
This week the cattle are rotating through the field with one of our hen flocks and where we do some of our crab shell and coffee ground composting.
One gratifying thing to see is that there is a thick stand of barnyard grass, a primo forage for the cattle, where we overwinter Flock 1 last year. It was beautiful, they cattle devoured and it’s a type of grass we haven’t seen this thick before. What’s interesting is that when it was wet in that spot, there was a lot of sedge grass, a much less desirable grass, but as it’s dried out, it’s given way to the better barnyard grass.
And sometimes the effects of the compost and mulch we spread plus all the chicken manure take a while to see as everything breaks down and becomes food for the decomposers and fungi and eventually grows into healthier plants.
I did not one, but two butcher pick ups to bookend my week last week! The beef butcher is 1.5 hours from the farm and 2 hours from the freezer and the pork butcher is 2 hours from the farm and 2.5 hours from the freezer, so either trip makes for a long day of driving.
In the late spring and summer when we were shorter staffed at the shop, Grant took over the butcher pick ups for me, even though he is also the one that hauls the live animals to the processors.
This week he was busy with some house projects as well as the soil business, so I started the week with a beef pick up just in my Honda Fit! So we have ground beef, Caveman blend ground beef, filet, ribeye, chuck roasts and more back in stock (though they’re all going fast).
And then we were going to try to punt the pork pick up until this week, but I realized that if I booked the UHaul for an extra day, I could pick up the pork, get it palletized at our freezer warehouse and then use it to get furniture out of storage to move into our new house!
So I powered through and we were able to get most of our dressers, my desk, some end tables and more out of storage on Friday night.
We still have cabinet pulls and blinds and shower rods to install, a bed frame to put together, closet shelving to install, so we won’t be fully settled for a bit longer, but we are hell bent on sleeping in there tonight and moving forward.