Gulf Coast Summer: It's a Marathon, Not a Sprint!
We are keeping on keeping on over here at the farm!
Not gonna lie, late July can be hard. We are still staring down several more months of intense heat and the hurricane threats are just about to kick into higher gear. Farm or no farm, I know all of us in the region can relate to those anxieties.
As we all know, summer here is a marathon not a sprint and we have a ways to go before we get to the finish line!
But there’s always the bright side. For one, the solid amount of rain we’ve been getting lately does make for beautiful and abundant forage for the livestock.
The cattle are in the last field on their rotation this week before they hit the fields Grant bush hogged over the past few weeks. That project cut down the tall, woody species, laid that down as green manure/mulch and has helped other warm season forages take off. In other words, that effort has totally paid off and has been gratifying to see.
The goats are now right in line behind the cattle, which has worked well as the cattle eat all their preferred grasses and then the goats come in and eat the taller browse, shrubs and vines and even the stray leaves on certain stalks of plants that the cattle may leave behind.
One major challenge that we are still problem solving around is how to maintain a potent charge in our five strand high tensile perimeter fencing. Many sections go through wooded sections that are hard to mow next to with the bush hog, but grow serious vines and shrubs this time of year.
The more those plants are touching the fence, the lower voltage it is. The fence still works well as a perimeter even in those cases, but it doesn’t conduct as much voltage to be able to connect temporary fences to and adequately power those.
Hence, the pictures of some sweet piggies once again in an incorrect location, even coming right up to the deck of our tiny house! Grant did some trouble shooting to get their more robust electric fence training area to have a higher charge this week, but the long term strategy we are still working out. Some farms use herbicides, some farms (try to) deploy sheep and goats to help with fence lines, some do a lot of manual labor with weed eaters and pole saws. Likely ours will take combination of those strategies, hopefully not herbicides if we can help it.
The chicken flocks got a little treat of crab compost this week and we got the last birds out of Flock 2, in order to do some quick repairs on the coop before moving the young pullets into that coop. We do have a handful of these birds available for sale. And piglets that are ready to be weaned for sale, as well!