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Kevin Cunningham
ParticipantI can forsee a “mixed power” type of situation at least in the transitionary years, because it is completely unrealistic to think that I could just switch and make it work right now. I also don’t know I can give up to loader capacity of a tractor completely. For making compost, and unloading feed, equipment, etc a loader is essential to our farm. I am drawn to oxen because I have more pasture than I can currently stock and our grazing season can easily be year round. I did feed hay this winter, but as I become a better grazier I hope to quickly eliminate the hay except for the dairy animals. I will also have plenty of oat and other straw from grain production for feeding more mature animals as well.
I do plow and I can pull a three bottom 16 with my tractor, so this is going to be hard to transition to draft, but I don’t plow the whole each year. I am on a every other year plowing schedule and this could change as well. Andy this is part of the reason that I was interested in your disc setup because in the fall most fields get a quick disc and then planting cover crop. I could even see the grain fields getting less plowing if I can minimise “disc pan” from tractor discing.
Recognising all this it will be a long transition to make the farm more draft based and I know that I’ll probably need more than one team. First things first though is to get these boys up to speed and for me to get a good schooling in draft power. Thanks to everyone here I have learned tons this year already!
ParticipantMy experiement with pigs ended in a hardpan and more compaction than a tractor makes. Durring the summer the ground was too hard for them to turn and in the winter I had so much mud that it was almost impossible to walk out there. The pointy little hooves just worked that mud into cement. I think there is a time window where they would be big enough and the ground conditions would be such that they would work it up perfectly, but you would need about 20 full sized pigs per acre to work the ground when you need it turned. Then what do you do with them? They tear up your good pasture, fill up your barn and promply destroy things, or spend the winter knee deep in mud. My experience was, pig are not great as rototillers but they made damn good bacon. I’ll probably grow some more this year but and rotate them but I am not counting on them to do any farming for me.
ParticipantI recently contacted Annie who has a feature in the latest Small Farmers Journal. She is making a kassine style tool set here in California, called Annies all in One, and might even be able to beat the $5000 dollar price tag. I did not make it to the auction in Oregon to see the tool system in action. Did anyone else get to see it there?
It seem to me that Promata also does good work promoting appropriate scale draft tools in other countries this is definately worth supporting here.
ParticipantThe first farm that I managed I made the mistake of calculating how much I made per hour of work. Trust me it is better to not know. Just keep working towards efficiency the money takes care of itself somehow.
ParticipantI was thinking that at a certain scale raking the grass out of the field might be an option. Using a drag rake to the headland then collecting and burning the grass. Seems like more work but maybe worth the initial time investment.
ParticipantThanks for the update Andy it has been neat to track your progress as mine also progress. I’ll post my own little update as a diary today as well.
ParticipantI know they used to use horse drawn version of the rod weeder in Oregon on huge plantings of wheat. I have seen great pictures of the wheat production in Oregon, it is the convergence of large scale ag and the very end of the major horse drawn era. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of acres grown and harvested with draft. Any how it got me thinking because the book I saw this in talked about a rod weeder. Here is the modern tractor based version: http://www.bighambrothers.com/rodweeder.pdf. In my understanding it was used post tillage, and prior to planting for weed and grass control.
Participantquack grass is a nasty one and around here we have what we call canada thistle, a thistle that runs with rhizomes, a real bugger.
I have heard of farmers with nasty problems using a summer fallow and using more of a cultivator type approach, because you don’t want to cut the roots up but rather dessicate them out. The williams tool system, from market farm, might be a good start. I have used it with tractor cultivation of row crops it does a bang up job. Exactly what you’re talking about, sweeps that undercut and then follow by wire fingers that scratch and up root the plants. When properly used it flips the plant roots up in the air to dry out and die. I can even picture a just the fingers to scratch and flip the grass out. And honestly the moldboard doesn’t get all the quack grass either. We always live with some of it. Here is the link to market farm:
http://www.marketfarm.com/cfms/williams_tool_system.cfmParticipantOkay so I have found the USDA pdf on the exemption. Look at the whole thing but the info you need should be around page 10 and 11. The key to not ask permission but rather say what you are going to do and know more about the subject than the regulators. Often the rule are so large and so many that they have never even read what they are supposed to be enforcing. Stick to your guns, I strongly believe that processing poultry on small farms is right that we can’t give up.
Participantokay here it is
ParticipantI do not process rabbits personally but I have friends who do and here is the scoop. Rabbits are legally considered poultry, I know it sounds weird but, based on size, time till harvest, etc it kinda makes sense. We process poultry, in this case chickens on farm under a federal exemption that was set up some time ago. The federal limit is 20,000 birds (or rabbits) a year. You can’t pay labor to help process and you have to sell directly, ie off farm, or in our case farmers market. Now each state can interpret this law and make stricter standards but as far as I know all the states let you process poultry on farm in this manner. I can’t remember the exemption number off hand but I can get that information later. My advice is to stand your ground process the rabbits your self and sell them directly. Don’t ask for permission from a beuracrat because that usually leeds to more rules and regulations.
ParticipantHere are a couple of pictures of our chicken tractors and the Poop Coop as it is affectionately known. We have a system inside to collect a deep bedding pack for compost making. That is why the door is so high up. Right now two or three people can move it but soon I want my steers to pull it forward for our pasture moves. I am pretty happy with the design and someday I will make a larger one on a full size running gear so we can expand the birds but we always try to start small and grow from there.
ParticipantWe’ll right now we are trying to improve our pasture as we slowly increase the numbers of ruminants that we can carry. When we bought the farm it had been hayed every year without input for at least ten years. No real grazing and export of all the grass every year. We have a sandy soil with low organic matter. So what we have been doing is running the chicken tractors over blocks of the farm at about 1 acre a year, as well as mob grazing with our motely crew of steer, sheep, and goats. This might be the first year that we won’t have to mow prior to chicken tractors to keep the grass low enough for the birds.
So this year we just finished grazing down our main “hay field” and we may still have to hay this field this year because we may not quite have enough animals yet. Next is the mobile egg unit, consisting of our 50 layers plus a few ducks. And one acre of the 10 acre field we get the chicken treatment. We may come back and regraze after grazing the other half of the farm or it might go to hay we shall see. The one acre that got chickened though will get summer irrigation to utilize the chicken manure and grow a lush summer pasture for the dry months of our summer when our land will get bone dry. Hopefully it will cut down on the summer months when I have fed hay. Last year we got the ability to irrigate and that should at least keep part of the farm green when the rest will be brown and dry. The benefit of the dry period is that it prevents disease build up.
In three years of work it is noticeable the difference in the grass. Right now one half of the farm is low grass that shows nutrient deficiencies and the other half is lush green and ready to make some meat, milk, and draft. I am learning as I go but I can see the difference that birds make on the soil and the animals can also see it because they prefer the chicken grass every time. My philosophy is that I might have to import some fertility to get the farm up to a standard that I want and need for the animals. So if I am going to bring in an off farm material it should be chicken feed and then I get the added benefits of eggs and meat that I can sell to offset the cost of bringing in the “fertilizer.”
So far so good and and we love seeing the farm come alive with the presence of animals in the fields. Especially the chickens.
ParticipantWe currently run about 50 laying hens in a mobile coop that I hope to someday pull with the oxen. It is fairly small and they will probably be able to haul it by the end of the summer. We use poultry net from Premier one. We also run close to 2000 broilers durring the season. Our first two rounds just went out in the chicken tractors. I am sold on using the poultry to improve burned out pasture. The half of the farm that has had birds on it for two years is drastically different than the half we are now getting to run chickens on. And all to other animals run straight for that chicken grass when their pen moves over already chickened ground. As far as predators go, we haven’t had much issue with then but I recommend electric fencing, livestock guardians, and human presence to deter predators.
ParticipantFor my 4″ yoke I used 3/4 inch pvc, because it has an outside diameter of about an inch. It was easier to drill a 1 inch hole through the 4×4. The trick to bending the pvc is to fill it with dry sand. This allows you bend it without collapsing the tube. Plug the ends and heat it outside over a fire or cook stove, the pvc will fume. Be careful not to burn the plastic and heat till they are noodle limp. bend around a four inch mold and they will cool quickly into shape. I have done the same with my five inch yoke but I used 1 inch pvc that is about a 1 1/2 inch hole. It works great but someday I’ll have to bend some wooden bows.
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