[sanhestar]

this ist great – thanks for the update.

[sanhestar]

during the flight stop a radio station sent a report about which vegetables and fruits and fish and flowers are in short supply. I had never before thought about it that much but when they mentioned beans from spain and several other vegetables and fruits that I hadn’t considered THAT exotical I started thinking and I’ll pay more attention when buying fruits, etc.

[sanhestar]

I can only repeat what I read about donkeys and heard from people who have donkeys. They basically say the same. It may depend on the area and number of rain days per year and type of soil.

[sanhestar]

Hello,

I read – no own experience – that donkeys mature around age 5-6, mules are similar there.

From my point of view, donkeys are more “high maintenance” in keeping compared to mules because

– they need a shelter against rain 24/7
– they quite easy get hoof problems when standing in mud
– you have to watch their diet closely to avoid foundering and other health/diet related issues when they are not working

Around here sound donkeys that are able to work and/or work harder aren’t easy to get. Many have conformation problems.

[sanhestar]

Ed,

I had to ask my neighbor to come with his tractor and front end loader to help us move the wasted hay the bucks left on their winter paddock. My hubby and I started to load it with forks but we really underestimated the amount of hay that had gone to waste (another lesson: use feeders next winter!) We would have spend weeks (!) to get the work done, with his schedule and my bad back while neighbor and his tractor got the work done in one hour. I spend another hour to fork up what he couldn’t get.

I’m a bit glad that others here have similar experience when it comes to using a front end loader because I really couldn’t see a way how to do this type of work with draft animals.

[sanhestar]

@Stable-Man 17504 wrote:

Garlic powder is much cheaper than fluid garlic or cloves.

yes, but it’s also more concentrated and can – at least in dogs – cause severe stomach irritations.

[sanhestar]

I tried several herbal wormers about 6-7 years back. Did a fecal exam before using the wormer, wormed the animals and retested them again 2 weeks later.

The only substance that showed an effect to drive the wormload to minimal resp. non-detectable was the homoeopathic remedy Abrotanum D3. Not sure if it’s available in the US.

Using it to be effective is rather time consuming, though. You have to give it 3 times daily for 10-14 days.

[sanhestar]

@Stable-Man 17141 wrote:

Sanhestar–it sounds like a cool place you live in. For many years I’ve wanted to live in a village and work on a farm outside of it. I hope you can drive through the forests. One time I wanted to climb the highest mountain in MD but it was on private property.

yep, we like it here, too. It’s rather thin populated for Germany in general and friends that visit us from more populated regions always wonder about how dark it is here at night – no lights from bigger cities on the sky.

Our neighbor with the dairy will retire in 2-3 years, we hope that we can take over his stables and some of his land, then.

[sanhestar]

@Stable-Man 17113 wrote:

It sounds like you live in town and have land out a ways? I saw a video in Britain of people driving carriages on the roads and the backup was a long one, same here with the Amish.

no, we live in a small village, about 400 people. But all the pasture here is taken by the remaing dairy’s and beef farmers and we have to take the unwanted patches and do weed and brush clearing in enviromentally protected areas. It’s perfect browsing for the goats although we have to move from place to place.

I spoke yesterday with somebody who gives driving lessons for horse carriages and she indicated that there are possibilities to get permission to drive through the forests if you “do it right” – I will investigate that, maybe I’m closer to a solution than I think.

[sanhestar]

and I have to chime in again, because the time issue will be important for me when/if I should finally make another step towards draftanimalpower.

I’ve been thinking about the use of animals for traction during this whole winter. When the snow got so high that our Subaru wasn’t able to navigate the snowblows any longer and I had to use an old sled and snowshoes and MY power to get water and food out to the goats on winter pasture I strongly wished for a trained team of horses or oxen. When we weren’t able to get to the hay storage with the car for two weeks and again yesterday when we had to rely on our neighbor’s help to get the old horse trailer we use as shelter for the bucks out of the winter pasture to the new pasture. When I look at gas prices and heard that the German government plans to raise taxes on gas another 0.30 EUR over the next years.

But with our animals 8-12 kms away in summer on pastures I simply don’t know how to make a change work:

I either put the draft animals out on the same pastures and still have to use the car to get out there, using the drafts only to do “local” work – almost no saving in fuel costs

or

I stable/pasture the drafts near the house, using them to drive out to the pastures with considerable time efforts. I don’t want to go on the roads (speeding cars) and I can’t cut through the forest (privately owned, no carriages, etc. permitted) so I have to drive a large detour around the forest and the next town. And who will earn my money when I’m away half a day?

[sanhestar]

interesting thoughts.

I’ve always felt a strong connection towards animals and a more rural live although I don’t have any “green thumb” – so I would do the work connected with animals – training, raising, milking, feeding, etc. while somebody else has to do the actual farming.

I come from a family with a long tradition of being farmworkers/helpers and my grandma still grew vegetables in our small garden patch when I was a kid. So maybe it’s a bit genetic involved, too.

Sad was a talk I had with my neighbor this weekend. He’s a dairy farmer, has been his whole live but he would never consider to use the smallest amount of draftanimalpower in his daily work and considers this type of work as a waste of time, only doable with funding from somewhere else. We spoke about logging with horses and oxen instead of using harvesters then about alternative fuel sources and it was sad to hear him rejecting every idea, every notion of changing the actual ways. Maybe he’s too old and too burnt out to still dream – I think he holds on, keeps going only until he has reached retirement age but is strongly disappointed how farming has developed over the years.

[sanhestar]

Caitlyn,

I was asking about your plans for the wool because if you want to seriously start spinning or having the wool processed for spinning you need to take this into consideration for your breed choice, too.

F.e. the Blackface have a wool that’s not very good for spinning fibers for knitting – it’s coarse and too long and was mostly used to make rugs from it.

Sheep with a coarse wool, short hair or hair with a lot of crimp also don’t give high quality wool.

Preparing a fleece for spinning is an interesting but time consuming work.

Depending on the state of the fleece – content of dirt, lanolin, sweat – you have to wash it at least one time, more often 2-3 times. This washing is more soaking because every time you handle wool under water with temperature changes AND movement there’s a high risk of the fleece/fiber starting to felt.

After that you continue with either carding or prepare the wool some more by pulling the smaller batches apart and sort out remaining food particles (hay, seeds, etc.) and then you start carding. Carding can be done with hand carders – VERY time consuming -, a drum carder or at a carding facility on a big carding machine.

After that it’s either spinning the white wool and then dying or first dying the fleece and then spinning the yarn. Last is twisting it with another (or even a third) strand of yarn to make it stronger.

Depending on how much time you can commit to all the steps it can take several months to turn a fleece into yarn.

@near horse: I don’t know how the situation is in Scotland but in Germany you can’t get Iceland sheep that aren’t heavily inbred and already suffer from inbred deprivation.

@Caitlyn again: have you considered asking in your neighbourhood or at county fairs to get contact to local sheep breeders?

[sanhestar]

what about Scottish Blackface Sheep?

Do you want to use the wool for spinning, felting, etc. or only have the sheep for meat. Or do you think about milking the sheep?

[sanhestar]

from what I know was Fabian butchered last year.

[sanhestar]

I feel with you…..

[Author]

Posts