Monday, December 18, 2006

Big honking chicken tractor

Last year I did an experiment where I grew some OP corn and some cowpeas.

This year I plan to scale the whole thing up quite a bit.

Last week we move our laying hens to the spot where the row crop patch will be.

Into this space we dumped most of the hay that got rained on last summer.

The idea is that between a six inch deep layer of mulch hay and thirty some chickens scratching around and fertilizing the place, the ground will be plowed and far better for growing things in than the beach sand that we have in place of topsoil in this part of the country.

I plan to plant corn in rows thirty inches apart with cowpeas between each row.

Both these photos show the same spot of ground.

I’m hoping that with the mulch and the chickens I can get away with just sticking the seeds into the ground. I don’t own a plow and don’t really want to.

I’m hoping for two crops, one about the forth of July, one in the late fall.

I’ll harvest the summer crop by turning newly weaned lambs into it, a little at a time. They can eat everything down to the ground. This should keep them from loosing condition at weaning time, and even put some weight on them.

The fall crop should help finish them.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Like lambs to the slaughter

This is not “like” lambs to slaughter, it IS lambs to the slaughter.

Five ram lambs whet to the butcher shop the Tuesday after thanksgiving.

These five were sold to six different customers. Two people split the largest one.

We picked up three of them today, including the big one with two owners.

One of these is in our freezer here at the farm so that the lady that bought it can pick it up at her leisure. She has an intense job that made it impossible for her to get it during the week.

We still have eight market lambs left. Any that have not been sold before the Dec 16 livestock sale go to auction then.