Well, today marks the 1st day of December, and the first snow. Typically, farmers around here try to get the harvest end before Thanksgiving, as all bets are off once the holiday is over. This year has been no exception. I finished (finally) the perimeter fence of the 10 acre field just south of the barn in lieu of grazing my sheep and horses for the winter on Saturday around 12:30pm, and by 4 the snow was flying. Which is good — I need a break – a time to relax, reflect and plan.

This year was one of the more challenging years for a while. The winter lasted much too long (mid-April), and spring was much too wet for too long. My market garden was 3 weeks late, and the harvest showed it. I found that onions do best planted as early as possible (but not too early to be heavily frosted). Squash needs to be replanted if there is a pounding downpour that heavily crusts the soil. Oats also do much better planted in March, not April. But, I don’t want to complain — even with vegetable setbacks the forage crops this year did quite well. I was one of the lucky (blessed) ones this year as I had no hay rained on — a miracle!! I know farmers that had every single hay crop rained on. I was able to store most of my winter needs in May and June, and sold the higher quality July/August cuttings to either neighbors or at the hay auction.

Animal health was fairly consistent this year. I havent’ wormed my sheep herd for 3 years now. I feel my brood herd is fairly resistant — the ones that lived are genetically  predisposed to parasite resistance. Although it seems cruel to let sheep die (without worming them), I had to do it to get the right genetics as I want to reduce my cost and labor in my sheep herd. I do not want to mollycoddle sheep, they need to be hardy. Saving sheep that probably should die and breeding them on produces offspring that are also weak. In the wild predators fulfil this function, in dometic settings the shepherd needs to step up into this role, in my opinion.

Filed under: Farm Updates on December 1st, 2008