Putting your Homestead on Autopilot

Whoo, hoo!  Back again!  Feeling soooo bad these last weeks (months, sigh) has shown me the importance of making your homestead able to function with a minimum of input day to day.  Of course, there are plenty of things to do and plenty of thing you can do any day on a homestead, but today we are going to talk about making it so there are very few things you have to do on any given day.  If you design for ease and functionality, you can save yourself a lot of grief and your animals a lot of discomfort. Now, if you are out for weeks, I can only give you a few hints to have the garden not fall apart.  But you can keep your animals comfortable with only a little help if you plan well (that also means you don't have to go out in the sleet if you simply don't want to).

Livestock

                 Insulated hoses, a freeze-proof faucet, and automatic shut off valve and a floating de-icer makes this waterer as automatic as possible

• Automatic water, automatic water, automatic water... absolutely take the time and money to run a water line and have an automatic valve in your tank to give your animals all the water they need.  If you run out, they will develop a lot of bad habits fighting over who gets the water first.  While you are at it, choose a non-freezing waterer or add a floating de-icer (you will have to have electricity for that) so you don't have to drag water to them on cold mornings.  If your area's ground freezes for long periods, you will have to invest in a special waterer that is insulated like this one. Here in the southeast of the U.S., we generally don't have freezing that is severe enough to make more than a thin coating of ice. For the few weeks that all day freezing is a problem, we keep our cattle near the house and where we have a line run to a thermostatically controlled warmer floating in the tank.  The only problem developed when one of our calves thought it was great fun to play with the floating disc and we kept finding it on the ground.  You can imagine our boys, "Really, Dad!  I didn't do it!" 

This season's waste becomes next season's soil!

• Hey, We want some hay!  Your livestock will be up with the sun - they want to eat then - why make it so they have to wait on you? I have tried numerous things over the years, but my favorite winter strategy is to provide 2 or 3 large rolled bales of hay at a time. They don't fight over a limited amount as they do when I give them a square bale or 2 at a time, and the wasted hay is a nice insulator against the ground.  By the time they have eaten all they are going to get from those bales, you have nice, manure-filled hay debris area that breaks down into beautiful topsoil.  The areas that have housed those bales are noticeable for years - they grow more rye in the spring and more bermuda in the summer.  They are also the spot the herd picks to munch on first when we move into that paddock. 
• Of course, most of the year, your livestock are eating grass and you want to rotate them to new areas regularly.  Here's the good news - afternoon is the best time to move them!  Moving to a new area stimulates your livestock to start munching on the best of the fresh green grass.  Think of living with a lot of siblings and taking your cookies RIGHT NOW because you know you won't get any if you wait until later.  We think of the herd as being this wonderful, supportive place, but really it's just each animal thinking first of themselves (but living in a group). Kind of a lot like us, huh?  Anyway, the other cool, scientifically beneficial thing about moving livestock in the afternoon is that is basically eliminates the chance of your animals developing bloat.  Bloat happens when cattle eat fresh, green, wet-from-dew grass on an empty stomach and develop gasses that seize up their intestines.  Yucky way to die, huh.  The not-so-scientifically-based cool thing about moving them in the afternoon is that my boots and pants don't get wet from dew.  I know.  Really. (It's just I would rather quietly dig around in the garden first thing in the morning and chat it up with some boisterous bovines in the afternoon.) 

• Minerals are key - We all need salt.  If you don't have a proper balance of sodium and potassium in you body, you will crave salty things.  Your livestock are the same.  Enter kelp. You can order it from here  or from a number of other sites online.  It looks like green powder and smells like shrimp.  It comes from seaweed and has the same mixture of salts and minerals the ocean does.  I mix mine 50/50 with plain livestock salt and place it in a mineral feeder that protects it from the rain.  Some days they munch it up, and others they ignore it.  I figure they know what they need.  Just to mention, my beef became even more tender after I added this to the regime.  
• Lastly, worming.  Doesn't it sound like fun to gather up all your suspicious herbivores on a monthly basis so you can give them something they don't want?  Yeah, not my idea of fun either.  Joel Salatin in Salad Bar Beef recommends using Shaklee's Basic H soap in your animals' water supply every other month.  They like it, it's easy for you, it's effective and nobody gets hurt.  Win, win, win, win.  Basic H is an organic liquid soap made from soybeans.  I've had good results thus far.  Here's a link for you fellow science nerds that want to see the background about intestinal worms.  

Okay, so let's review.  Things happen.  People get sick or family comes to visit.  It rains.  Some days you are lazy.  If you plan well, your animals can go stress free with all their needs met even if you aren't rushing to check on them first thing in the morning.  And when you get down to it, your kids or honey will remember a lovely breakfast a lot longer than they will.

Why "The Homesteading Maven"?

ma·ven

 noun \ˈmā-vən\
: one who is experienced or knowledgeable
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maven)

Well, it's Friday and my thought was that every Friday we would define a word that has to do with homesteading.  There are some funky ones out there, I tell ya.  But everything must have a beginning, so the best place to start is "Why Maven"?  The two words above say it well.  I have experience, that's for sure.  Experience at total failure some of the time!  I have had gardening beds overrun with bermuda grass, I have fought (and sometimes lost to) squash bugs, I have purchased tools that ended up being useless and I have purchased transplants that ended up being the wrong plant!

Good grief, Maven!  Don't you know when to stop?  Why are you still doing this at all?  Because I have also enjoyed having more peppers in my freezer than I can possibly use, I have loved the quiet mornings listening to the birds as I play in the soil, I have relished the challenge of solving problems with the animals or in the garden and I have served meals to my family that have been completely home grown!

I have a saying that I came up with.  You are welcome to use it:  "The best teacher is experience and the best experience is somebody else's!"  As the youngest in a large family, it kept me from many a spanking, I'm sure.  As a homeschooling mom, it allowed me to rely on other people's expertise in math, literature, history and science to graduate functional, well-educated adults.  As a homesteader, learning from others through reading gave me the confidence to attempt things I had never learned before!  Really, people, I'm a city girl!  I had never really been around a cow until I purchased my own!  Before this, my experience in gardening was solely in flowers and landscaping!

So here on The Maven, you can expect a lot of 'how to get started' - 'how to decide if this will work for you' - 'what are the problems that come along with blank' .  Hope that sounds like a useful thing to you, I'm having a blast sharing the joys and challenges of homesteading.

Winter is coming up and is a wonderful time to make plans for a new adventure.  Here are some of the resources I have found useful:

• Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin - he breaks down the process of Management Intensive Grazing and empowers you to work with nature to manage your livestock
• Weedless Gardening by Lee Reich,  How to Grow More Vegetables... by John Jeavons and The Winter Harvest by Eliot Coleman - the first explains the concept of using beds and aisles, the second sells you on the idea of planting intensively and the last is all about season extension.  
• Territorial Seed Company catalog - their planting guides are helpful and the pictures are lovely

So, there we are.  I guess 10 years of this means I have experience.  Reading other people's work has made me a little knowledgeable. I'll be working to apply that knowledge and experience to the unique situation of homesteading in the South.  Come on back!  There's a whole lot more!

Raising Your Own Meat

The Third Level in homesteading is raising your own meat. Today we'll chat as if you are in the 'Can I imagine doing that?' stage.  Check out the front page that says "Four Levels in Homesteading" if you haven't already. If you have a few acres, you can consider raising animals specifically for meat. Here's a question and answer format to help you think it through.

• How can I possibly eat an animal I have met personally?  Augh!  Will the children ever stand for it?
• First of all, you will eat them while making num num noises.  My beef is more tasty, more tender and more nutritious than anything I can buy.  
• Secondly, kids tend to get it - the meat in the package came from somewhere, right?
• Lastly, and most importantly, make the end result evident from the beginning.  You are welcome to any of our cow names .....Sir Loin, Brisket, Chuckie, Patty, Stroganoff, and Stu to name a few.  I have three on the way and would love some suggestions for future names. (Keep it clean, though.)
• Is it a lot of work?
• Well, yes. It kind of is.  All livestock need fencing and require rotation through paddocks or pastures to get a good quality 'grass finished' product.  
• You will need a way to get them loaded onto a trailer and transported to your butcher.  Obviously, a smaller animal like a goat will be easier than a cow.
• Can I make money at it?
• I have no trouble selling shares of my beef.  My butcher is inspected, but I am not, so in effect my customers are buying a quarter of the entire cow.  
• Goats and sheep are going well all around the country - here in the southeast, I hear much more success regarding goats rather than sheep.
• Where do I learn more?
• I would recommend anything by Joel Salatin as a baseline to understanding how to raise pastured pork, beef, or hens for eggs.  
• Why should I even consider doing this?
• Research continues to confirm that grass or pastured animals provide meat that is lower in cholesterol, higher in Omega 3's and lower in calories. If you are a true science nerd, you can see that even our government agrees here. 
• It'll make you a real farmer - although I have to admit I do things differently enough from the standard way that I tend to raise eyebrows when I talk about my cows.

It's a lot to think about and a big commitment too, but I have thoroughly enjoyed my cows and look forward to adding a couple of pigs next year.  So far, we have only butchered old hens, but even that wasn't so bad.  What I do know is that the demand for grass-fed, organically raised beef is rising as people become more informed.  Think about it....