Both baby goats doing good

In spite of the wet cold weather,,  we are pleased to announce that both moms (Molly and Maggie) and both babies are are doing fine.  The babies are nursing well and look strong and alert. 

Sorry we have not posted pictures yet....  It has been a incredibly busy weekend.  Hope to have some pics posted here this week.  Both babies are super cute!

Weather down today

Centurylink is having repeated problems with the internet feeds in this neck of the woods....  So unfortunately the weather station is inaccessible for several hours,  with no end in sight. 

Little Sprouts Weather Station is Active online!

NEW for 2014! We now have an official weather station that is online 24x7!  You can preview the weather before coming out, even get a special localized forecast for the next few hours.

We have been working on this for some time, but December was wrought with problems and little time.  Our local only weather station was to serve as the basis of an internet enabled station, by adding a "gateway" box. Unfortunately the first one we received was defective and had to be replaced, which took forever with the holiday shipping. Then we learned that our original weather monitor equipment was damaged in the -9 degree weather of mid December, so we had to replace that! Everything is finally up and working now as of Jan 3rd.

Details: we are using the AcuRite 5in1 sensor, mounted on our front chicken coop about 10 feet high. That feeds a wireless signal to the AcuRite Internet Bridge, which is connected to our local network and thereby the Internet through our DSL line, The combination sends updated weather every 5 seconds to Weather Underground which produces a localized forecast online for anyone to see.

We also have monitors in the greenhouse (where we sprout grains for feed year round)  and the garage (where we have our incubators running).  so that we can monitor temp and humidity of both of those locations. If the temperature of either exceeds the preset limits, a text message and/or email will be sent to us so that we can deal with it immediately.

You can even place the Little Sprouts Weather on your own webpage with HTML code from this resource:  Weather Underground Weather Stickers

Anytime you wish to see the current weather here, just go to this blog site and you will see a box on the upper right column with current weather conditions. You can click ion that to go to the weather underground history and forecast pages for our valley.

We are very excited to have this operating, both for us and for you. Weather is a VERY important factor in any type of farming. What we do is a "dance with nature" on a daily basis. We cant control the weather, so we learn to use it to our advantage and manage it's effects. You can watch this dance from the warmth of your own home now!

Here is the full current conditions:

Sunrise through a 2 foot icecicle

Winter is so full of beauty. Had to share this one.

Plumbing, plumbing, and more plumbing

What a day yesterday was!  Starting at 3am when we discovered no flowing water in the house.  Here us a rundown of the days events:

3am to 5am. No water anywhere.  Found the stub to the well pump pressure sensor was frozen  causing the well to think there was over pressure and not run. Diagnosed,  fixed.  But no hot water in house.

5 am to 7am: short nap

7 am to 10 am: no water in milking room.  Pipes under sink frozen. Defrosted those and found feed pipe to water heater frozen.  Defrosted that.  Water flowing.

10 am to 12 noon : late morning milking

12 noon to 1pm: lunch and rest

1pm to 5pm : feed pipe to house water heater frozen.  Thawed slowly but pipe cracked behind water heater (at back if closet)  shut off all water, drain and remove water heater,  replace pipes and insulate,  reinstall water heater.

5 to 6pm. Water on finally ,  help with carrying water and feed to animals,  grab dinner.

6pm to 9pm: night milking,  but low pressure caused by broken garden pipe that had Thawed.  Capped pipe twice (had to redo glue)  while milking.

What's left?  Never made it to the greenhouse water for the sprouting.  Faucet and pipes buried under a foot of snow.  None of the stall waterers are flowing.

But..  Had a hot shower to end the day.!

Just life on the farm in winter.....

Sometimes it's cold

Sometimes it's cold....  And then it's cold.
Just got back inside....  From trying to keep the plumbing working for the morning milking.  Managed to get the cold water flowing inside our house (the pressure sensor on the well froze )  but no hot water yet.  Tested the milking room...  Nothing glowing there yet...  After a nap I'll tackle that one.

Mr thermometer is showing -6 right now at 4am. Crazy cold.   The record for white city is -10 set in 1913! We may get there by dawn.  That would mean tonight is the coldest recorded in history,  ever!  Even if we only come close to the record...  That is a record set 100 years ago.

It's cold.  Time for a nap.  Then plumbing round 2.  The joys of farming.....  I love it...  Just wish I could feel my toes...

Good night.

Winter is here

With quite a cold blast,  winter blew in...  With 6 to 8 inches of snow overnight!  We are now covered with a beautiful white blanket,  littered with tracks of a lot sorts of little feet.

Cold,  but a beautiful winter Wonderland

This used to work

Dry Farming ? How to grow food without water

I ran across this article about dry farming.  Although innovative it isnt truly anything new.  I remember my dad (an ex farmer from the 60's)  taught me these same principles.

The basic approach is to water well in the beginning to get the sprouts started and established, watering deep  is more important than often. You want the moisture to be under the sprouting plant.  Then as the plant grows, you cut back on watering frequency, but make sure that any watering is DEEP, meaning soaking through the top foot of soil at least. Then you wait until the top is completely dry, and the moisture level is 4 to 8 inches down (dig down to see). You want the moisture level to be normally just UNDER the root level. As the plant grows, let the moisture level go deeper before the next watering.

While not truly "dry farming" as in this article, you get the same effect. The roots grow down deeper and deeper in between each watering in search of the ever falling moisture.  Finally they get deep enough so that you dont need to water any more.  The roots are down in the area where there is enough moisture to maintain the plant.

The only thing i disagree with the article is, I find it better to water well as above, then let the ground sit untouched instead of tilling lightly to dust.  When you water and let it sit, the soil forms a hard crust on the surface that provides a good shield form evaporation.  Experience has shown that this crust is more effective at holding in water than dust.

Of course thick mulch also retains water, if available. a couple inches of mulch will almost completely block evaporation between watering.

Another innovative way to block evaporation is, <gasp> weeds! or should i say ground cover. I have found that if you let the weeds grow (depending on type of course)  they form a type of living mulch that not only keeps water in but provides for a lot of life. To keep them from overwhelming hte plants you can mow or trim the weeds between the plants, but leave a couple inches for "living mulch". Perhaps a dangerous approach but it works!

SO yes, this does work, within limits. yield is lower, while quality is higher.

Here is the original article :  http://www.care2.com/causes/farming-without-water-its-possible-and-tasty.html

Portable power!

Finally, after 3 winters, Little Sprouts Farm will not be prone to losses through power failures! We found a good backup generator!

After lots of consideration, I came up with a list of wants about the generator:

1. diesel - engines last longer, overall efficiency higher (more power per gallon of fuel), we store diesel, but not gasoline,
2. easy to move - the kind with 4 little wheels just wont work off a concrete floor
3. at least 5KW
4. electric or manual starter
5. reasonably new
6. under $3000

We found one that matched all these criteria on Craigslist (farmers best friend)  located in Bend. It is a brand new, never started Titan diesel portable generator, 5KW constant, electric start selling for $2K.  We couldnt pass it up!

So we headed to bend. Unfortunately between here Medford and Bend was a rather nasty snowstorm. We ended up driving 30 MPH for about 100 miles in the blowing snow. Prudence encouraged us to spend the night and let the weather clear.  I am a big believer in good tires! The tires we have on the yukon pulled right through inches of snow with a trailer in tow.

We did pass a total of 3 serious accidents on the way there and back... 2 of them rolled off the road.

Nevertheless, we made it fine, and the new generator cranked up perfectly on the first pull.  All that is left is to rig up a connection to the breaker box so that we can easily plug it in and make out own power when it inevitably goes dark here.

Frostbite in the Greenhouse

Unfortunately we did loose a few plants in the greenhouse last week in that final winter storm. The temp here dropped to 16 a night or two, and that was just a little too cold.

Fortunately it only affected the plants on the lower shelves at the outside edge of the greenhouse. Stored there were the zucchini and cucumbers. It seems that about half of the plants are frost bitten and dying. Since I had left 2 sprouts in each bucket, many of the buckets are still ok with one live plant in it.

If there was more winter to go, it would make sense to buy a propane greenhouse heater to deal with the extra cold nights. As it is though, it doesn't seem wise to buy a heater this late in the season. All we have in there now is a tiny 1500 watt electric heater. It does its best, but 1500 watts is not much for a 1x20 greenhouse in weather below 20 degrees!

SNOW!

Its not the life threatening blizzard they were predicting... but it is finally snowing at Little Sprouts Farm! Today was littered by fairly light snow flurries all day, but it was too warm to collect on the ground. Finally, just before sundown tonight, the snow arrived.

Where does a kitty go in the snow? Somewhere to hide!

A snow covered llama and ram.

Even in the blowing snow the turkeys refuse to go inside the turkey pen. They would still rather roost on the turkey roost we built.

These guys look warm enough!

Look closely and you will see some stray geese flying overhead.

Taking a picture of my son taking a picture.

Will the pond freeze over?

The horses don't seem to care about the snow

And the happy couple leaves a pair of tracks as the waddle through the snow....

White Winter Morning at Little Sprouts Farm

We woke up this morning to a white cloud laying all over the ground. What a beautiful site!  Here's some pics:

Samson and Callie wondering what happened to their grass.

In the distance you can see some Red Wattle Pigs roaming the icy pasture.

Skies looking stormy again behind the barn.

One of my favorite views.. past the front fence is a field that never gets mowed, making it picturesque at times like these

The oak trees beside the house are raining snow.

The sleeping orchard under a fresh blanket of snow

How do herbivores eat when there's is no grass visible? Well these guys were served breakfast in bed! The horses, the sheep and llama, even the pigs had their own bales of fresh green grass thrown to munch on.

Hunter decides to take advantage of the lazy morning to do some crow hunting with his new pellet gun.

Yes... how may I help you?

Turkeys in cold storage

Turkeys walking around in the snow.

Windy?

Seems like the Spring Oregon winds go the best of the turkey coop today.  No damage done fortunately, but it does take time to keep fixing things. Whats that old saying about doing it right the first time? Good Advice!

More fencing....

Today is the day to finish hanging the wire on the new crossfence. Hopefully no surprises this time! I'll use the fence stretcher and tractor to get the wire as tight as possible without pulling the end TPosts out of the soft ground. This was an issue with the garden fencing but putting wood posts at the shallow end would be an even bigger issue due to the hardpan again.

So where's that dynamite????

Update: too much rain and wind.. no fencing yet. We'll try again tomorrow.

Update: 3/29/2010

There was finally a break in the rainy cold windy rain and snow so we were able to finish hanging the wire and gate.  I was able to stretch it more thant I expected, but alas.. the end post still started pulling out of the ground. I am attempting to use the metal brackets that make TPosts into corner posts with a brace. We had the same issue in the garden fencing though. Looks like these are not good to use in this soil without more bracing. Nevertheless, I was able to push the end post back into the ground with the tractor bucket and everything seems to be staying put now. Later I'll add another TPost right next to the end post and tie them together for more stability in the long run.

For now, the horses, llama, and last sheep are happily back in their side of the pasture , AWAY from my new fruit trees!

Upon closer inspection, there is some visible damage to the trrees, but hopefully not serious. Some bark missing here and there, several are missing top branches, and some mounds puched with holes. This was another valuable lesson!