Fencing

This morning I went out to milk and found these sumacs laying on the fence and blocking the path. It was the second time this weekend.



The fence was loaded pretty good, at least half way to the ground and very tight. It took a while to cut through with a bow saw and a pair of loppers. By the time I was done, the fence had regained it's line. Gotta love high tension fence and glad I put springs on it.

I have been dealing with fencing a lot lately.

Last year we enlarged our number of paddocks so we could have better rotation for parasite management. I moved the goats up to the backfield a couple of weeks ago. Now my push is to keep enough browse fenced in ahead of them. I am trying to move away from hay and more towards pasture only for the growing season.

This spring I fenced the new garden plot with the super deer fence. It is in the middle of th new goat pasture. Half of the garden is grown up with brush, poplar and small pines. Great browse for goats. So for the last month I have been browsing the goats inside the deer fence on the undeveloped half of the garden. But now that I am starting to use areas outside the deer fence, keeping ahead of the goats with new fence is challenging. I have a threefold goal of re-establishing old fence lines, keeping the goats fed and keeping the goats moving enough so I am not recycling pasture more than every four months. Someday, the goal is to have a lower perimeter fence forming a ring of goat pasture around the garden. But it won't happen all at once. For now, I am planting posts where I can and cutting through a lot of honeysuckle. After the goats have chewed their way through it will be easier to see the lay of the land and decide on the permanent fence line.

I also have two groups of goats to deal with. The Does and the Bucklings. Since I am keeping the Bucklings intact, it's important they are separate. Wouldn't want any hanky panky going on prematurely.

It took me a while, but I think I have finally worked out a cycle I think will work and am putting together the infrastructure to make it happen. I want the Does to see the pasture first and get the choicest bits. Then rest it for a week before I turn the Bucklings in to clean it up. That way I always keep a double fence between the Does and the Bucklings, no piece of ground sees animals for more than four weeks in four months, and I can keep a portable milking hut in the resting pasture. It beats moving the does back and forth from the backfield to the milking parlor at the back of the barn. The portable milking hut in the resting paddock between the Bucks and the Does was the key.

At present, I am just using three strands of poly wire to keep the goats in. Is nice because it is easy to work with, coils easily and doesn't require any tools. Also, a simple post in a reasonable hole for corner posts and fiber glass rods as line posts on long runs is all it requires to stay up. No need for corner bracing or getting elaborate. Sometimes I find the Bucklings need the extra convincing of a fourth wire, but that's not really a big deal. I hear a lot of horror stories about people unable to contain their goats. With our Saanens, I just don't see it. About the worst thing they do is play hard to get when it's time to put on a lead.

In the future, I would like to put up a 5 wire high tension fence around the entire goat fence. That way I could section for paddocks simply by stretching poly wire between the outer perimeter fence and the inner deer fence around the garden. I like the high tension smooth steel wire for permanent fencing. It is a significant physical barrier on it's own. But backed up with the fence charger, it is very convincing to those I want to keep in and those who should stay out. It isn't hard to string and I can take it down if I feel the need. If I turn of the charger, it isn't menacing to those who know it is off. And it takes a beating.

Some nice weather

We had a string of at least two weeks of good weather that spanned all the important days of kidding. Going into April, my wife pointed out that last year we had three significant snow storms in April. Not this year. We are completely melted out except the patch of snow on the north west corner that gets dumped on by both the house and the barn roofs. It is down from 8 feet to a foot and a half, soon to be gone. My mother in law looks to have won the pool on that, it will be gone before May.

The string of sunny days has been broken, though. It started raining at about 9 AM and has been going pretty steady ever since. The drainage over flow in the back yard is brimming. That's where the whole backside of the house and two thirds of the barn rain water ends up. We usually have two 55 gallon drums to catch it, but I haven't set that up yet this spring. Today's rain would have easily filled it.

We do have the spring line setup. When I bought this house the main house was still supplied by the surface well in a cleft up above the house. It will gravity feed into the firs floor of the house. One of the conditions to buy the house was to put in a drilled well, the state frowns on surface water. So I dug a line from the spring to the garden and we now have a supply for the garden that is separate from our drinking water.

We moved the greenhouses today. We had two greenhouses in the garden this year, one for the chickens and one for plants. During the coldest winter days, the plants go dormant since the greenhouse is unheated. But they are that much further along when temperatures do allow. This year, we got a solid extra month of growth over unprotected ground in the garden. Most people in this area are just starting to talk about working their gardens, but my wife already has greens to harvest, radishes, leaks, etc. All cold hearty stuff to begin with, but we are already getting daily salads out of the garden. So, today we took down the chicken green house and moved the plant greenhouse to a new set of beds. We also constructed two new raised beds in the garden to match the greenhouse foot print. The cold hearty stuff is ready to be out on its own and my wife will be moving tomatoes and peppers out to the new green house location. I am really impressed with the amount she already has growing in the garden. I'll try to put up some pictures when we takes some.

Out back, we are adding some new goat "pasture". Last year I put up a 75' square pasture for the goats and we tried to go rational grazing in that. But it was too small and we really weren't getting enough time between rotations. So I am adding another similar sized fenced area and then we will have two smaller pastures in between the two permanently fenced ones. That will give us a four month separation which is much better from a parasite perspective. Unfortunately, it is not optimal for forage nutrition, but the parasites are a more important consideration.

Stockpanel Arches

It's fall and time to think about coming frost and putting the garden together for the winter.



Over the last couple of years we have been working on developing a greenhouse design we like. We needed something that would extend our growing season into the fall, provide our chickens with a protected area in the winter, open the garden earlier in the spring and be easy enough to remove for the growing season. It also needed to be inexpensive.



From a couple of sources, we worked out the arched stock panel design we use now. My brother had been talking about arched hoop houses he uses to winter his chickens and a friend of mine showed me arched stock panel sheds he uses to house his yard equipment. I put the two ideas together into a hoop house made of stock panel over our raised beds to house the chickens in deep winter and a greenhouse on either side. And during the growing season, the plastic comes off the greenhouse and it becomes a trellis for climbing plants like beans and tomatoes. And since the stock panel is only staked down, it's easy to lift it out one panel at a time and set it up in a different location. Interestingly, my friend showed me the article he had gotten his idea from, an article about greenhouses... All my life's a circle, so to speak.



To make these stock panel greenhouses, we use three sections of stock panel (hog panel) 16 feet long and 52" wide. The panels are bent into arches about 8 feet in diameter set in a line to form a 12 foot long greenhouse. We drive a couple of 4 foot stakes that enter the stock panel 2 feet off the ground and go through the lowest rung of the panel. The stakes help define a 2 foot high vertical wall. A series of guy ropes (cords for geometry students) pull the panel in to form and stabilize the curve of the arch. This year, we also added some 46" spars that follow the same path as the guy ropes. The guy rope / spar arrangement use up about 6 inches of the headroom, but they also make the arch strong enough to handle our snow load. A couple of pieces of bailing twine lace the sections of panel together. A 10 by 9 foot piece of 6 mm plastic goes across each end and a 13 by 17 foot piece over the arch. Around the rim of the arch, we use those metal binder clips to clip the plastic to the arch. We run battens the length of the arch to keep the plastic from luffing in the wind. A couple of 8 inch long blocks of wood screwed to the battens from the inside secure the battens to the arch. For extra insulation, a second layer of plastic can go over the battens, forming about an inch of air gap between the layers of plastic. I frame up a door on hinges but it could also be just a flap cut in the end. A vent window will also be necessary to prevent over heating in warm weather.


Our 2006-2007 greenhouse as it finished the winter and started our spring plants


2007 tomatoes and peppers starting in the greenhouse in May

Frame for the second greenhouse going up on new raised beds in June

Young plants growing in the new East greenhouse as a trellis

West greenhouse with plastic removed and tomatoes and peppers uncovered.

Tomatoes and peppers growing in the west trellis in July. Beans hanging from the panels.

A variety of plants growing in the East trellis in July

The east trellis covered in plastic against frosts in September.