Mining manure

Yep - it's another exciting day at Wild Rose Farm! We're on vacation this week and it's one of those "stay-cations"! We're getting caught up on yard work, weeding, pruning, etc. One of the "etc." jobs is digging out & spreading manure from the area where we fed the round bales of hay to the sheep over the winter. Whew --- it smells like a farm around here right now. The manure is being spread on areas where we're going to disk and do some pasture renovation seeding. We bought some hay/pasture seed yesterday and I'd like to get it spread before it rains. It actually looks like there is rain in the forecast!

Still no rain here

It continues to be dry here ..... when will one of those tropical storms swing our way and drop some showers? It's time to get the grass growing for the fall.

We need rain!

It's not the most exciting picture, but you get the idea. I took the photo of the cracked ground after I had finished spinning on some grass seed on our pasture field. We use the sheep as "pasture management tools" to nub down the areas that we want to reseed. They also trample the seed into the soil as they walk around. It gets harder to get the push in electro-net fence posts into the ground when it's so dry. We'll move the sheep to another area to graze once they've finished the round bale that they're on here.

Spinning on the seeds

It's August and there is some rain (supposedly) in the forecast, so we took some time tonight to mow & clip weeds in a pasture field. I also walked over the area where we have our ewes confined right now and spread some seed with a hand spin seeder. The sheep will help to trample the seed into the ground as they walk around. You get a good look at the condition of the field when you walk over it! The ewes are eating a round bale now since we don't want them on fresh grass once we've weaned off the lambs ...... this encourages their milk supply (already low) to stop so that the ewes "dry off". I've noticed that the ground is cracked since any substantial rain in the tri-state area seemed to miss our farm. It's been perfect hay drying weather around here for the last 2 weeks. Lots of folks took advantage of that to make 2nd cutting hay.

Behind the scenes

Part of what we do goes on behind the scenes. Folks may not notice the barn full of hay when they're looking at the sheep, but it's a part of what we do in the summer. We don't make our own hay since we have the sheep on a Managed Intensive Grazing program on all of our open ground. Instead, we buy the hay that we need for winter from other local farmers who have hay to sell. Tomorrow we'll be picking up some square bales to store in the loft, but we feed most of our hay as round bales. Here's a look at some of the hay as it's being put away. The yield on the round bales is much greater if they're stored under cover and off of the ground on pallets. The big round bales are put out in hay feeders and as many as 20 sheep can crowd in around the feeder at times. The small square bales are usually fed to our rams during the year and also to any ewes that are in the barn around lambing season. We try to keep a small quantity of 2nd cutting hay around in case we have a sheep that might be sick or needs encouragement to eat.