YOUR LANDSCAPE WILL SPEAK TO YOU IF ONLY YOU WILL LISTEN.

[Beekissed]

G'day and thank you your continuing interest.Well BK ,there are a couple of things that strike me from the outset.Is the chicken project a free range egg one and if so is it a profit making one?

It's free range and not for profit, merely for family food and to give away to other family. It's also for good stewardship of the land.

Is your boundary's securely fenced? Nope...not yet. Is there an opportunity to "open up the woods" to allow a form of grazing? The woods are our boundary fence, of a sort, as we are bound by many acres of woodland between us and any neighbors.

Instead of owning a ram and wether,why not hire one for 6 weeks each year?

There are no rams of the breed I want close to me for that kind of enterprise, nor does anyone want to rent a ram due to biosecurity issues. I'm going to keep a full time ram and wether here and rotate them through the paddocks as two separate herds, of a sort....if you can call two sheep a herd.

Or better still start a Ram hiring business,First I would do an audit of a 50 km circle from your place,how many small sheep farmers fall within it? All those within that distance are using wool breeds and I'm doing Katahdins. What breeds are they using? What are the costs associated with keeping a ram on the farm ,feed, labor ,extra infrastructure and the ability to carry an extra couple of ewes? I think it would need to be a deliver and pickup service and a deposit to cover the loss of the ram.

Sorry, TOR, just not that kind of a venture...this is merely for food and good use of the land rather than mowing it all the time. Just what folks like you would consider a hobby, while folks like me would consider it livestock(as in live food on the hoof, stocked until needed that also help manage the grass and brush).

How about a few pic's of your place?......T.O.R. It's hard to get pics of the entirety, as it's only 20 acres of primarily woodland with a 3+acre meadow on which the house and buildings sit....no sweeping views like you have of pasture land. It does have some grassed paths/roads to he back of the land but I don't intend to use those for grazing any time soon.

Dug up a few pics of the front of the meadow and one side, taken in the fall. The whole place is on a ridge top with a slight grade to all the meadow, sloping downward...has some level areas there but over all a slight slope. Clay soil, so poor drainage even with the slope.

These pics don't show the rest of the meadow, the right of the house and up the slope above the house, but it pretty much looks similar to what you can see here. Grass with trees that fade into brush and forest.

 

[Baymule]

It's beautiful Bee!

 

[The Old Ram-Australia]

G'day bee, well that looks a "perfect spot",a nice mix of evergreen and deciduous trees.That pile of wood on the porch would indicate that it gets "pretty cold"? Do you harvest your firewood from the farm? Some of the timber looks a little close in the event of a fire? Do you get "big snows"?

Can you access your wooded boundary's ? Timber harvest could help when it comes to the boundary fence and thinning back from the grassed areas could extend your grazing into the woods.

What becomes of all that "leaf drop"?

Thanks for the pic's.....T.O.R.

 

[Beekissed]

G'day bee, well that looks a "perfect spot",a nice mix of evergreen and deciduous trees.That pile of wood on the porch would indicate that it gets "pretty cold"? Do you harvest your firewood from the farm? Some of the timber looks a little close in the event of a fire? Do you get "big snows"?

Can you access your wooded boundary's ? Timber harvest could help when it comes to the boundary fence and thinning back from the grassed areas could extend your grazing into the woods.

What becomes of all that "leaf drop"?

Thanks for the pic's.....T.O.R.

Yep, we get subzero weather here but only a couple of weeks of that. Usually in the teens, 20s and 30s for the winter months. We harvest wood here and sometimes, when we don't have enough dead hardwood to harvest, we'll buy a load of cured oak from someone. Often family members will have some they want to get rid of on their land and we'll go split and haul that home.

We don't get forest fires much in this state...it's very mountainous and moist, so and has many rivers, streams and lakes, so fires usually don't get any foothold here. I can't remember the last time we had one in this state.

We can access all our boundaries but not via vehicle....some of it is in steep hollers, some has no access path or roads. I really don't want to clear anymore land for pasture but make the stocking rates and livestock fit what we have here. I'll be setting fencing deeper into the wood lines so that the sheep have access to browse aplenty. I don't think 4 permanent sheep will overbrowse or overgraze the area,even with additional lambs in the spring and summer months....but if they do, then this sheep venture won't fly here.

In that case I'll take it down to two sheep, get rid of the ram and wether and just keep those ewes as lawn ornaments and grass removal.