Another updae

It’s super hot today, I don’t function too well once it rises much past 85 degrees and it’s far past that right now! Yesterday it was hot as well and I was working in the garden trying to pull the thistles that come through each morning but I think I was doing more mosquito swatting than thistle pulling, finally I got frustrated with the heat and the buzzing vampires so I did what the dog does and ran for the pond. Once inside it was cool and nice and no more flying bloodsuckers but it didn’t take long for snails to find me so it was a matter of choosing between mosquitoes and heat or snails. Something is eating the strawberries just as they are ripe, and it’s something small like a mouse or shrew. It’s really a test of patience because I want to eat the strawberries not feed the vermin. Other than that the gardens are coming along fine, though being first year out of 35 year sod means everything is quite a bit slower and less vigorous than it would be if it were an established garden spot. The soil is entirely out of balance and it will take a few years for me to get things in good shape. I can see right away that nitrogen is really short and I am sure that’s not the only thing that is short.

Yesterday I started working on the first summer flax oil pressing project, which is 3,600 lbs of flax that is now sitting on the back of my pickup. I got the press set up and cleaned out (from the canola residue) and about 600 pounds of flax pressed yesterday afternoon while I was adjusting the press and getting things set up. The new oil pressing building and filter system is sure a lot nicer than what we had last year! It’s still not perfect but after I got things adjusted for flax (it’s doesn’t take the same setting as canola does) I was able to get out my book and read while the press did the work and oil poured into the settling tanks. With all of the other projects I need to get done I’ll probably not be able to spend all of my time over there pressing so it will be Wednesday or Thursday before I get that job finished. Haying is the other major project for this week, and I sure hope it’s not over one hundred degrees out when I have to stack bales or I’ll be stacking bales all night long while it’s cool out and sleeping during the day! I need about 1,500 bales of hay for my own use and God willing I’ll do another couple of thousand bales for sale to the horse people that always seem to want some. If I buy the draft horses that I want I’ll need to put up even more hay but I think it will be worth it. I can usually do about 500 bales at a run and not be too tired of it, the second batch of 500 is a little tiring and after 2,000 bales I am usually sick of stacking hay. I always spur myself on with the thought of the old timers doing loose hay or the neighbor guys that talk about doing 100,000 bales per year. If they could do 100,000 bales when they were teenagers I can certainly do 3-4,000 bales when I am 25! If the machinery would keep going without breakdowns things would go a lot easier but there always seems to be a breakdown at several points. The mower not cutting nicely, the baler breaking a shear bolt, the bale elevator loosing a bearing or a chain or a belt (the most common problem), so far the rake has been the only thing that hasn’t given trouble through several seasons, the baler has been pretty reliable up until last year when I had a crew of helpers for the first time (Bartlett’s and Steve) and it broke down for the first time!

I mentioned how I was able to read while pressing oil and I think I should mention what I have been reading. It’s an old herbal veterinary book by Juliette de Bairacli Levy called Herbal Treatments for Farm and Stable (I think, it’s been many years since the cover has been around so I am going by memory as to the title) I would recommend anyone interested in raising livestock naturally and without chemical medical crutches buy this book, or borrow it or read it somehow. The author adds some strange things like moon cycles and gypsy treatments that I would question but the basic herb preparation and usage as well as feeding and care methods are excellent. The reason my copy of the book has no cover is because mom used it second only to her Bible (which also rarely had a cover) and it’s probably been in more barns and cow stalls and pastures and on kitchen counters being used as a cookbook for some herbal brew or concoction than any dozen other books. The test for many things comes from the results and I can attest to the results that come from using most of the information in this book. I didn’t know what a sick goat really was until I came to North Dakota and saw other goats. We never had a sick goat unless they got into something poisonous or got into the grain and overate. We had many cases of such things and always were very successful in treating them. We only lost one goat to poison that I remember and that was because she got into urea and we didn’t know about it until she was already having her last convulsions. With natural rearing methods our goats were always the absolute picture of health, I always figured the only way to kill a goat was to shoot it point blank with a high powered rifle or something along those lines as our goats were practically indestructible. When I first heard about sick goats not too long ago my reaction was almost one of “Did you say the words goat and sick together in the same sentence? Impossible!” Sheep take to dying and illness a little easier than goats do from my experience, for instance when a goat falls in a hole she will either make so much noise you come find her or she will think it is a game and call it fun; a sheep however, will lay on it’s back and die. Regardless of that, we always had extremely healthy sheep and our sheep were exposed to a lot that should have taken its toll. We kept them at fairs and shows and showing clinics for much of every summer and they were always in contact with sick or otherwise unhealthy animals. We never had a disease problem. I remember the first sheep we ever got were bummer lambs that came from the sale barn. They should have been conked in the head but we liked them so they immediately were started on the herbal milk formula and they did extremely well on it, much better than the stupid milk replacer that I have seen so many lambs and goats fed and consequently never regain their health. Milk replacer gives them bloated bellies and unhealthy look and their digestive tract never recovers. It’s not hard to pick out a milk replacer baby in a crowd. That first year my sister Jenifer had the Border Leicester ewe lamb and I had an angora goat that we raised on the herbal formula. Jenifer eventually took that abandoned ewe lamb and won every show in every county and also at the state and regional levels for about 5 years in a row. People started getting a little angry with us because when we drove up with our sheep to a show everyone knew we would take all of the ribbons with our healthy sheep and they would be spending their time doctoring theirs and giving shots. The same thing happened with my goat, though I liked showing sheep far better so he didn’t go to as many shows as my sheep did. At one show the judge made the comment that “This is the best angora goat I have ever seen.” Now ours were just plain orphan animals, not fancy stock from a high class breeder with high dollar show genetics, which is enough to convince me that health has more to do with quality than how big of a check the breeder can write. We didn’t have any special skill or knowledge, though we did work hard at caring for our animals; all that we did differently was to feed and care for our animals naturally instead of filling them with the latest potion from the veterinary office. We never used the regular vet, though we often talked with a friend of ours who was a veterinarian that had changed to natural methods himself. He had his license taken away because you just can’t go promoting garlic and wormwood over the latest wormer from Merck! I’ve found that unless you go all out with the natural methods you can end up with a lot of problems, either you go 100% modern commercial with all of their attachments or you go 100% natural and don’t try to walk the fence doing a little of both or you will have plenty of problems. Meaning, don’t try raising calves on a manure pile inside a dark and dingy barn and feed a little garlic in with your bottle that has been overheated on the stove. Natural means natural, and I have yet to find a calf bottle in the natural definition of things! Bottles are for emergencies not for general feeding of every baby animal that is on the place. God made mothers with udders and the exact milk at the exact temperature at the exact time that the baby needs it and when we pull the baby off for our own selfish purposes we generally make a mess of things for the rest of that animal’s life. Goats especially must nurse their mothers; a bottle fed goat is almost always less than healthy for the rest of her life no matter what you do later. You can do a lot to make bottle feeding better than the usual powdered milk replacer or reheated cows milk and that’s always good but it’s far better to let it be as God intended in the first place. I have yet to see a fully healthy mother that didn’t have enough milk for her babies and some for you too, and I can’t see any reason why anyone would want to mess with feeding bottles day after day along with washing bottles and mixing up the milk. Like I said before, a bottle fed baby will never be what it could have been, and an animal raised on a manure pile will not be what it should be either. Cows and goats and sheep were made to be born and raised on grass and clean dirt, not mud and filth. Greed seems to be the driving force behind people lambing or calving or kidding in the dead of winter when it’s 20- below zero outside and there is nothing to eat but some old dried out hay that’s probably been rained on. It’s so much better when it’s 60 degrees outside; there is plenty of cleansing green grass and brush for the mother to eat and a clean grassy place for the birth! I don’t see too many deer giving birth when there is snow piled 8 feet high and I think that should be enough to tell us something. On feeding, cows are grazing animals; they do well on lots of good green grass or good quality hay in the winter. A little addition of twigs and leaves and brush is extremely good for them but the bulk of the diet is grass. Goats and sheep are a little different, especially goats. Sheep can take mostly grass and some brush and weeds, goats are best on almost all leaves and brush and weeds, even thistles, and a little grass for a snack now and then, the hay for winter should reflect this as well. There is a huge benefit to feeding goats brush and leaves over grass, if you raise goats on a little grass and a lot of hay and grain you are likely to see rough coats and hip bones sticking out, weak feet and legs and weaker kids. Our goats on a full diet of brush and weeds and leaves with a little alfalfa were so shiny and slick you could just about use their side for a mirror and the dairy goats didn’t look like a skeleton even though our grandma goat gave over a gallon a day when she was at peak milking. Flax is an excellent addition to any animals diet and the effect is startling after feeding it for a while. I would also never want to do without the addition of kelp, I consider it almost essential to complete health and strong production. We used to feed it free choice and the benefit was plain, then we quit feeding it and the results were also very obvious! When I was a whole lot younger I used to run along the beach in front of my grandparents house and collect long strings of kelp just to use for ropes, now the smell of it brings back fond memories. Alfalfa is good for all animals and I think every farm should have some growing for winter use. We used to feed a lot of it and since we have lived in North Dakota we pretty much quit feeding it, I have seen a slight health decline since we have done so. Actually, since we moved here our animals have somewhat been set aside as a sideline and we just have fed whatever grass we can get, which hasn’t been entirely conducive to good health. I’ve also let the mud and manure accumulate from time to time and when that has happened I have noticed a decline in health even in the once very healthy stock. That is one reason I am paying a little closer attention to the livestock this year than I have in the past, I miss the glowing health I used to see. I want to have a 10 year old hen that is still laying an egg a day and a cow with the best milk in the county. Proverbs says that a righteous man cares for the life of his beast and I think that should be on a plaque over the door of the barn so it can be seen every time I go in there to feed or clean. It would be a good reminder to do the very best I can do to make the animals the healthiest that they can be.