The Ambler Comes to Visit

September 16th, 2006

It has been an exciting day on the farmlet. The Ambler, a handsome angus bull, has come to visit our three dear cows.


The Ambler

We are pleased that The Ambler could find time in his schedule to come over here, and are very grateful to our neighbours, Ronnie and Kevin, for lending him to us. He should be a fine mate for our cows. For one thing, he is not too large. This doesn’t matter so much with a bigger cow like Esmerelda who has already had one calf, but we have heard that smaller heifers like Rosie and Coco can end up with calving problems if the sire is too large. The Ambler is also very quiet and good-natured, as bulls go. We are glad we can still go into the paddock to check up on our cows without the threat of being charged by an aggressive bull. The angus is a good breed for meat. That suits us well, since we are not looking to breed any replacement milking cows this year.

This morning, we lured our three cows into a nice new paddock by tempting them with a bucket of kiwifruit peels. We left them in their new quarters while we walked over to Ronnie and Kevin’s place to fetch The Ambler. Then Ronnie, The Ambler, Kevin and I all ambled back to our place. Two of Ronnie’s friendly hand-reared sheep wanted to come with us as well, but we left them behind once we walked off Ronnie’s property.

The Ambler seemed very excited to be arriving at a nice fresh grassy paddock with three beautiful cows in it. As we approached the paddock, he smelled the cows and made what Kevin describes as “monstrous and terrifying sounds” — a lot of snorting, lowing, and strained breathing. Kevin and I wondered if our lives were in danger, but Ronnie assured us that, as long as we didn’t get between him and the cows, everything would be fine. While The Ambler was distracted by getting a kiss through the fence from Esmerelda, Ronnie quickly opened the gate. Moments later, The Ambler was in the paddock. None of our cows are in season at the moment (Coco was in heat yesterday — bad timing!), but they seemed pretty happy to see The Ambler, just the same. Esmerelda, in particular, has been licking him, butting him with her horns, and generally acting loopy over him. She watches him very jealously if he starts spending too much time with Rosie and Coco.

Anyway, The Ambler seems to have settled in for a good stay. With any luck, all three of our cows will be in calf by the end of his visit, and three little angus-cross calves will be born on the farmlet next year.

Coco’s Great Escape

September 15th, 2006

Take a look at this picture from a couple of days ago. Notice how Coco, the cow on the right, is outside the electric tape?


What’s wrong with this picture?

The entire pasture is ringed with a permanent electric fence. We use the portable tape and standards to break up the pasture into smaller paddocks so the girls will graze down the grass and not just pick the tops off the grass over the entire property. Coco decided that she didn’t like that plan. This is what happens if you try to get by without enough electric fence standards.


Splendid beast, Coco, basking in the afternoon light

Coco actually didn’t want to get too far away from the others for long. She wound up following them around, just on the ‘free’ side of the tape. I could still go up to her, pet her and even feed her by hand, but she didn’t want to go back into the smaller paddock.

Eventually, I managed to lure her back in with a bucket containing a tiny bit of palm kernel meal. Have you ever seen a child who’s addicted to sugar? That’s what our cows are like with palm kernel. Until we get a dog, this is the best way we have of moving them. Most of the time, though, they’ll just follow us around.

Farmlet reader, SH, contributed US$25. Yesterday, Becky and I went to RD1 and used those funds to buy a dozen more portable, pigtail fence standards. Thanks so much, SH.

Livestock Management

September 15th, 2006

Going back a couple of weeks, here’s how the day went when Rosy and Coco arrived at our neighbors’ place.

In order to get cattle delivered by truck, you need to have a race (a wooden or metal ramp that facilitates loading and unloading) on the property at which they are going to be dropped off. We don’t have a loading race on our property, but Kevin and Ronnie, our neighbors (less than a kilometer from our property) up the road, do and they were kind enough to help us by allowing the truck to drop off our heifers there.

Rosy and Coco had been hand reared by a woman (Hi Pene!) who was very fond of them. She was always gentle with them. They had never been “treated like cattle,” so the experience on the truck wasn’t pleasant for them. Immediately after Rosy and Coco came off the truck, they were a bit shaken up.

Have you ever wished things would go a certain way, even though there was no indication that they would? Getting our two Jersey heifers to our property was just such an experience. We tried walking them through a series of paddocks on Ronnie’s and Kevin’s place. We chased the cows, actually. They led us and we tried to keep up.

Finally, we reached the point where we had to take them onto the road for the last stretch to our place. They seemed pretty skittish, still, and I said to Rebecca something like, “What if they just decide to run away?”

She acknowledged that they just might do that, but what else were were going to do?

ADVICE MOMENT: If you find yourself in a similar situation, go get help from someone who knows what they’re doing.

We didn’t do that.

As soon as we took them onto the road, * poof * they were gone. They took off at a full gallop into a bush block of unknown size, several acres at least.

“One thousand dollars worth of heifers: gone,” was the only thought in my head.

“How the #@!*&@ are we going to get them back now!?” was my next thought. It was my first real OH sh*t moment since being in New Zealand.

Becky and I tried to go after them.

Ronnie noticed how long it was taking us to move them and she and Kevin came down the road with their dog, William.

We all started climbing up through the steep bush. Ronnie gave William a command and he leapt ahead of us and disappeared. I’d say it took about two minutes. The dog brought the cows back down to us. A few minutes later, Ronnie, Kevin and William had Rosy and Coco standing in our driveway.

There are a few lessons to be learned from this drama.

  1. We bit off more than we could chew with this move
  2. Kind, helpful neighbors saved our day
  3. We need a dog that we can train to work like William

Oozing Slimy Bodies

September 14th, 2006

The warm, rainy conditions we are having are ideal for our newly planted seedlings. Alas, these conditions are also perfect for slugs. . . and they are oozing their slimy bodies over to our gardens as fast as they can to feast on the tender young plants. We like to share our food, and wouldn’t begrudge them a few mouthfuls, but their collective intent seems to be fixed on total annihilation of all our kale and bok choi seedlings. This we cannot tolerate, so we are mustering all our resources to find a solution that does not involve slug bait or other toxic chemicals.

Our first line of defense is beer traps. Since Kevin has been brewing beer at home, we have plenty of dregs left over from the bottom of each batch. I’ve been burying plastic containers up to their rims in the garden, and then filling them with left-over beer. The slugs slither in for a taste of beer, and never come out again. This method has been somewhat successful. Slugs are certainly going into the beer traps in large numbers, but there are still more of them on the plants.The second solution we’ve tried goes as follows: Late at night, I don my combat gear — wooly hat and cardigan, head lamp, and trusty gumboots. Arming myself with a bucket of hot soapy water, I head for the garden to pick slugs off our plants. At first I thought I might keep a tally of how many slugs I vanquished on these forays, but I quickly lost count. This method is certainly quite effective. At the moment, it’s probably the only thing stopping our bok choi plants from being eaten to the ground. It’s pretty labour-intensive though, and as our garden gets bigger, I start to wonder if I will have to stay out there all night.

What else can we do? I’ve heard that if you eat half a grapefruit and leave the peel upside-down on the lawn, slugs will crawl under it and can then be disposed of. We plan to try this. We also want to get hold of some copper to make slug barriers for some of the most sensitive plants. Copper is on the shopping list for our next trip to town.

Slugs aside, we are really happy with how things are going in the garden. Today we made the first of several bamboo frames for our peas to climb up. I’m already dreaming of having fresh sugarsnap peas in our lunchtime salads! We were pleased with the first pea frame, but Kevin thinks the design is somewhat flawed, and that we are unlikely ever to have peas in our salad. He suspects that without the addition of barbed wire or an electric fence, he’ll have gobbled up all the sugarsnap peas before they make it to the lunch table.

The ‘Other’ Site…

September 13th, 2006

Farmlet is generating incredible interest, and much faster than we anticipated. Becky and I haven’t even had a chance to write a proper About section (we will do that soon). Clearly, there’s a deep hunger for this type of information out there. And we’re glad about that!


John William Waterhouse, Pandora

Many of you may not realize, though, how I entered the Farmlet headspace, if you will. My other site is cryptogon.com. It’s a chronicle of doom that spans several years and would be about 3,000 pages long if you printed it out, end to end.

Cryptogon has documented the problems we’re all facing authoritatively and repeatedly. The direction the planet is heading (politically, economically and environmentally) is clear and, as you probably know, it’s not pleasant. I don’t want to bog Farmlet down with the horror of Cryptogon, but that’s how I got here.

If you know people who may not be ready for Farmlet, have them check out Cryptogon for a few weeks or months. Reading Cryptogon is excellent for causing people to lose all hope, which is what needs to happen. When the masses have hope, established authority’s power is at its maximum. Hope is keeping most people in the prison, the Matrix, whatever you want to call it. Give up on hope. Let the wave of horror that is present civilization wash over you and burn hope away.

Ok, you’ve lost all hope: now what?

Grab a shovel.

There’s work to be done.