In defence of omnivory

A key concept reoccurring in my environmental studies degree at KU was the 10% rule.  For every step in a food chain (such as from grain to mice to hawks) only 10% of the energy required to grow the prey is passed to the predator.  In other words, the top predators in a food chain are the least efficient at using the energy that comes ultimately from the sun.  A logical extension of this concept is that feeding people on plants is more efficient than feeding plants to animals and eating the animals.  Think of the additional people that could be fed on existing world food supplies by cutting animals out of the plan.

Bluestem Farm organic pasture

Bluestem Farm conventional crop land leased to neighbors

I struggled with this as an young omnivore until I realized people foods (mainly grain) do not need to be fed to livestock.  If animals can make use of food sources that are unusable to humans (grass, weeds, bugs, etc.) then they can provide people with a high quality diet without subtracting from calories available elsewhere. That's why our goal at Bluestem Farm is to grow all our livestock on grass.  We're not there yet.  Some animals are an easy fit; cows, sheep, and goats are all ruminants that thrive on grass.  Others require an omnivorous diet; chickens and pigs have simple stomachs and need more protein in their diets than grass can provide.  One possible solution is to feed grass-fed cow or goat milk to chickens and pigs. 

The moral justification of eating meat can be summed up for me by these two views of our farm in winter.  The first is the habitat created by grass-fed beef production.  This land supports bugs, birds, snakes, rodents, deer, coyotes, and a host of soil-dwelling microbes.  The second is the habitat created by soybean monoculture.  It is devoid of life in winter, offering neither food nor shelter to wildlife.

The best little chicken house, and why we abandonded it (Part 2)

New chicken pen in barn

I know I left you all hanging with the last story about the pretty little chicken house in the yard.  So perfect in many ways, it encouraged the flock to focus their messy free-ranging in our yard.  When I suggested to Scott that maybe the chickens could be confined to the cattle pens and pastures, he jumped at the idea and built our new, larger flock a home of their own in the ag barn.  With a little extra chicken-proofing of our field fence, I'll be able to plant berry plants in the yard without a fence! 

Chicken roosts

The new pen has many of the features of the old coop with additional floor space for our 25 pullets (young hens) and one cockerel (young rooster).  The elevated roosts have removable poo-collection boards that help keep the litter clean longer.  When it's time to change the litter (straw and chopped leaves) I mix the manure back in and put it outside to weather down for a perfect compost.

Feeders and waterers go under the boards to discourage chickens from roosting on them.  In the summer I plan to build a chicken nipple waterer.  For now my fountain waterer is in winter mode with a heating pad under it on low to keep it just above freezing. 

Chickens exploring outside

Chickens will soon have a window and an outside door of their own, but in the mean time they have access to the interior of the barn and like to rummage for dropped grain in the cow stalls.  They are slowly braving the outdoors.

These chickens will play a critical role in controlling cattle parasites- a key element in organic production.  No worries about making chickens sick; species that do not share parasites can safely run together or in a leader-follower system (more on that later).

AI cattle breeding

Hanging out at Bluestem Farm

I don't have enough cows to own a bull.  When each cow comes into heat, I call my AI technician neighbor who comes over with his toolkit and a long glove and gets the job done.  As you can imagine this doesn't always work as well as a bull, but it lets me choose from a variety of high quality genetics available on line.  You can buy bull semen by the "straw" for about $25 and up, and have it delivered to your door frozen in liquid nitrogen.  We bred all our cows, Molly, Mary, Martha, and Agnes, in August for May/June calves.  Our score from that pass was 2 of 4.  The two white park cows, Mary and Martha, both took on the first try.  Molly, the Jersey, tested open (not bred) back in October so my neighbor serviced her again.  Just today the vet checked Agnes, the Angus, to find that she is also open.  I had intended to keep Agnes as a breeding cow, but she has a few strikes against her.

1. She is not a British White Park, my focus breed.
2. She is the only one of my cows that doesn't like me to approach her in the field.
3. She is the least predictable (she kicks when she feel threatened).
4. She broke my milk stanchion trying to get away from the vet.
5. The other cows don't like her. 
6. Our freezer is getting low on beef
7. She will be the perfect age for grass-finishing in the spring.

Let's say it's not looking good for Agnes.

Happy solstice morning

View to the southeast, Bluestem Farm

 According to Uncle Bill's calculations we should have 9 hours and 26 minutes of daylight today at the latitude of our farm.  Each day will get longer until, in a few months, Scott will again be able to detach from the wood stove.  

Our young flock of laying hens (pullets) need increasing day lengths to mature and start laying.  Rather than wait on the sun, I've been fooling them with a little extra light.  I hope to start seeing eggs in January and then I can wean them back to natural light.

Christmas gardening

New strawberry plants in the lasagna garden

I ordered 50 strawberry plants to get in the ground this fall, thinking that they could get a little jump on their spring growth.  They arrived today, December 20th.  Last year at this time we were covered with a thick layer of ice, but strangely today it was warm enough to plant.  For all the garden planning and wishing that I do every winter, it was a pleasure to do something this time of year.  I'll let you know if the little guys survive until spring.

A good day to tie one on

 Or in this case a case a couple hundred (fence ties, that is.)  Forty degree days in December are a blessing not to be wasted.  I'd been wanting this west paddock finished before spring and with a willing Scott, we got it done today.  Below is Scott's handy field-fence un-roller.  This is just one of the many inventions, small and large, that help make him a FARM GENIUS.  

Scott and the fence un-roller

Building the west paddock

I now have a corral on the south side of the barn, and three paddocks 2-3 acres each.  The rest of the pasture is open.  This isn't enough for a true rotational grazing set up, but it does start to give me some control over my stocking rates.  I need to keep the cows close to home during calving and breeding seasons.  Last year, I repeatedly abused my one paddock by overgrazing it.




If it doesn't grow back well enough in the spring, it may need to be reseeded- not the way to run a sustainable operation!  Now with three paddocks I can rest each of them to maintain good grass growth and diversity.  The other 20 acres of pasture will be an open salad bar until I can get some cross-fencing there too. 

Katherine climbing a locust tree in the west paddock

Katherine helped build fence by playing contentedly in our new 3 acre playpen while we worked.  What more could a kid want than trees to climb, dirt to dig, and by the end of the day- snowflakes to catch.

Cattle 101

Mary, White Park, checking out my bucket

Don't carry a bucket into the pasture unless you mean to FEED.  Luckily our cows are gentle, but when we first bought the place, our neighbor ran less-socialized cattle here.  As we naively strolled around picking invasive thistle heads into our buckets we couldn't figure our why we were being followed by the increasingly agitated herd.  It took a few times of ditching over the fence to figure out why they kept trying to stampede us.  DUH, cows are trained to follow a feed bucket and here we were taunting them with our mixed messages!