Sheep shelter

The rainy season has started in earnest.  We're starting to get continuous soaking rains every day, and I'm having to wear my boots and rain gear every day.  The animals take it stoically -- the cows chew their cud and wander around, the pigs dig furrows under the bushes, and the turkeys are pretty soaked.  Turkeys don't have a brain in their heads when it comes to getting out of the rain. 

To increase the comfort level of the sheep, I've decided to make a loafing shed for the sheep, to give them a place to get out of the rain if they want to, and to give me a place to feed them the baled hay I've got.  I've also got 3 ewes that are due to lamb in the next 2-3 weeks, and I'd like to have a place where I can confine them until the lambs get on their feet and get a good start. 

What I want is something that I can drag around with the tractor, that has enough clearance that the floor will be dry even if the skids are in the water, and I want it to be pretty cheap.  So I looked around my property and found a couple of logs that I could use.  They're about 15" in diameter, about 16' long.   For crosspieces I'll use some smaller diameter cedar branches.  The logs will rot over time, but the larger diameter will last for a decade or so.  The crosspieces will be drenched in urine and manure over time, so I want them to be rot-resistant, so cedar is the ticket. 

The crosspieces are about 4" in diameter, but they're tapered, so I arrange them so that the larger end is on one side to slope the flooring.  Well, that presumes that this shed will be on level ground, and it probably never will be -- it'll be on a slope or a hill or halfway down a hollow, so it really doesn't matter if it's plumb or straight.  Welcome to farm carpentry.

   I lay out the crosspieces, and then using a chainsaw carve out a notch the size of each member.  the depth of the notch is so that the top of each member is about the same as every other member -- so on the thicker crosspieces I'm carving a deeper notch, on the smaller ones a shallower notch.  I put these cross members on in 12" spacing so that there's plenty of support.  I'm counting on them to rot and decay over time, and so I'm putting extra wood in at each step so that the finished shed lasts longer.  Plus, using the wood in the round means that the 25% or so that's lost when you square timbers isn't lost here.  No waste.

If I'm careful, the log nestles nicely into the new notch, and I spike it in place using some 6" spikes. 

I'm finding it easier to drive these spikes with a 3lb blacksmith hammer. 

Crosspieces all notched in, and spiked down, I go back over them with the chainsaw to make sure that all of the knots are cut flush.

  I have a bigger chainsaw, but I've found, for this sort of work, my little chainsaw is a great tool.  It weighs 7lbs (vs 15lbs for my larger one) and that means that you don't get tired nearly as quickly.  And for making small cuts and limbing trees and so on.  The dog helps, too.  Well, he tries to help.    I've got no connection to stihl chainsaws -- I just like and use their products. 

I'll be making the deck tommorow, and working on the roof and the vertical supports tommorow.

Farm blogs -- drinking the koolaide

Farm blogs are fiction

I've been farming for going on 4 years now, and during that time I've looked around for resources on how to do various things, and I've offered a lot of what I've learned and experienced in this blog. 

When you read someones blog it's often what they'd like to believe about farming, or what they think should be happening.

There's this blog that I read, written by a guy who raises pigs.  He says he has 10 acres of pasture, and on those 10 acres of pasture he raises 200 or so pigs.  His soil is thin and not very rich, and the vegetation that I can see in the pictures on his blog is pretty darned minimal.  We're talking about 50% brush and 2" tall grass.  There might be clover or alfalfa or something more nutritious, but I just don't see it in the pictures. 

a 40lb weaner pig will take about 4lbs of prepared food to add 1 pound of weight.  So if we do the math, and figure that the grow-out is 6 months from weaning to market that pig will need to add 260lbs of weight, for a total of 1,040lbs of food per pig.  Divide that by 6 months and you come up with 173lbs of feed per month per pig. 

So if he's got 50 weaner pigs, he's going to have to come up with 8,666 pounds of food PER MONTH to get the weight gain. 

I'm sorry, but no matter how good your pasture is, 10 acres just isn't going to produce that much food, and I've ignored the other 150 pigs he's got on that same acreage.  and he's in the mountains, with a shorter growing season than most places. 

Yea, he feeds them hay, but just on the numbers, I'm guessing that something like 80-90% of the calories his pigs eat isn't forage.  But in a recent posting he's claiming just that -- that 90% of the calories his pigs eat comes from forage.   It just doesn't pencil out. 

So my point here is that when you read a blog about someones farming results, you should take their claims with a bit of salt and a little skepticism.  Just because it's written doesn't mean it's true. 

That applies to farrowing survival rates, feed consumption and cost, and just about any other aspect of farm life.  My experience has been that it's pretty hard to write about the stuff that isn't positive, and there have been times that I've skipped that myself, but if you're going to propose a particular way or method of raising animals that you not skip the details. 

So here's my numbers (which aren't fiction, but you don't have any way to know that for sure!)

I have 78 pigs; a mix of ages.  27 of those pigs are sows, and 3 are boars.  Those 78 pigs eat 6 tons of prepared feed every month -- 1.5 tons a week.  They are on rich, black, deep, soil.  River bottom soil.  I also have 10 acres of mixed pasture -- about 3 acres wooded, 2 acres of scrub, and the rest in high-protein grass.  In addition to the prepared feed I also feed them spent grain from brewing, expired dairy and use hay for both bedding and fodder for the pigs.  I also run across other food sources, like 6 tons of pureed pumpkin that showed up in email yesterday. 

So you folks who are trying to do numbers for your own farming ventures need to take note:  my farm, with fewer pigs and better acreage, has completely different results than his.  I'm skeptical.

Funeral costs

I haven't written an entry for a few days -- it's been a busy time, and I've been talking to a relative about a death that he's having to deal with.  I'm not really going to go into details, but there's some stuff that I think would be generally good for folks to be reminded of. 

Living wills are good for the folks you leave behind
I've talked at length about slaughter, and I've killed many critters myself.  I've said to myself, and to other people in my life, that I'd much rather go out with a bullet to the head by surprise than just about any other way. 

Right now I'm pretty sure that the last two weeks of my life are going to suck.  I'm in rude good health right now, and don't expect to go anytime soon, but so were these other people.   One was 47, the other was 51, and the third was in his 70s.  The first two died by surprise -- no idea it was coming. 

I'd really reccomend that you write down your wishes regarding how your care will be managed in the event of an incapacitating accident.  Forcing your loved ones to make the decision to pull the plug, well, frankly, it sucks.  And our current medical technology can keep parts of your body alive indefinitely, with no chance of recovery. 

So be kind to the people around you and make a living will.

Funeral expenses

One thing that happens when someone dies is that the people around them feel guilty that they died, and often assuage that guilt by buying an elaborate coffin, or service, or additional.   I'm all about ritual when it comes to important things, and if you have the money to spare, and it makes you feel better to do that, by all means, spend whatever you think is appropriate. 

But sometimes there's just not the extra money around, or spending the money would create a hardship on the living.   My uncle is a mortician, and I've spent some time "behind the curtain" so to speak, and I'm going to write up here what I've counseled my relatives on in the past regarding funeral expenses. 

The absolutely lowest cost is just not claiming the body from the county.   If you are truly at wits end as to how to pay for the body disposal, this is one choice. 

The second least expensive way is to have the body cremated.  A cremation typically runs between $600 and $800, and you pick up the cremains.  It's probably illegal to scatter the cremains, but I don't know how you'd be caught, and you can do a small service at the time that allows some closure for the people around. 
DO NOT pay for embalming the body, or a fancy casket, or for any other services.  It just costs more to burn the additional weight. 

If you loved one was a member of the armed forces, they may be entitled to a burial from the armed forces. 

With respect to burial, there is really no value in having a burial vault or other "protective" packaging around the body of your loved one.  We'll all be going back into the soil, and burial vaults and casket liners and concrete shields and so on are all a complicated way to extract money from you.  Let's just keep it simple, as nature intended and if you choose burial as the way you're going to go, skip all of this. 

I know, this isn't really farm related, but it's what I've been dealing with this last week, and I'm hoping that other people find it useful.