I know it’s been a while since we’ve put out some content, so I thought it would be appropriate to start things off again with a little homestead update:

We’ve had a pretty busy spring, spent a lot of time working on our cattle systems, building fence, shifting paddocks, and trying to get the coriography of rotational grazing down.  We’ll be splitting the heard and putting the bulls out to breed the cows here shortly, and weening a heifer or two in the process.

We picked up a family milk cow this spring along with another heifer calf.  They’re Jerseys, so the milk is rich and phenominal.  All grass of course. Having lots of fun dealing with the surplus milk…cheeses, yogurt, kefir, pig food, foliar feed for plants, you name it!

We planted something like 100 fruit and nut trees, along with another 40 berry bushes.  We’ve now got more apple, and cherry trees in the ground along with chestnuts, pecan,persimmon, paw paw, redbud, and mulberry.  We added more gooseberry, and some selected cultivars of elderberry, along with a honeyberry experiment.

We rehabbed two swales in the process and really got them looking and working good now.  I planted a couple dozen acorns in one of the swales, so we may have oak in the mix going forward.  Both swales got a nice cover crop treatment and mulch to go with the soil disturbance of course.  Overall were really pleased with how they’ve come out!

One disappointment has been the annual garden and greenhouse.  With so many other projects going on they both kind of fell by the wayside.  I got the greenhouse planted, but it wasn’t until the end of June, so who knows if we’ll be getting many tomatoes this season…such is life I suppose.  I shot some video and uploaded it to my YouTube channel.  I’ll link it in a post soon, or you can subscribe to my channel and watch it now (just search David Dahlsrud on YouTube).

Overall everyone is doing fine, and the homestead continues to make progress toward lending us to the more self sufficient life that we strive towards.