News from the Ranch

Well, I see I've been remiss is transmitting news of the ranch in the past two months. During July and August, the Severn clan sweated a lot, building fence, fixing broken fencing equipment, building fence, stretching wire, tying wire, digging post holes, and did I say building fence?

Today, the Dans completed the perimeter fencing of El Rancho, about eight-tenths of a mile. The next step is repairing/replacing the fence we share with Frank Leggio. Right now, the fence is certainly good enough for donkeys or cattle. In fact, I have my eye on a pair of jennys (one white, one light gray) who are about six years old. Hopefully I'll get out to see them on Saturday and see if they will fit in.

So, anyway, in all these weekends of fencing, we've really done a lot of planning and I've got a preliminary livestock rotation plan. Goats, followed by steers, followed by rest. So, we are planning this and looked over the fence and thought, gee!, we could buy more land! So we got a contract on another 14 acres, adjacent to El Rancho, and soon to become part of El Rancho.

Working along the fencelines has also allowed us to get a closer look at the native vegetation. D3 and I saw a plant with big leaves and lots of purple globular fruit. We both figured that anything that looked good was probably poisonous. On Sunday, I snapped a few pictures and looked it up by color and was pleased to find that we have lots and lots of Americana Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana. Deer and other foragers love the berries, the leaves are thought to ward off mosquitos, and they look pretty good, too! I even found recipes for making Beautyberry jelly.

I also noticed that while we still have some small yellow flowers (mostly bitterweed and sleepy daisy), lots of the other flowers are in the purple range, like wild petunia and bindweed. So, I guess if summer is yellow, then fall is purple!

Deer, me

Went out to el rancho today to work on fencing.  It's amazing, but there are still tons of yellow flowers in the open meadow areas. While I was gone, the two Dans finished tieing all the wire we put up the week before and used the new Stihl chainsaw (The "Farm Boss") he got for birthday and Father's Day.  Along PR 4057, they felled trees which died in the drought. I sure don't want them falling on a new fence. The Farm Boss  "cuts like buttah".

Speaking of 'we,' it's sure nice to have the third member of the team with us again! Danny Severn (D3 in shorthand) has been discharged from the Marine Corps and is back home! He was a super help while I was gone last week, also helping big Dan pick up rolls of goat wire and haul them to the farm from Producer's Co-op. He really likes the place we bought and we hope he'll join us. 

We started at the property line along PR 4057 setting posts.  My tractor has the auger and I was driving to the dig site when I noticed Dan on his tractor, signalling me. Not a clue what he wanted, but noticed his iPhone in his hand. I looked the direction he was facing and thought he was taking photos of the markers along the property line, so, I backed up. Turns out I was wrong, wrong, wrong, He was pointing to a doe and fawn standing on PR 4057, not bothered a bit by three humans and two noisy tractors. Through the morning, we watched them come and go while we dug holes and placed poles. 

We didn't work too late today. I'm really exhausted from a week-long conference and there IS work tomorrow. While the Dans were putting up the tractors, another deer just watched them from not too far away (the picture up above). Thus, our deer seem happy. Since goats are also browsers, we should have happy goats! And speaking of goats, I am going to Goat Camp in October for a week of hands-on fun and learning. More camp news as that gets closer!