Farming in the shade

Our sheep and cattle are often pastured beyond the reach of a hose. This requires us to haul water to them on a regular basis, and in the case of our cattle herd, we've had to haul water four or five times a day to keep up with their consumption. We've been using our trusty Gator with four 15-gallon water tanks. It takes quite a bit of time to keep up with the demand for water this way, and means that someone always has to be around the farm, hauling water every 2-4 hours. The Farmer wondered about getting larger tanks and doing the water runs less often. We found a few 330-gallon tanks for sale on Craigslist, and set a couple of them on a seldom-used hay wagon. We fitted them with special valves to which we could attach a garden hose. Now we fill two large tanks (each takes 50 minutes to fill) and haul water once every three days or so. The hose is attached to a standard waterer with a float (to prevent overfilling). The water is gravity-fed from the storage tanks, a...

During the summer we intensively rotationally graze our sheep and cattle. The sheep are moved to fresh pasture daily, while the cattle get new grass every three days or so.  In the pastures where we can reach a water source using up to eight 100' lengths of hose, we spend a lot of time dragging hoses along as we move the sheep. But in the furtherest pastures, we need to bring water in tanks. On hot days, we bring fresh water several times a day.  Our trusty little John Deere Gator helps us with the hauling of three tanks of water which we use to fill three tubs. I think this ewe is ready for a drink. It's usually a peaceful job, and very gratifying. The sheep need us to care for their needs, and obviously appreciate the fresh grass and water we provide. A shepherd boy described a similar relationship in verse one of Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need."

It's been a fairly wet May, and some of the fields with heavier soil have been wet. The other day The Farmer decided to add some grass waterways in two soggy spots. In the photo below, you can see the sogginess near the back of the photo. He worked with the bobcat to carve a very shallow ditch leading to another field ditch, which leads to a county drain, which leads to a creek, which leads to a river, which leads to a lake, which leads to Lake Michigan. See why it's important what we do in our fields? Anyway, he added the soil from the ditch-making to the low, soggy spot. Here's the same grass waterway/ditch, but facing the other direction. We will seed this grass waterway/ditch with grass seed. The point of having a low, slow waterway like this is that the water will slowly drain off the field here, and the grass will catch much of the soil that would normally erode into the ditches. Just doing our part to keep the earth and the water separated.

A few weeks ago we started hearing the well pump run more than usual. We kept our eyes open, but started to suspect an underground leak. The trouble with underground leaks is that they have to get bad enough before you can find them. Given what we've recently heard about the aquifer that provides us with water, we felt badly that our underground lines were wasting water. Apparently people in our area will soon be out of fresh well water, despite the fact that we are surrounded by fresh water: the Great Lakes! Something about the aquifer not recharging at a fast enough rate. Supply is less than demand. And there are two types of culprit in this situation: the farmer who irrigates his crops endlessly (sorry, but it's true), and the homeowners that decide to build new homes out in the country. But I digress. Eventually we found a tell-tale sign. And, on a lovely cold winter afternoon, The Farmer and his crew started digging. Just finding mud isn't enough. Sometimes...

I'll be the first to admit that I love well water. No added chlorine, no heavy metals, no monthly bill... But recently our well pump gave out. We figured this out when the water stopped flowing during showers. Not a good thing to have no water on the farm. The animals get thirsty. We get stinky. We hired a well repair guy to put a new pump in for us. He needed to pull all the well pipe up first, remove the old pump at the bottom of the well (more than 100 feet down), put the new one on, and put it all back like it was. He advised us that the well was looking kind of slimy down there at the bottom. He didn't have time right then (and neither did we, as it was 6:00 a.m. on the day we were leaving for a much-needed vacation), but he advised us to have our well blown out. Okay...fast forward 3 or 4 weeks (during which we drank water toted from my parents' house) and we're ready to blow the well out. Again, he pulled up all the pipes, one by one... And then prepared to blast...