If draft animal power is your first choice, there are many models of excellent mid to small-sized, pull-type, two-wheeled, ground-drive manure spreaders that might be quite handy when used with a forecart. The Minneapolis Moline Avery is but one. Today there are Amish shops making spreaders new. And, across North America, it is still possible to find serviceable used spreaders at farm sales.

Cob is a raw earth building style, free formed by hand. It is built and shaped like a giant pottery vessel. Only instead of coil, cob is shaped and stacked in carryable amounts as its Old English root suggests; meaning “a lump or rounded mass.” The clay has straw, sand and water added to it for strength, crack resistance, and to make it easy to handle.

Today, in most rural regions, for some farmers it is nigh on impossible to find a veterinarian that will travel a distance into remote settings to work on situations deemed impossible and of little or no return. Over the last twenty years that has been the case for us. If a situation with an animal calls for professional help we know ahead of time that we must find a way to get the animal to the veterinary clinic, with an appointment, in the daytime, during working hours. With large livestock that is often not workable. But these days, when it comes to trained professional help, there is absolutely no option… except for we amateurs of long tooth to try to be ready for any eventuality.

My granny’s brother Eoghan had travelled right across America and up to Alaska. Then for fear that wasn’t enough he went to New Zealand. I worked with him in the fields. He told me ‘I went as far as civilization would take me and then I walked.’ We had a very good school and many of the men in the valley had travelled – my grandfather crewed a boat trading Seattle/Alaska; so it wasn’t lack of education or travel that caused our valley to remain rooted in the past.

For those unfamiliar with the Shorthorn cattle breed they are considered a dual purpose breed that can be used for both meat and milk and are either polled or horned. Their color can be solid red, solid white, or mixtures of red with white or roan. Their long history as a dual purpose cattle breed is the result of their many positive genetic traits that separate them from all other cattle breeds making them the ideal animal for small family farms. Their calm, gentle dispositions, foraging ability, feed efficiency, fertility, and maternal instinct are just a few of their genetic traits that have been valued by cattle breeders and farmers worldwide over the last two centuries.

How I Plant Onions and Garlic …Without Breaking My Back

The Tale of Nimble Deer – Part 6

Donald was a smart, clever, stubborn, independent, funny, handsome, intelligent, big-hearted, sweet trickster of a horse. If he could just overcome the language barrier, I always felt he would have had a lot to say: an opinion about my hat, how I really should give up on that sad old floppy thing; or a comment about the way the rain overnight had freshened things up after a dry spell; maybe now and then he would offer a joke, some witty thing he’d thought up overnight, something about a horse with a long face. At times he’d greet me more seriously, with a touch of melancholy, for the life of a stallion, despite its perks, is mostly solitary.

The RC Cultivator will fit all Model BF tractors and any Model A tractor that is equipped with a pivot type hydraulic unit. The recommended assembly procedures are outlined on the following pages. If followed closely, the implement can be assembled quickly and easily.

This very promising black cap raspberry originated on the farm of the late John W. Durm, 4 miles east of Pekin, Indiana, about 1895, as the result of a definite effort to produce a variety that should be both very hardy and resistant to anthracnose. It is said to be a cross between Gregg and Mammoth Cluster.

North Country Pioneer Days. Organized by Cecil and Caroline Andrus on Rockfield Farm, Boulter, Ontario

Pollarding & Coppicing

Scientific American Supplement • Case Threshing Machines • Tongue and Shaft Supports

When a hen wants to set she orients herself to a location. Bantams often try to find a location outside the coop somewhere. All of a sudden, one day she is missing. She laid herself a nestfull on the sly and now is into full-time sitting and only comes out to eat and drink. It is a good idea to try to find that nest. Usually one has to follow her back to the nest when she is off for lunch break. Some hens won’t go while you are obviously watching them and you have to do it discreetly.

Growing up on a vegetable farm in Central New Jersey, strawberries were the first cash crop of the season on our farm. Yet as Ida said, the season really started when a new field was put out the previous spring, usually in April. But unlike Ida, our new plants were not put in by hand but rather by the old Allis Chalmers “B” pulling the New Idea Transplanter. Two young’uns, one seemingly always me, were on the planter alternately putting plants in.

When I was a youngster we traveled from California to Wisconsin to visit our grand parents and my grandpa took me out in a little row boat on a large, tree-sheltered Lilly-padded pond. It was my first time fishing. He set me up with a cork bobber and a worm on a hook and we both fished for sunfish. In a short time we caught a bucket full of fish. It was a glorious experience.

He who knows the ways of the woodchuck can readily guess where it is likely to be found; it loves meadows and pastures where grass or clover lushly grows. It is also fond of garden truck and has a special delectation for melons. The burrow is likely to be situated near a fence or stone heap, which gives easy access to its chosen food. The woodchuck makes its burrow by digging the earth loose with its front feet, and pushing it backward and out of the entrance with the hind feet. This method leaves the soil in a heap near the entrance, from which paths radiate into the grass in all directions. If one undertakes to dig out a woodchuck, one needs to be not only a husky individual, but something of an engineer.

One summer afternoon, I heard a commotion up the hill behind the house. Running around the house I was too stunned by what I saw to respond in time to help. There was Tweety in an out-and-out ground battle with a hawk! Evidently the hawk dove for one of her half grown chicks and she dove for the hawk. There they were in a feather flying fight. Dad’s dog Curly wasted no time in breaking it up.

Sometimes in the human adventure we need to go all the way back to man’s first premises and departures, the first turnings in the trail, and refresh our notions of ourselves by rethinking those first steps. The human situation now as urban man risks making the planet unlivable for all other species is just such a moment, and Anthony Sattin’s book Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World is such a refreshing look.

When we were looking to buy our small farm, the real estate agent took me on a tour of the pastures and fields. As we passed what I eventually named as the “Marsh Field,” I asked the realtor if a small section of steep woodland off to the north belonged to the farm. “Oh yes, that’s yours as well, but it’s overgrown, too steep for tractors, and you won’t get much use from it.”