Mowing and Gardening

We've been busy here lately gardening and mowing. As I mentioned in my last post, the rain delayed getting the garden planted in a timely fashion. Just when it was getting dry enough to plant the rain came back. Everything should be planted by tomorrow, though, except for some succession plantings of fall greens and root crops. I'm thinking of starting broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage for planting out in late July or early August for a fall crop.

The photo shows our pasture. Hopefully, you can see enough detail in it to see what I've been mowing. The right side was mowed about 10 days ago. The left foreground was mowed about 15 days ago and the left background just this past weekend. The center strip that the sheep are grazing was last grazed about 4 weeks ago.

This is a time for trial and error and learning about the grass on this farm and the growth curve at different times of the season. As we build the size of our sheep flock and add cattle, we will do less mowing. My goal is to have the right number and mix of grazing animals to never run out of grass while keeping mowing to a minimum. If our farm was larger, we would make hay but we can't justify the expense of the equipment. Because of this, we will probably always have to do some mowing this time of year.

Lately I've been reading less farming/homesteading blogs and more environmental/peak oil blogs. I'll probably write something soon about the insanity of corn-based ethanol and the environmental destruction that industrial grain farming causes. I've been thinking about starting a second blog to write about environmental issues from the perspective of a rural dweller and organic farmer. If you've stuck with me on this one though, you don't I don't have time enough to keep one blog up to date, let alone two. Maybe this winter when I have more free time...