Fall Tasks on the Ranch

 As you would expect, the tasks completed at TLR change depending on the season, giving the year a certain rhythmic workflow.  We have now begun our fall tasks, which in our fifth year of production, have taken on a grooved familiarity.

Since the years flow in a cycle, it can be hard to define a "starting point" for the year's activities.  But in some sense, our production year begins in fall.  Summer tasks are winding down, and we begin preparing the farm for our earliest rains.  Hay is tucked away safely in the barn, to keep it from molding in the rain.  The barn is checked for leaks, and loose sheeting that may allow water infiltration, or may blow off in a storm are battened down.  (TLR is high up on the side of a hill in the Salinas Valley; the valley creates a "wind tunnel" effect, which concentrates wind energy in the valley, especially at our elevation, so winds can be extremely destructive during winter.)

Fall is the main mating season for goats and sheep, so males are run with females to breed for the upcoming lambing/kidding season.  Female lambs and female kid goats are separated from the herd to give them a full year before they are bred.  This year, smaller animals are sold at auction to support cashflow, some are retained for sales around the holidays (our busiest time of the year for whole-animal sales), and the larger animals will be retained to grow out for our monthly subscription customers.  This year we have also sold older and smaller females before they are bred, to reduce feed costs on less productive animals.

The turkeys are growing to size, and are freely roaming the pastures (on bug patrol), and enjoying the irrigated green grass around the newly transplanted trees.  The last batch of meat chickens reaches its final weight, and is processed for the freezer.  Uneaten fruit from the fruit trees is thrown to the poultry, reducing waste, reducing pest pressure, and improving the flavor of the birds.

The trees begin to senesce, and begin sending energy down to their roots in preparation for new growth next year.  Dead, diseased, and wayward limbs are pruned off, allowing the tree to focus its energy on the ideal limbs for next year, hopefully improving fruit production.  Young saplings are planted, giving their roots a head start for next year, and allowing them to establish below ground before pushing growth above ground.

Some seedling trees are bare-rooted, others are potted, and many are sold.  Still others are pampered with additional time to grow using season extension techniques.  Seeds are scavenged from all over the community: black walnuts down the road, apple seeds and northern California walnut from Spreckels, black locust from Salinas... A mad dash through countless nursery websites begins, purchasing seeds by the thousands, Cold stratification of a wide array of seeds begins for next year, allowing the spring season to get off to a roaring start, and allowing for full utilization of space and time in the coming spring and summer.

And of course, we take stock of the ups and downs of the previous season, the successes and the failures, and make mental notes of our plans for next year, as the cycle begins anew.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Current and Future Herd Composition of Turning Leaf Ranch

Image
 When we began marketing our pasture-raised animals to the public, we believed that our grass-fed lamb would be our flagship product.  The whole-animal lamb sales we had done in the past were met with rave reviews, and our own culinary experience with the lamb led us to believe that it truly is a remarkable offering.  We raise a breed of sheep (American Blackbelly) that is known to have one of the premier flavor profiles of all sheep breeds, especially when grass-fed and pasture-raised.  The first round of animals that we had processed for market were four lambs, and one goat, as we had assumed the demand for the two types of animals would be asymmetric toward lamb. As we soon found out, however, the market for goat meat is remarkably underdeveloped, with few producers, who struggle to meet the demand of a very large and underserved market.  Among these producers, many follow "conventional" practices, feeding concentrates to accelerate growth to a large size as ...
Read more

Bulk Hay Purchase - Fall and Winter Feed at TLR

Image
 Throughout the season, we make various bulk purchases of hay to get us through the dry summer months, and the slow-growing winter.  Historically we have experimented with wide array of options for feeding hay, including Bermuda hay, orchard grass, oat hay, teff grass, and alfalfa.  Based on this experimentation, we have found that alfalfa gives the best return on investment, with high protein content, high palatability, and high utilization by the animals.  Alfalfa is the gold standard for protein, and all other feeds use alfalfa by way of comparison for the amount and quality of protein they contain.  Alfalfa is also high in minerals (the "Ash" content in the image below), which ensures that the animals are not eating empty calories, and are instead eating a ration that truly produces healthy animals and healthy meat.  Alfalfa has a digestible energy content of 10.7 megajoules per kilogram of dry matter, and sorghum Sudan grass has a digestible energy con...
Read more

Biden Administration Pushes for Meat Processing Diversification

Image
 When we think of a meat butcher, many of us think of the familiar picture of the portly gentleman in a white smock, preparing cuts of meat right down the road for us to purchase fresh as can be.  And of course, we all know this picture is largely outdated, save for a few exceptions.  Instead, the modern meat packing plant consists of a huge team of employees all trained with highly specialized skills (rather than the broad-spectrum knowledge of butchers in the past).  The production line is essentially a (dis)assembly line, with each worker making a limited number of repetitive motions to accomplish one narrow portion of the butchering task, as the product moves by at a set speed on meat hooks and conveyers.  Employees work in close proximity to one-another, and conditions are ripe for a highly contagious disease like Covid-19.  The meat packing industry has also consolidated over time,  just like every industry has, with the bulk of the supply moving...
Read more