Fall Weddings Peaceful Heart FarmCast

Fall weddings are really beautiful. June weddings are quite popular, but I prefer fall weddings. I just prefer the fall. The colors are awesome. Earth tones everywhere. Yellow, orange, brown, rusty red. Some of my favorite colors. Today I’m going to talk about what makes weddings special no matter the season.
But first, I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. I say it every time and I mean it every time. I appreciate you all so much.
Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates What’s going on at the homestead right now? Well, it turns out a lot.
Creamery Today, I’m starting with the creamery. It’s so exciting to see it evolving day by day. Scott has worked so hard on this project and continues to work hard every day to get it done. Even when I’m sick or traveling or whatever and he has to step in and take on my work load, he is right there picking up my slack and getting his tasks done as well. He is so amazing.
What he thought would be a rather quick task of a day or two is turning out to be days and days and days. That’s because he is doing such a magnificent job of it. I’m talking about filling in those spaces between the blocks that has been on his radar for weeks. It needs to be completed before the weather gets too cold and the mortar wouldn’t set up as well.
He has been at it for quite a few days and it looks wonderful. Not only is he filling in the spaces between the blocks, he is also giving it a wonderful rough finish. It’s going to be truly stunning once completed and painted. He always goes that extra mile to make his work durable and beautiful.
Cows The cows and bulls got shuffled around. Only two bulls with a few sheep are in one animal group. The larger group of our milking girls, the main flock of sheep and all of the goats are getting ready for the rotation through the back fields.
Stock Rotation We rotate our stock for several reasons. The biggest reason I think is for parasite control. They never eat the grass down so low they are re-ingesting parasites they just eliminated. Fresh, tall grass makes that impossible. Another huge reason for rotating stock is managing the grass. Just like any other animal, they eat all the really tasty stuff first and leave the undesirable stuff behind. Well, if you let that continue, all of the really tasty stuff eventually gets eliminated and only the less nutritious and less desirable grass is left.
Keeping them confined in a small area until they must eat the second and third desirable grass maintains a variety of grasses in the pasture. No one grass is left to take over. All are grazed and that maintains a balance. It is a delicate dance to get them to eat everything without eating it too far to the ground.
Standing Hay The fields in the back have been left to grow without being grazed for many months now. We have been working towards a goal of having enough grass for the livestock to graze throughout the winter without feeding hay. I’m thinking we are not quite there yet, but we get closer every year. The longer we can go without having to put out hay, the better. Leaving these fields to grow throughout most of the summer without being grazed makes a kind of hay in the field that we don’t have to buy.
Sheep It’s getting closer and closer to the time when the sheep will begin their breeding cycle. This task is so much easier to handle that getting the cows bred. We simply put the breeding ram in with the girls – the ones we pick out for breeding – and that’s all there is to it. We do not have to keep such a close check on exactly when the lambs are born. They can be born over two or even three months if necessary and our plans will still come out all right. Not like the cows when we need the calves to be born within a specific window because of our milking schedule.
The lambs grow out over a year or even a little