[roll-bar Bob]

This has been in the works for a couple years, I have been slowly gathering supplies and working toward pulling the trigger on getting a few of these

Aberdeen Angus and some of these Dorper sheep

No one has farmed my land in at least 40 years meaning there are no fences, no shelters, no real infrastructure to work with, all my fields have between 12 and 25 foot tall brush covering them. Now this leaves me with a kind of a blank slate to do what I want and not need to deal with others shit. I had a buddy bring a skid steer over with a hog on the front but he was limited on what he could chop and where he could go regarding tangles of multiple down trees, but for the most part he cleaned up the better part of 3 acres. I have about 1,500 feet of fence to install and 500 foot of water/electric line to trench in along with running my geothermal loop for my garage floor. I will still need a stack of 2x4s and the sheet metal for the shelter but I do have piles of post on site already.

For the last two nights I have been putting in 3 hours a night pushing trees over and stacking them for a nice snowy night. I have two piles about the size of shipping containers stacked up now.

 

[Plato2k5]

Hell yah! Something about just sitting in a cab and pushing tress over and clearing land.

 

[wrath]

My grandparents had berms around with dirt touching the walls 4' on some of their shelters to help with wind in the winter. These ones were all wood and painted black. The animals seem to like them because they held heat better also. None of the animals used the normal treated wood/steel shelters in the winter. So they parked equipment in the metal ones in the winter and the wood ones in the summer. My aunt/uncle are dairy farmers primarily so most of their holsteins are inside in the winter but they do have some shelters. Holsteins are kind of stupid.

Do you have a good enough reliable support system for cows? I'm fairly familiar with cows and horses... horses don't need much but cows... cows are very needy.

We've been thinking about angora goats for a while but I'm leaning towards no. Our dog is old and will die sometime and then we don't have anything "tying us down". The chickens are easy to find someone to take care of when we're not home as everyone likes good eggs.

Finding someone to reliably stop in to check on our cat every other day was getting really tough... even though we have multiple "friends" that work in town... and next door neighbors. For the people that work in town (and often jogs past our house after work) it's literally 10 minutes of their day to stop in, give the cat a scritch behind the ears, change his water, (we have an automatic feeder), and skedaddle out of there. Then the cat disappeared this summer so that problem went away. And when those same people want me to do stuff for them I feel obligated to tell them I'm too busy.

One of them (wife's college friend) was here last week and mentioned something about their car making a weird noise (2010 Malibu) with the check engine light coming on once in a while and normally I'd spring into action, put it in the garage, plug in the laptop and figure out what it was within ten minutes. Instead I sat here on this very forum typing up some nonsense for you guys to read and told her that my cousin has been slammed at work because people are keeping their used cars and fixing them up because they can't get financing on new ones. And he's picking up as much side work as he can stomach and charging $90/hr. She looked at me with disappointment and I went back to banging on the keyboard.

The reason I bring this up is... do you have a decent enough support system to take care of domesticated animals if you/family are on vacation/sick/laid up/injured?

 

[roll-bar Bob]

I was raised with cattle, I know what a pain in the ass they can be, But I also know with the right infrastructure they can be close to worry free. I am planning 6 strand high tinsel electric fence, feeding large pasture with limited head and auto filling stock tanks. I will be feeding bailage in the winter with the critters confined to the corral when my pastures are dormant. I do have a small but dependable network of friends and family for when we travel but the goal is to set them up right from the start and let them do there thing.

 

[greygoose]

Nice!! You really are transforming that land!

 

[roll-bar Bob]

Got a chance yesterday to do some more brush hogging and tree/stump removal this tractor is amazing. Put in around 6 hours broke 2 sheer pins on the hog worked until dark felt good getting something done.

I start with pushing it over, then I grab it pick up as much as I can, loading my front tires then I drive forward popping it out of the ground, depending on the type of tree and its root ball between 6 and 10 inch trees come right out 10 and up some digging is required.

RBB