Year of the Pastures

I enjoy setting goals, and the new year seems to be a perfect time to start over. The thing that really helps me accomplish my goals is setting a yearly focus. Last year was Year of the Garden, and what a good experience that was. You can’t do everything, but you can do a few things really well.

After much discussion we decided the focus for this year is Year of the Pastures.

When we bought our house we started our 3.5 acres with only 1 pen for our goats. It was 100×100 ft, and completely dirt. We quickly bought fencing to fence in the area that we consider our front yard, because it was the only place growing grass at the time. After that we slowly worked on the back; digging the ground down 4 inches for our irrigation to work properly, making it level, creating berms, and replacing the fencing. We have done SO much work to make the area usable. I am still amazed at how much it has improved.

We now have 8 50×100 ft pastures, 1 large area (the front yard), and 2 isles where our irrigation water runs.

But we still have another big area that would help support our animals tremendously, and we hate to see it sitting back there vacant.

Game Plan for Year of the Pastures

• Dig out old fence posts (there are SO many that need to come out)
• Level the ground so that we can properly irrigate
• Put in new fence posts to divide this area into 3 pastures
• Take down remaining chain link and replace with hot wire
• Put in gates so we can move the mobile chicken coop (it can currently only go into 3 of our current pastures)
• Cut down the remaining 5 palm trees
• Move the fence line for the “front yard” pasture

I don’t think this list will completely finish the pastures to the extent that we want (I would really love to re-fence our perimeter and put in proper gates. $$$$$). However, it will add a lot of grass.

And do you know what you can do with grass? Feed a cow. That’s right, dreams are coming true this year. AFTER the back pastures are done, we will be looking for our very own milking cow.

As usual it will be a very exciting year.

Do you have a certain focus or plan for the year?