Cows at an IBC Tote Feeder

2023 is going to be our biggest, best year yet!

by CowWinter

Good evening, everyone.

We are going to make 2023 our busiest and best year yet! In addition to processing 2 beef cattle, 14 forest raised hogs, 15 Thanksgiving turkeys, and hundreds of pastured broiler chickens, we are going to significantly improve infrastructure on the farm.  We will expand our forest paddocks to provide more diverse forage for our pigs and improve the farm overall. Additionally, thanks to a generous grant from the Pennsylvania Veteran Farming Network, we will be running water to all of our pastures to better facilitate watering our animals and eliminate the cumbersome task of running hoses and carrying buckets of water all winter long.

Cows eating at night
By moving the feeder around we are able to spread manure and disturbance throughout our pature.

We are also working to catalog our processes and document our farming practices so that others can replicate them if they so desire. Many of our customers are veterans and of those, many have an interest in agriculture and self-sufficiency. We want to clearly demonstrate scalable systems that potential farmers can use to raise livestock both for themselves as well as commercially on their properties. We will continue to blog, post to YouTube  (we know there isn’t much there yet, but please subscribe so that you can see things as we upload them), and post to our Instagram and Facebook.

We will also be hosting an on-farm workshop in the late summer/early fall to demonstrate the dramatic positive effect our pigs have on our woodlot. This workshop will have participation from other organizations within Pennsylvania who are interested in supporting and encouraging farmers to build regenerative silvopasture systems on their farms and homesteads. If you are interested in participating, please reach out and we will add you to the guest list.

As always thanks for reading, and we hope you will join us in making 2023 an excellent year!

-CJ and Tanya

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When it gets REALLY COLD on the farm!

by CowWinter

Last year we had some cold nights here at Skyline Pastures and they caused quite a bit of trouble, especially with animal water. We were out in the woods every day breaking water for the ducks and were constantly swapping out waterers for the chickens. We took notes and started this winter thinking we were much better prepared…and we were. Right up until the temperature got below 13 degrees this year. 13 degrees seems to be the magic number where all of our preparations and electric water heaters become ineffective.

Ducks need constant access to a pool of water for the purpose of dunking their beaks and general ducky activities.  Typically, we use 2 black concrete mixing trays but this year we decided to use two of the thin blue kiddie pools thinking the deeper water would stay liquid longer and we would be able to break the ice each morning and top off with the hose. We are now back to using the concrete mixing trays. Both of the kiddie pools froze solid and cracked when ice removal was attempted.

Frozen Duck Pools
These pools are too fragile for the cold winter days.

The cows have a 100-gallon water through with an electric floating heater that we were sure would be able to handle any temperature mother nature could throw at it. Nope. We needed a sledgehammer to break that ice. There was a small hole where the heater sat, and the rest was a 6-inch-thick slab of solid ice. To make matters worse we ran a length of empty hose about 300 feet from the barn spigot to the cow trough and even though the hose had no ice in it to start, the flowing stream of water froze solid before it could travel the distance to the cows. At least we had the Kubota to haul lots of 5-gallon buckets to top off their water.

Cow Water Trough
This needed a sledgehammer to give the cows access.

Next year the plan is to trench in water line to anywhere we keep animals and have frost proof hydrants to ensure liquid water throughout the coldest months of the year. This infrastructure project should take our farm to the next level and reduce the long winter days of hauling buckets. Here’s to next year!