in this random rambling thread we post random pictures

[Isadora]

I never got to do pony rides at fairs when I was a kid and I always wanted to. My kiddos got to ride some horses today.

 

[Cold Canadian]

I looked on the Internet - such cows are either very rare here, or they are not at all.
In principle, the place where I live is not at all mountains, these hills cannot be called steep, but there is no full-fledged flat pasture nearby.
Why is the soil uncomfortable here - there are many shallow holes in it, not deep at all, but sometimes a people can accidentally twist a leg. On the other hand, I have never had a cow, it is quite possible that she walks on four legs more accurate than I on two ))
While I'm definitely not ready to buy a cow, in the near future I want to limit myself to buying 2-3 sheep and, possibly, 1-2 piglets.
Now I have a herd of goats, their number ranges from 20 to 30, although once upon a time I wanted to keep only 2-3 goats. I eat part of the livestock, especially when I have too many male goats.

Very pedigree animals are too expensive to me, if i will talk about cows, then in the distant future I may buy a Holstein cow common here, different variations of which (not very purebred) often hang in advertisements for sale.

My farm is developing relatively slowly, so I won't buy a cow soon. Before even buying goats, I spent five years building a barn, fences, and running water and electricity there. And only then I bought goats.
I think I will prepare for buying a cow even longer. The winter is relatively cold here, so the barns are built quite strong and capital, in addition, space is needed to store a large amount of hay in winter, because spring does not come very early, the grass begins to grow normally only in May.

In other matters, I think sooner or later I will still have a cow, because my great-grandmother, even when she was very old, still coped with servicing the cow, milked and fed her without any particular difficulties. And I'm not old yet. As a last resort, I will live with goats, goats are also good animals.

Anyway, I have already found a place where to build a barn for a cow, but there first I have to demolish an empty bad barn, where once in the summer the workers who worked for me and my neighbors spent the night. Many years have passed since then, the barn has almost collapsed, I am gradually dismantling it, but more often I am doing completely different things.

If I build a shed for a cow, I will make it a permanent structure, like the existing shed for goats, i.e. build it from bricks or blocks, with insulation and an attic for storing hay. This is a rather slow business, but I think I can manage it in 10 or 15 years. I can certainly hire workers, but it's expensive. I'd rather do it myself slowly ))

Your weather is by all means like ours here , early winters and spring only shows itself around May .You should look at a beef crossed cow , something a bit hardier to the cold ? Holsteins are a great milk cow and provide a lot of milk but also need better feed , where as a beef cross is normally a bit smaller ( at least in height ) and not that particular in feed quality ..I have had calves but only as a animal I raised for a profit but those days are gone .I am thinking of getting a steer for meat but as was mentioned i am looking at the Dexter or maybe a Hereford ? But as we are near winter it will be a spring decision , buy around four or five hundred pounds and feed through the summer and harvest in fall , no over wintering .............Tomatoes were abundant here for us , way to many so gave away pails full , thankful they are done to be honest , but already planning next years garden ............stay well Pasha

 

[Pasha838]

Your weather is by all means like ours here , early winters and spring only shows itself around May .You should look at a beef crossed cow , something a bit hardier to the cold ? Holsteins are a great milk cow and provide a lot of milk but also need better feed , where as a beef cross is normally a bit smaller ( at least in height ) and not that particular in feed quality ..I have had calves but only as a animal I raised for a profit but those days are gone .I am thinking of getting a steer for meat but as was mentioned i am looking at the Dexter or maybe a Hereford ? But as we are near winter it will be a spring decision , buy around four or five hundred pounds and feed through the summer and harvest in fall , no over wintering .............Tomatoes were abundant here for us , way to many so gave away pails full , thankful they are done to be honest , but already planning next years garden ............stay well Pasha

This summer there were so many apples here, so many that every three days I cooked a whole pot of jam, canning can after can. Now this jam for baking buns will be enough for me for five years )))
In this year i did not get enough onion, because the winter was unstable - it began to rain and the snow melted, then immediately after that there was a severe frost, and then it rained again, and again frost, absolutely stupid weather. This time, I think to postpone the planting of onions (here they are usually planted in autumn) and parts of garlic in the spring. This is not very convenient, because in the spring there is a lot of other work, but i have to do this.

I am not a farmer and I lead a "semi-parasitic" lifestyle - there are serious farms and farmers working a lot, and I only buy young animals from them, and often I buy some non-pedigree or surplus for a pittance. I do not have a farm, but some kind of parody of a farm - on the one hand, I keep a relatively large number of poultry and goats, on the other, I do not sell anything at all, but I myself feed on the surplus, choosing an old or sick poultry for meat, which has become too much. All the rest live with me as half-pets.

Be that as it may, keeping poultry here is much more profitable than buying meat in the store, even if most of them are pets, and only a small part is used for meat. They produce a lot of manure, the price of which is very high as fertilizer for the garden, and at least I can safely grow vegetables and fruits for myself for food ))

I grow part of the feed in the garden, but I buy a significant part, in other things it is still inexpensive, and not far, I just order a truck with hay, wheat and other feed, it is brought in and unloaded. In the summer I spend less because there is a lot of free grass around and a lot of things from the vegetable garden. Of course, I mow some of the grass and then put the hay in the attic, but it's not enough and I still have to buy it. Basically, if I kept one or two goats, I would easily mow enough hay, but I keep 20-30 goats. Unfortunately, it was not possible to combine mowing grass and walking goats, goats climb to eat cut grass, thinking that it is tastier than the rest, and they get in the way. Therefore, for half a day I walk with goats, and I rarely and not enough grass for the winter.

But the premises for animals I have are quite capital and well-insulated, geese and ducks even have greenhouses for walking in winter.

 

[pennyJo1960]

This summer there were so many apples here, so many that every three days I cooked a whole pot of jam, canning can after can. Now this jam for baking buns will be enough for me for five years )))

Your English is excellent are you a transplant or did you learn the english

 

[Cynthia12]

Your weather is by all means like ours here , early winters and spring only shows itself around May .You should look at a beef crossed cow , something a bit hardier to the cold ? Holsteins are a great milk cow and provide a lot of milk but also need better feed , where as a beef cross is normally a bit smaller ( at least in height ) and not that particular in feed quality ..I have had calves but only as a animal I raised for a profit but those days are gone .I am thinking of getting a steer for meat but as was mentioned i am looking at the Dexter or maybe a Hereford ? But as we are near winter it will be a spring decision , buy around four or five hundred pounds and feed through the summer and harvest in fall , no over wintering .............Tomatoes were abundant here for us , way to many so gave away pails full , thankful they are done to be honest , but already planning next years garden ............stay well Pasha

Tomatoes here too. I didn't plant any this year with husband having passed. But..I had tomatoes and more tomatoes given to me! I may try planting next year..just one tomato bush though.

 

[Cynthia12]

This summer there were so many apples here, so many that every three days I cooked a whole pot of jam, canning can after can. Now this jam for baking buns will be enough for me for five years )))
In this year i did not get enough onion, because the winter was unstable - it began to rain and the snow melted, then immediately after that there was a severe frost, and then it rained again, and again frost, absolutely stupid weather. This time, I think to postpone the planting of onions (here they are usually planted in autumn) and parts of garlic in the spring. This is not very convenient, because in the spring there is a lot of other work, but i have to do this.

I am not a farmer and I lead a "semi-parasitic" lifestyle - there are serious farms and farmers working a lot, and I only buy young animals from them, and often I buy some non-pedigree or surplus for a pittance. I do not have a farm, but some kind of parody of a farm - on the one hand, I keep a relatively large number of poultry and goats, on the other, I do not sell anything at all, but I myself feed on the surplus, choosing an old or sick poultry for meat, which has become too much. All the rest live with me as half-pets.

Be that as it may, keeping poultry here is much more profitable than buying meat in the store, even if most of them are pets, and only a small part is used for meat. They produce a lot of manure, the price of which is very high as fertilizer for the garden, and at least I can safely grow vegetables and fruits for myself for food ))

I grow part of the feed in the garden, but I buy a significant part, in other things it is still inexpensive, and not far, I just order a truck with hay, wheat and other feed, it is brought in and unloaded. In the summer I spend less because there is a lot of free grass around and a lot of things from the vegetable garden. Of course, I mow some of the grass and then put the hay in the attic, but it's not enough and I still have to buy it. Basically, if I kept one or two goats, I would easily mow enough hay, but I keep 20-30 goats. Unfortunately, it was not possible to combine mowing grass and walking goats, goats climb to eat cut grass, thinking that it is tastier than the rest, and they get in the way. Therefore, for half a day I walk with goats, and I rarely and not enough grass for the winter.

But the premises for animals I have are quite capital and well-insulated, geese and ducks even have greenhouses for walking in winter.

Can I ask what you do for work Pasha? Your home life is very interesting. Self sufficient.

 

[Cynthia12]

 

[Pasha838]

Your English is excellent are you a transplant or did you learn the english

Perhaps it was sarcasm? ))
I speak English very badly, or rather English only works in one direction for me. I can understand almost everything what I read without a dictionary, but I myself speak at a very primitive level. Therefore, when I need to write something, I use online translators, after which I correct some words there, because translators very often write absolutely the wrong ones. There are many homonyms in the Russian language, i.e. words that are spelled the same, but mean something completely different. When an online translator writes English words from them, it often writes completely different ones and instead of the text, some kind of incomprehensible stupidity turns out )))
I try to read the text before posting it, but if I inadvertently missed something and it turned out to be some nonsense, I apologize in advance.
I mainly studied English from films, cartoons and computer games. It was available to me from childhood, but I had no speaking practice at all, and I hardly know grammar.

 

[Pasha838]

Can I ask what you do for work Pasha? Your home life is very interesting. Self sufficient.

The fact of the matter is that I lead a semi-parasitic lifestyle, I am unemployed. Once upon a time I worked, basically my job was to repair old government computers, servers, lay local networks, connect and configure mini telephone exchanges, as well as electronic queues. Then, after a few years, I got tired of it and decided to take a break, I just went to work at the nearest McDonald's - to calmly wash the floors there and sell sandwiches, fry potatoes or sit in moneyroom and issue change for cash registers, keep various accounting journals and accept cash from cashiers, and communicate with collectors from the bank, who came once a day. Then I finally got absolute lazy and decided not to work anywhere at all, settled in a house that I had been building for about 20 years, built several sheds and greenhouses nearby, planted a vegetable garden with a garden and began to live on very small means by renting out an old apartment in the city. It brings in little money, but it’s enough to buy food for animals.
And I stopped working, my whole life comes down to the fact that I leisurely build some regular greenhouses, livestock sheds, walk with a herd of goats in the forest, picking mushrooms, nuts and empty jars thrown out by someone from under canned cucumbers (I often collect "free" cans than buy them), well, I also do procurements - either I raise about 300 ducks for meat, then I cut 6-7 goats for meat, then I cook a lot of apple jam when there are a lot of apples around.
I have five relatively large freezers and refrigerators in my house, and underground I have a small cold room where I store canned cucumbers, jam, tomato lecho, apples in boxes with straw and compotes.
Usually, only very old people here who have retired here lead such a way of life, they have some kind of goat, cow or sit fishing on the river, and hardly work.
At one time I thought about getting married, but then I changed my mind, because girls are not interested in such a life, they love clubs and travel, in addition, they need to be looked after, I looked at them and I became too lazy to do it, and I decided to calmly raise geese and not invent for myself in any strange problems.
In addition, I was very spoiled, already used to constantly baking buns for breakfast, eating delicious lunch, sleeping a lot, having enough rooms in the house for leisure, so I move to the city and work there all day only to please a girl who spends money only on clubs and travel is absolutely not interesting to me. and besides, I constantly communicate with animals and clean livestock premises, so I usually wear rather dirty clothes that smell of dung, and the girls absolutely do not like it. In general, I am a terrible slob, I still wear the tattered sweater of my late grandfather, who died more than 25 years ago.
I go to the city no more than 1-2 times a year, the rest of the time I am at home and work in the garden, sheds or walk nearby with the herd, sleep somewhere in the meadow near goats or read books there.

 

[pennyJo1960]

More power to you .. You have a wonderful life for yourself why change it ...@pasha838.
Morning dry today here headed to the feed store chicken food