Nothing Simplifies Rural Life Like Fencing

Some people swear by meditation; others tout the virtues of cutting up your credit cards, or joining a cult, but for me simplifying life is all about fence.

That’s because fence is all about keeping the critters out of your garden, keeping the neighbor’s critters out of your critters, and keeping your critters off the highway. However, merely securing the food supply, staying on good terms with folks up the road, and avoiding lawsuits aren’t the only things that fencing can achieve for you. Fence can mark your property boundaries, and in certain instances even become your boundaries. Keeping these things in mind, you can see that fencing may well be the most important construction on your property.

Fence can also cost a lot of money, but it doesn’t have to. As a rule of thumb, the lower the cost, the more maintenance is required. If you have a small garden spot you want to protect, then you might not mind doing a bit of routine maintenance to keep the groundhogs out of the greens, but if you have a few hundred yards of livestock fencing adjoining a busy highway, animal, and even human lives, can depend on your ability to keep your animals off the roadway 24/7/365.

Of course there are about as many kinds of fence as there are fencing materials. (We’ve even seen a fence made out of old bicycles.) However, I’ve put together a collection of some of the more significant styles of fencing that might be of interest to the small landowner. The first group is timeless and cheap and the second group keeps your livestock out of traffic about as securely as the current state of the art allows.

Traditional Fencing

When you’re looking for ways to get by cheaply, there’s a lot to be said for looking at techniques that have been in use longer than money. Traditional fence methods make heavy use of the materials most readily at hand.

Stone

Arguably the first fencing material, stone endures in fences and walls, even if you have to replace a rock now and then. It’s easy to look at all the stone fences in Europe and New England and conclude that people these days simply don’t work as hard as they used to. That may be the case, or perhaps it’s just because stone fences can last for centuries, so there are a lot of them still around. At any rate, hard work notwithstanding, it’s a wonder to me that more landowners don’t build stone fences in places where rock is abundant.

Dry-masonry — the art of stone construction without mortar — has been practiced since before the time of the Great Pyramids. If you’ll just keep certain givens in mind, such as rain, ice, and frost-heave, you’ll find that you can, without gaining an excessive amount of education on the matter, construct rock walls that will contain sheep or cattle very well without great expense.

Although stone walls seem to be the epitome of immovable strength, they actually offer quite a bit of flexibility in that the shepherd or cattleman, rather than maintain some sort of movable gates, accesses the fields simply (or laboriously) by dismantling the wall where a gate is desired, moving the livestock from — say, the winter pasture to the summer pasture — then rebuilding the fence. When your life is measured in seasons rather than minutes, this would be a workable solution, but most applications require an easier/quicker gate than this.

Wattle

Wattle fencing is a technique so old and so simple that it has evolved independently all over the world. Over 6,000 years old, wattle fence involves placing stakes in the ground and weaving smaller branches or slats between them. It is the basis of the construction method called wattle and daub, which sounds like a Hobbit law-firm, but is actually wattle fencing covered with mud — concrete, morter, stucco, or whatever.

Wattle fence is basket-weaving in a single plane; it’s particularly handy for containing smaller animals, especially in dryer climates where the upright posts are less likely to rot in a season or two.

If you have lots of brush on your property, and a few crude tools, you can make wattle fencing for little or no cost. You’ll want to use green wood from flexible species like willow, bamboo, chestnut, or hazel for your wattle.

Split-rail

Split-rail is the fence of early America. Long-lasting, flexible in design, and effective, once you’ve done the seriously hard work of splitting the rails, you’ll have an enduring, low-maintenance fence that can be moved about according to your whims.

Rails are split from durable, straight-grained woods such as white oak or hickory. Unlike most of the photos you may have seen, log-splitting is not done with an ax, but with a splitting maul and steel wedges.

The rails are then arranged in a zig-zag pattern with a flat stone placed under each corner. Split-rail fencing has been used to contain all sorts of livestock, even boisterous, destructive, large hogs.

State-of-the-Art Modern Fencing

Traditional fencing is certainly unparalleled for low cost, but sometimes cost needs to take second place behind security, as, for example, when your pasture fronts on a busy highway. Not only are you at risk of losing your livestock, but stray animals on the roadway can easily cause an accident, placing you in considerable legal liability. Here are three types of modern fencing that can come as close to worry-free containment as you can probably hope for.

Electric Fence

It’s hard to beat a solar electric fence as a way to secure a small area. Theoretically, it needn’t be that small, as a single charger can electrify several miles of fence line. However, since the landowner needs to keep the fence from being shorted-out by weeds or fallen limbs, there is a practical limit to what can be maintained. Of course, how much maintenance is required depends on, among other things, how high off the ground the bottom wire will be. If used to keep livestock in, it doesn’t need to be that low, but if your fence is designed to keep small animals out — of the garden for example — it needs to be only two or three inches from the ground, so running a string-trimmer under the bottom line needs to be done every three or four days. A less-environmentally friendly technique would be to spray herbicide on the grass growing under the wires.

Using a solar fence charger and reusable t-posts means you can locate your fence as far from the house as you want since it makes its own electricity. I’ve had very good luck protecting my garden with three lines of hot wire: first, one about three inches off the ground, or the height of a groundhog’s nose; then another line at about eight inches off the ground, in case the ground-hog, or a rabbit, or squirrel, decide to jump the first line (although it’s true that after one bite from the fence, most critters get and stay far away from the area). Above that, around four feet from the ground, the third wire is about the height of a whitetail deer’s nose. The reason I “aim” for the nose is that the typical animal will first spy the white line of electric tape. His curiosity aroused, then he immediately moves in to investigate, which he first does by touching his nose to the hot tape. When a grown deer touches the tape, he’ll be out of sight and still running only a millisecond later, and most animals won’t be back to test the line again for a long while.

In days gone by, before electrical poly-tape was invented, steel wire was used. Wire works well enough at doing its job, but the poly-tape, besides being much easier to work with, is much more visible both to animals and humans, which is a definite benefit to both.

In case you’re wondering, electric fences are not harmful to animals as some city folks seem to think. If you want a good demonstration of this, simply grab hold of the hot wire/poly-tape yourself. You’ll find that this action will provide you with an indelible memory of your experience, yet you won’t be permanently harmed or altered in any way (other than perhaps deciding to stop taking my advice). Since the electricity comes in pulses, you’ll be able to let it go (and quite rapidly) which is another safety feature.

Once you’ve enjoyed all the direct current you need to come to this conclusion, you can test your fence in the future by pulling a blade of grass and holding it to the line. If everything is connected properly, you’ll feel a slight tingle, but not really a shock.

Welded-steel Corners and T-posts

Here’s a fence design that will contain everything from a (reasonably good-natured) 2,000-lb. bull to baby lambs. The photo below shows one strand of barbed-wire over a 48” woven-wire, but this strong framework will support any sort of wire fencing, and will last for the rest of your life in most conditions. The posts, in this case 5” steel pipe and t-posts, are driven into the ground and braces and caps are welded in place.

After the wire is stretched taut with winches or hydraulics, this results in a very strong fence.

In the past, cattle fences were made with wooden posts and fewer lines of barbed-wire. Some old fences only consisted of two strands of wire, but those were simpler times when a stray animal wasn’t that much cause for concern, and local laws tended to support free range. These days, five lines of barbed-wire is the rule for cattle fence, and six lines and up are used more and more.

Some animals are just naturally hard to fence in, particularly goats who are curious, smart, dexterous, and quite a pain when they learn the weakest points in a fence. But there’s a solution: here’s a photo of a fence that’s designed to hold in both cattle and goats. Goats are a particular problem because their tendency to climb things breaks down woven wire, so if this use of 11 strands of barbed-wire seems pricey, it is less so compared with the welded-wire fence that goats would normally require. Notice the use of rigid hog-panel to keep the goats from climbing over the stone cairn.

Of course, there are lots more types of fence. Many types are suggested by readily available materials; in the American west, where the stone is such that it’s possible, they make fence posts for barbed-wire out of long shards of the native rock. Then there are the living fences fashioned from dense, thorny growing plants like hedge-apple (Maclura pomifera) that can be maintained for generations. Whatever style or type you choose, will be a major improvement to your property, and you’ll sleep easier at night.

Reference: http://www.homestead.org/construction/nothing-simplifies-rural-life-like-fencing/.

How To Get Started With Backyard Farming

Backyard farming means the whole lot from a tiny garden plot to a bigger, more methodical approach. It depends on what you want to achieve. We use the term backyard farming since it gets nearer to the mindset of what our aim is. “Backyard” means that we are working on this at home and “farming” – we are putting a more organized or focused method to growing food. It is just used to indicate that we are taking a determined approach instead of only popping in some plants and trusting that they produce well. 

Its basic motive is to recognize the things we need to reach over time, and then create a plan to gradually execute them. It doesn’t mean that you have to house chickens or other livestock. Many people who have a yard farm are only interested in producing vegetables. Whether they live in the country, outskirts, or a city area, most people are learning to take benefit of the space that they have in order to cultivate food for their families and also make an income.

With Backyard Farming, you will possibly get more advantages than with old-style pastime gardening. 

• Lesser grocery bills, probably pointedly lower.
• Run a property that is 100% organic and biochemical free
• Possibly earn revenue and income 
• It can be very fun and satisfying
• Less lawn garnish / less clearing / less watering / less applying all that runs on gas

Knowing how to initiate occasionally is the firmest place to begin but it doesn't have to be. Here are few tips on how to start:

Making a Backyard Farming Plan

Your food manufacture plan is really only a constituent of your better, more complete homestead plan. It starts with an evaluation of your condition and food aims. For so many, unlike reasons, it is vital to start a small work externally over time. You do not want to make a full yard plan striving with backyard chicken hutches and composting. Go forward and design a backyard farming plan on paper if you want to, but for the starting, start a small by selecting one or two very simple things, placed in locations that make logic. Next year you can shape out.  Things will fall into place much more obviously this way.

Fix your goals

There are numerous reasons to capitalize on urban farming. While certain people need to raise the fruits and vegetables for profitable purposes, others are seeking for original ways to feedstuff their families. The vision of developing food in your property and vending it to turn profit entreaties to most people that have more space for gardening. The trick for achievement is to have a consistent resource of water.

What Food to Crop

It’s significant to recollect the goal of food manufacture on a true self-reliant homestead. It isn’t to commercially grow adequate food for you to make your living off of. On the other side, it also isn’t about only growing a few unusual “hobby” plants. The aim is to produce as much of your family’s food as likely. This is the framework that’s vital to keep in mind.

Design it to Look Attractive

As far as artistic design, they're so many options as you can think of.  Have a look around at land design photos that demand to you. Frequently these designs comprise of plants you perhaps do not want, such as general bushes, and decorative trees, and that’s an alternate in food crops where you can.

Going through the entire process can encourage you to have fun and income and see that your dream comes to completion. Even it will bring you closer to your family and you’ll get a talent to teach about the backyard farming ideas to your children and others as well.

To sum up, your backyard farm can begin as slight as a raised planter box occupied with the foodstuff to a complete countryside fondly mounted to harvest the organic crop and periodic flowerings through the year. Backyard farming is an authorizing way to relink with your food resource and joins neighborhoods and the better communities. Distributing these organic gifts with your friends and neighbors is a truthfully brilliant experience.

Homesteading or Small-Scale Farming. Which Is Right For You

Self-sufficient living signifies to produce your own food, clear from the electric network, develop your own homesteading farm and continue a prudent lifestyle. Self-sufficiency is the way onward. There is no well time to do the farming, particularly with the occurrence of climate variation, food security and the gloominess of the financial and radical doubt. You do not want to be in a state where you have the gamble to take charge for your own intention but failed as you either did not have the abilities, or the feeling to make the alteration.

Many homesteaders get cross tracked by the potential of earning from the direct to buyer marketing style ‘small-scale farming.  Frequently the ability of profit is indefinable and dreams are ruined.  In hunt of "creating a living", most of the homesteaders miss the sight of why they began this lifestyle in the main place.  What is the difference between homesteading and small-scale farming?  

Homesteading

It is about creating the food (and fiber, energy, or heat) to care your family and a self-sufficient lifestyle, off the grid. If you want to start a homestead, you can deliver dairy, meat, wood for reheating and lots of fruits, vegetables, and greens.

Farming

It is about generating the food for income to sell to the common public. Think about the factory farms, corn, and soybeans, inexpensive work. The overall idea is to make the maximum profit at every step - the old-style capitalist business model. There might be the range of smaller to mid-scale farmsteads that follow this model. 

The stable methodology can be preferred. The basic purpose is to produce income and to live off the land by consuming what we cultivate and practice what we have without trusting on external resources as much as probable.

Homesteading or home gardening:

It is a past tradition that has progressed in several sultry countries over an extended period of time and usually unstated to be a system for the manufacture of survival crops for the digger and his or her family. It gratifies the desires of sustainability by being creative, natural sound, stable, sparingly feasible, and informally satisfactory. Still, the land use variations, accessibility of agrarian labor, and dropping product prices are main restraints in homestead farming.

Upcoming plans to develop homestead farming should aim at watershed-based growth with focus on a complete farm or systems tactic; rearranging and purifying existing home gardens, and producing maintainable models through a farmer hands-on method for each agro-ecological zone; making homestead bunches; linking the yield gap by cultivating crop output; developing the post-harvest tools of home garden products; supporting and refining rural financial networks and extending the consumer viewpoints.

Small Scale Farming: Simple, Successful

This means that whatever is cultivated, upturned and fully-grown on the farm is expended by the farm inhabitants themselves. Preferably, one does not require a vast piece of land to become self-reliant. So how small is small? Well, one can really become self-contained rather luckily on one acre of land. One acre of land can be used for small-scale farming on the mini-farms that leads to self-sufficiency. Still, it is likely to practice the self-sufficiency on tiny farms, and then land management becomes vital. This turns into the most significant principle for small-scale farming and creating your mini farm.

In developing more justifiable small-scale homesteading, agriculture and rural progress efforts should be focused on three important goals.

• Food safety,
• Employment and income generation in rustic areas, in order to eliminate poverty.
• Natural resource preservation and environmental safety.

It has been familiar that the root causes of environmental deprivation are social and formal in nature. Measures to address the problem will need unified tactics which include a change of rules, values, and official configurations.

If somebody continues to work but rest of the family works on the farm, then it will give you a chance to start out more gradually and develop your client base, pick up the supports, and decide if you have got the correct choice to change to a farm-based revenue. Leaping to the first can be exciting and could very well pay off, but it will also leave you without stable revenue till your farm is bringing the highest return-on-investment.

Find The Best Backyard Farming Idea At Homestead.org

Backyard Farming or Urban Farming is a program where regular people who live in usual houses in typical neighborhoods are spinning part of their property into small or micro-farms. Farming is a term that makes a difference between ordinary gardening where one throws up the same tomatoes in the same spot of the backyard each year and hopes for the best, 

Starting your own backyard farm or residential homestead can be fun and satisfying. You can have fresh eggs, fruits, and vegetables that come straight from your own backyard, increase bees, and develop your own private food oasis. If you need a backyard farm you may have put it on the back jet for a number of reasons. You may feel it’s not likely where you live or that purchasing all the supplies and gear necessary will break the bank. You may just feel that you don’t have adequate room.

One of the bigger concerns most people have about the backyard farming ideas is the size of their yard. They wonder if it is really probable to grow sufficient food to make backyard farming with the effort. The answer is, “Yes!” More and more people are becoming artistic about how to grow a large amount of food in a small space. 

Are you considering becoming homestead farming but aren’t sure where to begin or if you can even make it work with the total of land you have? Well, fear not as this article gives you the idea about some plans to help you get started accurately where you are. It is vital to realize that even if you live in an apartment, you can follow the steps mentioned below to become more self-sufficient homestead farmer. However, if you live in a home and have even a small space, there are many ways to place it out and utilize that piece of land to the completest. Hopefully, you will get all the facts about the homestead farming

Small Space

Changing lawn space to a vegetable garden goes one step more because land that previously drawn up resources can now produce abundant food. Growing your own food still requires time and attention, but your asset is paid back in delightful nourishments instead of do-nothing grass. A home manure pile can deliver natural fertilizer to improve the soil while proper covering can lessen the amount of water and weeding required.

Vertical Gardening

It is a new trend of urban agriculture. Some vegetables that are typically linked to the bigger scale farming can produce well and provide the great results in a small space with an extra planning and care. Even the corn plant can prosper if you know its fertilization requirements. Vertical gardening adds the environment for the wildlife, creating the assortment that facilitates to stop the outbreaks.

Grow the produce that makes sense for you. 

Consider what you buy and eat most, and plan your garden accordingly. If you make drinks for breakfast, you might want to grow strawberries or kale for a prepared source of ingredients. Maybe your kids favor broccoli and peas, or you use a lot of fresh spinach and lettuce for salads. Occasionally analyze your garden’s output from a financial perception and estimate the cost of purchasing produce against growing your own.

Aquaculture

Considering the gloomy state of our oceans and decreasing and poisoned fish populations,   it makes sense to take a shot at farming your own fish. Sound suspicious? But could you do it at home? Seemingly, fish farming in the backyard is a certainly a growing drift. Be it a few herbs on the back deck, chickens or a full-fledged aquaponic system, May you too find the best self-sufficient gardening option for your very own backyard.

While the real aim of getting the backyard farming ideas is to be able to create a     majority of your calorie consumption, it’s a hard thing to put into practice, simply because we like to eat! By the time we’re old enough to tie our shoes, we have urbanized palettes that are intensely aware of all kinds of pleasing and far off foods, with superior ingredients, processing, and high reliance on monoculture farming.