In some ways winter on the farm is a quieter time with less plant growth and less animals being born however because we run our own natural systems this simply means it’s time to turn ourselves to tasks that will help us manage the leaner months when there is less pasture for our grazing animals, including the poultry.
Every couple of days we need to harvest our certified organic pasture (set aside for the winter period) which is collected, shredded it into smaller pieces and blown into the back of a cart which has a series of conveyors that will compact the plant material and empty it into winter feeders. Our New Holland forage harvester as you can see from the pictures is a few years short of state-of-the-art. Let’s say about 40 years short. Generally, they serve us well enough however from time to time they do breakdown and we can’t get parts for them anymore (this machine is unfortunately out of action again, at the moment. Not good timing!!!). The reality is we don’t as yet have the funds to buy a replacement.
In these photos Brenden is removing stored silage feed that has been previously cut by the forage harvester and kept airtight to retain its nutrition and sugars, before being fed out to the animals.
