This week I have been thinking about what type of hay should I buy for my small goat herd in Florida. Usually, we can get alfalfa, peanut, or coastal hay all year long. I tend to supplement only in the inter for maybe 2-3 months before spring. Where I am in Florida my fields start to grow back up again in early spring. In March my pastures are already lush and green so hay supplement is not a year-round thing. Below is an example of a pasture in March. As you can see there is not much growth but its green and growing
Lately, though the prices have gone way up for square bales, a coastal square bale is about $10 right now when two or three years ago it was $7. Historically i have been buying square bales, they last about a week for the kidding does and I can switch between alfalfa and peanut hay while their milking. The problem is that the prices of square bales have gone up but the price for large round bales has stayed basically the same. It now makes more sense to buy round bales.
The tradeoff is that with round bales I can’t switch varieties that much since they will last a while considering the size of my herd, about 25 does. I will have to either buy several varieties at once and put different types in different paddocks or just buy one or two for the season. Determining the hay for my small goat herd will be different this year since the last two years I have been getting underweight and slow-growing kids which I think in part is due to not having enough hay in the winter.
It has been busy on the farm, some projects went well, but a lot of other projects didn’t really work and I have to regroup and decide what to do next. I will break the updates up by enterprise to make them easier to read.
Goats
The goat herd continues to be difficult to increase in size. Last kidding season I got up to 42 goats, sold 7 of the kids, and kept 4. However, I continue to lose old goats to worms and some of the young doelings, especially after the year mark. Johne’s disease testing will be required to make sure that the symptoms that I am seeing and assuming are worms are not actually something worse. The buck seems to be doing fine and I have plenty of does that require minimal worming but I still have to cull more proactively. Yearly I have been averaging about 25-30 does before the kidding season, far behind my target of 50 does and one buck for the herd.
Sheep
I made a big mistake with this herd this year. The ram was very aggressive so I sold him too early in the summer and was not able to get another ram until October. Lambing will be late this year because of my mismanagement. I lost fewer sheep to worms than the goat herd so that’s positive. This herd is for internal consumption so the output has been able to keep up with our demand for lamb meat. There are 10 ewes and one ram in the herd.
High Tunnels
Growing crops has been easy, but marketing and selling them have not been. Peppers, Okra, cucumbers, and squash all are very easy to grow in the tunnels. I have yet to find a buyer for anything other than peppers and even this has been sporadic.
Overall I have had some successes on the farm over the last year but a lot of failures. I learn from those though so I can’t complain.
The 2021 kidding season has not been bad on our small farm. So far we have had 17 kids, 8 doelings, and 9 bucklings. There are two does still pregnant so I still have some more kids coming.
Pair of kids in February
This batch of kids is from a new 100% New Zealand Kiko buck, the does are Purebred Kiko. I have had more twins with this buck so far. I have a Purebred buck with a smaller herd and those have mostly been singles, although they are sturdier and healthier. Besides the goats I also have 10 sheep on the field this spring, 5 of those are lambs.
Crops in the High Tunnel. Small Farm challenges
Setting up the cash crops in the High Tunnel has been difficult. I put the habanero peppers, beets, and cucumbers in the racks in December. Germination for the beets and cucumbers was easy. The Habaneros didn’t really germinate until about 6 weeks in, and pests immediately took over, they didn’t make it out of the racks so that was a complete waste. I have regrouped and put peppers in the racks again last week. The Cucumbers were easy to transplant from the racks to the high tunnel. They were also easy to keep going, which is good on a small farm. I had about 100 cucumbers plants at one time but then didn’t follow up properly with watering. The yield was low too, about 4-5 cucumbers per plant but overall the experiment was not bad. I need to put them on racks earlier, probably around November, and plant at higher densities.
Cucumbers and Cilantro about a week after transplant
Cilantro; the only “success” story
The only “success” story so far has been cilantro. It has been very easy to grow, basically direct seed to the high tunnel. Grows fast, at least here in Florida it takes about 2 weeks. It also requires very little watering, about every 2-3 days I had to water but sometimes it was a week before I had to. Overall I can’t complain about the Cilantro. I also found a buyer, a Vietnamese restaurant, fairly easy and might have enough to get to a farmers market.
The fall on the farm had some ups and downs. I was able to get peppers to market from late summer to November. I sold wholesale to a local supermarket but the price fetched was not that great at $2 dollars a pound. Weekly I would take about 20 pounds to that supermarket. I tried a lot of different venues but with COVID there were simply not many buyers. Wholesalers kept saying they were full, some would actually tell me they didn’t sell the product when I could see it on their shelves. “Locally” sourced places would actually source their stuff from non-local places. It is frustrating. I have read many books and listened to podcasts about farming and the hardest part is finding a market. This is where I am now for produce. I have found ready markets for sheep and goats but not fresh produce. My original plan was to sell to restaurants, COVID made that kind of difficult in 2020. Hopefully, 2021 brings some new customers.
Getting a New Barn
I am now focusing more on capital improvements to the farm. I will be building another 24 x 105 high tunnel in March and will start work on a new 48×30 barn in April. Two big expensive projects. I am going to switch focus to fixing some fencing for the goat pen, building a small shelter for the goats in the pen for kidding, and electrifying about 1500 feet on the outside perimeter of the farm to help manage coyote attacks. For the high tunnels, I have a potential restaurant customer that wants cilantro so I will be planting more of that in one high tunnel and will start germinating both orange and red habanero peppers in racks for transplanting in May to the second high tunnel. That might seem late but I have found that at least here in Florida you can sell your peppers pretty much until early fall.
Finally I will be posting more updates regularly on the website, if you have any questions on what i have been doing or what i have learned, if you have read this far then you can email me at abdiel@abdielsalvafarms-us
The summer has not been difficult in the farm so far, below are a couple of the updates. Small scale farming is not easy, this is my third year doing this and i am still using alot of capital to get infrastructure and operations going.
Coyotes- we lost 4 goat kids to coyotes when the spring rains cam in May. We have 2 LGD, spent about 12k fencing our entire property and also have donkeys. The problem is that one of our LGDs hides when the rains come, that leaves one dog to cover 20 acres and two different goat herds. I hadnt lost a goat since 2017 to coyotes but i am doing upgrades to the fence during the summer. Mostly electryfing some parts and using cattle wires on the lower parts in something.
High Tunnel– We finished a 24 x 105 ft high tunnel in May. Nothing has been planted on the High Tunnel yet, we are planning on seeding cucumbers and inter cropping cilantro this month.
High Tunnel under constructionHigh Tunnel complete
Soil Tests– We also completed a new soil test in the tunnel. Overall our soils are not too bad. I am working on a Biochar gasifier to try to increase organic matter and bought some K-Mag to address some of the deficiencies on the tests.
Results of the Soil Test. Note the K and Mg deficiencies
Habaneros- this has been the biggest disappointment so far. We planted in early April to have produce in late June. Because of lack of rain and some goats getting out we have almost a 1000 plants that are yet to produce. I know that buyers have been scarce because of COVID but my plan was to have product moving by July. I have had to adjust.
Overall it has been a busy summer, not that productive but at least some stuff was done. I am working on the plan for the fall. I think i will focus more on forages for the goats and shelters for the winter.
Spring 2020 has been kind of busy in the farm this year. Kidding was a little but late this year, we had about 12 does kid at the very end of January. Usually it is earlier for us, beginning of January. Over the last 4 year i have learned that is way better to have kids in the winter, they seem to be sturdier than spring kids. I am in Florida though so it never really gets that cold here.
Spring 2020 also brought the addition of sheep to the farm. I have 6 Katahdin/Dorper crosses in a different paddock. I am trying out some of the rotational grazing techniques that i have been reading about in the Stockman Grass Farmer and the book Management Intensive Grazing by Jim Gerrish. I am just starting out though so for now i have the goats on one paddock and the sheep/donkeys on another. I will keep updating as i start planting more cover crops and trying to improve the land.
Spring 2020 also brought chickens to the farm!. These are not an enterprise though, basically my 7 year old son really wanted chickens so we built a “run” (its a really ugly structure) and put some coops inside of it and now we have 3 chickens. The goal is to have 5, mostly for eggs and for my children to take care of them and learn some farm chores.
Its been busy, we just had a goat kid today, but with the current pandemic we have been able to spend some more time in the farm doing projects, cant complain about that.
Once you understand what type of soil you have on your land then you can begin to work on improving soil quality with cover crops. You can check out my previous two posts to get the basics of understanding your soil if you need a refresher on how to get soil quality information. This week I listened to the Future of Agriculture podcast interview with Russ Conser, the CEO of Blue Nest Beef, in which they extensively discussed Regenerative Agriculture. You can find that podcast here. I highly recommend that you listen to it if you have the time but it basically summarizes some of the history of the regenerative agriculture movement. Mr. Conser has an empirical and scientific approach, evidenced based perhaps, of how brining carbon back into the soil is beneficial and how it can be measured. This is the latest in research that I have been doing over the last several months on how to use cover crops rotations to improve my soil quality and feed my goats.
I started with reading almost all of the materials I could find on the Green Cover Seed website after receiving my order of Sunn Hemp and Peas and Oats cover crop in the fall. I followed that by reading two books, Dirt and Growing a Revolution by David R. Montgomery and then spending a ton of time reading academic articles on the University of Florida’s online library.
I have learned 3 things doing research. This will be the topic of the next couple of posts.
Its important to research cover crop mixes. It is also important to rotate your cover crops
Cover Crops can improve your soils but its more important to keep your soils covered. Having the right cover crop is like a bonus
Adding livestock is essential to improve your soil faster.
Improving soil quality is my goal and I firmly believe it should be the goal of every farmer. Below is a picture of the second cover crop try out that i have done in my farm. Its a mixture of Sunn Hemp and a Peas/Oats mix. That picture was taken last month, as you can see Sunn Hemp grows fast. More to follow on the next post.
Continuing on the subject of Web Soil Survey and how we can use it to look at our land and start gathering data I want to discuss one of the features in the “Soil Data Explorer” tab. In the previous post I explained how to select an Area of Interest in WSS and look at some of the basic features of your soil. In this post we will look at the Suitabilities and Limitations for Use tabs and the Soil Properties and Qualities tab in Soil Data Exporter.
Suitabilities and Limitations Tab in Web Soil Survey
The suitabilities and determination for use tab is a good tool when you are trying to build facilities in your farm. It gives you a quick snapshot of what types of facilities the soil can technically support. I usually check on the Soil Health tab to determine if certain areas of my farm have slopes, are prone to flooding and to get estimates for the depths of the cemented pan, saturated pan and thick cemented pan. Needless to say these are just estimates and not to scale, requesting assistance from the NRCS or your local extension agent is recommended to get the most accurate readings for your farm. However this is a good start to the discussion with those specialists.
Utilizing the map above The RsB soils are slopes (fields highlighted in yellow) and the RsE soils are prone to flooding (fields highlighted in red) Suitabilities and Limitations is useful but the Soil properties and Qualities tab is even more useful
Soil Properties and Qualities Tab
This tab has ALOT of information that is useful to farmers. The Soil Chemical Properties drop down can give you information on Cation Exchange Capacity, Electrical Conductivity and pH. The Soil Erosion Factors can give you Wind Erodibility and K factors. Soil Health properties drop down gives can give you info on water capacity and organic matter. You can find bulk Density of your soil and Texture on the Physical properties drop down and the water features map can give you information on flooding and ponding frequencies. These are just a few of the MANY features that you can find utilizing the Soil properties and Qualities tab in Soil Data Explorer.
A lot of these insights have to be taken in context for them to be useful to the farmer. Let’s take a couple of the tabs on Soil Properties and Qualities tab. Utilizing the Soil Chemical properties tab in my own farm I can see that three areas of my farm consist of Millhopper sand, which has a low CEC at a 12 inch depth with a neutral pH. Well what does this mean? This probably means that those areas in my farm require more application of fertilizer than other areas of my farm with higher CECs. However I don’t use fertilizer so for me it means that the mix of cover crops that I use in those areas is different than in other areas of the farm. In this particular instance I have actually witnessed how crops (squash) had a hard time growing in those sections of the farm two years ago, its because the soil is less healthy in those areas.
Using the pH tool the readings are pHs of between 5.3 and 5.5. I can validate this because I conducted soil tests with extension agents in different areas of the farm resulting in readings with pHs of 5.6, a slightly acidic soil. What does that mean? I need to carefully select crops and cover crops that can thrive in slightly acidic soils. Thankfully 5.6 is not too acidic so a lot of crops can be grown in my farm.
One tool that I use at least once a year in Florida is the Water Features Ponding Frequency Class tab. Since I live close to a prairie I have seen a lot of the farms in the area have ponding issues in the last 3 years. There are some farms that have been under water since Hurricane Irma in 2017. Utilizing the tool I can see that my farm has a 0 percent chance to suffer from ponding. Drainage in Florida is good but the water table is high, ponding is a real problem. If the reports do not match what I see on my land i will seek the help of both NRCS and extension agents. So far I am still good.
I started my farm a little over two years ago, in late 2016. I spent about one year writing the business plan for the farm. The plan consisted of cash crops (peppers and squash), livestock (goats) and a longer term crop (olives). The idea was that the cash crops would provide the cash flow to buy the livestock in the short term, in the mid term the cash flow produced from both cash crops and the livestock will eventually provide the necessary cash to buy the long term crop; the olives. An olive grove can produce for close to 40 years so establishing the long term crop was the key to the business plan. Little did i know that understanding the soil in the farm was the most important step in the whole plan, this is where the NRCS’s Web Soil Survey became very useful.
Needless to say, and I assume this is the case for many beginning farmers, the plan didn’t survive first contact. I have done many things differently, in some cases I have stuck to the plan ( I continue to plant habaneros and I have goats) but many others have not gone as planned. That story is for other posts. As I was driving last night from Florida to Virginia for work I had plenty of time to both listen to podcasts and think about what I would do differently. The first topic that I could think of was that I should have spent more time understanding my soil.
I wasn’t completely clueless when it came to understanding the soil but I should have been more diligent. Before I started transplanting my peppers in 2017 I had already contacted the land grant university in my area, the University of Florida, and had an agent from the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences come out to the farm and collect a soil sample. The report was useful, it let me know that I had a fairly neutral pH (6) and that the levels of Nitrogen and Phosphorous were average for my area. I had a slight deficiency in Potassium but not too serious. Finally the extension agent mentioned that I should apply some lime sporadically but that was it. I took all that information, filed it away and went ahead and transplanted the peppers anyways. That first crop was not too bad, a short drought did some damage, and since it was not a total failure I thought I had done ok.
Two years later, a couple of college courses on Soil science and hundreds of hours of podcasts (yes, I am a huge podcast fan, ha) now I know that what I did was the minimum. Understanding our soils is not only the first step but its essential. I want to give credit to the “The Deal with Yield” podcast at WinField United for inspiring this post. I listen to their podcasts regularly and if you want to go in depth into Agri-tech tools that can be used to understand your soils you should check them out. I was listening to them on my way up last night.
Nevertheless if you are starting to farm I recommend the first step that you take is to do just as I did and have your land grant university complete a soil sample of your land. It is fairly cheap . I think I paid $15 for three different samples in my 20 acre farm. After you receive the results of your samples back and discuss the results with your extension agent I highly encourage you to use the NRCS Web Soil Survey to dive deeper into your soil.
NRCS’s Web Soil Survey provides soil data and and information produced by the National Cooperative Soil Survey. Start by clicking on the “Start WSS” green button. This is basically a GIS produced by the USDA. The first thing you have to do is select an Area of Interest, if you put your address it will take you to your farm. Below is how it should look like.
The image shows you the contours of the different kind of soils in your land. The legend tells you soil texture. This is the second step but its important. If you do at a minimum these two things (soil sample and WSS) you will understand your soil pH, major nutrients in your farm and what type of soil texture you have. All of this for maybe $20, the cost of the soil sample, is a good investment. Knowing this before you begin putting crops on the ground will take you a long way. WSS has many more tools that we will go over in other posts but this is very basic knowledge that can help beginning farmers understand their land fairly easily.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge of your soil can lead you into many different topics, from soil horizons, to humus, cover crop rotations, no tilling, nitrogen fixing, etc. It is a good time to be a farmer as far as knowledge is concerned because we have the tools and the expertise available to make informed decisions about our crops and our livestock. Hope this is the start of useful posts that beginning farmers can use to make decisions in their own operations.
