I should have mentioned, what you have is strip cropping which is great for helping to prevent soil erosion. The water and topsoil hit the grass portion, and slows down the water and the dirt drops out.
You can actually intercrop the barley and peas together. Which means instead of strips like you have, they are all mixed together. This link is kind of nice because it includes multiple studies of intercropping field peas with various plants for mainly weed suppression for organic farms. There is some yield loss relative to a monoculture, but some of that cost is made up by not weeding the crop. They placed no value on the companion crop. But even as such it will increase organic matter in your soil, and it has even more immediate value if you can make use of it as say hay.
But it is ultimately your call.
Here is a study from Estonia which is a bit closer to home, and they do harvest the companion crop.
Many people think of other places to go when they speak of going to Europe, but I think I’d like to visit the Balkans if I ever leave the USA. I want to see how they make Rakija in the different countries. I heard the stills have a stirrer to keep the fruit pieces from burning to the bottom.
I don’t drink at all, I just enjoy the process of distillation.
Intercroping grains and peas make sence ofcorse but how do you harvest? Even if they ripen at the same time (wich might be a lotery) you got a mixed grain then.
Al, unfortunaly this doesent work with our pigs. I tryed everything and only a wall or a fixed pen will keep them in. Not even wire fencing, unless maybee if its concreeted at the bottom. Problem is l got piglets in the flock and when they escape their moms will follow and even if they dont the litle ones make enaugh damage on their own. I will be making pens over time, rotating crops with pigs make a lot of sence…
Cody, this is about the last thing l wuld expect you to be interested in yes some do have a mixer. We never did. We put straw on the bottom, or a few layers of tin foil. Some stills come with a water or oil bath.
Apart from rakija, wich is plum spirit, there are also other specialitys like dunja (quince spirit) and Brinjevec. This is made from juniper berries but not like gin where the berrirs are added to spirit for aroma, this is actualy made by fermenting juniper berries. You can imagine the amount of work involved to pick enaugh berries off of the prickly bushes to have enaugh fermentable material for one liter of the spirit… alot of fakes on the market but the real stuff costs about 10 times compared to average spirits
I’ll have to try my hand at making Brinjevec. The hedge that separates the cow pasture from my property is lined with Eastern Red Cedar(actually a Juniper species).
How do they ferment the berries? Just suspend in water or crush them in a press?
I think that is why the canadian study only picked the pea crop yields, and used it as weed suppression. It would be something to try in a small area. I wouldn’t risk the farm on it until you had a handle on it. It looks like there are a couple of different varieties of field peas as well some with broad leaves and some with narrow leaves with different results.
I have also seen intercropping done, between rows so if you used a planter (which you may not have) and planted a row of peas, then scatter the rye inbetween the rows. then you have a row of peas to pick with a mechanical harvester, which I don’t think you have either.
As far as separation of the grains, that is actually pretty easy because you can screen them out with a fanning mill/grain cleaner. But it might take two runs. You may not have one, but they are a pretty simple design.
I thought you were talking about wild feral pigs.
you can use an electric fence. but otherwise you need livestock panels, and they need to be on the ground, and you have to check to make sure they aren’t trying to dig under them, and they need to be tall like 4ft tall gates because they can jump.
Father visited the birthplace of this speciality last year, Karst region of Slovenia. Untill then none of us knew whats the real deal with this drink. So lm not familiar to all the details. All we knew is that its highly prised and priced
What l found on the internet was that berries are crushed and fermented, then distilled.
Berries do have a sweet taste to them and a mushy center. Its important to point out thugh that juniper berries are not real berries but actualy cones so l wuld guess they too come in different forms depending on the species. Try it!
This drink isnt ment for regular consumption thugh. Its for special occasions but mainly for treating digestive problems.
A sideproduct of the proces is also juniper oil. A clear liquid that gets distilled with the spirit. Extremely potent smell, also medicinal for the same conditions as the spirit. If you try it and even if you dont get enaugh sugar to ferment in to alcohol, you will certainly be able to distill the oil out.
Our fresh peace of machinery, its a old stationary combine. I guess your right, peas shuld separate well from grain. Will try!
I do also have a winower.
Seed drill, l do not have. But im planing to build one before spring. I have done no till experimentaly for a few years and l think l got it well enaugh to go full scale. But its hard without a seed drill… other thain that, no till is a game changer. Took me a whole day with my litle tractor to plow our feald last year and the danger involved in plowing on a hill… this time going no till it took me maybee half a hour to plant and cover the same feald. Not to mention the other benefets.
No, these are the culprits
We raised this breed for years now. Actualy, on the pic is our first and best sow, its l belive about 7 or 8 years old and usualy gives us 6 piglets twice a year. You do the math…
They are smaller, maxing out at a good 100 pounds gutted, but l prefer that over biger ones. Safer and easyer to work with.
Wich brings us to a problem, as the piglets are also tiny. They will squeeze trugh a fist size hole when young, and no energiser will keep them in. If the wire is set low enaugh to reach them, its touching the grass and grounds out. I tryed electric fence and althugh better, occasionaly someone gets tangled in it and then the whole herd gets in to a stampedo mode and everything goes to hell…
I do! I also tend not to make assumptions that might anger people wielding scythes that know how to use them.
You have to try small first. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes you have to make adjustments and at the end of the day you need food on the table.
Intercropping isn’t done a lot commercially because it doesn’t work well with machines designed for single crops so in this case you have an advantage! But you might need a single row seeder to get it to work, and harvest.
We don’t use plows in this area. I haven’t seen one used on a farm in probably 20 years. HOWEVER since you need to pull up stumps, if your plow is the solid mount type, and it doesn’t have the springs to release like if it hits a rock, or a sheer pin (otherwise the tractor can flip backwards), you can probably plow the stumps up.
For hog gates we use welded wire panels, they only have 2" spaces at the bottom. Then just like a fence post at each end and one or two in the middle. The steels ones work, then wire the panel to it.
And you need to walk around it everyday to make sure they didn’t dig under it… and it has to be tight, if they can move it or lift it, they think they can get out.
As far as the electric fence, it won’t work for small piglets. and you need the wires spaced right, which is in the link I posted. They are quick learners and it works. But you also have to keep the grass off it or else it grounds it out. They will figure it out.
We usually separate the mom into her own pin with the piglets until they are bigger, sometimes they get aggressive and kill each other. And sometimes the mom will kill the babies. But a good sow won’t do that.
It was about time for an ash dump on my work truck so went out this morning and dumped the ash and lit the gasifier . After light up I could not think of anywhere to go . My driveway has gotten so muddy and I hated to tear it up more so I just sat in the truck and let it idle for about 10-15 min in the rain . Just sitting and listening to the big engine purr kinda took care of my addiction for a little while .
O well maybe I can wait until this afternoon and go out visiting to feed my addiction .
Just reading your post caused me to throw another sawmill slab in the heater .
If it were a warm day and my pastures not muddy I could tie my steering wheel, set my throttle and drive in circles . With my rocking chair in the bed of the truck I could watch the real estate go by and maybe take a nap.
Mr. Wayne, sitting in the car and listening to the engine burning wood is a good feeling, especially if you invented and built the system yourself, well, I’m on my way to that, now I can only sit still and steal gas from the tractor. If anyone, you deserve to enjoy the ride.
Yep, we had -21F this morning, visiting the inlaws now (thier 60 miles away) and father inlaw said he had -31F.
Had to chip ice for the horses after church and before going to inlaws. Tank has one of those 250W puck heaters in the bottom of it. New, they keep water ice free down to -40… but after a few years they dont cut it. I just need to replace it every two years regardless…beats dealing with everything all frozen if im not pating attention to it.
yes some do have a mixer. We never did. We put straw on the bottom, or a few layers of tin foil. Some stills come with a water or oil bath.
I just need to replace it every two years regardless…beats dealing with everything all frozen if im not pating attention to it.