Types Of Conveyor Systems

Personally, I find the challenge of digging drainage ditches to be rather enjoyable; I may have inherited this from my grandfather, as he was also fond of such projects and would create very elaborate channels and ditches for draining puddles.

Fly Traps Traps—plastic containers with bait inside to lure flies to their doom—are the slightly evolved version of fly paper. This could affect you if you have enough land to subdivide.

A Schedule In Sync With Nature Wilderness farms follow the cycles of nature. Wild farms protect this function by either leaving it be as they are or by growing crops in that space that are appropriate for wet environments, such as rice, cranberries and...

If you have use for more mulch or compost, collect Christmas trees from neighbors and friends to prevent all of their trees from going to the landfill. This fast-growing tree is native to the northern third of the U.S., extending as far south as the mountains...

Farm cooperatives of various types can be set up to make it easier to run parts of your farm business. Farmers are, in general, a pretty independent lot. Farming is expensive business—anything you can do to reduce your expenses should definitely be...

They also advocate the role of earthworms in helping improve soil as well: The worms “pull” no-till residue down into the soil; plus, their tunneling works as a natural drainage system.

To preserve its nutritional value, put up no more than you'll feed within a year of harvest. If storing small square bales, stack the bottom layer on their sides with the strings facing sideways instead of up.

The possibilities are as abundant as your curiosity and interests: collecting plants and other materials to craft into beautiful objects or delicious foods or developing formal long-range plans that can contribute to your farm's income, for example.

Harrowing will do even more to this end—remember, pigs tend to choose “toilet” areas where manure will be concentrated, and because one hog can produce up to 80 pounds of manure per day, disseminating this fertilizer is a big step toward healthy...

Everything has its consequences but compared to wild fisheries, aquaculture is a very low impact enterprise. “Some years we make money, some years we don't,” says Nat, who in addition to farming, is a sous-chef at a local gourmet market that specializes...

If done the right way, freshwater fish farming can be a great value-added opportunity for your hobby farm. To wrap your head around the construction of an aquaculture pond, use the diagram below to jog the pond-construction thought process.

Rodney Wilson On our farm, we do a bit of all three: We hand-mix an all-natural ration, run pigs in our limited pastures and let herds roam the farm's 12 wooded acres looking for fruits, nuts, bugs, snakes … the forest floor is a buffet for a foraging...

Lettuce Both head lettuce and cut lettuce are ideal intercrops. It gets a little stuffy amongst corn rows and difficult to maneuver, but it's definitely possible if space is limited.

What was growing in Plot 3 in 2014 will grow in Plot 2 in 2015, and so on. Outline Your Plan Make a chart of each plot number and each season, like the example in step 3. It's still a good idea to keep notes about how each crop performed in your garden...

If you take Steiner's lectures as the foundation, a very complete, beautiful picture emerges.” He's been a Biodynamic farmer since 1983 and believes that in order to transition, a farmer needs a lot more than just economic motivation to drive him or...

Protect your pastures, as well as your animals' hooves, with these six simple steps to creating a sacrifice area on your farm. Avoid locating the sacrifice area near wetland areas and other surface water flows to reduce potential impacts to these areas.”...

The goal was to clearcut the stand 30 to 35 years (~2014) after establishment. Livestock Cattle or meat goats are most often grazed in a silvopasture, but horses, sheep and even geese have been used in some settings.

“Your buyers can get your paperwork—the consumer's right to know how you grew something is codified in the audit trail.” The Giants Go Organic To me, knowing how my luscious, eco-friendly salad was nurtured is only part of the allure of organic.

With the joy of keeping livestock comes the annoyance of managing manure. “There are local technical experts from the USDA-NRCS, university cooperative extension and private consultants who can work with a small farmer to develop a manure-management...

Plants The only thing better than hands-off gardening is being able to harvest and eat fresh veggies year-round, and some cool-season crops can survive through the winter with a little help.

The conversion will give your livestock a wider variety of forage throughout the year, in addition to a longer period of grazing for animals while also promoting grassland-bird habitat in the spring nesting season, when it is most valuable.

Of course, I don't mean that your animals shouldn't drink secondary water sources or from streams. Water cleanliness rule of thumb: If you wouldn't drink from it, your animals probably shouldn't either.

Here's a quick primer on what grasses go where in your cool- and warm-weather pasture arrangement. (It's a joke only in the loosest sense—the humor lies in the fact that, nine times out of 10, this is exactly where he is.) I'd had a few conversations...

For example, if you have a breeding farm, you'll have all of the regular farm-management duties plus stallion management, care of foals and assisting in foaling. Physiologically, horses differ from other animals, too.

Maintenance With vines raised up and out of the way, you have free access to roots for easier watering, weeding and fertilizing, and because you're working within a smaller space, you'll battle less weeds and use less mulch or weed barriers, fertilizers...

Draft Horse Resources Before running out and buying a team of horses, it is never a bad idea to attend a class or two on farming with draft animals. It's great for field work and riding or showing.

Placing a numbered ear tag on each animal at the time of birth and snapping a photo will help you keep records for each animal from day one. “You need to record basic crop-production information, such as acreage amounts, yield per acre and total yield...