Preparing for Winter
...it's a big barn. It also has to house a LOT of animals.
It’s been a minute. What a wild year it has been. We’ve moved twice this year. First, from our amazing 3.5 acre homestead in Brooklyn, MI all the way to Stuart, VA in April. Then, back to Manchester, MI in August. While it certainly was not our intent to move an entire farm and family with two small kiddos twice in a year, it’s the way our storyline has gone and I can genuinely say we are SO blessed, grateful, appreciative to be back in the Mitten.
As the cold, grey winter of the Midwest starts to descend on us, I find myself missing our Brooklyn homestead something fierce. I think it’s because in order to survive the cold and the grey well, I need a cozy place of safety and routine, for both us and our livestock. I love watching the winter snow fall, but only when I know our critters are cared for with adequate shelter. Otherwise, it’s incredibly stressful. Our old homestead, though small, was a place where many memories were made in our home and our barn. In the four years we were there, we built and created that place of safety and security. The barn, though old and drafty, successfully housed a lot of livestock and saw a number of lamb, rabbit, and goat births.
Where we are now is where we intend to stay forever. The property is larger; 16 acres, with many more acres of family land right next door. It has tremendous potential and room to grow. The barn is bigger as well. Capable of housing a growing herd of dairy goats and sheep, in addition to the horses, livestock dogs, rabbits, poultry, and many barn kitties.
There is no house yet. We currently live in the insulated shop side of the barn with an RV. I’ll be honest, the process of building a house overwhelms me tremendously. Equally, the thought of building our forever home just how we would like it, and taking our favorite bits and pieces of the previous three homes we have lived in together to draft the house plans is very exciting.
For now, we are safe and cozy in our ‘barn-house’ and learning how to make it work for us in this phase of life. And literally on the other side of the wall is the animal side of the barn. As winter sets in, we are deciding how best to utilize all this barn space in a way that suites our individual species’ needs. We had this routine figured out at our previous homestead, but are very much in that learning and building phase here as it’s the first winter and you really can’t plan for it all until you find yourself in it. Have a plan in mind, then be very open to pivoting and acknowledging where improvements need to be made until it is an efficient and effective space. That is why up until this point, we have kept the space as open as possible. Room for temporary changes so we aren’t tied to the existing space and unwilling to make necessary change.
The dairy goat does have had the entire barn space up until now. When the weather is mild, all of our animals are out on pasture. The dairy does are the only livestock that need daily access to a barn space. Now that the weather is cold and wet, that space needs to accommodate everyone.
Tommy has built an indoor chicken coop in the hay-storage side of the barn. We will apply the deep bedding concept for them and hopefully hang on to our egg production once they’re cozy and warm inside.
The rabbits have a very mobile setup that we were able to move into that same hay-storage space. A benefit to having all these livestock inside during the winter is that the wonderful soil building benefits of their manure will be ‘trapped’ in the carbonaceous-diaper that is the deep bedding system until spring, when it can be applied to our poor fertility pastures and best utilized. Manure that falls onto the pasture during the winter is unable to be used by the microbes and critters in the soil who have gone dormant which means most of the nutrients wash away during cold rains or snowmelt. It is preferable to keep that manure locked in until it can be applied to the newly awoken microbes in the soil in spring-time when the weather warms. Deep bedding, and applying fresh layers of bedding over top of the old, keeps a clean space for the animals to live while also keeping the manure indoors. It also warms as the combination of manure (Nitrogen) and bedding (Carbon) begins to decompose. Talk about radiant heat flooring for the livestock!
In the large open space, we have divided off a portion for the horses and livestock dogs that is separate from the dairy goats. We still need to partition the horses and livestock area off from each other as they don’t get along well in tight quarters. Max (our old great pyrenees) and Cassie (my old quarter horse/arab mare) do not appreciate each other’s presence. Just yesterday, Max was napping in the new barn space while Cassie watched him. For the remainder of the day, she made a point to come into the barn, exactly where he had been napping, and poop. Right there. It was both hilariously intentional, and frustrating. Can’t you two just get along?! I guess not. So, some slight modifications need to be made to the space so the dogs area and entrance/exit is separate from the horses’.
Finally, the sheep will need space to come into the barn. Shetland sheep are incredibly hardy and can handle harsh winter conditions, but we want to provide them the option of shelter if necessary, and certainly by February as we approach lambing season.
And then the dairy goat kidding pens. We have 18 does that should be pregnant. Average 2-3 kids per doe, and we are looking at adding 36-54 baby goats from December-April. An area of very mobile, easy set-up and take-down pens will be required for does to bond with their babies for the first day after kidding. After mama has time to learn who her babies are, and the babies learn who mama is, they can be turned back out into the main herd.
I’m envisioning a well orchestrated chaos. A game of tetris to get everyone where they need to be. I can also see a cold winter’s night with the snow falling outside and all the critters contentedly hunkered down in the barn, warmed by the collective body heat and ruminating tummies. Is there any more peaceful of a place on earth?
