Best Home Sprinkler System

The best part is that this project helps drain annoying puddles and speeds up the arrival of dry ground. All you need are a few digging tools, such as a spade or digging shovel and perhaps a digging bar for tougher ground.

Your manure pile should always be placed close enough to your barn for access, yet far enough away to keep flies from swarming the premises. Their sole purpose is to stop the reproductive cycles of house and stable flies.

Crops choices on wild farms are determined based upon what the site can sustain instead of utilizing it until depleted. These are usually pre-existing paths that the wildlife has created to traverse to and from various points.

Set your tree spacing based on the width of your mower, so you can work within your fields efficiently. This is the most popular Christmas tree in the Southeast U.S., according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

Smaller ones, like the tool library I belong to, can be run by the participating farmers. Once you decide to work cooperatively, you are entering the world of meetings and committees.

Not only do they not hold water very well, organic matter decomposes quicker in sandy loam. In addition, UNL's study showed that with a bare sand and silt loam soil, “surface soil water evaporation can be as much as 30 percent of the total evapotranspiration...

Sky-high machinery and fuel costs and the lack of affordable haying-crew labor is driving up the cost of putting up hay . Twine should be snug and spaced 6 to 10 inches apart. Hay is a generic term for grass or legume plants that have been cut, dried...

Branching Out Your property has boundaries, but your woodland projects don't have to. Traditionally, farmers kept woodlots for timber and firewood supplies, for use as fencing materials, or for producing other products, such as maple syrup.

Other benefits of rye grass include weed suppression and increased retainment of all that nitrogen from the hog manure. Tillage will eliminate a lot of damage caused by rooting and wallowing, and a good till will spread manure around.

Conservation and Environmental Benefits Aquaculture probably has the best potential for relieving the pressure on threatened wild populations and allowing the conservation efforts on those populations to succeed.

Tags hobby farm To wrap your head around the construction of an aquaculture pond, use the diagram below to jog the pond-construction thought process. Then pick up the November/December 2011 issue of Hobby Farms for more complete information on starting...

Pasturing is a common complexity demanding careful monitoring of open, tended land—and it requires lots of land in order to serve both pigs and soil. Raising pigs is easy. Acorn finishing is an ancient technique for producing superior-flavored pork—perhaps...

That way, we are taking advantage of all the space something as thin as a leek leaves unused. Turnips Turnip greens are larger than radish greens, so we use this crop strategically, as it will block out sunlight in the wrong situations.

Separate your crop families so a family will not return to the original plot for two to four years, advises the North Carolina State University's Center for Environmental Farming Systems.

The Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association was founded in 1938 as an educational and informational organization. Viewing the farm as an organism involves seeing the farm become more self-sufficient in terms of fertility needs, pest control and outside...

If you have a solid boundary, such as wood-plank fencing or woven-wire fencing, you might run an electric wire around the inside top to prevent animals from resting or pushing on it.

“The goal is also to create synergy, symbiosis and sustainability.” Silvopastures provide multiple income sources, and they generate revenue at different intervals during production to fill in gaps between the harvest of one crop or another.

Who could trust the factory farm to provide a healthy product or for that product to be what they say it is? Being able to survive on these 200 acres without a lot of outside sourcing saves revenue and creates a strong work ethic in the minds and hearts...

A single horse creates 50 pounds of waste per day; a beef cow up to 92 pounds; a feeder pig 9½ pounds; a sheep 4 pounds; and a laying hen 1/4 pound, according to the Midwest Plan Service's “Manure Management Series.” Talk of manure management is...

Sherry Maddock runs 4th Street Farm, a rich and diverse urban farm in Lexington, Ky. She has mulched, planted, weeded and cared for her farm for the better part of a decade, turning it into a food-producing oasis.

Implementing a rotational mowing plan, where you mow one section of a fallow field or grassland once per year, minimizes habitat disturbance and allows the plants to have varying age structures, which in turn provides nesting ground for a wider variety...

If your trough or buckets are really dirty, you may need to scrape some of the gunk off with a putty knife. Trough Management Basics Of course, the easiest way to keep your animals water clean is through prevention.

Here's a quick primer on what grasses go where in your cool- and warm-weather pasture arrangement. A common approach is to toss it atop the snow, which melts and deposits seeds in the ground.

There are also performance-horse facilities that have indoor riding arenas to be cared for, clients paying thousands of dollars each month for their horses' care and multiple horse trainers working in the barn, so stable management here will require a...

Easy Access Vertical gardens get the fruit up off the ground and within easy reach come harvest time. Experiment with various techniques until you find one best suited for your needs or implement multiple techniques to optimize your garden's growth.

First, decide what you want to do with your horses, and then choose your implements and harnessing equipment accordingly. Tractors only really ever depreciate in value, whereas a horse can be bred and produce a foal every year.

“It's also important to record any vaccinations and supplements given and the dates they were given.” Keeping up with livestock inventory, breeding dates, and health information can be a challenge if you're using the old pen-and-paper method.