Winter - The Little Holistic Farm

21/2/26

Until recently, the world was still completely white. After being moved, the sheep eagerly devoured the few blades of grass. Some of them even used their hooves to scrape away a bit of the snow.

I was trudging through the deep snow when I came upon a couple of bramble shoots that were tempting.

Even the not-so-bold goats threw themselves onto the birch branches. Unfortunately, they later went back to gnawing on the bark again. The sheep also want some of the branches and try to take advantage of the goats' actions.

Last night the thaw began, and today the world looks completely different. On this stretch there are no trees to worry about, but the thaw has made the ground very wet, and there's a risk that grazing will cause greater trampling damage and weaken the vegetation. Therefore, we will move the animals faster than originally planned.

16/2/26

This morning at 7 o'clock, three sheep were taken for slaughter. It's always a sad day, because you come to care a lot for the animals through your daily interactions with them.

To avoid having to catch the animals in the dark, yesterday we built a small enclosure with our grinders, where the three spent the night. We first had to find the grinders in the snow because we hadn't cleared them away properly.

Snowplows had once again dumped large amounts of snow on our driveway overnight. The animal transport vehicle got stuck shortly after turning off the main road onto our country lane and could only be pulled out with a tractor.

It was good that our animals were fairly tame. We could put them on a leash and walk them 500 meters. It helped to lure the rams with a cup full of pills.

Transporting to the slaughterhouse took almost an hour. This afternoon you can already pick up the hides. A good friend is doing it for us because we're once again completely snowed in. In some places along the road there's 70 cm of snow. We're really glad that so many people here are very helpful.

You are considering whether you should slaughter the animals no later than December in the future, because our equipment is not suited to the current weather conditions.

15/2/26

The snowdrifts are giving us big problems. When we transport feed, water, and batteries to the power supply, we keep getting stuck with the wheelbarrow.

Fortunately, you have the ATV that can drive across the field.

It's also not easy to take down the fence when it's deeply buried in snow.

Some daring goats try to cross the snowfields, while the sheep themselves, even in the fenced-in areas, avoid the deep snowfields. They apparently stop looking for something to eat when the snow is 20–30 cm deep. Maybe we've just fed them too much.

11/2/26

After it snowed last week, there's still a continuous snow cover outside. Our four Danish free-range hens, in particular, weren't thrilled at first and, in the morning, turned around on the chicken ladder and went back into the henhouse.

The temperature has hovered around freezing for the past couple of days. Johnny has driven the fence posts into the ground so we could move the sheep and goats. It doesn't yield quite as much because of the snow cover, but at least the area isn't too full of manure.

Besides, you can save a bit on the hay. The past few winters haven't been that cold, so we used less, but this year there aren't many bales left.

We hope the remaining balls will hold until the grass grows back. Otherwise, we'll have to buy more. We prefer Morten Korch balls because we don't have the equipment to handle the larger ones.

Sometimes they're already sold out by spring, and then we have to resort to the large round bales.

3/2/26

After it had already been very frosty at the beginning of January, a new frost period began around January 19, 1926, during which there were almost no temperatures above freezing. At any rate, since January 20, 1926, a piece of ice from the drinking-water bucket has been lying on the grassy field, and it hasn't melted despite occasional sunshine.

For the last three days, we've had temperatures below freezing, and it's also been windy. There are no signs of the weather changing. The day before yesterday, we couldn't put up any fencing because the ground was so frozen. Fortunately, we had already fenced off some pastures in advance, so the animals can be moved today. But we're out of fencing. That means that we have to give them significantly more feed by three days at the latest. Maybe we can also drive some fence posts into the ground with a hammer without them bending.

In search of something edible, the goats in particular—but also some sheep—are gnawing on the trees.

I smear certain trees with sheep droppings. To that end, I collect the droppings along with the parts of the raw wool from shearing that are not suitable for spinning. This is supposed to deter the animals from scratching the bark off. In the past, it worked quite well. But at the moment, it seems that the frozen excrement doesn't have the same deterrent effect, and the animals continue to eat it gleefully.

Some trees were almost completely stripped of their bark this morning. It is still uncertain whether the affected trees will survive.

To treat the trees on the new plot, I first let the collected manure thaw in our furnace room and then mixed it with a little water. If that doesn't help either, the trees will probably have to be removed entirely from the pasture during the winter.

30/1/26

It hasn't worked as well to dry off the goats as I had imagined. After I stopped the evening milking, milk production from our two milking goats fell from a total of 750 ml per day to 700 ml. The milk yield stalled.

Another step to reduce milk production was to milk using the machine and not to help manually. That reduced the milk volume to about 600 ml. At the moment I milk each goat for only one minute with the machine, and in total about 500 ml of milk comes out.

As a final step, I will no longer milk every day and will increase the intervals between milking sessions. The supplement of pellets at milking is also reduced with immediate effect. No later than two weeks from now, I will stop milking.

16/1/26

You milk them even in winter. The goats have been milked twice a day since May 2024 (i.e., for 20 months). But lately it's hardly been worth milking in the evening. We didn't get more than a quarter liter. In the morning we get about half a liter.

Today I skipped the evening milking for the first time and now only milk in the morning. Gradually, milk production in the udder will decrease. If all goes well, I can stop milking altogether in early February. We hope that Anna and Bulette, our two milking goats, are pregnant, so they'll need at least two months to recover a bit and regain their strength.

The goats are Danish landrace goats and so robust that they can be kept outside year-round. However, they don't like rain and strong winds very much, so they hide in the small shelters, which we try to place according to the wind direction. The goats also need hay and straw to keep warm. On very cold days, they shiver all over their bodies when we bring the feed.

The Ertebølle sheep are even more insensitive than the goats. In freezing weather they have lain scattered across the pasture overnight, thawing the frozen grass mat a bit. Four years ago we had a severe storm and drove the sheep into the open barn. They didn't like that, though, and they quickly wanted to return to their cold pasture.

7/1/26

Your animals have been moved to the next pasture.
Despite the thin snow cover, they immediately began grazing.
Some even prefer the grass to the hay ration they received at the same time.

There isn't much left of the old piece.
If you hadn't fed them hay and our daily ration, it certainly wouldn't have been enough.
The sheep and goats didn't seem particularly stressed until the move.
Without extra feed, you would have had to move them after one to two days.