Geoff McPherson

I might be willing to try next year. All the leaves are off everything here now, so I wouldn't be able to ID the leafless stems very accurately and I don't want to spend a lot of time digging up plants that may or may not be sassafras. PM me late next summer and I can mark them before the leaves fall off and then we can work something out.

Where are you located? I'm in south-central Kentucky now and grew up in Arkansas (zones 6 and 7, respectively) and sassafras volunteer everywhere here. Basically if there is another tree that I don't mow/graze close enough to, a sassafras tree will emerge there. Evidently they really like nurse trees.

If you live anywhere in the southeastern US, you can probably find them pretty easily. They have several different leaf shapes, often on the same plant, so take your time with the identification. Sometimes they look a little like young wild mulberries here.

You're welcome to come to my place and I'll point some out. You're welcome to all that you are willing to dig up.

Regards,
Geoff

This is the mobile layer house I built this year after attempting several other models. Three sides are reused outdoor plywood painted and sealed on the outside to make it as weather-resistant as possible. The 4th side is old windows. The tops still have screens so they can be raised or lowered for more or less ventilation. The top of 2 sides is chicken wire for cross ventilation. Roof is old tin and the whole thing is built on a rebuilt wagon running gear that is no longer road worthy.

The chickens enter and exit via lifting one of the windows and placing the ladder against the opening. The lower side of the roof that you can't see in the picture has a gutter that runs water off the roof tin to an attached water tank so water hauling is minimal. On board water supply lasts 50 chickens about 2 weeks with no rain. There is also a feed bunk on that side that gravity feeds grain down when it's engaged through a simple PVC valve. Nest boxes line the interior wall and interior 2x4 cross beams serve as more lateral support and nighttime roosts.

This contraption follows 3 days behind our cattle and sheep. We have to encircle the mobile coop with electric fencing because we have serious coyote issues.

The wagon is easy to move. It can hook up to a truck, tractor, or lawn mower. Believe it or not, but I can even move it by hand as long as I don't need to go uphill. Flat ground or slight uphill/downhill works fine.

Regards,
Geoff

Hi,

I've had really good luck with the pawpaw. I'm in Kentucky and they are found in almost every hollow on our 150 acres. We get fruit from them almost every year (of course, as I write this, not this year due to the late hard below-zero spell in April that knocked the flowers/young fruit off).

I've planted seed from the wild trees closer in to the house for easier gathering, and they actually are very easy to sprout if you are patient. Collect them up from any fruit you eat. Rinse 'em, dry 'em, and then put them in peat moss or sphagnum moss in the fridge over the winter. In the spring, plant them directly where you want them to grow. It will sprout in mid-summer here. They also sprout easily and more quickly in pots - probably because the soil in the black pot warms up faster - but they are hard to transplant. If you nick that taproot or don't get it situated right, that seedling isn't going to do well.

I've also traded for some named cultivars from some nurseries. Nursery plants are expensive, but generally higher quality fruits.

One resource you may not know about is the Kentucky Dept of Forestry. They have a wide selection of seedling trees that are quite cheap, especially if you order in quantity. I've had good experience with their seedlings - especially the pawpaws. I think they are seedlings from the Kentucky State pawpaw improvement program.

Here's the link to the seedling order form:
http://forestry.ky.gov/statenurseriesandtreeseedlings/Documents/Seedling%20Order%20Form.pdf

They also have other trees of interest to permaculturists - locusts, nut trees, KY coffee trees, hazels, alder, tupelo/black gum, persimmon, mulberry, etc.

Pollination for the trees near the house has been spotty. I know they are supposed to be fly-pollinated, but the ones in the woods seem to have a high pollination rate without any help so there may be some woodland insect doing the job that isn't around the house area that is more cleared. For those trees, the pollination rate improved dramatically after I hung some small bits of meat in the trees when they had flowers on them. Not the best smell, but that week or three is long forgotten once the pawpaw harvest comes in.

Now if I can just find a way to store them all or get them to a market in presentable condition...

All the best,
Geoff

Hi,

We've had goats for years, and I think the first thing is to dispel the notion that you can build any fence that will keep a motivated goat in 100% of the time. You can keep bred females in with a single strand of electric wire sometimes, but animals that are ready to breed will wriggle under/climb over/bust through anything you can think of. My neighbor has a yearling buck who gets at the hay in a loft by getting a nice running start and scaling straight up a 12 foot wall.

All fencing has advantages and disadvantages. Natural fences look nice, can be edible, and can be cheaper. They are also more work to install and maintain. They often aren't truly barriers either, for the goats or for predators. Wire fences are more secure and last longer, but they also require more petro and chemical inputs. Horned animals can get stuck as well.

We use electric netting as others have noted above and have found it to be effective for trained animals. Nimble goats can simply jump over it or take the shock and walk through it, especially if there are members of the opposite gender within eyeshot or earshot.

Keeping the animals' nutritional and "entertainment" needs met where you want the animals to be is the key to keeping them where you want them. We find daily rotations to new areas work best.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Jan!

In response to your questions, my understanding is that llamas just plain don't like dogs. They will chase dogs away from their area and if goats, sheep, or chickens are in the llama's area then they will be under the umbrella of protection. The only caveat I've noticed is that one or two llamas will work as guards for other animals. If you get more than one or two, then the llamas go off into their own little herd and just worry about themselves.

We did NOT have the llama and the Great Pyrenees together. I think that would be very dangerous for the dog. Or the llama if the GP got tired of being bitten and kicked. Our llama has learned to tolerate our two house dogs as long as they keep an appropriate distance. If they get too close, all bets are off. I don't let our dogs into the pasture with the llama without keeping them very close to me.

When we got our llama, it had been working as a guard for goats and sheep. But my understanding is that they are like donkeys. They just don't like canines and don't really need to be trained in order to be effective as guardians. BUT, just like with LGDs, there are some llamas that are more effective at it than others.

Geoff

I have used both Great Pyrenees and llamas as guardians for our goats. Here's the experience we have had.

First, I should preface this by saying that we also have other predator protection procedures in place. We have woven wire perimeter fences and we rotate the goats inside of those perimeter fences with electric netting. The goats are inside the electric netting with the guardian animal (whether it has been a GP or a llama). So the perimeter fencing, electric fencing, and rotation of the flock probably all help with predator control in addition to the guardian animal being present.

We had the Pyrenees first. We had an 8-year-old female first who was later joined by a male puppy. The plan was for the female to teach the young male the ropes. They did very well. We did not lose any goats to predators while we had the dogs with them. However, a predator (probably a bear) did kill the older dog. I'm not sure if she did enough to deter the bear from the goats or whether the young male was able to chase the bear off later, but we did not lose goats in that attack.

The advantages we found to keeping the LGDs in with the goats were:
- peace of mind (you can hear them barking and know they are on patrol and alert)
- proven predator deterrents used for thousands of years
- personable, easy to handle, fun to be around
- they will clean up stillborn goat babies, plus all the afterbirth and what-not from healthy births, so that stuff won't attract predators
- our dogs were more permissive than our llamas about us working our goats, they were curious but not protective

The disadvantages we found with the Pyrenees were:
- they have to be fed separately (or make arrangements for them to eat) because they eat different food than the animals they are guarding
- vet bills for dogs can be expensive
- they do need training and that takes time
- there is a learning curve for them ("guarding mode" doesn't kick in fully until about 2 years old)
- sometimes the younger ones would play too rough with young goats
- GPs respond wonderfully to human attention, so the temptation is definitely there to make pets out of them. That's not good for guarding.


We got the llama after the GPs. Since having the llama, we still haven't lost any goats to predators. Llamas aren't as well known as guardian animals, and there isn't as much research available on their effectiveness, but I can tell you that I have physically seen the llama stand between the goat herd and a coyote until the coyote decided that the goats weren't worth the risk and ran off. I have also been present when a stray dog got into the pasture. The llama again stood between the goats and the strange dog, but the stray dog continued to advance. The llama kicked it twice in the head and the dog ran off. I later found that dog dead a few hundred yards away in the pasture. Apparently llamas can kick really hard.

The advantages of the llama:
- they eat the same thing as the animals they are guarding, so no special feed arrangements are needed
- they are quiet, no barking all night
- cheaper to keep than a dog
- they have fleece that you can use when you shear them

The disadvantages of the llama:
- no noise, so no deterring predators with it
- you do have to shear them once a year
- they get "used" to our farm dogs but I still don't trust them in the same pasture as our llama without me to intervene. There have been mock charges.
- the llama is less permissive than the dogs of us when we are working the goats. We have to put the llama in the barn to work the goats safely with one person.

I'm sure there are other advantages and disadvantages of dogs and llamas that I'm forgetting right now, but that's been our experience with them for the most part.