Wild Irish Rose

We'd have to hire someone to till, because we don't have a plow of a tractor.  And as strapped as we are for cash, that just isn't going to happen.

I'm going to try the weed database just posted, and see if I can find some results.  I suppose I can try to rip out as much ground cherry and milkweed as I can when it comes up next year.  Might be able to at least reduce it a bit that way.

I'm very sure of my identification on everything I named, and there's a decent amount of all of it.  But the majority of the field is taken up by a plant I can't seem to find an ID for.  For the safety of my stock, I have to assume it's toxic until proven otherwise.  It's about 3 feet tall, has long, narrow leaves up the stem.  The leaves are about 3 feet long and alternate, two across from each other, then two more going the other way - I forget what that arrangement is called (this is my third night shift in a row, so please cut me a little slack in the memory department).  When we went it appeared to have the remains of a cluster of little white flowers at the very top of the stem.  I can't find a picture anywhere that looks like it.

We finally settled on our property, which has a big lovely 4 acre field in the middle of it, which we'll mostly be fencing in for pasture.  The plan is to have a couple of mules, some chickens, and probably two Dexter cows.  I've been Googling all night to figure out what kind of plants we already have in there, and I'm not pleased with the results.  I knew about the milkweed - the pods were popping open all over the field when we were up there last week.  But we also have ground cherries, some kind of plant with burrs called "spanish needles", and something else that I haven't found yet but that I can only assume is toxic based on my luck so far.  What the heck can I do about it all?

I thought of just turning some goats loose once we have the perimeter fence up, but that stuff will even be toxic to them, won't it?  We don't have a mower, so we can't keep mowing it down and trying to re-seed with something better in the hope that it'll take over.  So what's left - a controlled burn maybe?  The trouble with that is that the property is very far from us, and we won't be visiting again until spring, when we'll be starting to put up the foundation for our house.  I don't know when we could possibly do that, or how.  I suppose I could offer it to the fire department, but I'm not sure they're want to do it, especially because it's not terribly accessible.

Any ideas?

The dehydrator instructions are here: http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/hooker41.html


If I'm burning wood that's good for smoking (hickory or apple, for example) it'll still provide good heat for the dehydrator.  And if I make the barrel stove pretty tight, it should smoke into the smoker side and not into the dehydrator side.

Food preservation is going to be a top issue at our new farm, because we aren't going to have any electricity at all.  I found instructions for building a wood fired dehydrator, using a barrel stove in the bottom to create heat for drying.  In the instructions, it tells you to put the pipe out the back.  I'm wondering if it would also work to build the structure with a double chamber, with one being a dehydrator and the other a smoker.  All I'd have to do is send the pipe over into the smoker half, right?  I could probably even use both sides at once, getting double duty out of the same load of wood.  Will this work, or will it overheat or something?

Kinda what I thought.  I can't imagine they'd go farm from mom.  Seems like that might be my best option, then.  A good blend of sturdy and inexpensive.

NYC is six hours away, so it's not likely we'll do much marketing there.  Hopefully Syracuse will have a ready market for "organic" meats and vegies.

Any opinions on this fence? 

http://www.tractorsupply.com/fencing/welded-wire-fencing/welded-wire-48-in-x-50-ft--3626520

It's a bit less expensive than what I had previously been looking at.  The mesh seems close enough to keep chickens in, and to keep horses from catching a hoof.  I could put a board across the top too, at least on the outside perimeter, to raise the height by a few inches and reinforce it just a little.

Will chicks stay inside the fence with their mothers, or will they slip through and end up scattered all over?

Because this is not a big area for permaculture and the like.  The locals obviously prefer the traditional fescue for pasture, and I'm not interested in keeping my stock on that.  The Amish are good farmers, but they're not exactly into making big changes to their pasture management system.  Or, for that matter, into animal welfare.

The little bit of pasture we have now, which will eventually be converted to a hay field (I don't want the stock on that side because our stream runs right through it) is covered with this tall grassy stuff that puts up yellow flowers stalks.  I have no idea what it is, or if it's poisonous, so until I can identify it I'm not keen on seeding it into the paddocks.

This is upstate NY, near Syracuse.  The land is so rich that it takes work to keep it from getting overgrown.  When we were up there viewing parcels to decide what to but, I couldn't believe how huge all the plants were, and how many of them were edible.  I call it "the land of giant plants" because everything up there seems to grow to twice the size it gets to here, and looks twice as healthy.