Rose Black

I never accepted an intern into my (non-farm) business because I could never see a way to make it work for both parties involved.

However, my uncle who farms (not in the US) does take on apprentices, never more than one or two at a time and it works quite well for him on his large, highly diverse farm. When I say one or two at a time, I mean one or two apprentices total, not one or two in each year of the apprenticeship cycle. He says he figures that he breaks even on them and he just does not have enough time to train more than one or two at any given time.

It's a six year program and the apprentice signs a contract committing them to staying for the entire six years. It is not tourism and it isn't for anyone who hasn't reached the point where they are absolutely certain that they want to run a farm. Just like everyone else on the farm, apprentices work 40-60 hours a week, depending on the time of year and other conditions. They get a total of six weeks of holiday spread out in three 2 week segments annually. Most of the apprentices are in their early 20s when they start, although there have been some as old as their early 40s.

It takes two years working through the various areas of the farm for an apprentice to learn enough to become qualified to be the least skilled and least productive worker in a given area. For those first two years, the apprentice pays for their education, a fee approximately equal to the cost of tuition at a university; they receive room and board.

The third and fourth year, the apprentice has enough knowledge to be productive enough to offset the cost of teaching them. They no longer have to pay an apprenticeship fee; they continue to receive room and board.

In their fifth and sixth years, they have gained enough skills that they may be able to move up the ladder to be "X lad's lad's lad." They are paid commensurate with their skill and production level, which works out to be approximately equivalent of entry level wages (think burger flipper) plus room and board.

By the time they have finished their apprenticeship, they are experienced in working with pigs, sheep, cattle, poultry (chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys), can handle a livestock dog, work the horticultural and agricultural yearly cycles, know how to correctly and safely run most farm machinery, know how to perform basic maintenance and simple repairs on the equipment and have demonstrated that they know how to work hard.

By the time they have finished their apprenticeship, they are qualified to work on a farm and they are eagerly sought after as employees. My uncle helps them find their first position on another farm and keeps them as employees until they get that first real job. That's when they are worth slightly more than entry level pay, more the equivalent of an assistant shift manager. It takes another six years or more to gain enough skills and experience to run a farm on their own.

My uncle will not hire them straight out of their apprenticeship but he has hired many of them after they have worked on one or two other farms (on the same grounds as other applicants, they need to have good references, etc). At that point, of course, they are employees and treated as such.

Stefan Pagel wrote: I tried to find somebody to teach me the art of using and sharpening a scythe but I live in a VERY remote area where plenty old folk don't like incomers. Many many people do not like to share their knowledge and the few that do are not easily found by people like myself.

I have a general suggestion for you. Knowledge is valuable. Time is valuable. Respect is valuable. Demonstrate you know these things.

When you go looking for local knowledge, don't go empty handed. Take a generous portion of the local tipple with you, more than will be consumed in one session. Take home made desserts or other such treats; I have gotten more by asking with a plate of homemade triple chocolate brownies (a very rich, cake like confection) than I could possible list.

Don't be a leech. Don't only appear when you want something. Make sure you appear just to socialise or to help out with your target's projects at least 3 times as often as you show up wanting information or help. Always show up with local tipple and homemade desserts or other such treats in hand.

You may never be accepted as "one of us." But you can be accepted as being a good neighbour that everyone welcomes.

Stefan Pagel wrote:I watched several videos about how to use the scythe but I bought an old one second hand and I don't think I know well enough what to do with the blade. It was hard work getting it to cut the grass. Also our terrain isn't flat and I kept cutting into soil and old plant matter from years of leaving the place unattended.
I wouldn't mind using a reel/cylinder mower but the one I had wasn't coping with the lumps and bumps and my back wasn't happy neither. I also need the grass to be fairly long and the mower couldn't cope with that neither.

Piling up hay is not an option in our weather up here. We have large bales of hay going walkabouts in the wind, 40-60mph is a regular occurrence with the odd 80-120mph, so I need to store it inside which means having to stack it to save space.

But first it needs to be cut and I am not sure how to do that. I would buy a machine if it wasn't so costly....

My hay making days are 30+ years in the past. Haymaking machinery may well have improved since then.

But just in case they haven't... if you have bumpy ground the very last thing you want is haymaking machinery. Every little lump and bump will stop you in your tracks and you will have to turn off the machine, get down and get everything aligned properly again. After awhile, you'll start shortcutting on the "turn off the machine" part. And that raises the chances of having a horrible, gore filled accident quite a bit.

A good scythe is razor sharp and should be almost effortless to cut each swathe. The blade floats on the surface of the ground, so it doesn't cut in. My guess would be that you need to learn how to properly peen and whet the blade or learn the correct technique for using one.

Hazel Reagan wrote:We had a problem with mushroom harvesters when we first moved to our property because our land is bordered by blm & county land. we put up a hedge row of native blackberries, raspberries, & hazelnuts. Also, we put in a gate on the access with a sign; Guard Border Collie on Duty. I use a pack of them for guardian livestock dogs. They are extremely aggressive at the gate but, I don't know if they would bite. Once allowed inside, they are friendly to anyone so far, but the people are first intimidated enough to wait until I greet them to get out of their car. We have had no unwanted people on our property since.

If I had problems with repeated trespassing, I'd put up a similar sign.

Only mine would read: Attack Geese On Duty.

Let the trespassers find out why there are distilleries in Scotland who maintain flocks of geese on the land around them.

Bradley Laughlin wrote:
I just think that it's unfair for everyone else that you automatically assume everyone who you don't know has ill intentions. It's one thing to start assuming if they are close to your house, vehicles, or storage building. Maybe I'm a different situation then a "drunk hunter" because I travel very far from my home to fish in the locations that I do. I may go several counties out of my own. The fact is I don't always know who owns the land so asking permission is out of the question. To be honest, if I was told in person that I may not use their land; I just drove two hours out, I'm not packing up my things and going home, I'm going fishin'.

So, if the landowner saw you walking across their fields to get to what you think would be a nice fishing hole and asked you to leave... you would persist?

Around these parts, the standard operating protocol for dealing with people like that is to let the air out of all four tires and then call the sheriff's department.

I totally understand the bull issue however. I have a friend who actually escaped a bull encounter picking mushrooms. He was lucky. Where I live we don't have big ranch style pasture's, just smaller pastures that are normally enclosed in barb wire. I most certainly don't go around hoping fences. I don't see how someone getting trampled, torn up, and tossed like a beach ball to be your problem though?

Where I live, most farmers practise intensive livestock raising practises (feedlots, etc).

Yeah, if you're fast enough and run away from the cows, the bull will lose interest in chasing once you get a certain distance away. He'll go back to check on his cows while you continue running... if you know what's good for you. Cattle are not stupid and if you come back, you'll discover his defensive zone where you individually are concerned has grown.

If you end up batttered and tattered, it's not my problem. I was trying to point out that there can be hazards that are not readily apparent to a stranger on the land and if you choose to disrespect clearly posted land, ethically, any bad results should fall on you alone.

The reality, though, is that there are too many people who would then sue the owner of the bull. Feh.

Bradley Laughlin wrote:I'm new to this forum, and a frequent "trespasser"... Albeit I don't do anything like poaching, littering, or destroying property. I am a simple catch and release fisherman and sometimes the creeks and streams I fish run though private property or I need to pass though private property to get to state owned grounds. As long as someone is not doing something destructive I see no reason why some of the people on this forum feel the need to govern their land as if it was their own country, especially if you own quite a bit of land , say 10+ acres. I never had a problem with this... I've also never been noticed trespassing. It kind of disturbs me to find out that there are some people who think they have the right to kill someone else if they find them on your land. It's disgusting and inhumane way of thinking.

I think shooting someone for simple trespassing would be over the top.

I do hope you don't come trespassing on my road. My neighbour across the road has a 500+ acre cow pasture and he raises black Angus with natural management techniques. Including natural breeding rather than IV. That means that he has a herd of approximately 100 cows and for part of the year, there's a bull turned out with them. Since the cows rule the herd, the bull pays more attention to what is going on outside the herd.

His cattle thrive, their parasite loads are almost nil because they aren't too crowded and over the years, he's gotten to where they rarely have problems calving or have any other health problems.

That pasture is close to a square mile and has a year round creek flowing through it with a couple ponds. The land itself is lightly wooded with lots of grass. I do think it is the most beautiful piece of land in the state. That pasture is so large that you can't always see the herd of 100 cow/calf pairs on it.

I can just about guarantee you, though, that you are not faster than a pissed off black Angus bull or a large herd of pissed off black Angus cows (this time of year, with new calves on the ground, those girls are highly defensive).

And your fishing pole will not help you.

A friend of mine and I have both had 100% success by posting our property lines with signs that say "Hunting by Permission Only."

When someone comes to the door to ask permission, I tell them the truth: I have already given permission to a guy who has two teenagers to hunt my property. If they want to negotiate with the person who has permission to hunt my property, I take their name and number and tell them that if the person who has first rights wants to share, he will get back to them. And once they are gone, the slip of paper goes into the round file.

There's something about the "two teens" that really seems to give hunters the fear of Ghod... or someone. I think they can imagine all too vividly a 14 year old who is all excited clutching a shotgun.

It's funny because that's far from the truth. The guy who has permission to hunt my property, his kids (he's got a passel, he's not gonna run out of teenagers any time soon) are so polite, painstaking and generally good people to have around. They hunt responsibly and have never caused any problems at all.

But hey, if the idea of a wild eyed 14 year old keeps them off my property, all the better.

Obviously, my only problem with trespassers has been during hunting season.

John Polk wrote:Welcome to the forums Rose.

I have seen the method you describe used for running a fence, and while it may appear 'extra work', it will save you time and grief in the long run. By compressing the dirt, and having a run-off slope, you will keep water from pooling around the base. Keeping the grasses from growing at the base also eliminates the damage from years of weed-whacking around the base.

Fence posts set as you describe will last decades longer than 'easier' methods. Building a fence can be both time consuming, and expensive. If done properly, you will not need to go back and redo it later.

By eliminating standing water, insects, vegetation, etc at the base, you will have created a fence that will last nearly forever.

Thank you.

All my life experience indicates to me that as the years go by, I will only get older, lazier and more stove up. Putting in some extra effort now to save me from effort in 10 or 15 years is a good investment to me.

Plus, setting fence posts that way means you don't have to turn to toxic methods to preserve them. When I was setting fence posts 40 years ago, it was to contain horses, which are animals that are amazingly easy to poison. Best just not even to bring anything like that into their environment.

Horses can also be really destructive of fencing, although this is usually only a problem in pastures that don't allow enough personal space per horse. A fence post set properly can withstand any horse scratching on it.

My fence building years are nearly 40 years behind me. But I did learn how to set a fence post the "correct" way and the last time I drove by that farm (about three years ago) those fence posts were still standing. I learned from an old cowboy who learned it from his father.

The way I was taught was to make the post hole at least twice the diameter of the post itself. Pile the dirt up on a tarp as you dig. Then add about 25%-35% more dirt to the pile (high clay content good but not necessary). Dig the hole at least two inches deeper than you will need.

Put in two inches of gravel fill. Put in the fence post and brace it to the vertical (VERY IMPORTANT). Then shovel in 2-4 inches of dirt.

Check to make sure the post is vertical. After this point, straightening up the post will be darn near impossible.

Then comes the hard part. You take a tamper, which is a long metal rod with a metal plate welded on the end, maybe 2 x 4 inches, and tamp down the first layer of dirt. As the saying goes "tamp 'er til she rings." That means beat the dirt down until the tamper makes a sound like you are banging it on concrete. Be honest, don't settle for a dull thud, keep tamping until that tamper rings like a bell.

Then shovel in 2-4 inches of dirt and repeat.

Once the dirt is level with the ground, you should still have dirt left over because of the volume of the pole and the extra dirt you added to your pile. This is good! This is the dirt that will help your post stay strong for years.

Build a well tamped cone around the base of the pole. It is really, really important to tamp until it sounds like you're hitting concrete with the tamper. When you're done, your fence post will look like it was set into a little mound, 6-12 inches high (depending on the size of the original hole).

The real test comes in 1=2 years. If you tamped your fence posts in correctly, there won't be any vegetation growing in the tamped areas because they are tamped too tightly to allow in enough air and water to allow plant growth. Insects can't burrow through it and fungus can't grow in it. There won't be any water erosion marks because the dirt is tamped so tightly, the water just runs down the outside it.

If you really want to do things right, take scrap planks and make little caps to put on top of each fence post to protect the end grain from the rain. You just make a little right angle cover out of two pieces of 1x so that it forms a little A line roof on each fencepost. And if you've got kids to keep busy, have them slap on a coat of boiled linseed oil every few years to slow down the speed of absorption/release of moisture in the posts.

Warning! A properly set fence post is really difficult to remove, so be absolutely sure of where you want to set them in the first place.

A very common ploy in my area for long stretches of fence is to alternate heavier fenceposts with lightweight fenceposts. The lightweight fenceposts can even be T-posts. As the lightweight fenceposts get beat up, then you can replace them with heavier fenceposts, set correctly.