countryside
Building Planter Boxes for Strawberries
Add to Favorites By Sue Robishaw – It wasn’t that the old chicken wire covers we’d constructed five years ago didn’t work, they did. I had an idea for building …
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Building Elevated Planter Boxes for Easier Gardening
Add to Favorites By Anita B. Stone Building elevated planter boxes helps bring plants closer. They’re great for children, disabled gardeners, or the elderly. Gardening can be an incredibly rewarding …
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Build a Backup Off-Grid Water System
Add to Favorites By Robert Sulek – Whether natural or man-made, rips in the fabric of modern civilization can occur with devastating consequences. Disasters seem to be happening more often, …
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Lambing Problems Can Arise from Abnormal Birth Positions
Lambing is always an exciting time on the ranch, but it can also be a scary time for the first-time shepherd. What are the things we want to see; what are the signs that there could be a pending lambing problem?
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How to Tube Feed a Calf
Add to Favorites By Heather Smith Thomas – There are times you must get fluid into a newborn calf that needs colostrum or a sick calf that needs fluid and …
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Dairy Sheep – Consider Icelandic Sheep
What struck me right away when my first Icelandic sheep lambed were the similarities that these sheep had with dairy goats. I had a commercial goat dairy in years past and these ewe lamb mothers had udders that would be respectable for a good milking dairy goat.
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Cold Weather Tips for Raising Hogs for Meat
Cold weather requires some planning for any homesteader raising hogs for meat. In the area of proper nutrition, thought and extra effort must be given to available supplies of fresh ice-free water at all times for all classes of hogs—the piglet, the weanling, growing/finishing, gestating and the lactating sow.
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Improving Soil with Cattle and The Best Green Manure Crops
Holistic grazing and the best green manure crops naturally improve soil. Add legumes or rotational cattle grazing to revitalize land.
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Countryside Theme of the Week
Each week on Instagram, @iamcountryside features a different theme and encourages homesteaders to play along with the fun and informative homesteading-based themes. Follow along with #countrysidethemeoftheweek.
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Finnsheep are the Perfect Fiber Animals
Add to Favorites By Mary O’Malley, Honeysuckle Farm johnandmaryomalley@yahoo.com An ancient variety, Finnsheep are both meat- and wool-yielding animals. Finnish sheep characteristics have been bred for thousands of years. Stentorp—the farm …
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Why a PTO Slip Clutch Needs to Make Your Farm Tools List
Add to Favorites Anyone who owns a proper farm tractor will tell you two things: they’re indispensable and they’re expensive to fix. I recently pursued a quote for repairs on …
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Preventing Unwarranted Aggression in Livestock Guardian Dogs
Add to Favorites By Mary Jane Oelke For many years I kept registered French Alpine milk goats and along with this endeavor, I acquired a Great Pyrenees livestock guard dog. …
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Adventures in Orange Oil Ant Killer
Add to Favorites By Lisa Jansen Discovering my orange oil ant killer was a triumphant epiphany after a lengthy battle with ants. I’m an old farm girl. As a child, …
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How to Get Rid of a Skunk Smell on a Dog
How to get rid of a skunk smell on a dog is something many of us have unfortunately wondered. Whether it’s your livestock guardian dog or your family pet, we want to encourage their curiosity, but when our friendly canines stick their nose somewhere they shouldn’t, sometimes they come back smelling like a skunk.
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Protecting Raspberries from Birds
Don’t let years of hard work go to waste. Protecting raspberries from birds saves berries for your kitchen!
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