Touring the Farm

We would like to take you on a tour of Footsteps Farm on the top of Quoketaug Hill, and we hope you will enjoy seeing what bits and pieces we can share here.

First, let us tell you about the names of our pastures, which you have been reading about. Most of our pastures were named in the 18th century, and why they are called what they are we can only guess. On the original farm there were such names as the "Black Steer Lot", the "Umbrella Tree Lot", the "Bill Dewey Lot".

Right now we are roughly using the old names but are having to separate the larger pastures and find ourselves creating new names that are useful for us.

Here is a rough map of the farm (not really to scale):

Click here to see the farm in pictures and learn more about it—click on one of the leaves that are on the map to see the a picture and read about that part of the farm.

Most of the pictures show you how early we are in the game of clearing the pastures. Clearing Russian Olives, Cherry trees, wild roses, milk weed, poke weed, and brush will most likely continue for 2 more years. Once all of this is done, we will be thinking about irrigation. At the present time I haul water in garbage cans to the animals in whichever lot they are in. For the clearing process we use two Stihl chain saws (one for limbing and brush work, one for felling) and a Stihl FS200 brush cutter. Sometimes we get help from friends with whatever chain saws they have. I did purchase removable forks for my tractor bucket and they are a big help in moving brush piles to a main pile for burning. A year after the pile is formed we wait until the fields are snow covered and then touch them off, as this tends to be the safest way of burning the brush piles. I start the clearing by making a 6'-wide path all around the lot, then I fence it in and let the animals in there to start the clearing. This is all after I have dropped any cherry trees and let them sit for a week. Then I go in and start to pile things up.

We are looking forward to the time when our work load will diminish some and we can spend more time visiting our animals. We may even have some time that we can spend together as a family. Gee I almost forgot, once all the clearing is done, fence is up, pasture is lush, but we still have miles of stone walls to repoint….

Thanks for visiting Footsteps Farm, and we hope you will come to see us in person. And, do check back as we have a lot of work to do and will keep you up to date.