Nirvana! Tell us about your farm, please?

monster • Jun 22, 2010 10:24 am
We have questions!

You breed dogs and beef cattle and grow mint? What else? Any other crops? How many breeds of dogs? Do you have a pig?
Why can you only grow mint for four years -is it crop rotation? Do you then use another field? Or do you only have one field? Are you near South Bend? Did you recover your Paddy o'Furniture? How long is a piece of straw in a haystack?

Inquiring minds are Inquiring.
TheMercenary • Jun 22, 2010 10:26 am
I would love to see a pic of your mint fields. I can't say as I have ever seen one.
glatt • Jun 22, 2010 10:30 am
More farm posts would be awesome. I loved those pictures a while back when you got a shipment of some silage or something for the cattle and had huge piles of it you had unloaded from the trucks.
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 10:51 am
You breed dogs and beef cattle and grow mint? What else?
Any other crops?
[COLOR="Red"]Corn,soybeans[/COLOR]
How many breeds of dogs? [COLOR="Red"]4 Australian Cattle Dogs Chihuahuas, Belgian Sheepdogs and a JSU[/COLOR]
Do you have a pig? [COLOR="Red"]No[/COLOR]
Why can you only grow mint for four years -is it crop rotation?[COLOR="Red"]Yes[/COLOR]

Do you then use another field? Or do you only have one field? [COLOR="Red"]1 field[/COLOR]
Are you near South Bend? [COLOR="Red"]Yes 30 miles[/COLOR]

Did you recover your Paddy o'Furniture? [COLOR="Red"]Yes cheap resin it flys but stays together :)[/COLOR]
How long is a piece of straw in a haystack?[COLOR="Red"] We only have small bales[/COLOR]
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 10:52 am
I will try to take photos later. . .
Undertoad • Jun 22, 2010 11:18 am
Would love to see some pics of the heelers! That must be the ideal dog for a farm. I would be too lazy to have one!
monster • Jun 22, 2010 11:25 am
Thanks, Nirvana. Do the dogs have their own building(s)? How many cattle to you have?

Beest paintballs not far from there once or twice a year -"Sherwood Forest"
Gravdigr • Jun 22, 2010 11:42 am
Old Nirvana had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O
And on this farm he had some mint,
E-I-E-I-O
With a "SNIFF--That smells good" here
And a SNIFF--That smells good" there
Here a SNIFF, There a SNIFF,
Everywhere a SNIFF SNIFF,
Old Nirvana had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O.

[COLOR="Silver"]your turn[/COLOR]
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 11:45 am
The blue female her name is Stompy and the red male is Suede. Suede is the working dog here on the farm. Stompy has ADD so she mostly runs around and pants. :)
jinx • Jun 22, 2010 11:48 am
And on this farm he had some mint,


Except that Nirvana is most definitely not a he.
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 11:50 am
Suede lives outside or in the barn 24/7 all the other dogs live in my house. I do not breed the ACDs. My Chihuahuas are almost all geriatric, 10 years and up. I have 2 intact females. One I am showing she is 2 yrs old and her mother who is 5. I may have one litter every 2 years or so.

We have 30 cows and 3 bulls plus their calves.
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 11:56 am
This is Rufus my JSU he is 13. He lives outside/barn too :)
TheMercenary • Jun 22, 2010 11:57 am
Undertoad;665410 wrote:
Would love to see some pics of the heelers! That must be the ideal dog for a farm. I would be too lazy to have one!


They are a lot of WORK. Let me tell you. And we don't live on a farm. They need constant attention and exercise. But we love our Boomer.
monster • Jun 22, 2010 12:11 pm
Thanks, Nirvana.

Any one else here farm?
monster • Jun 22, 2010 12:12 pm
Ooh I have another question.... What will you grow when your 4 years of mint are up? Or will you just leave it fallow for a while?
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 12:16 pm
The mint field
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 12:19 pm
I would say corn will be planted after the 4 years.
TheMercenary • Jun 22, 2010 12:24 pm
Is that the overhead center pivot irrigationwatering system in pic 1?
glatt • Jun 22, 2010 12:26 pm
there seems to be a lot of space between the mint plants. Do you have to do anything about weeds?
jinx • Jun 22, 2010 12:27 pm
monster;665436 wrote:
Thanks, Nirvana.

Any one else here farm?


I inherited a share of a dairy farm.
I don't like the cow milk though, trying to grow gas instead...
monster • Jun 22, 2010 12:28 pm
do you have tenants/employees to run it, jinx?
jinx • Jun 22, 2010 12:31 pm
Not much to run atm. It's me, my sis, my dad (who don't live there) and my uncle (who does). Uncle has some organic grass fed beefs hanging out until the gas crop is ready to harvest.

edit: We recently had the zoning changed to tree farm - lowered the taxes by quite a bit...
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 12:56 pm
That is a pivot irrigation system.
This is the first year so this is called row mint and I took that photo on the edge of the field. By harvest there will be no more space.
The field is sprayed for weeds we had some volunteer corn in it earlier.
jinx • Jun 22, 2010 1:20 pm
Couple pics of my place...

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
glatt • Jun 22, 2010 2:09 pm
Nice place, jinx. That's 6 miles east of my ancestral home (where my aunt lives now) and 4 miles east of the lake where I am a trustee of the family cottage. Real familiar looking scenery.
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 2:20 pm
What is a gas crop?
lumberjim • Jun 22, 2010 2:23 pm
glatt, this lake?
Image
jinx • Jun 22, 2010 2:41 pm
Nirvana;665492 wrote:
What is a gas crop?

Natural gas.
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 2:46 pm
That is interesting, I wonder how its decided there is NG?
I wish we were the Clampetts :)
lumberjim • Jun 22, 2010 2:58 pm
marcellus shale
glatt • Jun 22, 2010 3:21 pm
lumberjim;665494 wrote:
glatt, this lake?


Not that lake. No Dunder Mifflin cruises on our lake. This lake.
lumberjim • Jun 22, 2010 3:34 pm
I want to get up at dawn, smoke an entire joint, and paddle my kayak around that lake.
Undertoad • Jun 22, 2010 4:41 pm
Nirv, I just thought, do you ever have all the dogs together? Outside? Do they pack up and start to work as a team?
Nirvana • Jun 22, 2010 5:58 pm
They can and do sometimes.
Pico and ME • Jun 22, 2010 7:05 pm
Nirvana;665422 wrote:
The blue female her name is Stompy and the red male is Suede. Suede is the working dog here on the farm. Stompy has ADD so she mostly runs around and pants. :)


The picture of Suede is great - He looks so serious!

I was once by the North Judson/Winamac area (an ex had a deer blind out there) - I remember smelling the mint fields!
Elspode • Jun 22, 2010 7:58 pm
There's a documentary coming out that talks about the fracing process necessary to get that gas out of the ground in your neck of the woods, Jinx. Apparently it isn't always environmentally friendly, nor a happy thing for those who lease their land to the companies that produce the gas. YMMV, but the movie apparently starts with people lighting their tap water...

[youtube]dZe1AeH0Qz8[/youtube]
jinx • Jun 22, 2010 9:05 pm
Apparently it isn't always environmentally friendly


As compared to what?

Did you watch it? I don't have HBO.

review
Griff • Jun 23, 2010 6:44 am
I take the environmental consequences of this seriously, since we are in the same region. I had the misfortune of hearing an interview with the director on Fresh Air. It was one of the few times I've heard Terry Gross give someone a complete pass. I am however concerned since the gulf incident that deep drillers know less about what they are doing than they pretend to publicly.
squirell nutkin • Jun 23, 2010 8:40 am
TheMercenary;665390 wrote:
I would love to see a pic of your mint fields. I can't say as I have ever seen one.


She posted a pic of her mint fields a while back in dwellar nsfw
Shawnee123 • Jun 23, 2010 8:46 am
I thought those were her strawberry fields. ;)
squirell nutkin • Jun 23, 2010 8:48 am
Griff;665668 wrote:
I take the environmental consequences of this seriously, since we are in the same region. I had the misfortune of hearing an interview with the director on Fresh Air. It was one of the few times I've heard Terry Gross give someone a complete pass. I am however concerned since the gulf incident that deep drillers know less about what they are doing than they pretend to publicly.


I just heard a report about that film on Vermont Public Radio. The fraccing process didn't sound all that great, but what I found most interesting was that when you consider the entire lifecycle of natural gas vs coal they produce the same amount of pollution.

Curious what do you mean Terri Gross gave him a "pass"?
HungLikeJesus • Jun 23, 2010 9:08 am
It was the only way he could get to the bathroom.
squirell nutkin • Jun 23, 2010 9:19 am
2 minutes for unnecessary roughness
Gravdigr • Jun 26, 2010 4:47 pm
jinx;665424 wrote:
Except that Nirvana is most definitely not a he.


Old Nirvana had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O
And on this farm [COLOR="Red"]s[/COLOR]he had some mint,
E-I-E-I-O
With a "SNIFF--That smells good" here
And a SNIFF--That smells good" there
Here a SNIFF, There a SNIFF,
Everywhere a SNIFF SNIFF,
Old Nirvana had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O
Griff • Jun 26, 2010 5:52 pm
squirell nutkin;665698 wrote:

Curious what do you mean Terri Gross gave him a "pass"?


I live not too far from Dimock, PA where they made a lot about lighting tap water on fire. Problem being they've long been able to light the tap water in Dimock and apparently there is a local pond which the locals light once a year. The drillers may or may not have made things worse, but the problem was pre-existing. Terri treated the interview like an entertainment piece, when she had someone with a clear political agenda on the show.
jinx • Jun 26, 2010 7:52 pm
That's fucked up. There's no way Mr. "documentary" didn't know that.
squirell nutkin • Jun 26, 2010 8:14 pm
I lived in place in the catskills and the well water was filled with methane. I used to light the faucets. The water didn't burn, but there was a burst of, I assume, precipitated gas that preceded the water. Fun and really dangerous.
Gravdigr • Jun 27, 2010 1:32 pm
I'm sorry, but, if my tap water "lights"...Imma GTFO!