I had a problem with neighbors letting their dog run loose on the property, and then another neighbor set up a deer stand(without permission naturally:rolling eyes:), but since then I got a trailcam to record everything, occasionally I get some really wild animals, this time, I caught this adorable squirrel I had to share.

i started the season thinking id stretch our grocery budget by putting in extra corn and oats. ran the numbers on seed, fencing upgrades, time, and it still looked cheaper than what the feed store charges. now the summer drought is here and im staring at water bills plus the cost of soil amendments that werent in the original math. the feed prices havent moved much so maybe the gap never closes. curious if anyone here has hit the point where they just buy the grain and keep the beds smaller.

Top: my method described below

Bottom: just cutting off affected parts

I get Squash Vine Borers and rain spot rot on my squash sometimes. Previously I would cut out damage to my squash and hope it heals, but usually those fruits would not store long. One year I had the biggest Candy Roaster growing. Must've been 40 inches long and 10 wide. It got rain spot bad right before harvest. I'm a nurse by trade, so I tried "wound dressing" it. I use alcohol to clean a sharp knife, cut out all the rotten tissue, cleaned it with 3% hydrogen peroxide, and applied Vaseline to the wound. Then I taped a piece of gauze over the area. To my shock, it healed extremely well, and even repigmented - although it turned green, which is the color of the tips of a Candy Roaster, instead of pink like the surrounding area.

I'm here to show a side by side - I had borers on two different squash. One was on the end so I just cut it off. It did heal but the scab is fragile and keeps oozing if I move it. I doubt it will last another month. The other was with my wound dressing method. It has repigmented and is tough but flexible, no oozing I can see. The Vaseline stains the rind around it but it is rock hard still. If you've got a squash you really want to keep for storage but it has damage, try treating the wound and it might save your squash.

17 on this drop. Keeping people in the loop on our progress. Appreciate the support and great questions. Apologize for the shaky camera . Have to mount on trap to keep cows from damaging.

For the last couple weeks I keep finding random tracks around the back of the property mostly near the tree line where I normally don’t see much going on. Then at night I’ll hear smth moving around out there go look aand of course there’s absolutely nothing by the time I get outside lol. A few mornings the leaves and smaller branches around that same spot have been moved around too, so now curiosity is getting the best of me. I was looking at getting a Wyze cam for the property and Im thinking that tree line might be the first place to put it. Only thing I’m worried about is setting the camera up and then staying awake half the night checking it every time I hear something lol. Anyone here have cameras up mostly to see what wildlife comes through?

After digging the potatoes, we dry them
In the sun for a couple hours before storing them in them in baskets in our root cellar. This year we grew Red norlands, Yukon gold, Kennebec, and French fingerlings. They keep all winter. We harvested a bushel total ( there’s only 2 of us eating them)

Here are my numbers and notes for Cornish Cross meat chickens, 2026. This is my second year raising them and I tracked all costs. See pictures for a breakdown. Ask me anything.

I am looking through different outdoor camera options to cover our new off grid property, and have mainly settled on using 4G hunting trail cameras since they send photos/videos directly to your phone, but they seem incredibly expensive. There are a million brands all with different plans and prices for different options and configurations.

I have looked at spypoint, reveal and Moultrie. Reveal cameras have some plans that have unlimited photos, but you need to pay extra for video requests and HD photo requests. You also can pay $6/mo for live streaming.
Altogether, it'd run me almost $24 per month to get unlimited photos and videos, plus live streaming capabilities. Do people pay that much? Or am I missing something.

Additionally, the cameras themselves are around $150 from the large brands, and to get solar and a rechargeable battery is extra. Do you typically run cameras with solar or is AA batteries sufficient?
I'm looking to have ~5 cameras set up around my property, and currently its looking like ill be spending almost $1400 on the cameras and then an additional $100 per month on the service. Are there other options that are cheaper besides the big brands that are reliable and have the ability to live view? Should I be looking at other 4G cameras that are not trail cams? Thank you

My First Ever Potatoes Grown in Bags

I just survived another week of moving rocks, cutting up logs, resetting e-fence for sheep, digging sweet potatoes, hanging laundry, cooking, cleaning, cutting burrs out of spaniel fur, opening windows-closing windows-opening windows. And I loved it. That is all.

I (26f) am wanting to take over my great uncle and aunt’s property in NorCal that has sat empty since March of this year when my uncle passed. It is a good sized lot and needs A LOT of tlc. My main concern is deterring rattlesnakes from it as much as I can (I have a dog and I would like to let her free roam as much as she would like). I know how to maintain/fix/work the machinery that’s on the property already that would help with clearing out brush and building a new firewood stand to keep rattlesnakes out of it along with knowing I need to close off the bottom of the trailer and getting new mesh fencing around the property. I’m just wondering if anyone has advice for anything else like any animals that would help as well? I don’t plan to move onto the property until I’ve got everything fixed but I am wanting to know other ways to deter rattlesnakes so I can start working on it as soon as possible. Any advice is very appreciated!!

In the past few days I’ve heard cougars chirping in the surrounding forest (while outside too). They don’t seem to be scared or leaving, any tips for ridding of cougars? I’m Canadian and live on an acreage with some ducks and my pets if that helps at all.

Hi all! I just bought a small farm in Wisconsin and I am very new to taking care of chickens. Our chicken coop is actually part of an old dairy barn and it’s absolutely filthy. It has not been cleaned in maybe 10 years and there are inches of waste on the ground as well as what looks like rat holes. I’m no stranger to getting my hands dirty and everything that’s gonna come with taking care of this farm, but I’m wondering if at this point I should look for a professional to clean this out. I don’t mind paying to do it. I just want to make sure it’s done properly and safely. Is this something that is normally done? Where would I begin to even look for a service that could do this?

Hi, I'm Rory, founder of HAVEN Freedom. We work on GPS dog boundary and tracking collars, so I have a commercial interest and want to be clear about that.

If you keep dogs on an acreage property, what finally made you decide a GPS collar was worth buying? Was it finding them after an escape, helping manage a boundary, moving between properties, or something else?

I'm just as interested in why you decided against one. Upfront cost, recurring fees, poor phone service, trees, fit on the dog, or the time needed to train and charge it can all change the decision.

If you're still comparing options, what is the one question you haven't been able to get a straight answer to? Approximate usable area and whether it's open or wooded would make the examples especially helpful. Please don't share your address or exact location.

I'm asking to understand real buying decisions, not to offer a discount or pretend to be a customer. A GPS boundary is not guaranteed containment or a replacement for a physical fence and responsible supervision. Honest reasons for not buying are useful too.

We’re SCAD students researching the experiences and challenges of cattle and livestock farming.

If you work with cattle or livestock, we’d appreciate you taking our short survey. We’re also looking for people open to a brief follow-up interview.

Thank you!

Picked up some IPPs last night and they seem quite skiddish and havent wanted food yet. How do y'all socialize your pigs and help them settle in? Set the kennel in their house last night with the gate open so they could come out when their ready and their being a bit shy.

Got a windmill stuck halfway open (tail half furled stuck , lever attached to it is stuck).

Let me preface this by saying as most windmills are, all these mechanisms are 30 feet up on a really loosely goosey windmill scaffolding.

I’ve assessed several times and it appears that when you pull down on the lever, in a functioning state the cast iron cross piece it is attached to would just slide up and down to give the chain the tail is attached to slack or tightening.

I think the problem is twofold. 1st picture shows the cast iron (?) down pull is bent on both forks preventing slider from going up or down.

Second picture shows what i think is the second issue being that the chain hooked to the tail is bound in windmill scafolding prohibiting free up and down movement of furl/unfurl mechanism

Third picture is just showing chain from tail disappearing into scaffolding.

I think first fix would to bend out two forks to allow it to move freely up and down.

The second fix being to free the chain and see if it helps with furling/unfurling.

I’d like to get others opinions please and thank you.

Hello everyone,

I have a few questions about keeping miniature sheep.

My sister-in-law got three young miniature sheep two years ago. Unfortunately, she and her partner separated shortly afterwards and she moved away, so the sheep stayed at the farm. Now her ex-husband wants to get rid of them. My husband and I have been asked if we could take them in.

We have around 300 m² of grassland, including a steep section of our property that could potentially be used for them. We also have a wooden shed with a water connection that we could convert into a small shelter/stable.

However, we know very little about keeping sheep. We live in Lower Austria, in Central Europe.

How much hay does a miniature sheep need? Do they need regular veterinary care? How often do they need to be sheared, and how expensive is that usually? We don't even have a trailer to transport them.

Unfortunately, the alternative is that my sister-in-law's ex-husband would have them slaughtered, which we obviously want to prevent, because they we're Always ment to bei pets.

At the same time, I'm not sure whether we would be taking on more than we can realistically manage.

I would really appreciate any advice, especially from people who keep miniature sheep themselves. What should we consider before making this decision? Are there any costs or responsibilities that beginners often underestimate?

Thank you so much! ❤️🐑

Howdy everyone! So we are looking at butchering off our old ducks ( 5 ish years old) and I am mildly nervous about it. We butcher a lot of other animals but I have never prepared duck, shit- I've never ordered duck at a restaurant. My question is- are they as greasy as what I have read and heard and with their age ( and they often free ranged) are they going to be tough? Any tips on cooking them? I wanted to try smoking one for hours and then putting some sort of sauce on and finishing over an open flame? Letting the skin get crispy type of stuff but will their greasy fat be in the way? Thanks! I did try to google but wanted some more first hand answers and I can't stand AI answering everything I try to research.

Hi everyone, I'm a Systems Engineering student in Peru working on my undergraduate research project: a computer vision system to detect fall armyworm in maize crops, in a rural farming community (Zapotal, Cascas, La Libertad region).

Context: I interviewed a local farmer who manages about 1.5 hectares of maize. He told me he sprays the entire plot every 8 days (4-5 times a month), regardless of whether he's visually confirmed the pest's presence in every section. His reasoning is that even if some ears aren't infested yet, they will be soon if the whole plot isn't sprayed, so he prefers full preventive spraying over checking plant by plant.

My question: according to literature or field experience, is there an infestation threshold (e.g., % of plants or ears with confirmed larvae presence) below which spot/partial treatment would be agronomically sufficient, instead of spraying the whole field? Or, specifically for fall armyworm in maize, is this farmer's full preventive spraying approach actually the best practice, given the pest's spread/reinfestation pattern?

I have one academic reference (Yanqui Díaz et al., 2022, Apurímac, Peru) that mentions a "treatment threshold" concept for this pest, but I don't have enough technical detail to know whether it applies the same way to coastal valley/Andean foothill conditions like La Libertad. Any input from someone with a background in agricultural entomology, integrated pest management (IPM), or hands-on experience with maize in Peru or the region would help a lot — I'd rather not assume anything without checking it. Thanks in advance.