Welcome back to another episode of the Homegrown Liberty Podcast, this is episode 32, part 2 of our conversation with Carolyn Jill Sloane on tree fodder and tree hay.

Before I introduce to you what we have for the show today, I wanted to take a moment to remind you that I’m headed all over the place soon and you will have opportunities to get me out to your property for consulting at sometimes almost 50% off my normal rates just in saving on most of the cost of mileage! I’m going to Baton Rouge Louisiana on the 21st of this month, then a week or so later I’ll be headed up through Arkansas to St Louis Missouri for Garlic Fest on the 4th of September, then possibly headed through Tennessee around the Nashville area on my roundabout way home to Louisiana. So if you’re interested, email me and I’ll see if we can get you on the consulting tour! I often get called to someone’s property to help them fix a problem that could have been avoided with good foundational thinking from the start. So don’t let yourself be that person and have to call me after the fact. It’s so much easier and cheaper to avoid a problem than fix one!

Alright, in this episode we get into a lot more of the details of how and what to do with tree fodder. We talk about some unique opportunities and resources that present themselves when you start using fodder for animal food. I always like to try to make the work I do, reduce my workload in other ways and meet as many needs with as little effort as possible. One of my big priorities is trying to find as many ways to stack opportunities together, design into my daily life, systems that work together to meet our needs. Think about having your animals get to express their innate natural desires to scratch, root, dig, browse, and set up your animal and human interaction areas so they get to do what makes them happy and healthy, and at the same time they’re doing a job, or part of a job that would have required you do all the work. If they reduce your job by ten percent, or even fifty percent, that’s free labor! So think about that when we get into this episode. Think about designing into your homestead or small farm, a way to do multiple things with one moment of effort. We specifically talk about providing animals with food, while providing ourselves with fuel wood, and reducing our need to split firewood. If you don’t find lots of those little opportunities, you will have to work harder, or find outside employment to do so. And I want you to be able to meet as many of your own needs with your property as is humanly possible. So without further ado, let’s get into the interview!

[INTERVIEW WITH NICK & CAROLYN]

So there we go! I think that was a great introduction to the idea of using tree crops for animal food. I like to open up different ways of thinking about using resources on your land. So don’t forget to look up when you’re thinking about where to find your animal’s food. I’ll tell ya what, we’re starting thousands of trees from seed to get the stock we need to grow our own animal feed. This is a long term goal of mine and not a quick fix for sure. We’re working on transforming the land here from pine regrowth into productive glades of pasture separated by belts of trees that will be producing fodder for animals as well as fruit and nuts for both us and the livestock. In several years I’d like to see multi-species grazing going on with a leader follower system to help disrupt pest cycles. We want to be utilizing sheep, a couple dairy cattle, a couple pigs, chickens, and ducks. All pushing through the pasture and tree areas to harvest the plant matter and deposit in the form of manure up at the barn built on a high point of the property. That’s the long term goal. But for the short term, we are working on developing the area right around the house with a new kitchen garden and berry patch. We’re moving the chickens close to the house for now and hopefully that w...