Birthing Season: Kiko and Kiko X Goats

New Kids on the Ranch: photo essay

With kidding season almost complete, here’s a photo essay by livestock assistant Erin Campbell-Craven of the new kids at the Kerr Ranch…stay tuned for updates!

Horticulture Happenings

The Horticulture Projects have shifted into full gear with this warm spring weather and the addition of two new, enthusiastic interns. Katie Kilpatrick has joined us from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, and Jacob Delahoussaye has come up from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

We have been busy building a compost pile for our Biointensive demonstration beds and planting sweet potato slips for our 2012 Heirloom Sweet Potato Trial.

Our Beginning Farmer market garden demonstration beds are looking wonderful. The tomatoes and peppers are in bloom and we’ve been harvesting delicious “Provider” green beans.

 

Our sorghum-sudangrass and buckwheat summer cover crop is shooting out of the ground, shading out weeds, and providing biomass that will be incorporated back into the soil as a green manure.

Stay tuned for weekly updates from the Horticulture Projects.

Luke Freeman, Horticulture Program Assistant

Homeschoolers Spend the Day at Kerr Center

Meeting the Large Black piglets.

Homeschoolers Tour

Kids and parents from an association of homeschoolers in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma visited the center on May 4. Kerr staff talked to the kids about the center’s goats, pigs, and chickens as well as planting seeds and organic growing. Mary Penick, Luke Freeman, Erin Campbell-Craven, Andy Makovy and Hannah Daniels from the Kerr Center spent the day with the children. (Photos by Ann Wells). Click on “Homeschoolers Tour” above for a short powerpoint slide show.

Xerces Society Training Held at Kerr Center

On Thursday, May 17, the Xerces Society (with support from SSARE) conducted a training for agriculture and conservation professionals (such as NRCS and Extension) and producers of insect-pollinated crops. Participants learned about the importance of pollinator conservation and how to identify and understand pollinators and pollinator habitat. The training took place at the Kerr Center. For more information on domesticated and wild pollinators visit the Xerces Society website.

.Kerr Center trustee Sue Gray, Blue Thumb’s Cheryl Cheadle and Kerr President Jim Horne look at the crab spider Jim collected on a coreopsis flower.

 

Crimson Clover

Crimson and clover, over and over…clovers add nitrogren to the soil and habitat for pollinators….at the Cannon Hort Project on the Kerr Ranch. To learn more about planting both winter and summer cover crops to enrich the soil, check out the center’s cover crops fact sheet, which includes list of cover crops, rates of planting and other tips….http://www.kerrcenter.com/publications/cover-crops-2012.pdf

 

Resilient Farmer Workshop: Materials & Resources

Materials from April 28′s Resilient Farmer workshop at the Kerr Center are now available from the Soil Building section of the Farming & Gardening Resources page.

Featured speaker Steve Diver spoke throughout the day about about compost, soil quality, and building healthy soil.

The Kerr Center website features details about the center’s certified organic horticulture project, as well as resources on organic agriculture and farming and gardening.

Oklahoma Beginning Farmer & Rancher Program: Livestock Track – 2nd Session Recap

The livestock track of the Oklahoma Beginning Farmer & Rancher Program met for its second session on Saturday, April 21, for a focus on birthing.

Kerr Center Educational Programs Director Ann Wells, DVM, led off the morning classroom portion with a review of interpreting soil test results, using the Kerr Ranch’s Good Cow pasture as an example.

David Sparks, DVM, Extension veterinarian for eastern Oklahoma, followed with an overview of herd health.

Kerr Center Livestock Program Assistant Erin Campbell-Craven wrapped up the day’s morning classroom period with a presentation on kidding.

Outdoors in the afternoon, students looked over the current forage stand in the Good Cow pasture and offered ideas on what the next management move should be.  Wells emphasized that transition periods, from cool-season to warm-season forages (or vice versa), are some of the trickiest to manage: how to get the most out of the existing growth without impeding the start of the next.

Livestock staff also reviewed the contents of the Kerr Ranch birthing kit.  Here, Ranch Herdsman Andy Makovy demonstrates an ear tagging tool.

Students also took a turn through pastures where goat and cattle herds are kidding and calving.  The mothers and mothers-to-be were friendly, but none cooperated by giving birth during the class session.

Still, there were plenty of already-born babies to be admired, along with all the useful information to absorb.

For complete materials from this and other sessions of the Oklahoma Beginning Farmer & Rancher Program, both horticulture and livestock tracks, visit http://kerrcenter.com/beginning-farmer/course-materials.html.