Fox Point Farm

 It's taken way longer than I expected to come up with a pasture management system that seems to (knock on wood) be working. Given that we have 27.5 acres, most people think we have more than enough pasture, but with ~11 acres in hay, we've been hanging out around 3 acres of pasture. The two "best" pastures were planted along with the hay field in fall of 2017, and then fenced on the hottest Memorial Day weekend we could have had. With the two main pastures up and running, we thought we were good to limp along the original pasture, and eventually redid the fencing there, adding a real gate to the very wide opening that had originally had a stretchy fence gate.  Rotation wise, all of our pastures are gated directly onto the paddock, where there is shelter, the winter hay feeder and water. I wanted the horses to always have the auto waterer available, as well as shelter from bad weather, sun and bugs. The pastures otherwise don't have a lot of natural shelter; any t...

 Hello, reader! Fox Point Farm is 27 acres in west-central Minnesota. The property was originally developed in 2004, when the house was built; the barn was added a few years later. The farm came to my husband and I in 2017. While advertised as "turn key" we moved in and discovered it, like many farms... needed some work. Here's the run down on what we've been up to for the past few years: Redoing the existing barn interior to create 5 good sized stalls, with mats, and a functional storage area Adding on to the three sided hay storage building to double it's capacity The pasture and hay field project: Remove 100% of the previous fencing Straighten existing sacrifice paddock fencing and re-do with safer materials Till, roll and re-plant  all but 1 of the pre-existing pastures, along with the field that was planted in soy beans when we purchased the farm to put it into hay Fence 2 pastures out of the new growth; re-do the fencing on the only remaining original pastur...