Our hayrides are much more than just a free wagon ride through pretty countryside – though they are certainly that. You also get to hear about the inter-connected lives of the many plants, animals, and people of our farm. We usually start with a little tour of the barnyard behind the farm store. In summertime, most of our animals are living outside on verdant, green pasture. But many animals are still too young to go out – and they live in the barns until they’re big enough. These days, our newest generation of egg-laying chickens live in the long chicken-shed behind the farm store.
If you’re driving down Sligo Road past the farm store, you can often see calves on the river side of the road enjoying some grass and the company of their peers. Calves which are under a couple of weeks old live in the barn attached to the big garage next to the farm store. 
If you’re standing by the young calves in the barn, we sometimes call the barn across from you the ‘maternity pens.’ We keep very pregnant sows here, as well as nursing mothers and young piglets.
After we leave the area where the young animals live, we head out to the fields. Since we are always moving the animals around on the pastures, you always see different things on hayrides. Lately, most of the chickens live on Sligo Road just past the turn-off to Pinch Hill Road. Two covered wagons are in the field, and each one gets moved each day to a completely new spot of pasture. You can see a little bit of the electric fence we use as an enclosure in this photo – it’s not very big. It’s mainly there to keep predators out. The chickens could fly away if they really wanted to. But they don’t want to. The geese at the bottom left of this picture are there to guard the chickens. Don’t mess with the geese!
In the picture below, it’s easy to see what a huge difference only a day makes in our system of intensive grazing. In the frame of this photo are the footprints of three different days. If we left the chickens in one place too long, they would destroy the land. If we didn’t have them at all, the soil would not be enriched by the calcium and nitrogen in the chicken manure. In a few weeks, the brown spots left in the path of the chicken trailers will become visibly much greener than the areas where the chickens were not.
The pigs also perform really important tasks. The field pictured below was inhabited by pigs just a few weeks ago. Fields which are bordered by forests are constantly being encroached upon by shrubs, shoots, and young trees. It takes a lot of constant effort to maintain the borders of a field – unless you have pigs! Pigs are naturally excellent diggers, and they thrive in marginal areas which have shade (pigs, after all, can get sunburns) acorns, and delicious roots. In no time at all, the pigs rehabilitated this field, and we were able to sow it with vegetables which we’ll harvest for the winter. 
You’re more than welcome to join us for more fun at our next free hayride. Details on our events calendar.
