New Ground

Yes, we’re adding new ground to the farm!

This summer we were made aware that a neighbor just a mile back the road from us was selling her old family farm.  It’s a beautiful property with about 20-25 acres of open, rolling, grassy hillside…just begging to have cattle grazing it.  There is a small house, built fairly recently on the site of the old homeplace, and a nice pond.  Rader Creek, for which our road is named, finds it source at a spring on this land.  We jumped on the opportunity & made the purchase, as we are tight on pasture at our place, and are now in the process of getting it fenced & ready for cows.

So, here’s introducing Headwaters Farm!

This first photo is from the road, approaching the house.  An old barn used to sit on the flat area to the right, in front of the little shed.  We will eventually erect a new barn on that same site.  If you notice the reddish trees above the left end of the house, that is approximately where I was standing to take the next picture.

This picture is looking from the top of the hill out to the road.  The property extends out along the right side (from this view) of the road to the farthest tree that you see right at the edge of the road, then up the tree-line to the top of the hill on the right.  In the midst of those trees on that hillside, there are two other long narrow benches of grass.

This is the grassy strip along the road.  The benches sit uphill to the right.

This is looking out toward the benches.  The upper one goes back in to the right of the central tree-line, and the larger lower one goes off to the left.

This photo shows where the fenceline will run by the house.  The property extends up to the top of the ridge where the tree-line is, and curves on around to the right (above the house in this photo).  The pond sits up behind the closer clump of trees.

This picture looks across the bulk of the pasture, from the back upper corner.  That’s the house at the right edge, way down there!  You can get a feel for how much contour there is on this land, and can see farther back into the curve of the bowl above the pond (upper center of photo).  Just off to the left of where I was taking this photo, we will put up a small run-in shed for the cows on the flat top of the hill.  It will also serve as a rainwater collection site (off the roof) for watering the herd.

This photo is sort of the opposite view of the last one.  I was standing near the “entrance” onto the pond dam, with house & shed on the left of the photo.  You can see two “bumps” of land here, but the two “bumps” from the previous picture are hidden beyond…the other middle piece, then the bump where the run-in shed will sit, which curves around the end by the entrance into the two benches.

Here is more of a view of the pasture from on the pond dam.  The hill to the right is the beginning of the bowl that curves on around above the pond.  There is a good bit of pasture back around there yet!

And last but not least, the pond I keep mentioning.  Though man-made & not very big, it IS spring-fed, and is a very nice little pond.  And doesn’t every farm need a pond?

So concludes your photo tour of Headwaters.  I hope you enjoyed, and that you can see why we are so excited to add this piece of heaven to Hope Refuge Farm.  Now I can look forward to growing our Dexter herd!