There are many good,books, one is Grass Fed Beef, and the other by Joel Salatin is Salad Bar Beef. Beef cattle are one live stock species that as long as you have good fences, good rotated pastures , and good water you do not have to be there everyday, but you should everyother day. Do not let cattle in ponds, I know people do, but if you want to be at your best do not, especialy if you are not present every day. Cattle can get caught in the mud and die, cattle can drown, cattle defecate in water and spread worms and disease, ponds are expensive, cattle are like bulldozers and evertime in and out they fill the pond with sediment and wear down the dam, the 2 books I mentioned discuss this in detail. Also the NRCS will help design and pay for water facilities and even ones that do not freeze in winter. You need to subscribe to the Stockman Grassfarmer, run a search to find the website, 3 year subscriptions are 56 dollars and well worth it, they have a great book resource, another good one is any one by Allan Nation, and Greg Judy. josh

You might want to look into Farm caretaking. Folks who have farms occasionally take a vacation once in awhile and need someone who can care for the animals, etc. while they are away. This might be a good way to get some experience before deciding the type of farming you might like to do. Also, try googling "Farm caretaking". One of the links that pop up are for the Caretaker gazette. I had a subscription for years. Never applied for any of the positions, but I used to enjoy reading the ads for caretaking beautiful estates for ranch/farm/ and multiple home owners. They have sample ads at the website. Here is one example: "ALABAMA I NEED A HOUSESITTER and animal caretaker for the months of June to August for my home and animals outside of Selma. I have ten acres. I will need to show and teach the housesitter how to feed and care for my animals. The housesitter must be an animal lover to care for my horses, dogs, and cats. The horses do not need exercising or brushing. For more details, please email.... " Links that might be useful: CARETAKE A FARM (AND LIVE RENT FREE) www.motherearthnews.com/Modern-Homesteading/1976-05-01/ Caretake-a-Farm-And-Live-Rent-Free.aspx Caretaker.org

Yeah, this will never happen. But, not for the reasons you think. The sort of land elk need is now protected. Not for the beneficial ecological / environmental purposes, they have been prioritized for mega solar companies. Albany has put a target on the backs of Hudson Valley areas like Greene & Ulster Counties, specifically to clear cut vital habitat, forests, meadows, farmland and so on to make room for industrial scale solar farms that render the earth, dead, useless at the end of their roughly 25 year life-span. That's the future of NY State as long as Albany law-makers have their way.

Southwold, Ontario (near London) has a 5-way "Stop" signed corner, Ron. Post office is small - about 20' on each side. There's a building that used to be a store, but now is closed. A truck backs up to the back sometimes and when I ask what goes on there ... they tell me that they raise bait worms. There's a trucking company about 200 feet south. The aboriginal settlement nearby is having a big furniture sale next week ... on Ball Park Road. They are not a reservation - part of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Oneidas bought their own land, many years ago. My landlord would explain how sod-farming works - he says that it takes two or three days for some companies to roll out a trailer-load of sod ... I think about 36 skids ... but his guys and he lay one in one day. I could show you my garden ... that I must clean up, now that snow's gone. While I was hitch-hiking to the "Old Farts (Senior Men's) Coffee Hour" at church yesterday, (a young aboriginal woman with a baby in the back seat gave me a ride) I found a lot of beer and pop cans along the side of the road. We can take a dozen garbage bags, you travelling one side of the road and I running the other ... ... at 10 cents a can recycling fee for beer cans and liquor bottles and about 2 cents scrap price for a pop can ... ... we could collect enough in an afternoon to go out to dinnner ... well, maybe lunch ... (coffee, maybe: if Starbucks, just us, but we could invite some friends if we go to Tim's). Then home to rub liniment on the sore muscles ... before bed. A bit short of space - there's another single in my bedroom (I'd have to clear the flying clothes off) and a double in the guest room. We could put up another single in the family room. If there's another person, you could have my bed and I'd use the sleeping bag on the chesterfield (couch) ... or the floor: I think that the air mattress still holds air. We could take a tour (about two miles away) of Toronto's new "landfill" (that's a double four-letter word for "dump") that's a couple of miles away, over by Highway 401, the Windsor-Toronto-Montreal Expressway. I expect that they'll build a new exit for the 140 or so trucks that will stop travelling to Michigan and drop their stuff near here, in a couple of years. Nearby London has Storybook Gardens, headquarters of John Labatt Brewery (used to be locally owned ... now somewhere in Europe). They sponsored the civic-owned John Labatt Centre, arena for Junior hockey that provides players for the N H L. There's an Agricultuiral Exhibition Centre, TV station and some flee markets ...oh, something wrong with the spelling, did you say? Used to be a biscuit/candy factory, but they closed. Oh - there's a cookie factory (Archway, Hollandia - similar to Voortmans) in a nearby village - they make great cookies, sometimes have 5-lb. boxes on sale. There's a motor vehicle licensing testing centre on a highway just on this side of London, should anyone be interested. If you're still around next Monday you could go with me for my next test - but you and my licensed required co-driver would have to sit in the centre, as no one allowed in the car but the tester (and me). When they test guys riding motorcycles, they give the guy being tested a radio collar (sorry - "headset") and the tester rides alongside with a transmitter to give instructions. Another driver-instruction session slated for after church on Sunday. Our London has a Thames River ... and ours has two branches, which meet downtown, with parks nearby and the former jail (now a municipal office bulding). I didn't say that we've become so civilized that we don't need a jail any more. Have a lovely weekend, everyone. ole joyful