Neptune Farm
723 Harmersville-Canton Road, Salem, NJ 08079
Telephone: 856-935-3612
If you're grazing livestock,
you may have already found these links, but just in case, here are some of the
things we've found useful over the years. Most of the cool accessories
come from fellow farmers, who invented them out of necessity and who aren't
paying us anything for the endorsements.
Fly control is a huge issue for most of us. We've bought
predatory wasps, which do a fine job in warm temperatures, and we're lucky to
have cattle egrets. We've tried stinky bait traps, but our favorite fly trap is
a simple and inexpensive flypaper cylinder from Olson Products, that slips over a
fence post, can be moved to the next paddock along with the livestock, and can
be changed easily when it's full.
We also like bluebird boxes.
Ours seem to be inhabited more often by tree swallows, which do a dandy job of
eating all sorts of insects. We've been getting them from the North American Bluebird Society.
Waterers: We use a conventional heated Ritchie at the cowshed,
where there's electricity to keep it from freezing. But we're very pleased with the ones we got from Cobett and installed in remote locations
around the farm as part of an NRCS EQIP
contract to improve our grazing set-up.
The Cobett waterers are indestructible, reliable, and the plumbing is
protected from freezing by a nifty design that involves no energy
consumption. Although the waterer holds
only a few gallons at a time, the line feed brings in fresh water fast enough
to satisfy the whole herd, sheep as well as cows. It was designed by a farmer, who relies on word-of-mouth from
satisfied customers, so you're not likely to see them at the farm show or in an
ag mag.
Fencing: We mostly use post and wire, and, as organic farmers,
have had to struggle with the issue of treated lumber, so we drive metal
T-posts with home-grown Eastern red cedar posts every hundred feet or so. Because we can't use herbicides, we tend not
to install electric fencing, but we are using electric with split-rail in the
front pastures, and have switched to solar chargers that are a lot less hassle
than our old marine batteries and pack a more reliable wallop. We like the chargers from Kencove better than the ones from the feed
store.
Biodiesel: When we first started using B20 in our ancient
tractors, we had some problems with rotting rubber lines and gaskets, and with
clogging. Our IH806 actually spent a
winter in the field, where it had given up the ghost while moving round
bales. The old natural rubber fittings
on our equipment have now been replaced with synthetic ones, and we've become
more conscientious about replacing filters on tractors and the fuel tank. Low-temperature gelling has never been a
problem, because our supplier uses a winter additive. If we'd paid more attention at the outset, we probably wouldn't
have had any problems. Now we're ready
for B100.