But out here, in the mountains, our homestead is performing very important garden related activities that influence the sustainability of the land to support not only the animals that graze it, but also the humans that depend on it for some food.  In fact the picture to the left shows a very important process underway which will lead us to looking like the picture you’ll see at the bottom of this article.

When first purchased, this land had the most excellent feature of being very well drained, a big plus in the Northwest known for wet, damp, and basic rainforest type qualities. The reason for its drainage: the land is essentially a gravel pit. In fact, if not for our plan to build a guest ranch featuring yurts for the public to “glamp”, it could have been sold to one of the several quarries that also exist out this way. All you will find if you took a shovel and started digging is rock, rock, sand, more rock, and occasionally some jade (which is rock too). Basically, this mountain area is not known for its agricultural operations.  You’ll find all those types of farms down in the lowlands,  the place where millions of years ago the glaciers that passed through here took all the soils and deposited them, leaving nothing but rock, boulders, and gravel behind.  So, there was a big challenge ahead of us if we were to set up a homestead, and that was essentially to create soils. Actually, the goal was to create Tilth, or healthy soils, or healthy soil micro-ecologies; and no, the solution didn’t reside in hiring a fleet of dump trucks to bring that dirt back up here from the valleys below.

Instead, we veered towards an approach espoused in Permaculture principles: letting nature do the work while the humans cultivate around the edges, giving a little nudge here and there. Of course, there was the initial hard labor of clearing logging debris, stumps, pulling brush and blackberries and bracken fern, but our story really starts after we’ve cleaned the land and burned the debris (in a way, we used nature’s own forest fire approach to step the land back to an alpine meadow stage of growth when we burned the stump piles). In fact, we did what most would do after that task: threw pasture seed mixes down with a good dose of lime to sweeten the soil. But still, the story of tilth doesn’t end there, heck, it doesn’t even start there. 

The concept of creating tilth has to do with setting up a cycle where nature is in balance with the uses of the land by humans and animals in such a way that both are replenished, indeed both benefit from abundance. So, while those grasses were growing we had a few more tasks ahead of us. One task was that of installing fencing, both perimeter and cross-fencing to create pastures for the herd of alpacas to graze. Again, here is where our approach differs from the norm, we took these large swaths of land and divided them into the smallest units of pasture we thought we could manage (or had a supply of fencing for. Indeed, later we even subdivided those into smaller pastures!) Closer to the barn area, we created a series of paddocks which contained the essentials for the herd: shelter, hay feeders, and water sources. So instead of having a larger field for a herd of animals to live upon, we not only separated their living quarters from their grazing spaces, but we also created the ability to control where, when, and how much of the pastures would be grazed by the herd at any given time.  This concept of rotational grazing became a cornerstone of herd and pasture management that sets us up to have a healthy cycle which promotes tilth, which gives us abundance.  That’s a step in the right direction.

To complete this cycle of tilth, we still had some steps in the cycle to manage.  For example, how do we feed the pastures that are feeding the herd? How do we manage the animal manures in the pastures? How do we overcome mossy spots, which are so prevalent in a rainforest, so that grasses will grow instead?  For this we turned to using a tractor, of sorts, a chicken tractor!  Its referred to as such because it performs all the functions of a tractor (harrowing, raking, spreading manure) and then some (weeding, bug eating, fertilizing). As the herd moves through the pastures during the summer, the chicken tractor follows them and does its job (see my previous blog entries for more details about the chicken tractor). This moveable flock of birds has the effect of scratching up mossy spots, decimating the biting fly population that lays their eggs in animal manure, and feeds the grasses with a high nitrogen fertilizer they produce from all the bugs they eat!

It’s a smooth running cycle with observable results during the spring, summer, and fall seasons when the grasses are growing.  Then the weather starts to change and winter brings a slowing down of growth and even some dormancy.  Its not a time when we want to see animals grazing, the pasture simply cannot keep up. In a traditional approach of just giving the herd a large field to live on, we’d eventually see more and more bare ground as grasses get eaten away and mosses start replacing them. The field itself can no longer maintain itself as a food source for the herd. In fact, nature is now combatting the effects by turning towards the more opportunist plants which can survive such conditions, that’s moss. However, in our approach, we return the herd to the barn area for the winter where we have stored their winter allotment of hay, and the pastures are allowed to rest. 

Not all stops there however, still there is work to be done around the barn!  During the winter time, the two largest paddocks in front of the barn are open to the herd.  They quickly devour anything green in that area, essentially causing the ground to go fallow and bare.  They gladly leave manure on the ground there too. The rest of the barn areas, including the sheltered areas,  have a layer of screened sand instead of dirt. This is the area they sleep, eat hay, drink water, and grow their awesome fiber. We keep these sandy areas raked and cleaned on a daily basis, picking up any manure piles to the compost bins for use in the garden beds.

As for the front paddocks, a different strategy is afoot there. Instead of poop pickup, we practice poop cover up.  All the raked waste hay and additional straw gets added right over the manure piles in that front area.  This ground is exposed to the weather, and the chickens from the coop, and decomposes over the winter time.  Because we are adding sequestered carbon in the form of straw, we don’t have bacterial problems, overly muddy areas, or any smells. 

A natural decomposition is occurring, with the aid of the roaming chickens, and what we end up with is two paddocks with a rich fluffy bed for planting in the spring. This past season we grew wheat and veggies there. This next year we’ll see more wheat and oats. As pasture grazing season kicks back in, these paddocks get closed off from the herd and planted with grain crops.  The grain crops give us a harvest not only of grain, but of straw which we can return right to that space to help increase the tilth. Thus, the cycle is complete, continuous, easy to manage, and beneficial not only to the humans and animals which use it, but also to the land and the micro-biology that calls it home as well. 

This approach to managing the land has many side benefits as well.  Because of the rotational grazing, we are able to break all parasite and worm cycles, and thus there is no need to give deworming medications to the herd.  Because we add more carbon to the manure in the paddocks, we don’t worry about a rise in bad bacteria, like E. coli, that could make the herd sick.  In fact, we do regular tests of the manure we pick up from around the barn to see what our levels of bacterias,  Strongyles, and Coccidia are and have yet to see any rise to cause a concern.

What we’ve achieved is a healthy balance of flora and fauna interacting with each other to the benefit of each other. That’s Tilth!

Paca Pride Guest Ranch makes an appearance on TV!

http://www.king5.com/on-tv/evening-magazine/Discovering-Washington-on-the-Mountain-Loop-Highwat-133699373.html

In 2011, we admit, we’re hooked on Facebook!  We just love the interaction that it gives us with friends and fans of Paca Pride Guest Ranch. So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we look back, with awe, wonderment, thanks and grace, at the formative years of Paca Pride with a retrospective video and photo album.  We dedicated this to all our supporters without whose help through these first years, we could not have made it.

We invite you to check out the video on our YouTube Channel:

A Retrospective Look at the years 2005-2011

For the complete annotated photo album, we also invite you to become a fan on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/PacaPride (share and plan a “glamping” trip with your friends!)

Here’s a sneak peak at some of the photos you’ll find out on our Facebook page!

The herd was shorn at the end of June and we are still awaiting the return of the annual clip from the mill in the form of yarns and rovings, but Uber and Mucho were lucky enough to receive another hall pass from shearing this year. Llamas do shed and can acclimate to the heat of summer a bit easier than alpacas with their dense coats and, honestly, Uber just looks grand with his big shaggy mane.  Kusco, one of the new alpacas to the herd, still has a distrust of Maximo, the hound dog. Thus it was endearing to watch as Uber tried to show Kusco that Maximo was in fact a cool canine.

The garden has been an adventure this year to the delight of all the yurt campers who’ve roamed through it’s paths and peaked under the mini-greenhauz panels.  We upgraded the raised beds to have A-frame style panels that provide more grow space height yet still can withstand the snow during winter when we like to overwinter certain veggies and plants with some extra protection.  It’s amazing to see celery and carrot flowers blooming in the second year after being overwintered in their beds; more seed to save!

The harvest has been a bit of a hit and miss with our tomato crop this year. However, there has been a bounty of everything else including, hold your hats, green bell peppers!  We are still letting them fully ripen and turn red on the vine to hopefully do some jarred roasted Reds this year. In the meantime, we’ve been quite distracted experimenting with making a Japanese-style pickle slaw salad that we’ve perfected.  It’s one of those salads that gets better over the course of a few days marinating in the sweet sake dressing. Of course, we’ve also got pickles brining for hot-n-spicy-n-garlicy dill pickles.

As the harvest has continued this month, we have collected over 75 pounds of potatos, 3 braids of garlic, plenty zukes and cukes to shake a stick at, 15 pounds from the very first planting of wheat (let’s turn that into more next year!) and the Amaranth flower heads are still drying and await threshing of its grain.  On the grain front, since we’ve now demonstrated that, indeed, we can grow grain in the mountains, we found a source for some ancient grains to begin trials on next season.  We’ll eventually land on a good combination of a nutritious grain that’s easy to thresh and turn into food.

Our herd of alpacas and llamas were kept quite busy with their yurt camper PR program.  It is not uncommon of a sight to see families coming up to explore with fascination an animal most have never experienced up close.  You can learn a lot about people just from watching them interact with a new animal where they have no expectations developed; some can act leery and nervous at first, but it’s always the youngsters that go bounding right up to the fence, instinctively picking some grass, and holding it out with the hope of a furry snout coming to grab it.

The other activity that occurs every summer is the run of our chicken tractor.  As you’ve been reading from our previous blog entries, this handy device helps us establish a good fertilizer and harrowing program for the pastures, not to mention, fly control too!  The 20 poultry birds, raised for their meat, have all been sent to the freezer and breasts, thighs, drumsticks and wings.  All that remains are the 4 turkeys, still needing to put on some weight.  They are aptly named: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Patty and Link!

Summer at Paca Pride Guest Ranch is coming to a close soon, and it’s been a very enjoyable one!  The flowers that have bloomed for the 3rd year running are attracting pollinators and admirers alike.  As the season ends, we turn our attention to the dynamic weather of Autumn where the leaves will fall, the blustery winds gust, and our yurt campers will remain warm and cozy enjoying it all inside a heated yurt.

In our last post we discussed the role that a chicken tractor has within our homestead system.  Now, we are at 1 month in to the current chicken run and you can begin to get a sense of just how quickly these Rock Cornish Cross chickens grow.  This mutant breed between two types of chicken produces most of the commercially grown, store-bought chickens that consumers eat.  The upside to this crossing is you get a chicken that grows very rapidly allowing you to harvest the birds for meat within a very short period of time. (Thus, the “Young Chicken” label you see on store bought chickens.)  The downside is that they grow too fast for their bones to keep up with them and support their weight, so letting them grow for a long period of time means seeing them develop leg problems, fall over and die.  So no opportunity to keep them as your pet chicken or even a egg layer bird because by the time they reach egg laying maturity, they start having health problems related to their rapid weight gain.  The genetics resulting in these chickens from the crossing of their parent breeds would by natural selection be weaned out because of the low survival rate, but in our ever productive search for the better chicken, we actually select for this mutant variation because of the benefits for meat production.

For these birds though, they don’t live the droll ordinary caged and confined life of a bird raised in a production operation.  They’ve got plenty of forage for their main source of feed and are actually weaned down from the main diet of commercially manufactured feed once they are done brooding and have feathered out.  Instead of an all-you-can-eat free-choice commercial feed diet, they are let out of the chicken tractor during the day to hunt and peak around for their food.  They run to the clovers first; the most delectable of choices for them, followed by grasses and other native species forbs we have in our pastures.  They always make their way over to the closest llama poop pile where they rake away and grab bugs and flies.  When the evening rolls around, they get a bucket of chicken feed, enough to fill out their already full crop, and round out the day.  The token amount of feed also serves the rancher by easing the task of getting them all back into the tractor for the night.

Be sure to check out the video update to this post and see these 1 month old chickens in action:

Chicken Tractor Progresses!

Thus enters the chicken tractor. Like a tractor which harrows a field, spreads manure, tills soils, a chicken tractor performs the same functions, albeit on a different timescale than the gas powered wonders of the modern age.  For this year’s run, which starts in May and ends between September and December, we are running twenty Rock Cornish Cross poultry meat birds and four turkeys (including a bronze).  We’ll start harvesting the poultry in September and butcher 3-4 per week leaving the turkeys to finish out in time for Thanksgiving and later ground turkey meat for the freezer.  While we are thankful for meat provided from free-ranging chickens, their primary purpose is really to help renovate the pastures.

Like most chicken endeavors, our chicken tractor is made from salvaged and recycled materials, some of which was leftover from the construction of our house.  A few carport metal tubes serve as skids and the bottom frame, and PVC pipe creates the hoop structure.  Fastened to the PVC are some leftover fence pieces and chicken wire. The two ends of the chicken tractor are leftover cedar plywood sheets with a door cut into one end. Covering about two-thirds of the entire structure is some white plastic tarp wrap that originally wrapped the wood delivered during the construction of the house.  Partly covering the tractor means there is always a shady and sunny area and the portion towards the front of the tractor which is covered helps keep the food dry during any rain. 

For the first few weeks of the chicken tractor, when the baby chicks are introduced, we add another tarp to fully cover the open portion of the tractor and prevent drafts while we brood the baby chicks.  We also add a heat lamp to help them remain warm. The heat lamp limits the tractor to an area within 100’ of the barn where the electricity comes from, but that only lasts until the chicks are fully feathered out and can keep themselves warm.  They also are offered free-choice chick starter feed which they can have as much as they can manage to eat.  Once the heat lamp is removed and brooding is complete, however, we’ll begin to wean them from the commercially manufactured feed and let them forage freely in the pasture for bugs, grasses, and clovers.  We’ll only use a small portion of commercial feed at the end of the day when it’s time for them to go back into the chicken tractor for the night.  This approach saves quite a bit on the feed bill and allows for some of the best tasting chicken meat that is free-range and grass-fed with minimal additional feed. 

If you try this approach for your own chicken tractor it’s important to have a well-fenced in pasture space for the birds to roam which offers enough for them to eat without over-grazing the grass down to dirt.  It’s time to move the flock to a new pasture when you notice the grass getting too short from the chickens eating it. As part of our strategy, we first let the herd of llamas and alpacas graze, followed by the slower moving chicken tractor to “clean up” after them.  The chicken tractor can stay in one of our small pasture areas for 3-8 weeks depending upon how much I choose to allow them to impact the area.

Since I do let the birds out of the tractor during the day, I wait until I move them to another pasture to perform the remaining human-based cultivation tasks.  That generally includes spreading out some more straw and raking any remaining llama poop out and adding grass and clover seed.  The pasture is then set for the season.  A heavily renovated pasture may have the llamas and alpacas mob-grazing it for week or two and the chicken tractor working it over for another 6 weeks. After that, I’m guaranteed a lusher, more sustainable pasture for next season.  If a pasture only needs a light renovation, because most of the grasses and clovers are established, I may leave the chicken tractor in pasture for a shorter duration and then return the herd back to it later in the season for another grazing.  I can also choose to limit the birds foraging for a day by keeping them within the tractor over a portion of a ground, say with lots of moss, until they’ve really dug it all up and then move them to another spot.  If I do this the chicken tractor is moving on a daily basis to assure they have enough to forage, or I’m supplementing with a little more feed until they are done with that spot. Generally, when I’m brooding the baby chicks, the chicken tractor gets located on the mossiest spots I can find since it moves less often than when the birds are more fully grown.

By the end of the chicken run season, all the poultry birds have been harvested and dispatched to the freezer.  Our birds are allowed to grow longer than the typical “young chicken” label you see in most store bought chickens.  As a result, we end up with chickens that can produce breasts which weigh 6-8 pounds; very large chicken breasts. The only occupants left to finish out the run will be the turkeys.  So as September winds down and October sees the grasses slowing their growth, the chicken tractor is moved to the front paddocks of the barn where some deep straw bedding is added and the turkeys are given finishing feed, and garden scraps for the reminder of their time.  After the last bird is harvested for meat, come Spring the deep bedding, with rich turkey manure,  will be raked out into the paddock where it will be planted with corn and beans or wheat, grasses, and clovers.  When the herd is pulled off pasture for the season, it’s these garden paddocks that they get for their final foraging before strictly feeding on their winter hay bales.  Once these paddocks go fallow again, they are ready for another garden season the next year allowing the ground to recover.

Be sure to check out the video of the chicken tractor brooding this year’s baby chicks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjap5ym-7SE

Our story started in 2005 when we bought this parcel to make manifest the change we’d like to see in the world. Witnessing America at a crossroads, we saw that the only way to survive in corporate America was to incorporate. Putting our heads together, we wrote a business plan, moving to a rural location, with the hope of bringing future jobs to a popular tourist destination. That’s how Paca Pride Guest Ranch started offering a twist on camping with some cool structures, yurts. We decided to position ourselves as a destination that could demonstrate green principles, sustainability, homesteading, even offer farm fresh eggs from our chickens.  

But, all is not without its struggle through adversity. Having to carry our costs for two years without establishing a revenue stream until the county executed their 120-day process and issued our permits dwindled our cash reserves to bring further yurt accommodations on to the property. Over $50,000 went into satisfying the county’s requirements, including hiring experts and professionals to navigate the regulatory waters.   We even had to fight through a serious cancer battle, during that time, that tested our mettle.

Eventually, that had us stepping back quite a bit from the original business plan to see how we could use our remaining funds most effectively. We now struggle to determine the most effective ways to get out and market ourselves as well as how to generate further capital to invest in the business, bringing more yurts on board, followed by adding the rustic amenities.

But we are here! We started a small business! Our shingle is on the side of the road! We had a moderately successful summer season, in 2010, of bookings and retail sales of alpaca related products, eggs, and even a few items from our garden! We have great hope that we can take our business to the next level of growth and continue to make a deeply felt impact on the community we are now a part. The Mountain Loop community, especially within the tiny Robe Valley, has been filled with excitement and been inspired by our efforts, we hope to be able to one day hire staff from this valley and bring jobs to this rural, and very historic, area.

Certainly, all this could never have happened without all the love and support from our friends and family.  We count our blessings everyday and choose to remain positive that others will also continue to see the value in our venture as we enter into the 2011 camping season.  Perhaps an angel investor will somehow find it within them to support our efforts?  Until then, we’ll continue our hard work to grow and mature this new attraction that continues to awe the tourists and hikers alike once they drive up the front entrance. 

For Paca Pride Guest Ranch, the return of the robins signals an awakening on various fronts.  We know we can start growing in the garden again. We know the grass is coming out of dormancy, making for some eager alpacas that want some fresh greens in their diet.  We know the tourists are ramping up in numbers too.  Typically, what has been a shoulder season for campers seeking outdoor adventure usually has only the diehards venturing out to pitch a tent.  However, the number of day hikers are like the robins, suddenly spiking in numbers on your front lawn seeking those worms.  Indeed, at the most famous “hidden secret” of a trail, the Robe Canyon Historic Park trail, which leads down to the old Everett & Monte Cristo Railway tunnel, you can quickly lose count of the parked cars at the trailhead. 

It’s always been a dilemma for outdoor enthusiasts exploring the Mountain Loop Hwy’s many hiking trails, whether to go hiking or camping.  These days it seems the two are somehow mutually exclusive, an either/or proposition.  Either you are going hiking or you are going camping.  If you go camping, you are committing yourself to a nesting in at a campsite and not wanting to leave it to do much exploring, instead enjoying the local surroundings of your campsite. You just never know how secure your campsite will be if you left it alone for a few hours to go hiking.  So, most hikers don’t camp out this way. They choose to plan a day trip hike and not camp. 

Fortunately, another tide of change is working itself on the mountain that is making camping much more accessible to those day hikers who dismiss pitching a tent as not worth the effort.  Paca Pride Guest Ranch offers a furnished guest yurt, with bed and linens, electricity and even heat. We even have a larger Roundhouse that could be used as an accommodation space. For those hikers and day-trippers out here, it’s beginning to open up so many more options. Yes, you can go on that longer trail you’ve always wanted to try, but didn’t want to get up so early in the morning for the drive out there.  Yes, you can explore several hikes over the course of the weekend and return to a cozy bed at a hosted campground.  Yes, you can even pitch a tent here and not worry too much about security knowing those same hosts are onsite. 

So, as Spring winds itself up and winter retreats into it’s own hibernation, the day-hikers of the Mountain Loop become as numerous as the robins. Like our robin family that chose to makes its nest here at Paca Pride, and return with the kids this year, hikers have the opportunity to nest in the round comfort of a yurt after a long day of adventuresome hiking.

That Robin family? Oh yes, here’s mama robin feeding her new young this past Spring. Come out in April and May and you’ll see this scene in person!

“You Are Here” How often have you come upon a map and the first thing you reference is that famous little tagline that let’s you determine the course of your upcoming adventure? That sense of grounding, of showing your location and informing you of what’s possible is an important part of the tourist’s experience in an unfamiliar setting. 

For a long time, the Mountain Loop Highway, a national scenic byway, remained a hidden gem within Snohomish County, Washington.  It is the loop within the larger (and traditionally more promoted) Cascade Loop. To find your way to unlocking it’s secrets and exploring it’s attractions meant becoming an investigator doing some in depth research ahead of your trip.  Well, such will be the case no longer!

Paca Pride Guest Ranch is teaming up with About-The-Wow promotions (www.AboutheWOW.com), to start a new non-profit organization to fill this gap. The Mountain Loop Tourism Bureau (www.ML-TB.org) is officially established bringing a new level of service to the over 250,000 cars per year that travel this route!

Accommodations, businesses, services, attractions, trails, events, festivals, workshops, campgrounds, and much more will become readily accessible to the tourist adventurer.  Favorites like Big Four/Ice Caves or the Mt. Pilchuck Lookout trails will certainly be highlighted, but so will little known secrets like the “Boom or Bust” cave that most tourists just drive by without knowing is even there.  MLTB will become a source for hikers, campers, and general outdoor enthusiasts as well as helping connect visitors to the variety of accommodations to stay locally in the area. MLTB is forming partnerships within each of the gateway towns along the loop, Arlington, Darrington, and Granite Falls, to help establish Tourism Outposts assuring that no matter where you are on the Loop, tourism information is available.

Not without your help and support!  As you well know nothing happens without a lot of groundwork backing it up. So we look to you, the visitors, the regulars, the residents, the mountaineers, hikers, campers, skiers, geo-cache seekers, anyone who has some knowledge or experiences of the sights they’ve seen out here and wish to share.  Send us information on your favorite spots anywhere along the entire Mountain Loop which every visitor should consider and which MTLB should highlight. 

The Mountain Loop recreational area, which includes national forest, has a rich history rooted in the gold rush mining days of Monte Cristo.  Serving a continually growing number of tourists each year, the Mountain Loop Tourism Bureau is dedicated to promoting this region.  The MLTB is a non-profit organization and happily accepts your donations and assistance.  If you wish to help fund our efforts to educate, promote, and inform the consumers of the Mountain Loop, consider sending us a tax-deductible donation.  Contact us at info@pacapride.com for more information about donating or becoming more involved.

Oh, and if you are wondering where along the Mountain Loop Hwy you’d find Paca Pride, well, just look for the “You Are Here” on the map above. Happy Trails!

This was the scene here at Paca Pride Guest Ranch  during the last week of the year. We haven’t seen any snow through most of December, only Thanksgiving weekend had the impressive six inches,  so it’s nice to see it back just in time to celebrate the New Year.  The weather is cooperating by giving us some cool and clear nights, assuring the snow will last until New Year’s Day. That makes fun in the snow possible for toboggans. Our road down to the lower pasture becomes the attraction as you can see <here>. 

Inside the lodge, holiday cheer still abounds and visitors are welcome. The new chalkboard displays above the reception area will feature rates for the yurts and campground along with information from the newly started Mountain Loop Tourism Bureau.  Watch this space develop over the next year! Of course, Maximo and Shadow, the ranch greeters, are always on hand to say hello to everyone and officially welcome you to the ranch.

Our store space has seen some brisk traffic over the course of the holiday season leaving our stock looking pretty depleted. Not only do we look forward to replenishing our alpaca socks, we also look forward to how this space will change over this coming year. In the window will be some more garden fresh indoor grows including basil and lettuce. Currently, our fresh Malabar spinach vines out and grows its berries there.  The entire back section of the store is set to feature the tourism efforts of the Mountain Loop Tourism Bureau.  Paca Pride is fortunate to be one of the very first stops that visitors see when they leave the town of Granite Falls behind and climb Sand Hill towards Robe Valley. At the mouth of the valley and sitting on the edge of the Green Mountain plateau, we are the stop along the Mountain Loop for a spectacular view of Mt. Pilchuck.