Located in Mid-Western Ontario,
by Conestoga Lake, owned and operated by Janice and Chris
Retterath & family, our interests are in producing nice-minded
athletic horses that are versatile and fun to be around.
This summer, Chris will be managing the
Orangeville Color Thrill
horse show, along with Shelly Cassel, for the
Ontario Paint Horse Club. Located at the Orangeville
Fair Grounds, we hope to see you there this summer, on Sunday July 13th,
2008!
For a laugh, see Fun and Wisdom. Click Reining to see some
pictures of Chris riding at the Mid-Western fair in 2003.
Starview Farm has about 100 acres of rolling mid-Western Ontario
countryside.
Most of the farm slopes down to Conestoga Lake, a man-made water control reservoir, part of the Grand
River watershed. The gentle hills have a mix of clay and loam soils.
Click on the picture to see a few more pictures from around the farm.
Over the years we've slowly phased
out row crops, and moved to perennial hay and pasture. Our hay is alfalfa with timothy, our pastures are orchard
grass with birdsfoot trefoil.
We have an area in fescue that is an experiment to see if we
can have it grazed through the winter.
Red and white clover
are frost seeded in thin sods to help fix nitrogen for the
grasses.
In 2006 we renovated
a 20 acre corn field with oats as a nursery crop to a mix of
grasses and legumes. Instead of combining, we strip grazed the
green oats and grass.
We do our own hay, putting half into round bales, the rest into small squares
that go into our loft. Round bales go into our 60x120 arena/storage building,
which is a Calhoun tarp building.d
Grazing
After meeting Jim Garrish and attending a grazing seminar put on by
Brussels Agri Services,
Chris decided
that our farm could be better managed as a ranch.
The difference: on a ranch, the stock gets its
own forage, as compared to a farm, where the feed is provided by the farmer.
With our colder (zone 5) climate, good rainfall and deep clay soils, cool season
grasses do very well. We started in 2005 with some local Holstein
replacement heifers and a few paddocks, and worked up to grazing all our fields.
In 2007 we grazed 14 horses including
brood mares, 6 owned Angus cross calves, and up to 32 Holstein heifers.
We cut 25 acres of alfalfa x timothy hay, which was enough
to winter our horses. The cattle were all gone by November.
Grazing in the fall. The leaves are almost all gone -- taken
October 28, 2007.
The key to a grazing system is having water
lines out to all the fields. We have about 4000 feet of 1" and
3/4" polyethylene line.
Here you can see a 1" line running under a fence. All lines
are drained in the fall, but the odd frost at night won't hurt
the lines.
Our storage tarp building is in the background. At 60 x 120,
this is a nice size for indoor riding.
We no longer use the silo shown in the picture -- it's made
of poured concrete so it will be around for some time.
When we move cattle or horses to a new paddock,
the switch can be easy as dumping the tank, opening a gate,
moving the stock, and reconnecting the tank. A salt block is
moved with the tank.
We don't have shelters in all of our fields - just grass,
salt, and water. We do have some smaller shelters for the horse
paddocks. These are simple 12 x 12 buildings we built in our
arena and dragged out to the fields with a tractor. We thought
we would move these more often -- instead we have ground staked
and left them in place -- instead of moving, we just build more
structures.
Winter
We can have some nasty winters here -- freeze up
in early December, and snow sometimes into mid April. This means
we have to use hay, and our water lines have to be winterized.
We use our arena a lot in the winter. Round bales are fed
out when the ground is frozen, giving us more room to ride.
Trees and Wildlife
The climax forest in this part of Ontario is
Beech&Maple -- we only get around 2700 heat units, and this is
too cold for an White Oak/Maple forest. We have a 5 acre woodlot
with massive beech trees and many maples.
We have also planted many trees on the farm: Red Oak, Red, Sugar, &
Silver Maples, Norway, Blue, & White Spruce, White Cedar, Red & Austrian
Pine, Tamarack, and Poplars.
There are lots of Hawthorne and Dogwood that seed
themselves into any openings.
Fencing
We had no fences 13 years ago, and have learned from scratch what
works for us. We have oak & hemlock board fences, split rail backed up
with electric, a electrified poly-wire paddock, and a lot of hi-tensile
electrified fence.
The hi-tensile wire works well with really large
(over 5 acre) pastures. Poly tape works well for cross fencing because
the many white tail deer in our area can see it easily -- but it has to
be removed every fall and re set in the spring.
We've also tried going to single strand hi tensile along natural
boundaries like old tree lines. For less visible lines we have put up
one strand of hi tensile, with another higher strand of horse cote (a
thick white coated hi tensile line). These can be left out all year.r.
All contents of this website are Copyright (c) by Starview
Farm, 2003, 2010.
We do our own hay, putting half into round bales, the rest into small squares
that go into our loft. Round bales go into our 60x120 arena/storage building,
which is a Calhoun tarp building.d
Grazing in the fall. The leaves are almost all gone -- taken
October 28, 2007.
We use our arena a lot in the winter. Round bales are fed
out when the ground is frozen, giving us more room to ride.