It isn’t a understatement that we have been swamped with activity here on the farm. This year has brought us many changes….many good changes for our family and we are starting to feel like we are gaining traction once again.
This spring, we are enjoying all the babies being born. We’ve had several different sets of sheep twins born recently. Baby lambs are so adorable!
We also had baby goldfish born which was is something we didn’t expect!
We are now getting lots of eggs from the chickens and even some from the ducks.
The boys have been working on repairing their “Indian Fort”. It’s served them well over the years and they have put a lot of hard work into getting it back in shape. So they have been measuring, drilling, cutting, sawing and nailing wood for days.
We are still having some cool nights but on the warmer spring like nights, we all love hearing the loud frogs. During the day, the little ones are having a great time making frog homes for all their pet frogs.
We also found the first snake of the season yesterday and it brought back really bad memories. I know warmer weather brings the ticks, chiggers and snakes, I just like to forget about it and hope they might just go away one year.
Also with warmer spring like weather comes the beautiful greenery in the leaves and grass. Which means the grass is going to need to be mowed soon. We’re taking a proactive approach on keeping the grass down this year. It’s an old fashioned lawnmower and natural fertilizer all-in-one!
Talk about a cowboy. Here we have Tex the son in the cowboy hat, riding on Tex, mommom’s freezer beef.
The stated idea was to use a cow to round up the cows. I’m not so sure that worked well. But, I think the real objective of having a little farm adventure was achieved!
We love May the Milk Cow. She has a bull calf that is about 6 weeks old now. They are doing wonderfully. We have an abundance of winter milk for which we are all thankful for.
Having that milk drastically cuts our grocery bill as well. Of course there is a lot of work that goes into getting that milk to the house everyday. We love the fact that we have a handful of very energetic boys who can milk the cow now. We look back at when we started farming and see a huge leap in what the boys can do now. It’s amazing. We have a 3rd cow milker in training currently.
We’ve moved up the younger ones to take over some of the chores the bigger ones use to do. Like collecting eggs…however, this has had its challenges. A 13 year old is a lot more careful than say…a 7 year old….but after losing a few baskets of eggs to mysterious accidents…like tripping over the goat…he’s well on his way to becoming an expert egg collector. He hands me baskets of eggs every evening….and now they are consistently not broken!
The 7 year old and 8 year old are also delivering slops to the pigs everyday. That usually goes without incident, except recently somehow they lost the slop buck on their way back to the house. I don’t understand how things like that happen…but they do. Hopefully, we will have some pork soon.
At the end of this year, our meat is almost gone and we’re having to reevaluate our “planning” on raising meat. It should be timed so that you go from butchering to butchering without lag time waiting on animals to get ready. When you are about to butcher your cow, don’t get so caught up in the glories of having your very own meat to stock your freezer with that you forget about the next cow that should be making its way into your pasture before or around the time you butcher the first one. Keep the cycle going or you will end up with an empty freezer and no “next cow” ready to be butchered.
In case you have been wondering where we went…we’re still here. I amazed at how busy life is. Fall is already here in full swing and it is absolutely amazingly gorgeous outside. Every year, I stand in awe at the amazing painting that appears.
We have a lot of things coming up in the near future. I have a lot to update here on the blog, but for now, here’s a brief update:
We have a new milk cow (new to the blog..we’ve had her a couple of months actually) that is about to have a baby any day now. Her name is May and she has been an exciting addition to the farm. She’s got spunk and personality plus and after our rocky start with her (she ran away the first day we got her and it took 2 days to find her), we are enjoying having her around even if she does consistently challenge the fence lines!
Our sheep herd is growing. I love watching the sheep in the field. They are a favorite around here. They are easy to maintain and require little care.
The milk barn has been undergoing some work. The boys have been trying to make it more functional. They are trying to remove the rigged setup of bungee cords, bailing twine and tarps and replace it with a real roof that doesn’t leak or look so make-shift hillbilly.
Our old milk cow, Layna, is doing better than expected. She’s well loved around here and we could all learn a thing or two from her very laid back, slow-going personality.
We’ve lost a lot of baby animals. We lost our baby goats that were born this summer and some kittens too. We’ve also lost some of our bottle fed infant cows. Our 8 year old has been very stretched in dealing with these losses, as he has been very involved in their care and feeding every day. He announced that he was going to go out of business if things didn’t pick up soon. Haha! He’s a brave boy who has been taking his job seriously. He currently is in better spirits and has been talking about maybe getting a few more baby cows! We are attributing a lot of the newborn/baby losses to weather related issues and being out of town when we needed to be attentive to the babies.
The fall garden is pitiful. Nothing has been planted and the only thing the garden has to show for itself is dying okra trees and pepper plants that are still loaded with hot peppers. I think we’ll focus on getting the plastic on the greenhouse and get it ready for planting spring starter plants.
We just completed a wonderful apple order. These fall apples have been delicious. I wish I had more apples to sell, but we are out. Next year, we will order more. It’s inspired me to get apple trees going around here.
And there’s more on the horizon. We are putting together some very exciting Webinars for those interested in family farming and agrarian living.
We have a little side business we wanted to let you all know about. For the past couple months, we have been buying and selling dairy bulls and having quite a lot of fun in the process.
We have made friends with a dairy not too far from us. When they have a bull calf or several bull calves, they give us a ring…we load up and go pick up the babies. Some of the babies are less than 24 hours old when we get them. They’ve had their colostrum and are sent to us to care for.
We bring them home and the children teach them how to take a bottle, run and play with them and they even get serenaded often by our little 3 year old. They are fed twice a day by our boys. They are selling them as bottle fed bulls or steers (they can castrate them for you if you would like).
If you would like some great grass fed beef….contact us about getting a steer for your pasture. We also raise grass fed beef here at our farm for those who don’t have a pasture or who live in town. You can buy your calf and we will board him, feed him all the green grass and hay he wants, take him to the butcher and deliver your meat. If you are interested, let us know and we can give you further details about beef boarding.
We do not have a mature dairy bull on our farm. We have been told by those more experienced than we, that dairy bulls are the most dangerous farm animal around.
We do however have a bunch of bull calves here on the farm awaiting to be banded. Our 13 year old castrated one bull calf they are raising for their grandmother…we have 6 more to go but are allowing the young calves to gain a bit more weight.
Today, we had an up close and personal introduction to a really amazing Guernsey dairy bull from the Guernsey Dairy farm in Kentucky. It was a great home school field trip!
Mr. Guernsey Dairyman was a wonderful host and let our whole crew pile on his gator and ride the pasture to see the Guernsey girls! Wow! Was that ever a treat for us to see so many Guernsey’s at one time. We oooohhhed and ahhhed over them. They were all ages and all sizes.
One our way back to the dairy barn, he stopped to introduce us to his bull. Bulls are incredibly territorial, so he noticed us right away and started coming towards us.
I began to doubt if the electric fence wire was on and even if it was…Brutus here, looked like he didn’t care about a thin little wire. Mr. Guernsey Dairyman stopped the gater and began to tell us about his bull and the calves and other things that faded out of my hearing as I watch the big bull just feet from us start bellowing and rub his head into the ground. I wasn’t sure what that was a sign for, but I was sure he was not liking all 11 of us staring at him and his girls.
Mr. Guernsey Dairyman went on about how dangerous bulls were. The bull stopped rubbing his head on the ground and got up snorting dust out of his nose and stomping his foot several times…just like in the movies. Boys are amused at this sort of thing. Not me. Now I am really sure we should just get back to the barn. I’m content to look at the impressive beast from a distance. They were thrilled with the great front row seat!
We had a great time and after all that, brought home two Guernsey bull calves. (although not staying a bull!)
Dairy steers make excellent beef and you can often find them quite inexpensive compared to the beef breed counterpart. While they have a higher bone to meat ratio…dairy steers offer high quality beef for a fraction of the cost of ..say… a registered Angus.
Caring for calves has been an excellent family adventure here with several children who are capable of taking care of the bottle feeding.
Our boys are raising a cow for their grandparents. They named him Tex. They have been bottle feeding him for a while now and he is finally weaned! He weaned from the bottle last week…he still likes Havala’s ear.
I am sympathetic to the newly weaned calves. They come bounding up to the fence when we come near thinking we have a yummy bottle of milk for them! I think it is sad…everyone else doesn’t seemed bothered by the cute little cow trying to nuzzle his head up near us looking for that big bottle. Of course, I didn’t go out twice a day, rain or shine, for months feeding them either.
However, such is farm life… little calves grow up, get fat and become hamburger.
Today, we acquired 3 newborn…really newborn, one was less than 24 hours old… bull calves. Tonight after a full day of chores, playing real live cowboy and dealing with 3 fragile not-yet-bottle-broke calves, our 8 year old remarks with pride after supper ….”Sure is nice having bottle fed calves back on the farm!”
I laughed… Yeah! Sure is nice having bottle fed calves back on the farm!!! … I think we went a week without bottle feeding before we jumped into it full time again!
If all goes well, we hope to get these bulls healthy and strong, castrated, dehorned and ready to sell as nice family farm feeder cows. We’ll keep you updated!
Baby calves are so enjoyable to have around on the farm. We love watching them romp and play. Here’s one of our baby cows named Havala. Here, Hava is chasing our 8 year old as he makes his way over to one of the other calves. We plan on keeping her here on the farm to produce beef cows for us hopefully for many years to come. Over the last few months she has really grown and fattened up!
Our children love feeding the calves their bottles. And the calves love the children and that bottle they carry!
Havala and Tex are doing great and growing leaps and bounds and eating lots of fresh grass.
When you buy very young, little calves, there is always a cloud of unknown in the air. Once you get them over the hump and they start really thriving…it is exciting to watch them take off! We will soon be weaning them off the bottle. It sure has been nice having a milk cow to provide raw milk for the calves — it has helped these bottle fed calves really gain the nutrition they needed to thrive.
One fact that we quickly learned after we moved to the farm is that children can do more work than what you think. It’s amazing how helpful they can be…when required to. Our children are full of energy. The trick is to harness that energy and point it in the right direction. Children left to themselves, unchallenged and without responsibility turn into lazy, me-centered “kiddults”. I don’t know if you have noticed lately but our world is filled with them: 30 year old “kids” who haven’t grown up and who lack vision, maturity, depth and a good work ethic.
We believe labor and early responsibility are vitally important for our children…even our young children. We have found that all our farm work around here captures their adventure and endless energy in positive way, all the while teaching them responsibility and a good work ethic. It’s nothing new. Ask most any elderly man or woman and they will tell you the stories of their youth. You will most likely hear about good, honest, hard working days. I remember sitting and talking with my great grandfather about his youth. His youth was filled with responsibility and hard work. Those are the things that grow strong young men and women.
In a large family, sometimes the older children are counted on for most of the chores. The middle children can easily do the chore, but we are so use to calling on the oldest ones to complete the task. It’s habit I guess. Around here, it has been becoming apparent that we need to enlist the younger troops. So we have changed around our chore schedule quite a bit to accommodate the younger ones involvement.
We have 4 baby calves. 3 of them take a bottle twice a day. The 4th one we gave up on chasing him around the field. Now he just watches from a distance as everyone else happily drinks down their bottles! We had the calves on cow formula which requires mixing up 8 oz of the formula into 2 quarts of warm water. Whisk around and pour in the bottle. We originally had our 11 year old doing this chore. Looking around at what needed to be done and who could do it, I learned from my Managers of Their Homes book to start enlisting the youngest child who can do the chore…not the oldest. Wow..this changes things.
So the 6 year old and 8 year old were pulled away from their dump trucks and enlisted to mix up cow formula, pour it into the bottle and go find the calves. It works great! Lately, they have been transitioning the calves off the formula and putting real milk in the bottles. It frees up the 11 year old to focus on the milk cow and the little boys have a real chore that is vitally important on our farm.
Teaching responsibility isn’t a one time how-to class. Handing over chores and jobs to children can be messy. It takes lots of patience and understanding. It takes a parent that is willing to give up perfection and ready to invest great amounts of time and energy into their children. It’s a long term investment that repays many times over with young men and women who are hardworking, honest and responsible!
We’re trying too. We just realized it has been almost two weeks since we posted. For shame. Good thing the blog doesn’t require water or feed, doesn’t need it’s pen moved to a fresh green patch, doesn’t need a bottle or need to be milked …it just sits there and waits.
We have lots to post! The farm is waking up this spring. We have plenty of fresh green grass and are enjoying watching the trees burst out new leaves. We have quite a bit of new life around here…some of our hen’s have hatched out new chicks with new broody hens making themselves known. The calves are growing well and we hope that they are over their newborn frail hump. The ducks are growing rapidly in our frog pond with more tadpoles to eat than they could ask for.
We’ll be back with some of the happenings and upcoming events around here….
…been busy…feeding their MomMom’s (grandma’s) calf…
We have found that bottle feeding calves is sort of like bottle feeding a lamb or goat, only a baby cow is really a big animal to be so “little” , ya know, and is only going to continue to grow into a massive animal. They drink a bigger bottle than what we used for the lambs and goats…only you have to get a good grip on the bottle or they will knock it out of your hand–they are very strong. They also produce a great amount of really disgusting cow slobber. Watch out for this especially if the wind is blowing your way!
Goats, lambs and calves have this butting instinct that they do when taking a bottle. They forcefully hit their head into the bottle as if they were hitting the udder of their mother to get the milk to let down. We are enjoying bottle feeding them and hope that they continue to stay strong and grow well. We have been under a deluge so hopefully this won’t complicate things with them.
We have a new exercise…it’s called calf chasing. You can join us every morning and evening if you like. It’s what you do when you buy a bull calf that does not like you. This only looks like a leisurely morning walk. The boys are chasing the calf around the pasture so that they can force feed him his milk.
Thankfully, the other’s like us. They look forward to bottle feeding time and eagerly await.
The kids are very excited about the new babies and are enjoying feeding them the big bottle.
Today we were quite busy. We took a trip to the butcher shop to pick up our meat. We took all the coolers and freezer bags we had and still needed more…so the children ended up packing some of the meat in plastic bags and putting it inside boxes. We froze on the way home with the air conditioner on high!
Here the boys are unloading the roller rack and packing our hamburger patties. We are very glad we opted to have 1/3 of our beef put into patties. They came out very nice…and are sure to be a convenience for me cooking.
They loaded the coolers on to a roller cart to take out to the trailer.
Almost ready to go…It took quite a while to pack over 600 lbs of meat.
A very proud 11 year old stands by the lamb meat he raised.
A very busy 2 year old pushing carts.
After a big day, we finally get the last of the meat into the freezer. We still have a lot of rearranging to do, but at least we have our own beef, pork and lamb stocked at home in our freezers! And Wow..that is an amazing feeling to raise your own food! Anyone wanna buy some meat?!!
Since moving to the farm, we have had a crash course with the concept of food going from the field to table…family style. I will be the first to admit that at first it was at first very strange concept. We, like the majority of Americans, were completely disconnected from knowing where our food came from. However, lately we have had plenty of opportunities to get use to the age old idea of family food production.
Yesterday, we took our steer to the butcher. He weighed in at 1,080 lbs! I was surprised he weighed so much! We also loaded up a pig weighing in at 205 and two lambs that each weighed 50 lbs. Had we of known the lambs were only 50 lbs, we probably would have waited a little while before processing them.
We were concerned about loading up the animals on the trailer. Our last experience with loading up an animal to take to the butcher was traumatic. Traumatic only because the pig would not hop up in the trailer like we were expecting him to. Only after lots of dragging, pushing and ear deafening pig squealing, was the 300 lb pig finally in the trailer. That day we found out that they don’t just hop up in the trailer when you want them too.
However, we learned a few things from last time. First, don’t feed them before you load them up. You will want them hungry so they come to the feed you lure them in with. Second, park the trailer in the field the night before and put a feeding trough in it. They will want to check it out.
The guys put a feeding trough and feed in the trailer the day before. They left the trailer open and in the field over night. The next morning our 12 year old went out to the trailer and put some more feed in the trough. He then ran up the hill to go find the cows and bring them down. When he arrived back at the trailer, to our great astonishment, the pig was waiting for him. He was lounging in the feed trough inside the trailer. WOW, that was easy! Our steer wasn’t as easy, but compared to what we were expecting…
Now we were ready to head off to the butcher. We had about an hour and a half truck ride with 8 children and a trailer full of animals. We arrived at the Yoder’s butcher shop and went inside to fill out our order. They hand you a sheet of paper for each animal you bring in and ask you how you would like him. Roasts or Steaks, thick or thin, tenderized or not, medium or hot sausage etc. etc. etc. After we filled out our orders, it was time to drive around back and unload.
The boys help unload.
Here they try to coax the cow off the trailer and into the weighing station.
Little ones look on with great interest.
Still trying to coax the cow…only this time out of the weighing station. I became a bit concerned when the executioner began to yell at the cow, “HOOO, YHAWW, I don’t have all day cow!”
Maybe I should get the children back in the truck??
The Yoder’s butcher shop is quite large. The children look on at the work taking place. Our 3 year old asked, “Is this the place where they take the cows apart?”
It was a great field trip…that is…for those who enjoy loading and unloading messy animals and watching people cut up meat. We will return in about 3 weeks to pick up our meat.
This week we have posted a lot of farm related material…that would be because it’s early spring (as of today) and there are a ton of things to do around a farm during “planting season”. As one of my younger children recently lamented, “If only we had more children…we could have more help…”
Today was a beyond gorgeous day. I sat in a lawn chair out by the garden and gave directions on what I wanted done. We had cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, potatoes and onions to get in the ground. By the days end, they had the garden planted with plants and had posted the poultry netting around the garden. The garden would have been gone by morning if we didn’t do something quick because the chickens spotted the fresh young plants and started eating them.
The boys also repaired the disconnected spring pipe. Water was gushing out of the pipe into the creek (it is supposed to be connected to another pipe running into our spring tank). The pipe was disconnected because of the amount of water and debris that rushed through the creek yesterday with all of our rain. The boys cleared the debris and reconnected the pipe. All is well.
The cows and goats were also moved over into a different section of the pasture. They enjoyed having fresh green grass as they had been grazing in another section for several weeks.
So far the mother hen hatched out 3 chicks: one died, two are doing great. We aren’t sure why the other eggs have not hatched.
This week, my husband and the boys also started taking out one of the driveways so we can run a fence across the front of the house. They worked on clearing brush, filling in other parts of the land with fill dirt, leveling out other parts. This is a huge project in the works.
…well, there are many reasons, but one good one is having the pure and simple freedom of raising our own beef cow in our own pasture.
He eats grass and drinks fresh spring water and has free access to all the sunshine he could ever want in his big old fashion pasture. He isn’t medicated, vaccinated, chemically coated or filled with hormones. He lives the peaceful life of a cow on a family farm.
Raising your own beef really is not that difficult and leaves one to wonder why in the world we ever allowed ourselves to become mixed up in the Frankenstein factory meat-lots anyway? Is it any wonder we are seeing the headlines in the papers this week about the largest beef recall in this nation’s history?
We hope to encourage other families to seek out alternatives to the regular factory system through either raising your own, buying from a family farm or utilizing a coop for your meat purchases. For our family, the road to being self-sufficient in the area of producing home grown meat, has been a long and greatly anticipated journey–one we haven’t arrived at yet, however, news such as these food recalls only furthers our resolve to think and grow with sustainable, generational intent.
After supper the boys get in a little light reading by the fire on a very blistery cold winter’s night….
These Salatin books win hands down in the minds of these farm boys: Salad Bar Beef and Pastured Poultry Profits. Tonight, we heard Salatin wisdom in the form of two boys excited about the books they were reading……The constant “Did you know..” followed by some piece of sustainable farming insight or some funny story or some great idea they are going to pursue became very entertaining.
Technically, these books aren’t written for 10 year old boys, however, these boys have used the Salatin books as well as the knowledge they have gained through growing practical experience here on the farm, listening to sustainable farming cd’s, reading farming magazines and other books and attending conferences to grow their knowledge and maturity well beyond their age—Well, they are ready to make a go at it!
They both are in the process of starting up business here on the farm. One with raising beef, one with poultry.
Tonight, I paid my debt on 5 dozen chicken eggs to the 12 year old after he asked the question over supper, “Do I get to charge a late fee to someone that doesn’t pay their bills?” I got the hint. Remember he submitted me a bill for his chicken eggs 2 days ago!
I caught myself thinking a very agrarian thought today as I looked out into the field and watched our cows munching on some fresh hay in the middle of a frigid January winter. The happy thought hit me, “Look, our milk and meat eating hay!”
I never use to see cows as anything else but a cow. However, the agrarian life has opened up an entire wing of thought and introspection like never before.
Not only that, but it has greatly expanded the subjects of conversation at the supper table.
In other farm news, our goats are ready to be picked up from the breeder. However, we have to wait until the weather warms up a bit or we might end up with goats that get pneumonia?? It is strange to think that not too many months ago, it was 100 degrees hotter than it is tonight. The 2 super baby chicks are doing great out in the milk barn in their warming box. We are still unsure if the milk cow was bred successfully, however, we should know in a few days. Our hens are laying up a storm thanks to the boys focused efforts in separating them from the roosters, giving them a light and lots of kitchen scraps for food. Our barn cat catches squirrels and the boys built a “plow” out of an old bicycle. Now they are just anxious for the ground to thaw so they can ”plow” in the garden and finish their paying job of hauling dirt for mom.
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