The sun is out today but it’s still frigid. Tomorrow it might get to 40! Wooohooo. Snow and ICE be gone please.
It’s been a long cold winter. Overall okay on the farm. 1 bad day really.
We only have the beef herd and 8 hens on the farm in the winter. The herd is a dozen mom cows, a bull and 2 years worth of offspring. New calves will start being born in early May.
One morning last week Matt was feeding the cows their hay with the tractor and found a yearling calf upside down in the big hay feeder. The bottom is rounded and it got stuck. They aren’t supposed to get in there anyways but with the deep snow it may have climbed in or pushed in. Anyways, he was alive and Matt got him out. I came down with some warm water and molasses for a quick energy boost and we got that into his belly with “cow funnel thingy”. He wouldn’t stand up but could stand if helped him. We assumed he was exhausted. We moved him to the hay barn in a rigged up stall so he could be on his own, a thick bed of hay under him and nobody to bother him. The next day he was better, he had moved around pooping and peeing in the area but wan’t on his feet. We got him up and he would stand and eat just fine but layed down. Perhaps a shoulder injury? The next day he was up eating and drking on his own. Good news. Then the next day he was down, bloated and his rectum was prolapsed. We put him down because this is not something it will recover from. The stupid crazy unexpected things that happen make for lousy days.
So the maple trees are tapped and a little sap did run last week, maybe a few gallons. Tomorow and this week has some really nice temperatures so we are prepping for maple syrup season.
I am starting peppers and green onions this week but wait on tomatoes and most other things until April 1st.
Update from the farm email and ordering information for returning customers will be going out soon.
I’ve been going over our numbers for 2 months and figuring where we can cut our expenses. I’ve found none and that’s because we have always operated a very lean operation since the beginning. So I have the unfortunate job of raising our prices. It’s always hard to do but if we want to keep doing what we do and how we do it then it has to be done.
We have always raised our animals in the best we that we can so they have good lives out on our land. We detest putting them on concrete, instead we have them grazing as much of the year as we can and putting up hay for the winter months. Our beef herd is entirely grassfed start to finish. They have never seen grain except for 2 mom cows we purchased a few years ago. Their previous farms did feed them some grain but not much. The rest of the mom cows have been born on the farm or came to the farm as babies. Few farms are around that feed their cows entirely on grass. Some decide they need to feed grain or fermented feeds. We have stuck firm to our 100% Grassfed practices and will continue to do so. It is not easy, it’s a challenge, it takes some skill and deliberate planning for utilizing the land we have. No molases or protein “tubs” either. They have free choice minerals from Fertrell, A mineral salt from Redmond and baking soda.
There is a bunch of misinformation out there about vaccinations for animals. We do not regularly vaccinate our herd, simply because there has been no need to at this time. Our bull calves when we castrated them at 9-12 months would get a tetanus shot but we don’t need to do that anylonger as we castrate them at a few days old. We have started giving them an “antibody” bolus for ecoli and coronavirus at birth because we had some calves wtih issues at birth, a couple died in the past 3 years. This should prevent any further issues. At some point we may have to immunize for other things but will wait for the veternairans to make recomendations. We have a closed herd so that prevents many things plus we. don’t have visitors on the fields.
We used to raise our own piglest with sows giving birth on the farm. We' had done that for many years until we had repeated issues sows not getting pregnant. We treated them with vaccines to see if htat would help and it did. 1 sow did finally get pregant but the other did not. Then she had a small litter. We decided to instead purchase piglets from friends of ours nearby who raise many sows with many litters a year. It works out better for us. Plus we only raise pigs in the summer months now and no more struggling to raise pigs in the winter. We were at the point that we would have built a barn for pigs to be in the winter and we just didn’t think it would be a good move financially or just for our quality of life. We find as we get older we have a strong desire to be smarter and work less hard. Our bodies are not made for it as we get past 50!
The piglets should start arriving on the farm soon and spend some time inside some woven wire fence while they acclimate to us and the farm. Then they have some weeks learing our electric net fencing before we move them out to areas on the farm where we need them to work. Pigs no matter how we do things, they always dig dig dig. Digging up our beef herd pastures is a bad thing. then the cows don’t have enough grass to eat, we can’t take hay off the pasture if it’s all rutted and nobody is happy except the pigs digging massive craters. So we instead move them in areas we want dug up AND grazed. Areas in our meadow and woods that have open areas that are full of brush or brambles along with grass. PIgs roote around, dig up the brush and later we can clear it out, seed it with cows grazing in afterwards. Each year we decided what areas to target to keep pigs busy and happy, plus we all get something from it. This means that we don’t raise as many pigs as we used to in the past. The land can’t handle the pressure.
We try to find that balance of what the land can handle and recover easily from, while giving the pigs and cows a darn good life with good food, sunshine, and good land under their feet. Plus we need a good life where we like what we do, can keep doing it, and make a fair living with enough money to make it profitable. Too many farms don’t make money or much of it, they don’t charge enough to stay in business. So they close the gate and it’s over with. We are trying to keep this all going so the land can be cared for, the animals have a good life while they are here, we have the honor of feeding people really good food that is nutritious, safe, healthy and from a farm that is sustainable for the future.
If you have heard of the mass indescriminate layoffs at the direction of a billionaire nobody voted for then you may have heard of the impact on the USDA. Agriculture is what feeds people and it has been under fire. We have lost thousands of highly qualified employees in the Ag sector for no reason. None were making outrageous amounts of money. Many had Masters and PHd’s. ALL were dedicated to their work. Many many many programs to help farmers are gone. Poof, gone. A few contracts will be paid for what has been done already but so far that is only on paper, no funds have been released even though it is court ordered. Farms will go under for this. Farms doing good work.
We beleve here that a farm must be financiall sustainable before it looks for money from the outside to assist it in going further. It shouid never be a handout. It should never be the situation where if you do this and stop polluting the water, or erroding land or treating animals like prisoners in cages, then you can get this $$$$. It should be if you are already doing things good things and get some assistance to do more. But wiping out contracts and agencies and work groups just because it has some words in it’s definition is wrong. So wrong. But then billionaires don’t care about where their food comes from.
Speaking of where your food comes from. On my social media feed came up a very popular meat subscription service. I’m always curious what is on offer and what they are giving away for free. How on earlth do they give away 3 pound of chicken breast or 3 pounds of ground beef in every box for FOUR YEARS. Wow. But then do they really make money? Or are they a way to lose money without paying taxes? Or however some hide their wealth. Anywyas, wouldn’t you be HORRIFIED to know their 100% Grassfed beef is not from the USA. Nope. It’s from AUSTRALIA. How do you like that?
Me? It’s pretty typical. It’s all about someone making money and the farmer once again getting screwed. Thanks B…….. box for supporting USA Grassfed farmers. You deserve nobody’s support.
So if buy from our farm and other local farms you can KNOW YOUR FARMER.
YOU CAN SEE THE FARM ITSELF AS YOU DRIVE BY OR STOP IN (at our farmstand in the summer).
YOU KNOW that the farm is spending their hard earned dollars locally and that they live here, breath here, drink the water here, walk the land here, they love their land. I hope that means more to you than beef shipped in from Australia. Oh is that shipped in frozen? oh no it’s not. It’s ALIVE on those massive cargo ships. ALIVE. but how does it get USDA processing? hmmmmmm simply it’s butchered on the freaking ship with an inspector on the ship? I’ve read that is how it happens or there are slaugher facilities at port? Nope that can’t be because there would be a quaranteen and testing if it was on our soil. So imagine a massive cargo ship full of beef cattle, shitting their way across the pacific Ocean for weeks. Maybe some go through the panama canal? It’s a question to find the answer to. But me? I’d pay more for homegrown goodness raised by Americans on American soil and proudly do it forever. I hope you agree and will continue to support our farm our family and those like us in the area. None of us are wealthy, most of us are not even super confortable but we do it because it matters.
Love and Peace and Respect to you.
Tricia
