We had snow before Christmas, it left and still can’t stick around…. yet! It’s wet and muddy and soggy and depressing outside. Oddly I can see green grass in parts of the fields and gardens. I planted a very late cover crop in the market gardens and they are growing in January. It’s. winter wheat and winter rye which can grow in cold conditions.

I’ve spent many days making gallons of beef stock then freezing it for easy meal prep during the year. I also make chicken stock but only after I cook a chicken. I had the beef bones on hand from 2 older cows we had butchered this year. I like to do these things when it’s yucky outside. I use my instant pot- thank you to Lauren who for a few years told me how great it was. I’ve been a “user” for 4-5 years now. I don’t use the instant pot for much cooking though. Stock/broth is a must for me in one. So fast and easy. Then if I’m cooking kidney or black beans for chilli our soup. I also like using it for beef short ribs and pork spare ribs if I don’t want to spend time tending the grill (which I rarely do).

I’ve also been making lots of tallow and lard soaps plus some herb infused lard salves. I’m to the point I need to reorder supplies and more containers.

I finally have a shampoo bar that I like and my hair likes. Now to have some others try it.

It’s made with no coconut or palm oil which is not easy to do. The main ingredients are tallow, sunflower oil and castor oil. No conditioner needed, just a vinegar rinse is needed to balance the hair ph.

3 weeks and it’s good so far. Kind of nice to make something with little packaging!

I’ve seen lots of farm groups and programs pushing for farmers to do what is called Bale Grazing. It’s just a hot newish trendy term where instead of cows being in winter quarters or a sacrific area or a barn in the winter they are kept out on pasture grazing leftover stockpiled grasses if there are any and the farmer rolls out round bales for them to eat. These eating areas are moved around the farm. The idea is their manure is being applied to the field themselves. We’ve done this before when we first moved to the farm. Back when we really needed to renovate the pastures but the weather was very different. It was cold and the ground was well frozen. We also barely had a dozen head. Now we at times have 40 head still a small number but with only 75 high quality acres that are suitable in the winter it’s not do able for us. We do have about 130 that we graze at times from May-November, not all of that is where we want thousands of pounds of bovine destroying. They will destroy it too.

We finally have our pastures in really productive state and no way are we letting cows out there in this soggy wet warmish weather. They would destroy 11 years of work is very short amount of time- in just weeks it would all be mud.

So for bale grazing, it’s not for every farm. It really depends on the weather, the farm layout, and the farmer’s goals.

What we do now, and this can change any year and for whatever reason that suits our farm, the cows have a new 2 year old barn that we built where a there used to be a gravel bed. It’s well draining gravel so no deep mud. The barn is 3 sided and we use wood chips from the farm that we make for their bedding. We catcher most of that fertility as they hang out in the barn. That is then removed, put in windrows and composted down in the summer then applied the next year for fertilizer for our gardens and fields. The cows are fed hay outside and loaf around inside when they want to. The mom cows are on one side sepearated by fencing so they can see their children. The other side is the all the younger stock the almost 1 year old and almost 2 year olds. We do this because we need to wean the calves in the winter so the mother’s can stop producing milk and put energy into growing the next calf. Plus the mom’s are pigs and will push out the young ones away from the feeders. We found the young ones were eating but not as much as they shoulld have been. They are feed every other day and it takes about 1 1/2 days for both groups to clean up their hay. If we hit really cold weather or for some reason they are finishing way to early we can feed them more. There is very little waste of hay and they all have full bellies. For 2 years we’ve been doing it this way in the new barn, each year the calves come out of winter larger and in better shape than before we did this. This is what works for us. Again it’s different for all farms so there is not right way or wrong way. We want them content- they seem to be. Calm- oh they are relaxed. Safe- they are nice and secure from most anything. We also want them to come ouf of winter in really good condition- they have been. Plus the farmers are happy and fields are resting. Its sooooooooo wet out there now. So wet and that herd would be making mud if we let them out. They like to make mud but they sure don’t want to be stuck in it. Nobody does.

So how about some snow for a few months? Okay? You hear me Mother Nature- a little snow……. please!