Last night #12 had a little calf. She had him during one of the worst thunderstorms we’ve had in a while. The fields were already wet and three more inches of rain fell during the storms. We have flooding in all of our low-lying places, water standing in any place it can collect, and generally squishy footing everywhere else. With all this water, I think this little cutie should be named Noah. I just hope he gets to work on building that Ark because it looks like we are going to need it.
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Noah will be a keeper. He’s the son of Benjamin and #12. 12 is a baldy Angus that we’ve been keeping an eye on the last few months because she was BEYOND pregnant. In fact, here is the closest thing to a picture I have of her.
Well, without the guns. #12 was as wide as she was long with a very high body condition so it wasn’t all being pregnant. A lot of it was fat which means she’s thriving under our management system. Between Benjamin’s genetics, and hers, I think Noah will finish out to a really nice steer in a few years. That means come fall of 2016 we’ll have a really nice animal to sell, right when we hit our fall flush of grass to finish him on. Perfect.
I’ve been married 13 years, and I didn’t get here by being stupid.
Note I didn’t say we were out of beef, just beef we can sell. If you recall, SWMBO said that I could sell some of our personal beef from our latest cow. Well this weekend she came home, looked in the freezer, counted the number of children we have (Still at a 3 count. They are resilient little buggers) and declared that all the remaining beef belonged to her. Now I did protest a bit. I said, “But Honey, I have people who still want to buy. They have money. Their kids are starving and trying to live off of McDonald’s. Think about the children.”
I found that I was talking to myself at that point and stopped trying. SWMBO had already left the room and gone about her business. I do care about my customers, a lot. But I care where I sleep somewhat more so if you want some Ninja beef, you’ll have to get an invite over for steak night from SWMBO.
In all seriousness, thanks to everyone who bought our beef. I’d appreciate any feedback anyone has, good or bad. We’re pretty happy with how our latest cow turned out but it’s not my opinion that matters, it’s yours.
We’re growing more cows as fast as we can. I’m looking forward to having a freezer full of beef for everyone this fall.
I went to a silvopasture school put on by the extension service a few months ago. While there the property owner showed us a small area they were working on for a silvopasture test. She apologized that her prepared area wasn’t big enough but “it took so much work clearing” that she wasn’t able to do more with her available labor. Since she had cattle on her farm, I suggested that she bring her cows into her areas she wanted to clear. It would give them a day out of the sun, give them something to eat, and get all the undergrowth cleared out. Then she could simply do the chainsaw work on the trees she wanted to remove which wasn’t bad for her since her trees were pretty young and small.
Here is a panoramic view of the area directly behind our wood boiler.
Behind our house we have about 5 acres of woods. Its one of the areas of the farm where we do not run our cows and the woods show it. Brambles, undergrowth, etc. clog up all the edges. A few weeks ago I was looking at this area and thinking I need to get this cleared. Boy, that sure is going to take a lot of work. Then my own advice hit me, let the cows do it.
This is further down the wooded area, behind the playground.
The above pictures are the before pictures, taken just minutes before we turned the cows in.
And the after pictures. The area directly behind the playground.You can see the wood boiler on the left.
The picture above is where the cows entered the woods when we moved them. You can see the before shot in the video below.
Panoramic view from the playground
We left the cows in the woods for about 4 days. They lost some body condition because we left them in an extra day to get them to clear all that they could. Leaving them that extra day didn’t do them any favors but did result in some additional small areas being better cleaned.
The cows really like being in the woods. The crash around, rub on trees, and generally behave like kindergarteners turned loose on the play ground as you can see in the video. We watered via water hoses dragged from individual houses and wired the electric fence with our normal temporary electric wiring. The only escapes we had were the normal escapes of young calves which walk right under the wire and go explore. We received a few distressed calls from neighbors that “we had cows out!” Once we determined that is was just calves, everything calmed down and no action was needed.
We are going to run another paddock of woods, then hit our back pasture for a few days. The back pasture isn’t part of our normal rotation and it’s a decent hike from the main pastures to the back pasture. Running the cows through the woods cleans things up plus it means that we have a short walk to the back pasture. After the back pasture, we’ll likely run one more paddock of woods and then move the cows back to their normal rotation in the main pasture. Next summer I’ll definitely do this again as the cows enjoyed it, the kids enjoyed having the cows behind their houses, and the woods look much better now.
The cute little female calf, unfortunately still born.
Today Love, #15, had her new calf, a little female. Unfortunately, the calf was still-born. She was also undersized which means she hadn’t been developing normally. Normally I’d be worried what could have caused this, but Love is one of the cows that had had issues with bloat earlier this year. Love was treated by the vet along with #28. Both of them received some pretty serious medicine along with the usual manual work. After those two, we started treating them ourselves so I’m confident we won’t have any more issues. Well, I’m confident because they next two cows weren’t cows at all, but steers. Anyway, we don’t use near the medicines that the vet uses so ours shouldn’t have these issues. Nevertheless Love has lost her calf as a result of bloat and it’s a sad day on the farm today.
It’ll be sad this fall as well because Love is a really nice cow and she’ll be getting on the trailer with our other bloat cows to go to the sale barn. To quote another cattleman, “Love your children, forgive your enemies. Do neither for your cows.” That means when a cow has issues in your operation, you cull early and often. Love will be heading to the sale barn as soon as we get a chance to get them loaded.
The brisket, after brining and after having its rub appliedA man in his element, smoking a brisket
Our new neighbors, the Clarks are from the Southwestern part of the US. Daddy Clark, pictured above, is quite an amateur chef. The combination of coming from the Southwest and being a home chef means that cooking a brisket is simply in the DNA. With fresh brisket in the freezer it wasn’t long before the smoker was fired up.
The brisket, resting after smoking for about two hours.
I didn’t think to tell Mark that grass-fed beef cooks much faster than traditional grain fed beef. When I stopped back by to check on progress, the brisket was already out of the smoker and resting after about half the normal time. Fortunately Mark had control of his smoker and checked on the brisket to catch it before it was overdone. Something I was very glad of because they were kind enough to share some of the brisket with me. You see, I’m from Eastern NC. If you want a pig killed and grilled, I’m ok with that. Brisket is hamburger that hasn’t been ground according to my upbringing. The only way to get good brisket is to know someone from the right part of the world. Thank goodness those kind folks moved in next door.
A collage from Erin. The caption on Facebook said, “We met Sam, we fed Sam, we ate Sam.” Too funny.
You have to have a respect for the animals to have them born, raise them right, then kill them and eat them. You also have to have a bit of a twisted sense of humor. I’m glad to see the new neighbors seem to have both in spades.
Yesterday when we went to milk Benjamin was extremely interested in Dottie. In fact when we brought her back to the pasture Ben met us half way back because he simply walked through the paddock fence looking for his sweetie. Today, he paid her no mind so I do believe she has been bred now. That means a few things.
One, we will dry Dottie off the end of February to give her two months with no milking and no calf at her side. This will let her recover some body condition.
Two, we didn’t have a repeat of Maggie. Our milk cow is bred back with no issues, no broken back.
Three, Benjamin is not exactly faithful. This morning he was chasing Love, the cow, trying to woo her to his affections. He paid Dottie no mind. He’s kind of a love ’em and leave ’em kind of man.
This isn’t the rainbow of love, but it is a rainbow I saw a few days ago just down from the farm. You don’t get one of these every day so I wanted to share it somewhere on the blog.
Sorry it took too long to get the pricing up. I’ve updated the beef page of our website with pricing.
For those of you who have contacted me to buy some beef, now is the time. I’m traveling all day today but will be back this evening if someone wants to pick up beef. I’m around the rest of the week and this weekend as well. Just contact me via email at dan@ninjacowfarm.com to make arrangements to stop by.
I don’t expect this beef to last too long based on the people who’ve already told me they want to buy some. It’s first come, first serve.
I mentioned Benjamin in this morning’s post and it occurred to me that I had not actually made a post about Benjamin. Benjamin is a bull we purchased last year from a fellow cattleman who was getting out of the business. Benjamin is a Spring Field bull which means he’s a superstar, bred for performance. When we give tours, even people who have no idea about cows remark about Benjamin and how massive he is.
Benjamin, grazing next to a year old ninja cow (Belted Galloway cross)
There is a bit of an exaggeration in the above picture because Ben is a bit closer but it’s close enough to get the idea. Benjamin is easily twice the size of the year old steer beside him.
Benjamin enjoying a back scratch
I noted in some previous posts that the flies were especially bad this year. We did do something about it. We built the contraption pictured above, with Benjamin as the Vanna White model. This mobile back scratcher lets the cows rub the areas where the flies congregate and treats them to try to keep the numbers down. In case you’re wondering, the wheels and tires are from the bent axle we replaced on our little trailer. Nothing goes to waste. As you can see Benjamin barely fits under the metal cross bars. The year old calf in the first picture can’t even reach the white part to scratch his back.
As nice of a bull as you’d ever meet. He literally eats out of our hands.
Benjamin is a good bull, and will be with us another 18 months or so before he moves on to a new owner. At that time, Boyd will take over as our herd bull and we will sell of Curious so there’s no incest. That’s assuming father and son can get along for that long.
We’ve really added some nice genetics into our herd with Benjamin and that should continue with Boyd into the future. Boyd likely won’t be the specimen that Benjamin is, but after what happened to Maggie, I think I’ll take a bit smaller bull.
Little #43, born just a few hours before, trying to enjoy a nap.
Wednesday of this week we were blessed with another little bull calf here on the farm. This is another Benjamin calf. For those that don’t know, Benjamin is our bull. Benjamin is HUGE and as nice of a bull as you’d want to meet. He eats out of my hand, gentle as a lamb and is usually the last one out of the paddock or to the food when we feed. However every once in a while a bull calf will test him and end up on his butt for the effort, usually after doing a flip or two. He does make some pretty calves though.
Baldy markings on #43
Benjamin is a full-blooded black Angus, with no white markings on him at all. Our cows are baldy Angus, with white faces and some white markings. It’s neat to see the calves which have smaller white markings but Angus shining through.
A perfectly bad picture. I couldn’t get the calf to stand in the right place.
I didn’t want to take too long at this point. We had just ear tagged this calf and banded him (that’s how you castrate them young) so besides being born, he’d already had quite a day. I didn’t want to pose him too.
Ear tag for the new little calf, just before being applied.
Our freezer, full to the brim with pasture bred, born, and finished beef.
Friday Spork and I took the new reefer truck(that’s a refrigerated truck to you snickering out there) and picked up Sam from Chaudhrys. We had enough truck to pick up 30 cows so I was a bit worried we didn’t get enough meat from one cow because the meat looked pretty puny in the big truck. However when we got home and started packing the freezer, we filled it to overflowing and had to put the rest into another freezer. I guess there was more there than I thought.
In talking to SWMBO this morning, she’s agreed that we could sell some of the beef we have to make a bit more room in the freezer just to be organized. If you’ve been asking me when we’ll have beef, now is the time. Shoot me an email if you want some. We have all kinds of cuts and will be updating pricing on the website as soon as possible.
Now, onto the rest of the story.
Spork riding back from picking up Sam, dead asleep.
As you can see, not only did Spork get to ride along (I love home schooling) but he was able to catch up on his sleep as well. Don’t let the snooze fool you. He worked hard on each end of the trip and was a joy to ride along with for the hour trip each way. As you can see we had the windows down on this trip. It was mid-July in North Carolina and it was about 84 degrees, low humidity, and a light breeze. It just doesn’t get any prettier.
Chaudhry’s did a great job with our cow, packaging, communication, etc. The only hiccup we had was they didn’t box our meat for us, which I’m used to. It’s not even remotely a problem, except I didn’t have boxes with me so we had to scramble a bit but it all worked out fine. Next time I’ll have plenty of boxes with me so we’ll be prepared.
Breakfast of champions, natural grass-fed beef, scrambled cheese eggs from our chickens, and fresh cantaloupe.
We had dinner plans last night and tonight so I couldn’t whip up a test steak to see how everything came out which was driving me crazy. What to do? How about steak and eggs for breakfast? The verdict? Holy cow! Quite simply the best grass-fed beef I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some “good” grass-fed beef. I cooked these steaks the way you DON’T cook grass-fed beef, fast and with high heat. The steaks were tender, juicy, and flavorful. It’s really hard to get fat into a grass-fed cow but with our methods it seems to have worked in this case very well. When you consider that our cows receive NO COMMERCIAL FEED, no GMO, no hormones, etc, etc it’s pretty exciting that we can finish a cow to this quality. Fat equals flavor and fat is what you need to cook with high heat. We have fat in these ribeyes and they are wonderful. We have a number of ribeyes so we can spare some, along with sirloin steaks, hamburger, stew beef, etc. SWMBO has decreed that no filet mignon’s (her favorite cut) will be sold so I apologize in advance if you want some of them.
Ribeye steaks, ready to be cooked.
Here you get a better look at the marbling in these ribeyes. Ribeye is usually the most heavily marbled cut and has the most flavor. That’s why it’s a prime cut. High end cattlemen have ultrasound machines where they measure the fat on the ribeye before the process the cow to make sure there is enough for the cow to grade out well. Of course we don’t do that here and rely on the old eyeball and experience to tell when a cow is ready to process. Sam looked ready and boy was he. This is a beautiful ribeye with lots of white flecks in the muscle. Those flecks are the marbling that we are after. Seeing that much marbling is what caused me to cook the steaks hot and fast. Our steaks will stand up to the grill.
Cotton enjoying her breakfast
Of course we couldn’t leave out our hard-working guardian dog. After we’d finished our breakfast, Cotton got to clean up all the scraps and bones. She was a happy dog this morning.
