Even on bad farm days, they aren’t this bad
Sunday on the farm
Yesterday was a good day on the farm. I was worried about a couple of cows who were feeling poorly combined with the bone chilling cold we had on Saturday night. I didn’t sleep well worried that I’d find a dead cow in the morning.
At daybreak, I took a walk through the pasture and counted heads and everyone was accounted for. While it was cold, and a few cows were still looking a bit sad, everyone was up and moving and ready for the day. I made sure to get them some fresh produce and fresh hay so they got a full belly first thing. Then it was back to the house to make breakfast for everyone (eggs and bacon, yeah!) and then Spork and I headed over to feed the pigs.
My guys had hooked us up, pre-filling all the boxes for us so all we had to do was move some boxes around, move some produce around, and bring the trailer out of the barn where we’d stored it so the produce didn’t freeze. It only took us a few hours to get everyone fed and clean up the cardboard and get it compacted. Then it was off to the market to pick up the day’s produce from our farmers. Sunday’s are the light days at the market and winter is lighter still, so picking up on Sunday was pretty much a formality, netting about 1/4 of a box of food. Probably less than 200 pounds.
After picking up, we headed over to our leased farm where the row crop farmer had planted rye grass as his winter cover crop. We’ve been planning on grazing over there this winter but it’s been so wet I wouldn’t think of turning a bunch of cows loose to cause damage. But now it’s dried out for a week or so and spring is coming so if we are going to graze it, now is the time. I had visions of wind blown fields of rye grass up to my butt, or at least my ankles. Turned out it was loose soil with green fuzz on it. The rye was only an inch or two high and pretty loosely spaced. That’s actually ok because turning the cows onto a field of green grass with no transition period would be bad for their digestive system. It would give them a terrible case of scours so limited grass along with hay might actually work to our favor. Miguel and I will take a look this week.
Back at the house, we parked the truck, put all the equipment away, and went to treat Betsy, our milk cow. She was due for her follow up and final shot of special milk cow (read horribly expensive) medicine. Erin had left her in the barn for me so all I had to do was tie her off with a lead rope, then hold her while trying to give her a shot behind the ear. Whoever decided that was the best place, I don’t know. Even tied tightly, she still danced all over the place which makes it even more fun since she has horns. Eventually I got it done without getting gored and we moved onto trying to get water to the cows.
The water lines were frozen solid so there was no way to get water to the trough short of hauling it in five gallon buckets. That’s doable, but the cows will drink it faster than you can haul it in. Then I recalled we had some old water hoses we hadn’t used in years. They would be dry because all of the water would have evaporated. We hiked all over the farm and pulled old water hoses out of storage to try and get one run long enough to reach the trough. In the end, we had more than enough hose, however someone must have used one recently because it did indeed have water, correction, ice, in it. No go. So I got the bright idea of pulling the water hose into the shop where we could warm it up with the wood stove.
As we were just beginning to work on that project, my phone rang. Turns out a couple was sitting at our gate, wondering why we were not open. I point you, kind reader, to the second question on our First Timers FAQ.
Can I just stop by unannounced?
Right now, no. We are looking to add regular store hours on Saturdays, hopefully starting in the spring of 2016 but for now we need to know you are coming. When you have an appointment, we are expecting you and greet you with warm welcoming smiles. Stopping by suddenly, we tend to frown and look grumpy.
I tried mightily, but I was grumpy. I’ve got frozen water lines, cows with no water, and now folks trying to make up their mind what product they want while I’m watching the clock tick. I probably scared them off forever but I did my best. It’s not like I didn’t warn folks about the grumpy version of me, in writing, in advance.
It wasn’t just me though, they explained they planned on having dinner at the Angus Barn, on Valentine’s day, with no reservation. And they had driven from Jacksonville, NC to have said dinner. They had ended up at Tripps in Garner after being turned away at the Barn. I guess they were spur of the moment people. They were a young couple, I guess experience will teach them over time. Was I ever that young? God, I don’t remember being so.
After we saw them off, meaty goodness in hand, we went back to the water lines. Everything was pulled inside and a fire made. Then Spork had the idea of turning the cows into the pasture with the pond. A marvelous idea! We hiked down to the pond, opened the gates allowing access, made sure everything else was secure, and called the cows.
They studiously ignored us. As in they turned their butts to us and pretended they didn’t hear us. We tried talking to a few of the older cows, explaining the water, the grass, the freedom! Meh was the response.
Defeated, we went to the house where the kids and I played penny poker. After taking all their money (that I’d given them to start), I explained statistics and how playing cards isn’t exactly a get rich quick scheme you should plan on. While we played, we watched through the window as the cows slowly discovered the new pasture they had access to. They were very excited and soon were all in having a large time.
We finished the night with a batch of Ninja Cow pork chops (awesome) and a Valentine’s day chocolate fondue party after. Finally we watched The Martian, which SWMBO, Spork, and I had all read. I made it to Sol 45 before I passed out, and woke to find Mark Watley having just been rescued. I turned over and went back to sleep and slept all the way till 3am. Time to start a new day. There is snow and ice coming and animals need tending all over again.
This all skips the three hours I spent in the office before anyone got up, or the texts, calls, emails, etc from customers, the vet, board members, and friends. Do you know how many people told me I’d be bored when I “retired”? Yeah right.
Congratulations, you’ve crashed our server!
Earlier this week, we had our server go down temporarily. I called our hosting company and after 15 minutes on the phone they said, “Meh”
I was displeased.
They said we probably had too much traffic and that caused the problem? Really? For our dinky little farm site, you server couldn’t handle it? Yeah right. We’re on a shared hosting server. Probably somebody hosting a porn site and brought down the whole server but they don’t want to admit it.
Today, our weekly newsletter went out at 8am, as scheduled. At 8:05 the server went down, HARD. I hopped into the management panel and all the measurements were spiked past the red. Unlike Spinal Tap, hosting servers don’t go to 11. They stop hard at 10. Oops, maybe that guy was right. I quickly upgraded our server and within a minute all the measurements were back down in the green and things were running smoothly. Oops, I guess the first tech support guy was right. I owe him an apology.
I’d already called tech support this morning as I was logging in and upgrading and this guy took some time to go over some usage statistics with me. He ended by congratulating me, saying that I’d accomplished something he rarely sees, driving this much traffic to a small site like ours. He said if we blow it up again, that we could upgrade again and take care of it. He also said if I blew up the server again with that much traffic, I should be proud.
Heck, now I’m trying to blow the stupid thing up. What is wrong with me? I’ve definitely gone over to the nerd dark side.
#67 is born, to mom #66, formerly #14
We had a new little winter calf born on the farm. Momma, #66, formerly #14 (she lost her ear tag) had a beautiful baby boy calf who we tagged #67. It’s odd that mom and son have ear tags one number apart but that’s the luck of the draw. This mom calved on February 9th last year so she is definitely a winter calver. Hopefully she’ll transition to a warmer calving time at some point on her own but for now she seems content to getting jiggy with the bull when the buds burst forth in the spring.
For those of you who’ve taken a tour in the past week, you’ve been able to meet this little guy. He’s definitely a cute one.
We need your input on a new logo
In case you haven’t been by the store in a few weeks, the girls are starting their own bakery to bake and sell fresh goods on Saturdays.
On the right, you can see the cookies in the covered glass. For now we have to bake them in a commercial kitchen but we’re working on our home kitchen inspection. Once that is in place, we’ll add breads and other goodies that the girls will learn how to bake, then perfect (dad and mom are the taste testers) and then bring out for sale. There is talk of me teaching them my fresh baked pita recipe when tomato and cucumber season get here. Yum!
As we prepared to get these girls started as bakers, we of course had to do the most important part first.
No not safety. Safety is third.
We had to create a new logo for their new bakery business. We already have a cool logo for the farm.
We couldn’t let the bakery have anything any less cool so we went back to the source of our farm logo, 99designs.com.
The first step of a new logo was to come up with a name for the bakery, which SWMBO did immediately. “Mojo Daggers Bakery”. The name is a play on nicknames that our girls have. You can get the story behind those names when you stop by. They have so many nicknames now I can’t even keep up.
The important part is we had a name, and it was now time for a logo. After a week of work with 99designs, we have some top choices available and we now need your help. We have a poll up and running where you can pick the logo that you like the best and give us your feedback. Rate the designs, offer critiques and criticisms in the text boxes. We can still tweak the designs at this point so anything you like or don’t like is fair game.
You can view the poll here.
As you can see, and as you would expect, these are not your typical little girl bakery logos.
There are only four designs and the girls would love your input. Please take a minute and let us know what you think.
We have new products in the store!
We just received a delivery of all kinds of new goodies. Butter, chocolate milk, cream, whole milk, and there is even talk of ice cream!
We are fortunate that we’ve found a dairy and creamery that we had a connection with, although we didn’t know it. Our chicken farmer Brittany Ridge Farm, whom we love, just happens to be related to the folks over at Simply Natural Creamery. I didn’t even know this but when I asked Brittany Ridge about the dairy near them, the response was, “Oh yeah, that’s my sister.”
Small world.
With the hookup of our chicken farmer, we got instant access to the full product line! Even better, now when I get chicken, I can get dairy at the same time since they can deliver both, or if I’m picking up, I can pick up both. Awesome for me, and for you.
Simply Natural has a herd of Jersey cows, which is what we used for years on our farm. The have more cream and a richer milk than traditional dairy cows. The downside is they don’t have the volume of milk of a traditional dairy cow, which is why most folks wouldn’t use them. We’ve always believed in quality over quantity so we were excited to find out about this creamery and even more excited to find out we could get product from them.
The butter is awesome, just like I make myself from our own cows milk, and the chocolate milk is to die for. There is heavy cream, whole milk, and I even managed to get a few gallons of ice cream that went straight to our house freezer (sorry folks, maybe next trip 🙂
I know we’re fully booked for tours this weekend but there are slots to just stop by and grab some loot. Click on “The Princess” as your provider and get some dairy goods before they are gone.
You can book tours with Spork now
“It’s time to get a real job. You’re 11 now.”
Spork is getting tired of riding along on tours, listening to me babble on and on about grass and cows and blah blah blah. And we have people booking weeks in advance to get by here on a Saturday. So we are doubling our capacity for tours on Saturdays by having Spork start giving his own tours.
When you book a tour, you’ll now see “Spork” as one of your providers. His tour will be a walking tour as we only have one John Deere Gator for tours but his tours will be great for kids because he will get you up close and personal with farm animals, farm kids, and what it’s like to grow up and work on a farm. Plus, he doesn’t go on and on about grass.
If you’ve been trying to get in to see the farm and can’t find a slot in the schedule, his schedule is currently wide open for this coming Saturday.
He is a real farmer and on the one solo tour he’s done, the customer gave a glowing review so we’re going to try him out giving tours. Come and give a young man a chance to work on Saturdays.
So how’s it going with the new milk cow?
Man, I forgot how hard it is the first week of milking a new cow! While both Betsy and Bernie are gentle and well behaved, they have been a handful, quite literally. Betsy, who apparently wears a halter only as adornment, isn’t quite up to being led anywhere, by anyone. So far our milking team has consisted of three people. One pulling, one pushing, and one handling Bernie. With three people working, sweating, swearing, and occasionally laughing, we’ve been able to get her into the milking parlor each day so far. The score so far is:
Betsy pooped on my arm. +1 Pooped on Erin’s shoulder. +1 Peed on Erin. +1 That’s three for Betsy.
We’ve milked her twice. That’s two for us.
Yep, so far, the cow is winning although I’m not sure that pee should count for a full point. Seems unfair to me but I didn’t make the rules.
Bernie has made a point of staying close to mom through all of this, as you would expect. In fact, the only way we’ve really moved Betsy any distance is to use Bernie as bait.
When it came time to put Betsy and Bernie outside for the day, Betsy, who didn’t want to be in the barn, was quite certain that she didn’t want to be outside the barn. I was the one holding the halter and Bernie was scampering about having fun, as kids will. Every time Bernie ran behind something, Betsy became agitated. That means that she went from four legs pulling against me, to suddenly running forward to catch sight of Bernie. Since Betsy came equipped with horns, the immediate issue is getting a face full of horns attached to 1000 pounds of cow who is suddenly in a hurry. So far I’ve managed not to get gored but it is exciting, to say the least.
So once we finally drug Betsy to the temporary paddock, via the bait pictured above, we found that in addition to not being halter trained, she also isn’t hot wire trained. Within about 20 seconds she was out of the paddock, Bernie had also ducked into the paddock with the main herd and mom was quite upset. The entire herd was chasing the new calf around and causing quite a ruckus. Oh, and Mr. Dan. Your customer is here. For about 20 minutes it looked a lot like this.
Luckily Miguel arrived and with Erin, Vicente, Miguel, and Lucy everyone got back where they were supposed to be while I gave a tour to a nice family who was quite keen to see the hilarity of a farm running off the rails while I was trying to distract them.
The next morning, Betsy was just as keen to milk as before, which was not at all. It takes about a week of successful milking before it becomes a habit. Since we really haven’t had a fully successful day yet, the clock hasn’t really started. We’re getting milk, but we aren’t getting her happy in the milking parlor yet. Today I’m going to get some different feed as she doesn’t like ours. Hopefully that will entice her.
Ahh, new milk cows. How quickly you forget all the fun.
We’re back in the milk business
Yesterday Erin and I travelled to Creedmoor to look at a milk cow that was for sale. She’s just freshened on the 21st of January and she looked pretty good from the pics.
After driving about 45 minutes, we arrived at a closed farm where we met the farmer’s wife, Linda. Linda’s husband had injured himself and he wasn’t able to milk anymore. Linda loved milking, but was tied up making a living off the farm as many farmers are. Therefor they were selling this freshly freshened milk cow and her little bull calf. Erin and I looked the cow over as best we could and by all accounts she looked great. The calf was cute as a button and everything seemed like a decent deal. Well, she was a little expensive but with what happened to Ginger I wasn’t in a negotiating position. The cow is a Heinz 57 of a breed. She’s 1/2 Jersey, 1/4 Dexter, and 1/4 Holstein. The calf is even more of a mutt with a makeup of 1/4 Holstein, 1/4 Jersey, 1/4 milking Devon, and 1/4 Main Anjou. Phew!
As we talked a few minutes, I noticed that the bull calf peed out “his” backside. Now I’m no expert, but bull calves pee from a different spot. Heifer calves pee out the back. Erin noticed the same thing so we asked Linda if the calf was a bull. “Sure is!” We’d already agreed to the deal so we pointed out she was a heifer and explained to Linda what she was selling. Heifer calves are worth a lot more. She agreed to go ahead and we paid her and backed the trailer up. The calf was a tiny fuzzball so when she got near the trailer I scooped her up and plopped her into the trailer. I then walked her into the front so I could close the cut gate and then coax mom in the trailer with me. As I was walking forward, I felt the trailer move and looked back. Mom had hopped in with me and was ambling forward. I closed the cut gate and Erin closed the rear gate and we had both cows loaded easier than I’ve ever loaded anything or anybody. It took about 5 seconds.
We put mom and daughter into the barn last night and we’ll begin working with her, and milking her today.
Both cows are really cute. The mom’s name is Betsy and the calf’s name was Bernie since Linda thought she was a boy. I was going to keep Bernie and just say it was for Bernice but SWMBO has declared that’s a terrible name so we’ll see. So far they both are sweet but as they say the proof is in the pudding. We’ll see how milking goes. She may be a devil cow in disguise!
Wow, was it busy on Saturday! Thank you everyone!
Last year I had some people come for tours from NC State University. As we were talking they asked me how many tours I gave.
“About 3-4 a week.”
They were quite impressed and complimented me on being so busy and taking so much of my time to educate people on what farmers do and where food comes from.
Yesterday we had 18 bookings, IN ONE DAY. We had one last minute cancellation (for a hospital trip instead) and one last minute booking to maintain 18 groups. We had the entire family working, including SWMBO, and we were still behind. There was only one melt down (The Princess got confused on a large order and couldn’t find me), no lunch, and church after. We sold over two dozen of the girls cookies. We had one overcharge which I’ve already apologized for and credited and I don’t know what else will pop up today. We did more business yesterday than a store I used to sell to would do on Saturdays. And they were a real store, in downtown. We’re just a little room on a farm with some kids working the store.
For all of you that came out, waited patiently while The Princess tried to remember how to round up or down on a weight, or helped her when she charged something wrong, or waited while she grabbed me. Thank you. The reason we do all this is so those girls can learn to work. Those girls are 9 and 7 now. In 10 years they’ll be 19 and 17. Can you imagine how employable they’ll be? How comfortable they’ll be under pressure? How good they’ll be at rounding, or addition, or any of the 1000 other things they’ll learn working every Saturday. Do you think when they take their next math lesson they’ll pay a little more attention since they’ve actually used math in the real world?
I had an order this week from a restaurant that was as much business as all the business we did on Saturday. It took me a couple of hours, by myself, to handle the whole thing. I probably made more money on that order than on all of Saturday’s business.
But the picture above is why we do what we do. We’ll keep working the store, and getting better at it. And we, all of us, thank you for your business.