When we had the NC Cattleman’s Association come to visit, we had an unexpected bonus. Along with the cattlemen, we had some grazing experts who joined the group and did some instruction with our pasture as the model. I not only finally learned how my grazing stick works, I also found out what another one of our grasses is in our pasture. We know we have Bermuda grass, crab grass, fescue, and Johnson grass. What I didn’t know was we also have a lot of dallisgrass. I’d never even heard of dallisgrass so I did some searching on Google. What I found didn’t make me feel good at all. The first 10 or so links on Google were all about how to kill dallisgrass. It sounded like it took 2-4-D, napalm, or pigs to get rid of it. It also sounded like everyone was trying to kill it and it was just behind kudzu on the lovability scale of flora and fauna.
Then I was lucky enough to come across this forum. Looks like some people love dallisgrass, namely cattlemen. That’s a relief to me because a key part of our management strategy is to support what grows naturally vs. trying to seed or cultivate certain types of grasses. What grows naturally is pretty hard to kill with drought or pressure. Cultivated stands are a different story. If we had the kudzu of grass we’d have a problem but I should have known it was ok, as looking at the grazing and looking at the cows performance is all that I need to know about our management system. Our cows are fat and happy, dallisgrass or no.
Dottie, when she was only normally skinny. Not super skinny.
We’ve finally heard back from the vet. Dottie is ok as far as any testing goes but she isn’t gaining any weight to speak of. We’ve addressed her teeth, given her food on her own, and stopped milking her but she’s still skinnier than I’d like. For now we are going to keep her on pasture with her calf and continue forward not milking till we see some improvement in her body condition. Not the most profitable way to handle things, but certainly better than overtaxing Dottie. When and if we start milking again, we’ll have that news here as well.
The kids, having a completely non-healthy breakfast
If you’ve read our blog any amount of time, you know that we are way over the top on nutrition, especially as it concerns our kids. So what gives with the above picture? Was this a proof-of-life pic from their kidnappers? A photoshopped picture to torture SWMBO?
Nope, it’s just a breakfast out with dad. You see, before I learned about nutrition and began farming seriously, I ate all the things that “normal” people ate. While most of that food is gladly in my past, there are some foods that are a treat and we indulge on rare occasions. Well, not rare if it’s ice cream. Being from North Carolina, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, specifically when the “Hot Doughnut Now” sign is on, is one of those treats. I mentioned to my girls something about doughnuts and through conversation realized that while I’d take Spork when he was about 6, I’d never exposed my girls to the horrible goodness that is a warm Krispy Kreme doughnut. I told them I’d take them someday and proceeded about the rest of my day.
The next morning I received a phone call while standing in the pasture from The Princess, asking me where I was and when we were leaving for Krispy Kreme. Since Justin had an entire couple of days of experience under his belt, I left him to run the farm and took the kids to Krispy Kreme for a doughnut.
Seeing doughnuts made is a treat at a real Krispy Kreme location.
The kids (and even I) got a hot doughnut and had a large time talking to the other patrons and watching the doughnuts go through the machine, visible through the glass in the store. Justin managed not to kill himself and the farm was ok when we got home. All in all it was a morning well spent.
Just in case you’re wondering, Spork and I both felt queasy after eating a doughnut. Apparently we aren’t cut out for this much sugar and carbs anymore. The girls seemed to be ok. I figure we’ll go back again when they are dating, which should be in about 30 years. 🙂
Also, as you can tell by the pictures of Justin in other posts, he needs to eat something more than he does. We sent him home with some produce from the market, some grape juice from the pressing, and the rest of the dozen doughnuts. I turn 70 pound calves into 1100 pound cows. Surely I can get some meat on Justin before his internship is up.
Today we harvested our Muscadine grapes that grow here on our farm. When I moved to the farm in 1980, the grape vines were already here and were already very old. Over time they were neglected and nearly died off but a few years ago we rehabilitated the vines, built new trellises and began a multi-year process of bringing them back into production. This year was our first payoff year and today we harvested our 2014 grape harvest.
What’s the most important part of picking grapes? Eating them!
We had lots of help with our grapes. All three kids, SWMBO, Dustin, and Justin were all on hand to pick grapes. A goodly portion went to pay the help but we still managed to harvest a heavy load.
Wildflower and The Princess, picking grapesSpork had his own way of getting to the grapes.Dad did his share of picking.Spork and our haul of grapes. At least what was left after everyone snacked. We had about 3 bushels, not counting the scuppernong grapes we also picked.Apple press, being used as a grape press.
Remember the apple press? We realized that with this many grapes, we needed a larger press to handle the volume. The apple press we had restored was made for volume so we pressed it into service as a grape press.
The girls working the press.We all got a workout on the press, Justin maybe most of all.
It took three of us to work the press most of the day. But then we had the idea of tie the press to the gator, so that it was anchored securely and we could concentrate on just cranking the press down. Worked like a champ and we made good progress after our rope work.
Of course, the kids continued to help.Everyone had their fill of grapes today.
The final result? Four gallons of grape juice, plus 10 gallons of hulls in the two fermenters starting to percolate away. And some sticky, happy children.
When Justin and I went to move the cows this morning, we found a new little calf roaming around the paddock. She was already up and moving, dry and nursing so she must have been born late in the afternoon or during the night.
Up close and personal with #46. Prior to getting her ear tag.#46 getting a break from all the cows pushing and shoving, and instead coming over to help us feed.
New born calves are so cute. They bumble around and let pretty much anyone pet them. At least for the first day after they are born. That’s why we make sure to get out there immediately and get an ear tag and a band on them if they are a boy. We hadn’t made it to the barn to get an ear tag yet to tag this new little girl, but while we were feeding she decided to come over and check out the truck. I had plenty of opportunity to pet her and give her a good rub. She’s cute and will be one of our momma cows in the future.
#46, now officially numbered with her new earring.Mom checking out her daughter after we’d put the ear tag in.Â
On Friday we hosted a pasture walk for the NC Cattleman’s Association. We were expecting about 20 people but when the buses started arriving we had over 50 for the tour. So many that it was tough to keep everyone together and to be heard by everyone as I explained what we do and how we do it.
I spent some time showing where we’d repaired our pasture with the help of Wake County Soil and Water. Fortunately everything was holding nicely and growing well so we had something that looked good to show off.
Everyone was very nice and asked really good questions. It was an honor to host the Cattleman’s Association meeting. I just wish I’d have more time to visit with people and to learn more about what they did in the rest of the meeting.
Today we brought #9 out of the barn and put her back in the head gate so we could remove the trocar. While we had her we put some surfactant in her rumen just to be safe and then we released her back into the wild. Well as wild as it can be in the paddock with everyone else. She was glad to get back with the herd and didn’t seem to miss the spa treatment at all. #9 will be joining #40, #28, and #15 who will be culled this year. It’s time for culling as there is no need to keep cows we know we won’t keep over winter. The hay is just too expensive for no gain.
Not everyone is going away though. Boyd, our little bull born this winter is growing like a weed. He is already showing some pretty amazing muscle definition for a little calf. You can see who is daddy is and that he’s going to be a chip off of the old block. It’ll be neat to watch him grow up and see how he turns out.
Father and son, Boyd and Benjamin. Boyd doesn’t look like any of the other calves at this point. His rump is much rounder and more defined, like his fathers. He also has definition in his thighs unlike the other calves. Wildflower wanted to keep him as a bull. Looks like she has a good eye for these things.
This weekend our newest intern, Justin, began working with us on the farm. Justin comes to us with lots of experience in crop production but he is brand new to large animals and mechanization which makes this a perfect internship for him as most of what he’s doing is learning new skills.
As you can see above, the cows were awfully interested in who this new guy was. Of course, they are always interested in anybody who is moving them to fresh grass and bringing them food.
Justin had a few lessons on operating our John Deere tractor and he’s already getting good at picking up produce at the farmer’s markets. Pretty soon he’ll be an old hand at all this farm work. He’s yet to work with Miguel, so we’ll have to see if he can survive the hazing he’ll get there.
Justin also learned how to make chicken food from fresh produce. This is our fancy Craigslist find for grinding produce for the chickens.
We also spent some time on welding, grinding, moving cows, and home surgery. It was a busy first weekend of work. Learning to back the trailer was probably what we spent the most time on. Before the month is out, he’ll be backing around blind corners like a pro. You’ll get to see plenty more of Justin as the months go on.
WordPress has a dashboard where you can see various summary information about your website. I noted today that my recent post was number 400 which is pretty impressive. I also noted that we are getting about 3000 views per month on the website. Considering this is a website about moo cows and pictures of poop, I thought that both metrics were pretty impressive. I know it’s just a random number that doesn’t mean anything, but hey….
This article was recently published on the struggles of cooking at home, mainly for low-income people but also a bit for middle class families. It’s an interesting article and one I appreciated reading. However I think some points were missed and they reflect how our view has changed over time.
In case you don’t hop over to the site and read the article, it basically talks about a study where the sociologist go and stay with a family and observe how they prepare food for the family. It deals with the struggles the mothers have in getting a meal on the table each day. With the complaints of the children and husbands who won’t eat the food they don’t recognize, with budget pressures, the high cost of healthy food, the time it takes to actually cook, etc. Basically it says that cooking, as prescribed by foodies like Michael Pollan, is fine if your one of the elite but for real people it doesn’t really work.
I think the research was well done. However I think their premise behind it, and the conclusions taken from it, are wrong. The take away is that cooking takes too much time and isn’t well received by the family. That mothers are expected to do too much and it’s not worth it in the end. That we need to focus on making healthier foods that can be purchased the way we purchase unhealthy food now. As if magically healthy food can be produced that is convenient and mass produced like food in a box is today.
Most of the people in the study who get the focus in the write up are at the poverty level. Someone at the poverty level is in a unique circumstance and has to be dealt with with unique solutions. Interestingly enough, one of the poverty level participants cooks at home because it saves money, which is the point of cooking at home. To paint cooking at home as unrealistic as a whole because someone has holes in the floor of their trailer and rats in the house is painting with a very broad brush. That’s akin to saying cooking at home is unrealistic because amputees can’t hold the pan and the spatula at the same time. If you’re in that dire of straights then we have bigger issues to tackle first.
I’ve mentioned before that my wife cooks nearly every meal we eat, pretty much every day. She is a stay at home mother because we are blessed to be able to afford it. However she is also a stay at home mother because we decided to live this way before we were even married. When we got married and she still worked, we put her sizable paycheck in a separate bank account from day one and never spent any of the money until we paid for a remodel of our house with it, in cash. We never adjusted our lifestyle to having two incomes because we knew it was a lot harder to come down than to stay down. We’ve lived on one income for the entire 13 years of our marriage. One basic premise of this article, not challenged at all, is that all these mothers are struggling because they have to work, even the middle-income mothers they studied. Folks, my wife made more money that I did for most of the time she worked. We have a wonderful life and are blessed, but we could easily ship our kids off to school and put the Mrs. back to work and have a lot more money. If you’re at the subsistence level, then I understand trying to make every dollar you can. But many people are not at the subsistence level and still both work. And have a nice house, and new cars, and go on vacations every year, etc. They also have debt up to their eyeballs and are on a path they can’t get off. It’s why Dave Ramsey is so popular because he helps people get out of debt. You can’t have the idyllic 50’s lifestyle but live the modern consumer debt lifestyle. Our parents and grandparents didn’t spend money the way we do.
So we’ve chosen to live like people before the 50s. So how does it work for us? We have our own beef, pork, and chicken that we raise ourselves readily in the freezer. We have a stay at home mother who has time to cook a meal and enjoys cooking. We have a budget that affords quality ingredients. So dinner time is blissful, right? Nope, not at all. Every single issue described in this writeup happens at our house every week. “I don’t like it! I won’t eat it!” is heard just about every meal. Mom is frazzled trying to get dinner done is probably 2/3rds of the time. “Food costs are hurting our budget” or “we can’t have that because it costs too much” is probably a few times per month. “I can’t make what I want because one of the ingrates (including me) won’t like it” happens routinely. Btw, I just get told to shut up and eat it. The shorter ingrates get worked around a bit more, but not much. We have the same EXACT issues as the people in this article and we have everything going for us. Your grandmother in the 50s had the same issues as well, you just can’t see it in the Norman Rockwell painting of your memory. Saying cooking isn’t realistic or is only for the elites because the kids don’t like new foods is just short-sighted and defeatist. No kid likes new food. Tough, get over it and eat the food or don’t. In my house, you don’t clear your plate, you don’t get dessert. That’s it, end of story. If you waffle and don’t eat it, dad will reach over and eat yours and now you don’t get a choice. Next time you’ll know better. Food doesn’t go to waste and nobody is going to listen to whining.
So we struggle through the exact same issues. Dinner is late, somebody is whining they don’t want to eat, we spend more money than we save I’m sure. What is the result? We eat together as a family every day. We laugh at the dinner table. I read the bible to my family every night which helps me even if nobody else is listening. I have complete control over what is going into my body. My kids know the difference between good food and bad. My middle daughter, and now my younger daughter are learning to cook. My son, who has no interest in cooking, sees that his dad does cook and that it’s normal. When he discovers girls, and that girls like to eat too, he’ll maybe take an interest in the business side of the kitchen. Is it worth all the trouble? Absolutely.
