Ninja Cow Farm LLC

December 10, 2013December 10, 2013

Cholo

So the little red truck that I have on the farm was loaded up and taken to paint this past weekend. It’s expected to be about a month before it’s done. I had to get it painted because:

1. It was only primered red and it needs paint. Primer sucks up moisture and these old trucks rust like nobody’s business. Therefor if I want to have a truck long term I need to get that protective paint on it.

2. It will look better painted. Not that I am overly concerned with my looks but if you are going to tool around in an old truck it should look decent. Having actual paint should make quite a difference in how the truck looks.

3. SWMBO didn’t ask how much it costs to paint a truck. If she’s not asking then I figure my budget must be available.

4. The real reason I am getting it painted is that our beautiful and smart baby sitter who has babysat for us since she was 12 is getting married in March and she wants to drive away from the ceremony in my truck. I couldn’t put off painting the truck any longer knowing she would be in it on her wedding day. So out came the interior and pretty much anything that wasn’t bolted down was put into storage and a stripped shell of a truck was loaded onto the trailer and taken to Ignacio for refit and paint. That’s where this picture was taken. That’s me driving, just off camera is the trailer I am about to load onto. For those of you that don’t know me. I am 6’5″ and you can see I am barely looking over the steering wheel because there are no seats. Miguel said I looked like a cholo with my “lowered” truck.

The truck is being sand blasted back to bare metal then fixed back up to hopefully look like new. Oh, and the little red truck won’t be red anymore. It’s going to be teal, the color of the wedding. I will post update pics as I have them.

December 8, 2013January 7, 2014

More farm Princess

I came home after work to discover that we had a calf who had gotten separated from her mom and was on the wrong side of the fence. Unlike goats, cows after making their great escape immediately want to get back to the herd so I happened across this calf pacing the fence and bellowing to her mom. We had about 15 minutes of daylight left and I had two Princesses playing on the front steps of the house. No interns, no Miguel, even Spork was at a sleep over. To make matters worse Bok Bok at 5 had never really worked cows before. Then to top it all off, this was a ninja calf. Admittedly not one that had caused any issues before but it was out so there you go. About 30 seconds in I realized I should video rather than instruct because as you can hear, The Princess immediately took over instruction after I had given them the game plan. I had to stop filming because I was needed to get the cow going but the rest of the event looked like this.

I had to run and back up the girls one time because Bok Bok didn’t quite get what her job was and the calf ran right by her. I stopped it and turned her back. Then The Princess pushed the calf along the fence, past the corner, down the fence, around the open gate, into the barn yard and then closed the gate. All in her pajamas and all while instructing Bok Bok on what to do. I helped a tiny bit and then she didn’t need me anymore. Also all while taking on a cow that outweighed her by 300 pounds with no fear.

Yeah, I was proud.

December 7, 2013December 6, 2013

More hay

Despite the 80 degree day on Friday, I had to go get my second load of hay. 17 bales, plus the 21 we already have purchased. This should get us into January with what we already have. We need one more load of 17 to get into March. Hopefully we can stretch to make the last load last till the pastures have had a chance to fully recover. Keeping the cows off of the pasture just as it comes out of dormancy is tough. They want all that green grass and we want to stop feeding hay. We will see how long we can make it go.

The good news is the new (to me) truck and trailer are doing well. I was burning more fuel and getting only 8 bales before. Now I get 17 per trip and do so in style.

December 6, 2013

Goodbye Spunky

We had a tentative plan last year that we weren’t too sure we would act on. We really liked Spunky as a cow but we preferred Maggie over Spunky hands down. Maggie, as you may recall broke her back and had to be out down. Well we thought we would give Spunky another try once she freshened and see if she was better this time. She wasn’t. She was fine, just not as good as Maggie. The management crew here on the farm discussed what to do and we decided if Spunky could find a good home we would let her go and get another cow.

So I listed Spunky on Craigslist and a wonderful family inquired about her within a few hours. They raise beef cattle and every year have a few calves that need a foster mom. Spunky is to be that mom and she will spend her days as a professional mom for this beef herd. As maternal as Spunky is, I couldn’t be happier for where she is now.

Now to find our new milk cow. One that is more docile and gives better milk.

December 5, 2013

Princess chores

Today I had The Princess for my helper and you can see her unrolling an eight hundred pound hay bail before sunrise. Two points from these pictures.

One, for you boys out there, despite a cute outward appearance a farm girl will break you. Don’t mess with her.

Two, I may have helped her a little bit. For you boys out there. A farm girl has a dad that can do all that she wants done to a boy who broke her heart and is adept at making sausage from most any meat and will serve it to the nice police officers who stopped by to inquire as to your whereabouts.

The takeaway here is don’t mess with farm girls.

December 4, 2013

Well that’s better

Scratch what I said yesterday. Here is todays haul and that was pretty much from one side. The calf had emptied the other side of Spunkys bag so this was a half load. I think the calf is an early riser and that’s why we are getting such different amounts. It depends on how far he has made it around when we get to her. That’s a solvable problem as we can isolate her from her calf at night like we used to so she has a full bag in the morning or we can graft the calf onto another cow and get all her milk. Either way she is producing all we need and we can get more should we choose. All is well again on the farm.

Btw, that’s Spork doing the work to get the bottles labeled and into the fridge.

December 4, 2013January 7, 2014

A fallacy I’ve heard before

We live longer today than in our great grandparent’s time, right? With all the advances in medical science we’ve gone from dying at like 35 to living into our 70s. At one point I believed this too.

I hear this from people when they ask me how I lost so much weight. As soon as I say Atkins they say, oh I couldn’t do that, I’d have a heart attack. That soon leads to a conversation on real food vs. packaged food and the history of real food. Then the person comes up with life expectancy as the basis for their belief that Atkins/Paleo/etc is bad for you. Yeah, about that. Turns out it’s not true. People lived to ripe old ages in the 1200s. I’ve traced my own lineage back to 400AD and even then I had relatives living into their 70s routinely. Infant mortality is the big change over time and is the metric that is considerably improved. Average age, not so much. For more information on the fallacy of life expectancy, go here. It’s a blog about nutrition but has some links to more information in the post.

Remember the old saying, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

December 3, 2013

Turning off the wood heat

This isn’t exactly farming but as I have said here before, this journal has whatever random stuff I need to document. Today I need to document the procedure for changing from wood fired boiler heat to electric heat or electric/LP heat. The reason for this is if I suddenly get hit by a train, I want the Mrs to have a documented procedure. For anyone who is interested in hydronic, well here you go, a behind the scenes look.

The procedure for switching from boiler heat to automatic heat. In all of these pictures, the system is currently set to wood boiler heat.

First go down to the boiler. On the front of the boiler is a switch labeled off/on. Turn the switch off. This disables the boiler blower. Its best to have the fire go out by itself prior to this step.

Go to the heat pumps and LP boiler enclosure. Its on the back of the house and looks like a matching half wall coming off the back of the house. Once inside raise the roof behind the LP boiler. There is a hook on the right side as you are facing the house. This hook matches an eye bolt on the wall of the house. Raise the roof on its hinges just like opening a car door and hook the hook into the eye bolt so the roof stays up by itself. Above you can see the roof raised and locked.

Now go to the left side of the LP boiler and bend down to look at the panel. You will see a switch that has been added and is labeled in sharpie as the wood boiler boost pump. Turn that switch off (down position).

Now look at all the pipes, valves, and pumps under the roof you raised. There are three valves that need to be moved for this step. All are on the left side, have yellow handles, and are pictured above. The big valve that is leftmost will be off. Off is when the handle is 90 degrees to the valve/copper line. On is when the handle is inline with the valve/copper line. For the leftmost valve that is off, turn it on. To the right of that valve are two valves. They are both on. Turn them both off.

DO NOT forget to lower the roof when you are done. It is insulated and keeps the pipes from freezing.

Go in the boiler room in the house. If the heat is going to be off for the summer or a long period of warm weather with no freezing concerns, then pull this plug located just above the hot water storage tank. If there is any concern of freezing then leave this plug plugged in. This is the master power for the pumps and by leaving them running you keep the pipes from freezing. The downside is you are burning electricity.

On one side of the hot water tank are two doors. One is large and one is small. If you are standing in the entry door looking at the tank, the doors are on the left hand side. The small door is directly on top of the large door. Open the small door, it is hinged on the top. Inside you will see a set of controls. The one pictured is labeled hot water. There is a small black slider switch that is labeled pump is on, pump is off, and automatic operation. The switch will be in the on position. Move it to “pump is off” and verify that the red light goes out. This turns off the domestic hot water circulation pump.

Now go to the utility room nearest the kitchen. Locate the hot water tank and the valves pictured. These valves have hanging labels. The one in the middle is labeled “hot water makeup always open.” The other two are labeled hot water loop. Leave the middle one open and turn off the two hot water loop valves.

Last step, go into the house to one of the two thermostats. Open the little door on the bottom and click the “advanced” button. Then click the button on the right beside where it says next. Scroll to the last menu which will look like this.

Use the silver scroll button and select “system in control”.

REPEAT THIS STEP on the other thermostat and you are done.

There, you go. Easy! 🙂

December 3, 2013

Rocky Mountain oysters

Today we moved the cows from the front pasture to the side pasture. In the process we moved them through the barnyard which meant it was time to band and tag the ninja calf. We managed to get all the other cows out of the old pasture and into the new pasture except for, you guessed it , the ninja calf. The rest weren’t an issue. In fact this is what greeted me at the gate.

They were more than ready to go and about all we did was open the gates and let them through. Not the ninja calf though. He took about 5 laps around the pasture. Fortunately I had Bar-B-Jew, inmate Brian, and Miguel all onsite to help with the ninja so 800 pounds of human vs 100 pounds of calf seemed like a good ratio. In the video you can see the final successful lap of the pasture where the calf finally goes through the open gate. Trust me, there were lots of previous laps.

So after we had the ninja calf in the barn yard, we made a few laps of it where the ninja calf did the thing I’ve only ever seen the ninja breed do which is to try and run through a wire fence head first. Normal cows know better. Ninjas, not so much. So finally we got the ninja calf cornered and Miguel grabbed the head and I grabbed the back and we wrestled him to the ground. He was not amused. I proceeded to put the band on his cajones and then ear tag him number 36. After that we reunited Spunky and her calf and called it a morning from cow work. It was a busy morning.

December 2, 2013

Milking woes

We are getting all the milk we need from Spunky each day. However we are not getting all the milk she is producing. She’s holding back for her calf seemingly a little more each day. We like to keep the calf on her because it’s better for the calf, we don’t need all the milk, and this gives us an option if we cannot milk one day.

It does create this holding back problem though. I am milking the next few days by myself so it looks like it may be time for experimenting to see if I can increase the yield. I will keep you in the loop to see if there are any major break throughs.