Ninja Cow Farm LLC

Every day, we process a couple of tons of food, literally. Most of this food shows up in its original wholesale packaging. That means it’s in boxes of some sort.

This is a good example of what I’m talking about. Oranges, avocados, lettuce, etc. Each box holds what will be food for our animals. So what happens when the food is removed from all these boxes? We get a huge pile of boxes, every day. This whole produce thing started out small, so our solution was small. We just tossed the boxes into our burn barrel where we’ve burned all of our paper trash all the years I’ve lived on the farm. As the business grew, we built a bigger burn barrel, and then a bigger one, but the solution itself didn’t change. I did contact Waste Industries to see if we could recycle the cardboard but it sounded like they basically treated it as trash and charged us to boot. Then Miguel had an idea.

“Jefe, the guy who owns El Toro has a compactor where he compacts his cardboard. He must sell it to pay for the compactor.”

Turns out Miguel was right. He went and talked to the owner of El Toro and while he didn’t get rich, he was able to pay for his compactor in a few years and get a few dollars to spare. Armed with this information I started looking at compactors, and ran into a brick wall. Turns out they all run on three phase power and we only have single phase power on the farm. So I looked closer at compactors. Turns out they are just a simple hydraulic system running at about 2500 psi. There isn’t any fancy computer on most of them, just some safety lockouts and a big honking electrical motor to turn  a hydraulic pump.

Since our log splitter is one that I built myself and it has no hydraulic system or gas engine but instead runs off of our skid steer quick connects, I have some experience using an outside power source for hydraulic power. And our skid steer runs at about 2500psi. With about a 65 horse power engine, we should have plenty of power to run a baler. The issue was to find one that is ragged out so badly it’ll be cheap enough I can justify hacking all the expensive bits off of it. No sense buying a $1000 hydraulic system just to cut it off. So I talked to my local cardboard recycler and told him my plan. He said he knew a guy in Virginia who might have just what I want, and he was right. Yesterday I came home with this.

After looking at balers for a while, it seemed they all were about the same. 60″ vertical baler, 10hp motor, yadda yadda. I went up to look at this baler and made sure the cylinder looked ok, that the door opened and closed, etc. It had the manufacturer’s name on it, but not the model so I could only get an approximation of what it was. The electrical system was shot and I was removing the hydraulics so it really didn’t matter about the rest of it. It wasn’t till I got it home that I looked up the motor specs and found out this is the Philadelphia Tram Rail Company’s 7200HD when what I thought it was was the 3400HD. Oops. Turns out it weighs over 8000 pounds where I thought it weighed 5000 pounds. Also it makes 1800 pound bales vs 1200 pound bales with its 115,000 pounds of compression force! Considering I bought this thing for about what it is worth at a scrap yard, I don’t feel too badly about getting the hoss unit, but it was an adventure getting it off of the trailer and into position.

It took both the crane and the backhoe to lift this thing. The crane will pick up 21,000 pounds but that is at max lift in the best position. Our where we had to work, we could pick up about 6000 pounds, which is about 2000 short of what we needed.

Since we didn’t have a concrete pad poured yet, we had to be careful and not drag the baler, creating an uneven footing.

It took Miguel, Vicente, and me, along with the crane truck, the backhoe, the farm tractor, the skid steer, and the diesel truck and the new trailer all involved to get this job done. Plus it took almost every chain we had, two come-alongs, many blocks of wood, and too much of the morning. Now I have to plumb in the new hydraulic setup, grease the door, find wire ties for making bales, and finally put this thing to work. If everything works as expected, then we can pour a concrete pad and move this thing all over again! But then we’ll be baling our cardboard instead of burning it which should save time and a little bit of the world.

Like a lot of bee keepers, I’ve had a tough time with my bees. Last year we had two really strong hives, and one not too strong hive going into the winter. One nice day in early winter I checked on the hives and as expected the not strong hive had died out. I think I had a bad queen but I really didn’t want to requeen the hive so I let it go. However I was shocked to find that my strongest hive was also dead. There was plenty of honey in the hive and it wasn’t even cold yet. Really not good. So in desperation I tried to keep the remaining hive (I only have three) alive through what ended up being a horrible winter. Like the first hive, this hive died off with honey still in the box and I went from a bee keeper to a bee murderer.

I had planned on getting three new packages of bees in the spring of 2015 and had already ordered them. Now I debated just getting out of the whole thing and forgetting about bees. Winter turned to spring and I was still discouraged about my bees when we had a swarm of native bees move in. That got me going again and I thought maybe I could try bees one more time. I’m glad I was in the mood because on Monday I got a call from the post office that my bees had arrived. I looked at my calendar as I wasn’t expecting the call. Yep, no notes of when the bees arrive… Oops, no notes at all! Apparently I forgot to put the date on my calendar. Ugh! Thank God I was in town and could run over to the post office. I hightailed it over there and picked up my package. Unfortunately, one of the packages had died off pretty severely and couldn’t be used, but I simply combined it with one of the other packages and gave the queen away to another bee keeper.

This is how bees show up at the post office, a box of swarmy, buzzy, scary, goodness. It’s often that someone is freaked out by seeing all these bees and is scared they will escape. The funny part is, I have always received my box with at least one hobo bee. That’s a bee that didn’t get captured in the box and elected to hang onto the outside. She rides all the way from Georgia to NC, through all the different loading and unloading of the post office, and rides all the way home with me with no problems, and no flying away, and most importantly no stinging. Bees with no home to protect are completely docile. These bees have been sucked out of their home and mixed with other bees they don’t know. They have a queen they barely know at this point and all they want to do is get inside somewhere and start making a home.

Well that’s exactly what we did. I took the packages of bees and went to work on cooling them down, getting them some water, and keeping them in the shade while I prepared our new hives. Normally you wait till afternoon to hive new bees because they are much less apt to fly away. But with one package already pretty much dead, I felt it was best to get them into a hive as quickly as possible. I had to clear away the two old hives, reset one of the stands to a new location, bring out the new hives, and get the feeders and bee gear all ready. All easy things to do and things I would have done earlier except I forgot the bees were coming. No problems though, it all got done and everyone is in their new homes. They are already defensive of their new homes and they are building comb so they are moved in as well as can be expected. They are all already drinking their feed which should give them a boost. Now if the queens will do their jobs we should have strong hives this year.

For comparison, I checked on the native bees as well. While these new bees are starting with shiny brand new homes, the native bees moved into a place that was well lived in. There was comb and honey already in the box. There was also dead bees on the floor, unwanted bugs running around, etc. The home had potential but it was a fixer upper. However the native bees have knocked it out! There is already capped honey in their new house and they are rocking and rolling. We’ll probably get a little bit of honey off this hive this year since they have such a start already. That would be nice.

It feels good to have bees back on the farm however I’m already dreading winter but we’ll deal with it when it gets here I suppose. SWMBO apparently has a new friend whose husband is a master bee keeper who needs some land for his bees. Hopefully he’ll be interested in coming out and helping out. If that’s the case, we should be able to greatly increase our bee success. If we can increase our success, then we can increase our product and finally have some honey for sale!

Last week the entire family and I went on vacation. It’s not unusual for the family to go on vacation, but it is unusual that we ALL went. I always seem to have something that requires my presence and keeps me from going. I probably make 1 out of every 10 vacations and those are ones where I drive down late and/or leave early. You’d think that by selling my company and going to farming full time I’d be able to take off now since I have Miguel and Vicente here but the first vacation of this year, I had to stay home and was glad I did because it was so busy. The really bad day we had was when I was supposed to be at the beach with the family.

Last week’s vacation was special in that it was actually a school trip disguised as a vacation. We went to Colonial Williamsburg, VA and toured the entire town.

I’m going to post some pics of what was interesting from the trip because a lot of our friends follow us on the farm site. There is a LOT of farming stuff I need to post, so not to worry, more pics of cows and pigs coming soon. There was one bit of farming that had to happen before we left though.

I had to butcher and process the pig we had to shoot that had been hanging in the cooler ever since. When we got the family up to leave, I was already hard at work in the kitchen breaking down this side of pork. It had to be made into usable cuts, vacuum sealed, labeled, and put in the freezer. Then I had to clean up and put everything away. This was all before we could leave the house so it was an early start to the day. In case you are wondering, yes that is our kitchen I’m working in. SWMBO is a wonderful wife.

It wasn’t all school while we were there. On the way up, we toured some wineries in the area. They were gorgeous! The wine wasn’t too bad either.

The next day was Busch Gardens. Not somewhere I would have picked since I don’t ride rides but I always found a bench to sit on and the kids had a ball. I’d go back.

The last day was spent at the place where we stayed. There was lots to do and the entire place was really nice. Mostly we stayed by the pool and played some mini-golf. There were tears from both families when it was time to leave.

More farming to come. I promise. We are home now and it’s busy as it can be this week. I already have lots to post, with more coming.

Most of you know that besides me and the wife and kids, Miguel is the other person we have here working on the farm. He’s involved in pretty much everything that is post worthy, and all kinds of things that aren’t. What many of you don’t know is that before Miguel worked for me, his brother Vicente did. When Vicente first began working for me, he was in the country illegally, even though he was married to an American woman and entered the country as a minor. Both details that usually mean he can immigrate without a lot of trouble. In order for Vicente to work for me, I told him he’d have to get legal status. Since he paid his taxes, had never so much as jay walked, was married with two kids, and all in all was a better citizen than many actual citizens, it should have been easy. It wasn’t.

Just before Obama decided to stop deporting illegals who had committed no crimes, Vicente had his court final court date to allow him to begin becoming a citizen. The rule at the time was that in order to immigrate, you first had to get your visa. In order to get your visa, you had to apply in your country of origin. Even though everything was in order and usually the judge could waive the need to apply in the country of origin, this judge decided that Vicente needed to go back to Mexico to apply. Two years and a month ago we said goodbye to Vicente as he left his family behind to go to Mexico and fill out a form, and then wait. Yes really, that was the process. Leave voluntarily, then go fill out a form and wait. Meanwhile, you have to demonstrate you have a job and an income to be eligible to immigrate. You know the job you left behind when you left the country. Doesn’t make much sense.

Shortly after he left, they stopped deporting people just like him so for the two years he has been in Mexico nobody else followed. Bad timing. I’ve been working with both our Senator’s office and our Congresswoman’s office over the past two years trying to get him back. After much work on all sides, Thursday of this week, Vicente arrived!

I somehow have managed not to get a decent shot of him since he’s been home. This one came out too dark.

And this one is of his backside. Don’t worry though, he will be in lots of action to come. Vicente is living with Miguel for now so that they can carpool together to work. Also, since Vicente is home, Miguel decided he was short one vehicle.

Miguel found a Yukon Denali that had been repossessed and bought it from the repo company for about half what I’d have paid for it. If I ever get successful, I’m going to make Miguel my purchasing agent.

I helped him get it home, which was fun because it has a 6.2 liter Corvette engine in it. I didn’t even know that was an option in an SUV. It’s been sitting in my barn for a few weeks while we waited for the title to arrive from the repo company, a process that was monumentally slow. Miguel shined the truck, read the manual, changed the windshield, and generally did all that could be done to a truck he couldn’t drive. Remember seeing all those presents under the tree when you were a kid and knowing that Christmas was FOREVER away. Yeah, it’s been like that for Miguel. Yesterday the title was taken to the DMV and the tag was acquired.

It’s Christmas and New Years all rolled into one. Miguel has his new ride, his brother is back, there is a ton of work to do and we have the manpower to do it. Of course now he’s poorer than a church mouse but at least he’ll look good driving to work and back.

I haven’t written about our bees in quite some time. On our tours, I don’t really point them out anymore. It’s because while we had two wonderfully strong hives last year and one weak one, by early winter the weak hive had died as expected but so had the strongest hive. By late winter so had the other strong hive and frankly I was depressed looking out at those hives. The view above is of our wonderful sunset but it’s overlooking our bee hives. I’m the Pol Pot of bee keeping and I’ve murdered more bees than I care to think about. I know that everyone else is loosing bees too, but these two hives were doing so well, I just knew they were going to make it. Having all three die over the winter was just too much and I was considering calling our bee supplier and canceling the order for packages I have coming this year and just getting out of beekeeping altogether.

When I inspected my hives this winter, I was so disgusted that I didn’t even bother to put them back together correctly and left one hive open and exposed. I figured the honey that was in there would at least feed the native bees. The other two hives were closed up properly because who knows, maybe a swarm will drop in.

The other day, Miguel asked if my bees had shown up. Nope, don’t have them yet. Not sure when they are getting here, I think it was in May. What’s that then? I looked over, and one of the hives was awash with bees.

Too late for native bees to be robbing I think. Goodness! A swarm has moved in! And guess which hive it is. The one that was open and exposed. Go figure!

I went over and carefully put the hive back together. I noted that the foraging bees are steadily pulling honey from the other hive, plus there is honey still in this hive. A swarm of native bees, with a new queen, and plenty of honey to get started! These guys should do alright.

Suddenly I’m happy about beekeeping again and I’m looking forward to my three packages of bees showing up. I’ve never had a native swarm take up like this so it’ll be great to see how they do against package bees.

I’ve always let me bees swarm if they wanted to. I figure that’s another chance for bees to be out in nature replacing the losses that bees have been having. It sure feels good that nature gave me back a swarm, and my hope.

SWMBO sent me this the other day. She thought it might make good fodder for a blog post. I’m always wary of any top 10 list on any major news site but then this one starts out with bacon! Anything that starts with bacon has to be good.

Items one through four are items we use all the time here on the farm, and have available for you to buy from us.  Are we trying to increase fertility here? I certainly didn’t think so but apparently one of the kids asked for a little brother the other day. A little brother?!! Yikes! I think the old folks in the house are past that phase of life. If we need a little brother, I’ll rent one.

Note that for all the items listed like eggs, beef, liver, etc, they are all recommend to be real food, raised on real farms instead of factory farms. There are real differences between corn-fed animals and grass-fed animals. Differences that you can taste and differences in the health profile. Fertility is natures measure of your overall health and environment. If one cow here or there doesn’t breed back, it’s an issue with that cow. If it’s more wide spread, it’s an indication that you have a management problem. Either way, nature is saying, whoa, you’ve got a problem here that needs to be addressed before we start adding more stress with a  calf. This is cow breeding and management 101.

Not to compare humans to cows, but I’m a cow farmer. Everything compares to cows in my world. If you are stressed (work, life, in-laws, bills), with a poor diet (fast food, processed food, skipping meals, incomplete nutrition), nature doesn’t want to add new stress to you as well. Eating a proper diet of farm raised healthy products can help, as can spending some time out in the green grass seeing where your food comes from. Also, from personal experience I can say that red wine causes children (3 for 3 on that one!).

We also offer a baby getter-outter service 9 months later which involves bumpy rides in the Gator. We have satisfied customers on that one as well. 🙂

Nearly all of our customers are already parents as feeding their kids a better diet is a primary driver for them. However, we’ve all known people who have struggled with having kids and how heart breaking it is. If a change of diet can help, and you can have eggs and bacon while doing it, then this should be good news for them. Feel free to share this with someone you love and let’s see if we can help them.