| Home | About Us | Beef | Lamb | Contact Us |
|
|
|
||||
|
It feels like we are one of the few families in Soda Springs that hasn’t had someone sick with the flu. I know this isn’t the absolute truth, but of all of the families we are friendly with I believe we are just about the only ones who haven’t had it yet. I’ve no idea to what we can attribute this good fortune since the kids have gone to school nearly every day with kids who are hope sick with the flu a day later. Perhaps our staying well has something to do with nursing the kids for 2 plus years, or living on a farm (constant exposure to germs building up a strong immune system), a customer suggested it’s our healthy died of grass-fed beef and lamb, and John would smile and say its “Good clean living”, and finally it may just be that the other shoe has not yet dropped and we’ll be down soon.
Most of the families who have had seem to be down to the last few members of the family having it, with the first to get sick recovered and back at school. The elementary school says absences are close to normal levels, down from absentee rates of double normal. They apparently got really close to closing the school due to high levels of absences a few weeks ago.
I find myself wondering when the kids are whiny or ill-tempered if it’s because they are getting sick. I just hope that if we do get the bug it won’t force us to reschedule our deliveries. I tend to think that I must be the one to nurse the children, but John has reminded me that he can deliver Advil or Tylenol with the best of them. If we see a bug hitting the family we’ll do our best to give you warning if it looks like we’ll have to alter our plans. With 15 to 30 customers placing orders each month it is not at all exciting to have to look at rescheduling with all those people, but that may be what has to happen.
I’m still trying to get used to day light savings time, in part because it means John is home so much earlier each night. Today he wandered in before 5:30 which hasn’t happened for so long I can’t remember when it happened last. It sure makes having some family time more of an option. He’s been playing checkers or chess with the kids after dinner which they love.
We preg checked the cows (vet determines which ones are pregnant) and vaccinated all the cows and young calves last month. We had very few open (not bred) cows and most of the yearling heifers were also bred. We’d actually hoped for a few more open heifers so we could use them in the meat business, but they saved themselves from that fate by getting bred. Having some extra bred heifers will affect our meat supply in 2010, but means well have more calves born in 2010, and bring our meat animals harvest numbers up in 2011 and 2012. We may have to look into buying some meat animals from other ranches in natural beef programs to keep up with the demand. It still amazes me that we are still feeling the effects of having to sell extra cows after the droughty summer of 2006 or 2007 ruined nearly our entire hay crop.
We’ve yet to go thru the ewes but we can’t wait much longer as they need a vaccination to prevent viral diseases that cause abortion several weeks before they go out with the rams. It looks like if we put the rams in on the Saturday after Thanksgiving we should see the first of the lambs around April 22nd. That late in April the weather is usually fairly conducive to lamb survival, but we may still miss the first few farmers markets in May so we can take care of farm chores.
We’ve enjoyed our nearly 3 week break. I don’t think I left town for 2 weeks (had to take a group of lambs in yesterday) which hasn’t been the norm since May or so. I made a point of sleeping in the last two Saturdays just because I could! And the weather has been great for the last several days. John keeps chugging away at his final farm chores for the season. I’ve put the garden to bed under layers of various mulches.
I’ve attached another brief report from the University of Utah researchers who are using our animals hair, wool and meat to test various methods of analysis and calibrate their research. We hope you will find it interesting. It will be interesting to see how far they can take this science-if they will eventually be able to tell not only what your “meat” ate, but where it ate it. We recently had a request from another group of researchers who are trying to test grass-fed meat from different ranches to see if they can detect whether the animals had any corn or other tropical grasses in their diet. But I think there isn’t a direct test for if the animal ate other grains like barley, oats or wheat. I think testing omega-3’s and CLA levels in the animals fat is the best way to get an indication of the animals diet.
With school back in full swing the kids afterschool activities are going full bore as well. Girl and boy scouts have resumed. Becca was excited to bridge into Brownies last week. Tom received his Bear Cub Scout award last week. He still has a few months until he moves up into Webalos but this way my Dad and stepmom were able to attend the ceremony. Tom is going to flag football practice now with games starting this week and going thru October. Thankfully dance won’t begin for a few weeks. With every afterschool event crammed in to Monday to Thursday it sure makes the 4 day school week more crazy. I think our kids are managing okay, (they are doing quite well in school) but I fear for those who have less natural ability and or less family support.
We have now had 5 nights of frost so the garden is really in decline. The first hit me unprepared on August 15th, I covered for two nights right after labor day, and two nights last week as well. Last weekend the kids and I harvested all the potatoes, larger onions and tomatoes, garlic, turnips and beets. I think the broccoli, cabbage and Brussel sprouts will keep going for a while, but the squash etc are pretty much toast. I can see that winter squash would have to go in far earlier if I hoped to get a crop-but I was afraid of the late frosts in June wiping everything out. So now it’s time to start mulching the beds, knocking out the rest of the weeds that got away from me etc. I wish I had a root cellar to put all the produce in-I’ve got a tub of turnips in damp sand in the garage but they can’t stay there for long as it is unheated. They are predicting lows of 24-25 later this week, with snow possible here at 6000 ft so I’m trying to figure out if I need to pull all the cabbages, Brussel sprouts, onions etc before that hits.
I think I’ll try to dry the garlic and some of the onions once I get my pears dried. I’m doing far less canning this fall-trying to save my sanity. The mad rush of summer took its toll on me I’m now realizing and trying to slow down a bit. I even read a book during the day recently-something I LOVE to do, but haven’t allowed myself to do enough recently.
The rush to complete all the farm work is now in full swing. John finished cutting grain on Friday (our two tiny patches, and two custom hired jobs). For once, it looks like we will actually make a bit of money with our grain, at least the wheat. The wheat John cut last week had just the right amount of protein and moisture and received no discounts. At the elevator John was hearing that most of the wheat coming in is too low in protein and the farmers are getting nearly nothing for it. They can’t possibly be getting enough to cover their fertilizer, herbicide and diesel bills! We will soon be working all the cattle to administer vaccinations, parasite control materials (if judged necessary) and determine which of the cows are bred. And we’ll also be going thru all the sheep as well and giving the ewe’s their pre-breeding vaccinations and deciding which of the girls is staying in the flock and which ones need to go. We’ll also be deciding if we have more lambs than we anticipate needing for the meat business. John also has some fence and water system improvements he wants to complete before he gets snowed out of the farm. With the time for filling our larger carcass orders on the horizon I’ll be going thru our records to make sure we have cutting instructions from all of our customers, and other little details.
My Dad and Stepmom will be leaving Soda in mid October to head to warmer climes. Their departure date seems to keep moving forward, and their arrival date moves back, each year. John and I are hoping to squeeze in a brief trip while we have them around to take charge of the kids. Current plans have us probably taking the commodity bags of wool to Tooele and then spending a night or two in SLC area. We figured we could look for a new couch and possibly a new fridge while in the “big city”. The couch is approaching 20 years old and it shows it! I don’t know how old the fridge is-it came with the house-but it freezes everything in it from time to time. I’ve lost a lot of produce in recent months and I’m sick of it! We’ve talked about getting a new couch for at least 2 years-every once in a while we go look, and then other things take precedence and we never do it. So if we do get away maybe this will be the time!
It’s hard to believe that the end of the farmers market season is in sight! John says he is pretty burned out-wishing he could stay home and get farm work done on Saturdays. I’m finally adjusting to the early morning departures required when I go to the SLC market 2 Saturdays out of 3. I used to be such a zombie when I got home, and the next day as well. I always have mixed feelings about this time of year. I too am a bit tired of having to be at a market every Saturday morning (and every Wed afternoon for most of the summer), but I do enjoy interacting with all of our customers and the other vendors.
Soccer season is just beginning here so it seems that nearly every school night (Monday to Thursday) at least one of the kids has a soccer game or practice. Girl and boy scouts are also resuming as well-thankfully dance won’t begin for several weeks. I’m sure glad someone invented a crock pot as that is the best way to get dinner on the table when I’m running kids hither and yon during normal meal prep time. I just have to get organized to pull the meat out to defrost far enough in advance! I hope to soon be able to share a cabbage roll recipe with you all-a good way to use up all the cabbage we are swimming in.
We all enjoyed going camping with a group of friends over Labor Day weekend. The rest of the crowd went out Friday night, we headed out after we get home from the market on Saturday. We shared communally prepared breakfasts and dinners so the meal prep work was far less, plus we enjoyed the company. We were supposed to take out steaks and bratwursts for our family’s dinners. We made sure we get our own steaks/bratwursts off the grill so we get to enjoy our excellent grass-fed meats vs. the tasteless grocery store stuff. The Eastern Idaho State Fair begins this weekend. I hope we can make a trip up to Blackfoot to the fair sometime next week. I like to look at all the exhibits and I do enjoy fair food!
About half the adults and all the kids took a couple of multiple hour 4 wheeler rides. The morning ride was to Caribou City. There were supposed to be close to 10,000 people up there mining (for about an 18month period) near the turn of the century. They used a lot of placer mining-using a water stream to erode away the dirt. Holy cow did they alter the landscape! We didn’t wander around enough to find very many remnants of the inhabitants, just all the placer mining debris. The afternoon ride, in which I didn’t partake, went up nearly to the top of Mt Caribou. A couple of years ago the group stumbled upon a handmade rock road that crosses a large field of scree (shattered rock from the peak). John said someone spent a tremendous amount of time finding rocks with flat sides and “paving” a road across all the loose rock with them. It’s hard to image what could have motivated someone to do all that work-what did they need to get to the top of that peak that couldn’t be put on a pack horse team? Soda is at nearly 6000 feet, Caribou City must be at 8 thousand plus, the miners cabin beside the rock road is even higher. Those must have been very tough people to live up there is tiny log cabins with just wood for heat, wool for warmth, and all the food hauled up the hillside. Maybe in winter they focused on the hole in the mountain type of mining instead of the wet placer mining-sure would be a lot warmer under the ground than using water to erode away a hillside.
John is working hard to get all of his projects completed before the weather changes in a few months. The hay is all hauled and stacked so now the focus is finally off the hay crop. I am trying to keep up with household, garden and family chores as well as all the business related tasks. Now that the kids are in school for nearly 8 hrs 4 days a week I have larger blocks of time to try to clear up all the piles of stuff that have built up everywhere. I’m making somewhat feeble attempts to de-clutter our tiny little home to try to save John’s sanity, and mine as well. Hopefully this fall we’ll finish preparing Tommy’s room and get him moved downstairs. Having the kids in two separate rooms should help some, plus they’ll not be able to claim the mess is due to the other child! And once the room is finished, all the stuff we moved out to work on it can go back in, making the storage area downstairs more manageable. A few days ago, John and my Dad did manage to complete yard improvement job he had started a few years before. So now we have a little paver patio to put our table and chairs on, and we can enjoy eating outside a bit more. Hopefully Fall will hold off a bit longer (we had another frost last night and it’s only going to be 70ish today) so we can enjoy our new patio a few more times.
The Caribou County Fair was the first week of August and we all enjoyed taking part in some of the associated activities. I put together a photo contest booth for the local county Farm Bureau, Becca was in the children’s parade and performed one of her dances on the stage, Tom entered a few items in the open classes as well as several 4-H projects. And all of us enjoyed our share of fair food. I don’t know why fair food always tastes good to me, guess I’m still a sucker for fat, salt and sugar.
The garden was producing nicely until August 15th when we had our first frost-we had fresh peas several times while my Mom and Step-Dad were here visiting. I’m looking for new ways to use up all the cabbage-cabbage rolls are on the agenda shortly, and I’m considering trying the turnip and beet greens. For a person who used to only eat peas and corn I think I’ve come a long way! And thankfully the kids are more willing than a lot of kids to try new things, and actually like a fair number of veggies. Wish we had the root cellar as the fridge (and freezer) is way overfull. I plan to dry dehydrating some more things to help save them
We had our first frost a couple of weeks ago and as usual I was completely unprepared. We covered for frost on the next night but I’m not sure if it was below freezing. The squash, potatoes and tomatoes all got hit but are not decimated so hopefully they’ll keep going. We have a lot of green tomatoes coming but nothing pick able yet. The peas, broccoli, cauliflower, onions etc seem to have been unscathed by the 30 degree night. The forecast seems to suggest we won’t have to worry about frost for quite a while. This frost hit 10 days before last years but wasn’t as hard-last year the squash, tomatoes and potatoes were DEAD and the peas were even damaged.
The kids started school last week. I can’t believe it is time for that already. I’m not sure where the summer went! The cool weather is putting a damper on our last minute playing plans-I’d hoped to take the kids to Bear Lake before school started but it is nowhere near warm enough to go play in the water.John and the kids went up in the mountains last night to help our good friends with the first of their lamb shipping’s. Over the course of the next 10 days they will bring in each of their 5 bands of sheep and send all the lambs to Colorado to go on feed for 30 or more days. We often go stay overnight and then at dawn we help to separate the ewes and lambs and load the lambs on semi’s. The ewes are then turned out to graze and by the end of the month the rams will be turned in for breeding. Our friends are part of a cooperative that raises natural lambs-no antibiotics or hormone implants- but I still hate to see all the lambs go to the feedlot to be finished. John and I laugh at ourselves that we consider going to camp overnight and then work for 4 hours at dawn is something enjoyable. Our two kids are each about 9 months younger than our friends two kids and they all have a blast “mining” for crystals or playing in the creek. We have plenty of work of our own to do but it is good to go help friends and spend time with them even if it is mostly work. They are always willing to come help us with our farm work too if we need them. It seems to be a trait of farmers to try to turn projects that require extra people into social events if there is any way to do it. We will have a BBQ/party after we work the cattle in October for all those that come to help. A good meal always helps to ensure we get the help we need the next time around.
If you would like to see the article just published in the Idaho Farm Bureau magazine about us it is on page 5 at http://www.idahofb.org/archivej/uploads/Summer%2009%20Quarterly%20lr.pdf. Our meat steers are on the cover.
It’s hard to believe we are now in our 61st month of running this business. It looks like August will be a decent month, while May, June and July were a bit slower than in the past. That may very well have been due to missing some markets, and the rainy weekends in June. Once again we thank all of you for purchasing your family’s meat from our family. You have helped to make our dream of being able to make a living from our farm a reality.
Now that we “complained” about all the moisture we were getting all spring, it went dry and didn’t rain for 3 weeks following July 4th. The first batch of hay John cut got rained on every night for 7 days but since then I very little of the hay has been rained on. This dry patch has really helped keep the quality high on the hay. The whole process has been delayed by mechanical issues but John is seeing the end point in the distance now. If you see him at market over the next few weeks cut him some slack, as he is quite sleep deprived. Due to needing the dew to be on the hay he has to bale the hay at night. Also because of the dew, he needs to rake (turn over, and put two windrows together) the hay in the very early morning, and then the sugars are highest in the hay if it is mowed in the afternoon. So all together the poor fellow isn’t getting much sleep. I’ve not yet been pressed into service, in part because the main job he has me do is mow, and until our recently we were using a borrowed machine that was more difficult to use. The tractors are both beginning to act up (they are getting old!) and I think he doesn’t think I would notice the signs of impending breakdown. So I just try to keep my chores caught up, and help with his other tasks where I can.
Hopefully, in a few weeks, when all the hay is at least cut and baled, if not stacked, the rains will return. Our hay fields and pastures are still doing okay, as the legumes and grasses have roots that are deep enough to tap into the moisture stored in the soil from all the spring rains. John was told by some grain farming friends that wet springs followed by dry summers often result in near total crop failures for them. They said the constant moisture in the upper levels of the soil keeps the grain plants from needing to grow deep roots, and so when the weather turns dry suddenly the grain plants don’t have very many roots that are deep enough to tap into the moisture that remains in the soil. So for all of our sakes I hope we get some more rain relatively soon. We had a little break on the 24th which was very nice, and I’d welcome a few more days like that pretty soon.
All of us were looking forward to having my little brother and his family visit next week, but that visit has been canceled. My brother was laid off from his job, due to the financial mess California has found itself in. So he felt too stressed about searching for a new job, etc. to take a trip to SE Idaho. I was really looking forward to spending time with him and the family. He is 8 years younger and so he was just a kid when I left home for college, and our lives have gone in such different directions we haven’t gotten to spend much time together since then. I was looking forward to getting to be an Auntie too. Oh well! My brother is hoping to find a job outside of California, before things fall apart even more. So if by chance you know of a company that needs a internet/computer security person I’d sure appreciate hearing about it so I can pass it on.
The first week of August is our county fair, and we are looking forward to having my Mom and her husband coming to visit for several days. The kids are preparing some items to take to the fair, and I’m getting ready to build the Farm Bureau’s display booth. We are going to have our 3rd annual photo contest again this year-so it should be pretty easy. And since I have some beautiful cabbages, and peas ready I’m considering entering some in the fair too. I’m pretty thrilled with the 4 large cabbages I’ve picked so far, and the peas have been yummy. We’re also swimming in lettuces, and finding they are getting ahead of us and bolting. I keep trying to share but they never remember to come by, or I don’t get it picked and delivered when they are home. I’ll just keep trying I guess. I’ve even gotten a beet, carrot and kohlrabi from the garden along with quite a few radishes, and some broccoli.
The stuff that survived the early plantings are doing well, but some of the later plantings have done nearly as well. The plant on top of newspaper method doesn’t seem to work as well in the heat of the season. I think since its above the surface its harder to keep it moist enough, plus the hail and heavy rain moved the seed out of place quite a bit. But with a little luck we’ll get some yummy stuff out of the garden this year. We’ve been lucky so far with few frosts, so I’m just hoping it holds off long enough to let us harvest some of the things I planted late. It is certainly a good thing we don’t have to survive on just what I can grow! We’ll be frequenting our fellow farmers market vendors and the grocery stories for quite a while. I’m not sure we’ll make any progress on installing a root cellar this year, but maybe things will calm down in the fall.
Becca and I are recently returned from a 2 night Girl Scout Mom and Me Camp in McCall. It was really nice to get away with just Becca and play, play, play. I left the computer and had no cell phone calls for 4 days. It was hard on the budget to miss another market in July, after taking the 4th off, but it was worth it. We created some great memories and that what’s matter most. I sometimes have a hard time remembering to stop working and just play and enjoy our kids and our life together.
We recently passed our 5th anniversary of our first farmers market attempt (we sold $64 worth of lamb in Pocatello and were thrilled!) It’s hard to believe we’ve been at this for 5 years now, but I just have to see how the kids have grown. Tom was only 4 and Becca only 2 when we started attending markets and learning how to direct market our meats. We are so thankful to all of you who have gotten us to the point of being able to make a living from what our farm can produce. We love farming and direct marketing, with all of its trials and tribulations. Thanks for being our partners in this local food effort!
I had planned to write about some of the testing we have had done on our meats over the last few years-CLA, Omega 3, as well as Leslie’s work with the meat and hair samples. We also had liver samples analyzed to check mineral levels, like selenium. Instead I’d like to ask you to read about the food safety bill going to the house floor tomorrow potentially without some very important changes. If you agree these changes will help ensure you can continue to purchase locally produced and processed foods perhaps you will take the time to contact your Representatives in DC. I’ll attach some information I’ve gotten from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition about the bill currently under consideration. I found the letter and requested amendments some Representatives sent to the committee very informative.
While I think there are some problems with the current food safety system I am quite concerned about the unintended consequences of the bill they are considering. I believe that one of the major problems with our food system is that it has been consolidated with huge percentages of each crop being produced in small areas of the nation and prepared for market in large processing facilities, and then distributed far and wide. I believe it would be far better, and safer, if we had a multitude of smaller facilities spread across the nation, or at least the region where the crop can be grown. This creates some redundancy which while perhaps not being maximally cost effective (less economy of scale), is certainly safer. I recently heard that the armed forces build lots of redundancy into their planes, tanks etc. They know that if the primary system has a failure, they need to have a secondary or tertiary system that can maintain that function. But the American food system is moving toward having little to any redundancy-all the food is produced and processed in centralized locations and then distributed to all the other areas. I think that, for example, having 75% plus of all the nation’s pistachios processed in one facility is asking for trouble. If we had a multitude of farms and processors if any one facility had a food safety issue far less food would be contaminated, and thus far fewer families put at risk. The likelihood that all, or even several of, the plants would have the a contamination problem at the same time seems very remote to me, and therefore the American food supply would be safer. We need to work on reducing contamination at facilities of all scales, but I believe we would be better off having lots of small clean facilities than a few large super clean places that occasionally mess up. When of these normally clean super facilities mess up it’s a huge issue because so many people are affected.
One of my major concerns with the current food safety reform efforts is that putting another level of burdensome (and costly to comply with) regulations in place will encourage further consolidation to occur and I fear that it will stifle recent advancements in the local food movement. From what I have read, it doesn’t seem that the rules consider the scale of the production or distribution at all. A small operation will pay the same $500 fee as a multinational corporation. If the rules end up being written so that a local farmer who sells bags of washed and ready to eat salad greens via a CSA or a farmers markets to several dozen families has to pay the same amount as Dole does for one of their massive salad green plants that isn’t at all fair, in my opinion. While the risk of contamination may be similar, the ability of each “facility” to make people sick if they mess up is hugely different. I was shocked to learn during the last e-coli on salad fiasco that folks in 26 states were getting sick. If people in those 26 states were not buying CA lettuce, but instead buying more local food, that scale of injury wouldn’t have occurred. So it seems to me that any changes need to consider not only what crops are grown, and thus what types of contamination could occur, but also the scale and system of distribution. I believe we need to encourage more local food production, processing and distribution and so must carefully consider the effects of reform efforts so we prevent further consolidation of the food supply. We need redundancy not consolidation in the American food system, but most new regulations seem to encourage consolidation as the businesses find that increased scale helps them to cope with the new rules.
I hope you will take some time to learn a bit more about this bill and then make your opinions known to the House of Representatives. Unfortunately time is of the essence, but we need to make sure that Congress passes a bill that will actually make us safer, not one that will force further consolidation, and discourage local producers who are wanting to supply local food directly to consumers, or via local stores and restaurants.
All but the last couple of ewes have lambed now. We have about 130 lambs from just over 80 ewes. The weather was pretty cooperative, and the ewes did their job well. We lost just a handful of lambs and so this year’s lambing must be considered a success. My one orphan lamb seems to have found a ewe that is willing to foster him (and she has the milk to do it!). This might be the first time in 11 years that I’m not trotting out to feed babies 2-4 times a day! Only having one set of triplets (who often need at least some supplementation or result in one full bottle lamb) has reduced my work load. I was able to graft (force/trick a ewe to accept a lamb that isn’t hers) one of the triplets onto a ewe that lost both of her twins.
All the cows have calved too-and that too went well. We only lost one calf-a still born fellow. He may have come breach or something as his mother was an experienced older cow who hadn’t lost a calf before. And best yet we didn’t have to assist a single cow with calving (pull a calf). It’s been several years since we had to play bovine OB/midwife or worse yet call the vet to extract a undeliverable calf.
John has gotten all of the spring grain planted already. We put in just a few acres of wheat and oats on our farm. The older farmer that John does custom work for insists upon putting in barley year after year-but we keep trying to talk him into letting us put in some alfalfa or other types of hay for him. On our place we use a year of small grains as part of our rotation between hay crops. It provides an opportunity to break any disease or other pest cycles we get going in the hay crops (the plant the pest needs is not there and so the pest dies.) John also likes it as it gives him a chance to smooth out the field, which should make haying it the next year a lot less rough.
So now the focus is moving to rotating the cattle and sheep thru their pastures which means getting all the electric fences going as well as the solar water systems. Thankfully, the rains we have been getting seem to mean our pastures and hay crops should grow quite well. Our alfalfa fields were frosted quite a bit a week or two back, but seem to be recovering quite well. Initially we had feared that our hay crop could be totally decimated.
Between all of the lambing chores and other farm and business chores I’ve been trying to get our garden in. Much of what I planted prior to lambing in mid to late April seems to have not germinated or survived the frosts. Replanting those sections and planting the rest is a slow process since I’ve got more weeds than I thought I would but I’m making some progress.
May 6th, 2009
It’s hard to believe it is time to start attending Farmer’s Markets again already. We decided to wait until the 16th to attend as we are in the heart of lambing season, and still waiting on a few calves as well. I’ll have to scramble to have everything ready for the 16th. One of these years I won’t procrastinate so much! Hopefully the weather will be good so our babies will be just fine while we are away at market. If it looks like it will be hard and wet we may have to find some “babysitters” to check things for us.
We’ve had nearly 50 ewes lamb since April 24th. (The lambs arrived a week later than I had previously thought, as I had miscalculated!) We’ve had pretty good luck with quite a few twins, and one set of triplets. We’ve even had quite a few yearling ewes lamb already when they are usually among the last to lamb. We’ve had a couple of stillborn lambs-much to our and their mama’s distress-but I’m “grafting” one of the triplet lambs on to the mama that lost both of her twins. Only one other loss-a lamb that apparently snuggled in too close and then was trapped beneath its mother when she shifted in the night. I don’t think we’ve ever had this happen outside of one of the small pens they spend the first 24-48 hrs in-but I guess there is always a first time. And to date, I have not had to play midwife, or OB, though I did help deliver two lambs that were coming breach to help ensure they wouldn’t be stillborn.
John finally selected his replacement heifers from those born last spring so we got the surplus ones sold. We kept a few to grow out for meat as well as we don’t think we have enough steers to keep up with current demand levels. We kept 10 heifers to breed this year so we will hopefully be able to bring our cow numbers back up a bit. Culling heavily (selling off older and less productive cows) and not keeping any replacements in 2007 due to the drought and complete lack of hay it created is still impacting us. This year’s calf crop will again be smaller than we’d like, but hopefully in 2010 we can get closer to our preferred level. We also purchased a bull this spring to replace the one that keeled over last December. John selected this bull for his overall size (we are hoping to shrink the size of the cows and thereby make them more efficient on a forage only diet) and his carcass traits (reasons for this should be obvious). With a nearly 3 year lag between purchasing a bull, and his daughters producing a calf of their own-changing cow frame size is a long term project, but hopefully we’ll see carcass trait changes (from the last bull) in the calves that are currently being born.
I got a few things planted in the garden before lambing kicked into high gear. To date, they are being very slow to show themselves. We have had several frosts since I planted, so perhaps I’ll have to start over. I only planted a few of each item in case the weather was not conducive to their growth. We took a stab at pruning our apple trees-especially the one largest one. That too will be a work in progress as we try to correct about 10 years of neglect. Plans for expanding the garden, and building a root cellar and pit greenhouse are currently on hold as we get thru lambing, calving and prepare to plant, check fences and get the animals out grazing and off hay. We will be rotating out some older hay fields this year and so will plant some small grains in those areas as a pest control measure. (Rotating the crops makes it hard for host dependent pests (diseases and insects) to survive as they don’t have the plant they need available to them constantly).
We are also finalizing plans to bring some irrigation water to the farm land near the house. This will be our first experience with irrigation and will likely provide some challenges as we go thru the learning curve. Revamping the antique water delivery system is the first hurdle, and one which we must tackle fairly soon to be able to get maximum benefit from the water. In time we hope the water will help us to utilize the pasture and hay land around the house even better. We might even be able to keep animals here year round, and that would be our easiest way to have pastured poultry follow the grazers around.
As soon as I can manage I will skirt (pick out poorer, stained, and areas with lots of hay) a bunch of the fleeces from this year’s shearing. We were able to keep the fleeces much cleaner this year than last as we fed most of the winter on the snow and not in feeders. So the roving and yarn should be quite a bit cleaner than what we currently have. I’m not sure how long we will have to wait for Spinderella to processes the yarn this year. I included a few photos from shearing below.
As you will have guessed this is a very busy time of year for us. John is often on the move from dawn to dusk which makes getting a family dinner in a challenge! My hours often extend to midnight and then 3 am while we check for lambs every three hours, and then during the day I try to keep the ewe’s in the jugs (small pens in barn) and in our larger “mothering-up pen” (ewes and lambs spend a few days here while we watch for milk supply or other health issues before being turned out in the larger pasture) fed and watered, the lambs tagged, pens cleaned, as well as dealing with newborn babies. We do our best to keep all of the balls in the air during this time, but this juggling act does tax us to the limits and occasionally things slip thru our fingers and get dropped. Please try to be patient with us, and don’t be afraid to be a “squeaky wheel” if you need some information/action from us.
April 9th, 2009
Our first 2009 babies are on the ground now. We’ve had 2 calves so far- the first last Saturday. The majority should start to show up beginning next week. Here at the house in town the snow is nearly gone. John has broken up most of the remaining drifts so as to hasten their departure. At the main farm north of town the story is a bit different. John has tried at least 3 times to open the road into the “meadow” but the wind keeps drifting the new snow into the road. So he continues to snow machine in each day to feed and check on the mama’s and new babies. Hopefully soon he will be able to get the truck in so he won’t have to ride across the slush while it more “slush” is falling from the sky. Being able to drive in sure makes checking things over faster, and on the rare occasion that we need to bring the vet in to assist with a birth not having to transport him and all his gear on the tractor is very beneficial.
We were able to get about half the sheep shorn last week. I believe the rain we are getting currently will prevent us from finishing tomorrow as we had hoped, but Saturday might still be an option. If that doesn’t work it may be May before we can find a day that works for us, the shearer, and when the sheep are dry enough. We are trying to work with a new shearer because the fellow we used last couple of years called us a several weeks ago to say he was having open heart surgery the next week. It’s been a bit of a challenge to find another shearer that could get our ladies shorn before they lamb beginning in mid April We like to have the ladies shorn prior to lambing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, shorn ewes tend to find more protected locations to have their lambs, which tends to result in the lambs being born in better circumstances. Secondly, the shorn ewes fit in the lambing pens (called jugs) a bit better. Even though they usually only spend 24-48 hours in these small pens with their newborn lambs, it helps to have them fit better. Although it is relatively rare to have a lamb be laid on by its mother, I think this happens even less with shorn ewes. A third benefit is that it is easier for the lambs to find their mother’s teats when she is shorn. Occasionally a lamb will try to suckle a lock of wool, if the mother is unshorn. This is obviously not a good way to get the nutrition it so desperately needs. Even if the lamb survives long enough to be taught the right place to nurse, it may have missed out on the its dose of critical colostrum. Lambs are born with very little immunity (antibodies don’t move across the placenta as they do in other species) so they are entirely dependent on getting the antibodies from colostrums. And finally the whole lambing process, as well as time in the jugs, dirties the ewe’s fleece and so fleeces from ewes shorn pre-lambing are a bit more valuable. We recognize that it is a hard for the ewes to lose her wool jacket so abruptly so we make sure they have a place to get out of the wind, and provide as much hay as they can eat so they can keep themselves warm, and meet the needs of their late gestation lambs.
Once the ewes are shorn we’ll try to get the raw fleeces to Spinderella’s Creations in SLC as soon as possible. We are hoping that we’ll be able to get this batch of yarn and roving back by mid-summer. By that time we will probably have sold all of the yarn and roving we currently have. If you have any suggestions about how we should have the wool spun (sport, worsted, bulky weight yearn) or size of skeins (2 or 4 oz) please share your ideas with us. If you are interested in purchasing a raw fleece to scour, card and spin yourself please let us know as soon as you can manage and we will set aside a fleece for you during shearing. The majority of our fleeces will be sold on the commodity market again this year, and so will be put into 200 lb wool bags. I’m looking forward to taking a few skeins of the natural white yarn and dying it this spring. I’ve been told it can be dyed with Easter egg dyes, or even Cool-aid. Maybe the kids and I will play with this a bit soon.
With Spring being upon us both John and I are looking at our list of “winter” chores and scrambling to get as many of them behind us as possible before we have to focus on our animals, planting and checking fences, and all the other spring work. We’re hoping to prune our apple trees (they’ve been allowed to grow wild for a decade or more), and get a dormant spray on them in hopes of improving the future apple crops from these trees. We’ve also put in a few more raspberries. We’ve had no luck with raspberries in previous years but we are still hopeful. We are working with a good friend who is a market gardener to get our garden up and running this spring. She has agreed to start extra seeds for us, and to sell us the seed for direct seeded crops so we can have access to some of the best varieties for this area without having to start them all ourselves at this very busy time of year. I’m hoping to expand the garden a bit more this summer. We are also looking at plans for pit greenhouses, root cellars and hoop houses. All of these structures would expand our ability to produce our own food. Growing our own food is a good option for any number of reasons, but given the economic turmoil we are experiencing it seems even more prudent to move toward being somewhat more self sufficient in terms of feeding ourselves. It is the ultimate insulation from inflation, and other economic challenges.
About 10 days ago a friend extended a challenge her family member had told her about. The challenge has been to not go to the store for two weeks-to live off what you currently have in the house (imagine a storm or other event kept the trucks from arriving at the stores). It has been a little bit of a challenge, but not too hard given the amount of food I like to keep on hand. We are now totally out of bread and lunch meat as well as fresh fruit and most vegetables, so I’ll be baking bread and making soup for lunch until we have Easter ham leftovers for sandwiches. Canned and frozen fruits and vegetables have been an acceptable replacement for the fresh ones. We’ve horded our milk for 10 days now-on Monday I’m going to have a large glass of really cold milk. I think I’ve missed that the most! It’s been a fun experiment to see just how we can improvise and substitute, but we’ll be glad to go to the store on Monday!March 26th, 2009
Until the recent storm most of our snow here at the farm in town had melted off. On Wednesday, John and I ran into a friend with several hundred mother cows. He said he still had a couple hundred that had yet to calve. As we looked at the snow building up outside we both looked at each other and grinned. We were so glad we weren’t having to deal with new babies just yet. We’ll probably see our first calves show up in a couple of weeks. By then the worst of the storms should be behind us and the mama cows will be able to calve without much interference from us.With any luck we’ll be shearing the ewes next week. The fellow we used last couple of years called us a few weeks ago to say he was having open heart surgery the next week. It’s been a bit of a challenge to find another shearer that could get our ladies shorn before they lamb beginning in mid April, but if the weather cooperates we hope to get the job done next week, and still have time to take steers in for harvest, and pick up the meat we need for this delivery. We like to have the ladies shorn prior to lambing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, shorn ewes tend to find more protected locations to have their lambs, which tends to result in the lambs being born in better circumstances. Secondly, the shorn ewes fit in the lambing pens (called jugs) a bit better. Even though they usually only spend 24-48 hours in these small pens with their newborn lambs, it helps to have them fit better. Although it is relatively rare to have a lamb be laid on by its mother, I think this happens even less with shorn ewes. A third benefit is that it is easier for the lambs to find their mother’s teats when she is shorn. Occasionally a lamb will try to suckle a lock of wool, if the mother is unshorn. This is obviously not a good way to get the nutrition it so desperately needs. Even if the lamb survives long enough to be taught the right place to nurse, it may have missed out on the its dose of critical colostrum. Lambs are born with very little immunity (antibodies don’t move across the placenta as they do in other species) so they are entirely dependent on getting the antibodies from colostrums. And finally the whole lambing process, as well as time in the jugs, dirties the ewe’s fleece and so fleeces from ewes shorn pre-lambing are a bit more valuable. We recognize that it is a hard for the ewes to lose her wool jacket so abruptly so we make sure they have a place to get out of the wind, and provide as much hay as they can eat so they can keep themselves warm, and meet the needs of their late gestation lambs.
Once the ewes are shorn we’ll try to get the raw fleeces to Spinderella’s Creations in SLC as soon as possible. We are hoping that we’ll be able to get this batch of yarn and roving back by mid-summer. By that time we will probably have sold all of the yarn and roving we currently have. If you have any suggestions about how we should have the wool spun (sport, worsted, bulky weight yearn) or size of skeins (2 or 4 oz) please share your ideas with us. If you are interested in purchasing a raw fleece to scour, card and spin yourself please let us know as soon as you can manage and we will set aside a fleece for you during shearing. The majority of our fleeces will be sold on the commodity market again this year, and so will be put into 200 lb wool bags. I’m looking forward to taking a few skeins of the natural white yarn and dying it this spring. I’ve been told it can be dyed with Easter egg dyes, or even Cool-aid. Maybe the kids and I will play with this a bit soon.
With Spring being upon us both John and I are looking at our list of “winter” chores and scrambling to get as many of them behind us as possible before we have to focus on our animals, planting and checking fences, and all the other spring work. We’re hoping to prune our apple trees (they’ve been allowed to grow wild for a decade or more), and get a dormant spray on them in hopes of improving the future apple crops from these trees. We’ve also got a few more raspberries to plant. We’ve had no luck in previous years but we are still hopeful. We are working with a good friend who is a market gardener to get our garden up and running this spring. She has agreed to start extra seeds for us, and to sell us the seed for direct seeded crops so we can have access to some of the best varieties for this area without having to start them all ourselves at this very busy time of year. I’m hoping to expand the garden a bit more this summer. We are also looking at plans for pit greenhouses, root cellars and hoop houses. All of these structures would expand our ability to produce our own food. Growing our own food is a good option for any number of reasons, but given the economic turmoil we are experiencing it seems even more prudent to move toward being somewhat more self sufficient in terms of feeding ourselves. It is the ultimate insulation from inflation, and other economic challenges.
February 25th, 2009
Well, we got the moisture that we’d been wanting. We’ve had a few snow storms and nearly an inch of rain in the last few days. John and I really hate rain on snow-think major slush everywhere! He talked me into going with him to feed the mother cows on our larger property today-in spite of the looming clouds, and the need to write this newsletter. I’ve included some photos from our trip below. As soon as we headed out there snow began to fall and by the time we unloaded the snow machine it was really coming down. (This time the farm can only be accessed by snow machine, or skiing in.) By the time we traveled across the neighbors land, and on to our property and over to where we store the tractor John’s goggles were completely covered with snow. Just how he managed to go thru 2 relatively narrow gates, and across a narrow dam without taking out our knees I don’t know. Guess he knows the route like the back of his hand after spending so much of his adult life out there.
I’ve included a photo of our remaining bull-pretty good looking fellow I think. John is studying bull sale catalogs and trying to decide which events to attend, and which to follow, and potentially bid online at. Our DSL will help make that much more feasible than it was with dialup-he used to go to the library to watch the sales. Although we don’t need to turn the bulls out with the cows until late June/early July we need to pursue the purchase now as most of the sales are timed to accommodate all the ranchers who breed much earlier.
Yesterday and today as the moisture was coming down in sheets John and I looked at each other and commented on how glad we are to not be calving or lambing now. This is calving season for many of our neighbors! We’ve only heard one report so far-and it was that that rancher was able to save 2 and lost 2 newborn calves. I didn’t hear the details but the two that were saved probably involved hauling at least the calf, and possibly the cow, into a barn to protect them from the weather. John and I feel that bringing our calves and lambs into the world in April and May sets them up to succeed much more than birthing now would. The benefits of spring calving are so numerous I wont repeat them all here now.
After our family vacation I traveled to New Mexico to attend the Society for Range Management annual meeting. By attending I not only got to acquire some of the continuing education credits I need to maintain my certified rangeland professional status but I also got to meet some great folks, reconnect with folks from my grad school days, and learn so really interesting things. One session I attended was about wolves. I missed many of the presentations but was able to hear a very powerful presentation by a New Mexico rancher about her experiences with the wolves that have been reintroduced into her area. She said that some of the wolves that affected livestock herds down there would selectively attack a calving cow. She showed some horrid photos of cows who’s udder and genitalia had been destroyed as the calf was consumed as it left the cows body. They have also had area children stalked as they walked from the bus stop to the house. Over Christmas vacation we had some friends who spotted 4 wolves at or near Georgetown summit, I also visited with a dairyman in Georgetown who if quite certain he lost a calf to a wolf. Last summer a wolf depredation was investigated not very far from our main farm. These are all only about a 15 minute drive from our farms. So it would appear that is just a matter of time before the wolves venture into our area and we have to learn to deal with them. I’ve heard that single livestock guardian dogs, like our snowball, are not able to protect their livestock from a wolf attack, but I don’t know if a group of guard dogs would have better luck. Here’s to hoping there are plenty of deer and elk in the mountains and that the wolves stay up there!
I also attended some interesting sessions about riparian area ecology and one that highlighted some very innovative and effective New Mexico ranchers. Attending these meetings always renews my interest in the field, though I do very little real work in this realm.
I think I’m nearing the end of the year-end financial work finally. I’m to the stage of moving all the receipts to their storage file box and double checking they are all charged to the right account. John hates this time of year because I’ll start asking what would you have spent x dollars on at y store on z date. We always swear we are going to clear up these mystery expenses as we go but never get around to it. Some of the codes at the part stores are very mysterious to me. For managerial information, I like to categorize the expenses down to the right part of the farm, ie, piece of machinery, cattle vs. sheep etc. So soon I’ll work on a summary and prepping for the annual visit to our tax accountant to see where we stand.
Thank you to all of you who wished us well on our first family vacation. It was really nice to get away and spend time with my family. I couldn’t check email and the world survived without me for 7 full days! I hardly even thought about farm and meat stuff. Our farm sitter didn’t have any major problems, and we only heard from him once when he had a question about the tractor. By the time we getting ready to come home we were all happy to be getting home to our quiet little town-well maybe all of us grownups-I think the kids could have stayed much longer before they tired. It reaffirmed our opinion that cities are nice places to visit, but were glad we don’t have to live there!
We haven’t gone much snow since Christmas time and the various thaws we have experienced have reduced our snow depth fairly dramatically. Hopefully some fresh snow will be forthcoming and this won’t be like 2007 when we got no snow after January. That was the start of our terrible drought. We surely don’t want to go thru that again.
The animals seem to be wintering well. We had one very unexpected loss just before Christmas. Our high-dollar, grass-fed genetics bull keeled over for no apparent reason. After a necropsy and various tissue tests no cause of death has been determined. Poor John was almost beside himself. He said he saw the bull push thru the crowd of cows to get to the hay he was putting out, and thought this bull looks to be in really good condition, he’s grown and has put on weight. He came back 4-5 minutes later to put out another bale and the bull was dead! No one we’ve talked to has ever seen anything like it. Even the vet is totally stumped. We are sure wishing we’d purchased insurance on him, but who’d have thought that a yearling bull that seemed to be in perfect health would need to be insured! We never saw this younger bull breed a cow, but we are hopefully we was just shy, and we will at least get some sons or daughters out of him. So now the hunt is on to find another bull with such great carcass traits, smaller frame size, at a price we can afford. I guess this is just one of those things that happen when you have animals, but not being able to find a cause of death is very frustrating. If we had that, we would at least know what to do to prevent this happening again. (I’ve included a few recent photos of the ewes and meat lambs, and meat steers below.)
After a quiet and less frantic pace over the holidays we are back to full steam ahead. My responsibilities as a board member of Rural Roots (sustainable ag group for Idaho, E Oregon, E Washington) are increasing. Since the group doesn’t have a paid director all the board members are having to take a more active role. I think this will be good for the groups future, but it puts more on board members all ready full plates. I’m currently chairing the committee to organize our local food buying guide. Hopefully once that is published in June things will quieted down.
Somehow in spite of Becca being at school all day, I don’t seem to have any more free time, or be more caught up on my work than before. When I return after our vacation and the training meeting I am currently attending I will be trying to catch up all of our books to prepare for our annual trip to the tax accountant. With a little luck we may even have to pay taxes again! I know it sounds crazy to be pleased about paying taxes but we try to remember that it’s a sign of financial success and so not something to be avoided. 2009 sales were stronger than ever before and we hope we can maintain or grow our level of sales throughout 2009. Time will tell I guess!
We all enjoyed our first major family vacation which occurred in early February. We were also pleased that my father and step-mother were able to join us after all. At Christmas time she had some major health issues come up that looked like they were going to prevent that from happening. My older brother also joined us, which was great. Our kids have spent very little time with my brothers as they live so far away and neither party can afford to travel much. John spent a great deal of time thinking thru what he needed to do to make “babysitting” the farm and all our animals as painless as possible for our friends who were so kind as to volunteer for the job. Leaving so many animals for a full week in the dead of winter is not something John or I take lightly. Thankfully our friend has raised livestock all his life so he knew how to deal with any eventuality. And thankfully all went well and no crises occurred in our absence.
I’ve got a back log of recipes customers have been kind enough to share with me, that I haven’t yet tried and passed on. I’m thinking about creating a page to share these recipes, so if you have any you want to contribute please send them our way. Those of you who are lamb lovers might want to enter your favorite recipes in the American Lamb Board’s Fans of Lamb recipe contest. See http://www.americanlambboard.org/fansoflamb/ for more information.
Speaking of recipes do any of you have or know of, a cookbook that gives methods for preserving foods, and then recipes for using those foods. As I expand my canning experiments I find myself wondering just what does one use barbeque relish or chutney for. I’m also looking to add a good gardening book to the shelf-one that tells how to harvest, store and deal with pests of various plants
©2004-2009 Lau Family Farm, LLC