December 8, 2010

Well, it was about a month late, but our calf, T-Bone, is separated from Sugar and we are finally milking again after 5+ months of giving the calf all of it. She gave 2.5 gallons this morning with about 1/3 cream. This is the 18th month of her lactation. Wow! I certainly didn't expect that. I thought we'd be doing good to get a gallon a day. We're only going to milk once a day so that will come down a bit, probably to around 2 gallons. We should be making lots of cheese. I'm thinking maybe a Swiss this weekend.

We have some home improvement things that we wanted to get done this fall and didn't, but all our farm stuff is wrapped up and our woodshed is full. We have a chest freezer that is full to the brim of beef and another full of lamb, chicken, corn and bone broth. We are truly blessed. God is good.

Be well.

November 1, 2010

Wow, sorry about last month, folks. I've been busy at work, busy with church matters, and we took another week of vacation. We're entering our slow season so I should be better about keeping up.

The lambs went to the butcher on October 1st and the bull went on October 12th.

Here is the bull carcass, after halving, before being quartered and loaded into the truck. The carcass weighed 750# so I estimate the live weight at around 1200# (give or take 50#). The meat is ready so we'll be cleaning out our freezers and bringing it home this week.  I haven't seen the finished product yet, but the exposed ribeye face was showing some nice marbling even before cooling.  He was 16 months old and our butcher thinks we hit the sweet spot where the testosterone allowed for rapid growth and muscling but will not have an adverse effect on meat flavor due to his young age. The drawback to an intact bull may turn out to be less fat but the carcass looked encouraging in that regard. I'm sure it won't be prime, but choice would be nice.

The ewes and rams have collectively decided that it's time for breeding. They were separated by a single strand of electric fence and while the ewes have been going back and forth all summer, the rams just ducked under the fence for the first time on Sunday morning. The ewes were up on the hill with them on the boys' side of the fence on Saturday and when they came back to the barn, the boys followed. We may end up with lambs in late March. That's a little earlier than I'd like but the lambs were a bit on the small side this year. I probably should de-worm the lambs once or twice during the summer. Some farmers have had good luck with garlic juice but the lambs have to be dosed with it regularly. I'm sure we would have bigger weaned lambs if I kept the intestinal parasite load down.

The pullets (and 1 rooster) have been moved into the barn with the older hens. We haven't decided if we're going to keep the older ones. Our pen is rather small for 28 birds so we'll probably get rid of the older ones this winter when they start spending more time inside. We've finally got a surplus of eggs.

We're finally going to separate the calf from Sugar this weekend. She was in heat on October 20th so I expect her to come back in next week unless the calf managed to breed her. He turned 6 months old on 10/21 so it's possible but not likely. If she's not bred, as I expect, I think we'll put the bull calf back in with her in February to shoot for a November 2011 calf. That's a goofy time of year for a ruminant to give birth in Ohio but I guess we'll just have to go with the flow.

September 25, 2010

Well, the joke's on me. I posted on 9/9 that Sugar was likely bred. She came into heat the next day, September 10th. If she's not bred this time, she'll come back in heat around 10/1. After that we'll be butchering the bull. If she ends up not bred, we'll try again next summer. I don't want to keep trying and end up with a calf in late July or August. She's been lactating for 20 months and since the calf is taking all the milk, we have no idea how much she's producing. I'm sure it's low since we didn't get enough rain in September and are having to feed hay already. Fortunately, we were able to buy our herdshares back so we're still getting good milk. So much for natural breeding being more reliable that AI. I don't know if our bull is infertile or just inexperienced.

The butcher is coming on 10/1 for the lambs. We still have one available. If anyone local is interested, email me at joe [at] realfoodfreedom [dot] com. The price is $3.00 per pound (carcass weight) plus butchering (around $200 total cost for a 45 lb. carcass).




We've decided not to raise any more meat chickens this year since our freezers will soon be full of beef. We would like to sell half the beef which can be split into quarters. The price for that will be $2.25 per pound plus butchering. I expect Porter is in the neighborhood of 1000 lbs which probably equates to somewhere around a 600 lbs carcass. I'm just WAGging (wild-ass guess) it so if you're interested don't count on these weights. Email me at the above address and I'll let you know when the butcher's appt. is and the actual weights as soon as I find out. I expect this beef to be leaner than I would like since he's a bull and not a steer. He's not 100% grass-fed but has had organic corn and spelt (no soy!).

We arrived home last Monday from our annual trip to the coast. It was great! Our animals all thrived under the care of Jennifer's brother. Now we are ready for all the work of autumn.

September 9, 2010

All is well at Liberty Farm. Lambs are growing, calf is growing (like mad) and Sugar appears to be bred!

Sugar came into heat for the first time after Porterhouse went in with her on July 31st. He didn't get the job done and she came back into heat on August 19th. It's been 21 days and she hasn't come back in heat so we assume that she's bred. She's due in mid-May. Her heats were mostly uneventful before we introduced the bull but the two times she came in while he was with her were very obvious. She was trying to mount the calf, the bull and the rams. That probably seems odd to folks unfamiliar with cows, but the cows will mount other cows to get the bull's attention. We're really excited to have another calf b0rn here!

The pullets really look good and we haven't lost a single one. We ended up with one rooster which isn't bad out of twenty birds. He recently started crowing. It's kind of annoying at 4:00 in the morning but I love that sound.

Lamb butchering is scheduled for October 1st and we might have one left. If anyone is interested, email me at joe [at] realfoodfreedom [dot] com. I think we'll butcher Porter in late October. We'll have half a beef available then (can split into 2 quarters).

Be well.

August 14, 2010

I finally finished my rotational pasture mowing yesterday - only a month late! We'll be feeding some hay for the next couple weeks to augment the comparatively small amount of grass we have left. That seems to be the norm for the summer even with our low stocking rate.

Sugar was in heat on July 31st. The next several days will tell us if she's bred because she'll come back into heat if she's not. If she did settle, that means a late April or early May calf. The timing couldn't be better. If she comes back in heat and is bred this week, it will mean a mid-May calf which is fine, too. A little late is better than a little early with our typically unpredictable April weather.

We have a 65 gallon Rubbermaid water tank for the bovines. Porter's new game is to use his horns to catch under the lip and flip it over. I didn't want to spend this much money but I guess I'll go to TSC this week and buy the biggest stock tank they have. I prefer plastic to galvanized steel but the steel ones don't have a lip around the top where he can hook his horns.

Our bull calf T-Bone looks entirely different than when we brought him home at three days old. When we got him, his coloring was exactly like his sire's - Milking Devon red - with a white patch on each side from his (primarily) Dutch-Belted mama. At a little less than 4 months old, he has turned almost completely black with a Jersey face. If I have time later, I'll try to get a pic and post it along with an old one to compare to.

bull pics

The first two pics are T-Bone when we brought him home in April. The third is him today. It's not a great shot but shows the change. The fourth shows Porter's water tank-flipping horns.

Note to our farm customers

We have removed our listing on Local Harvest because we have been getting more calls for chicken and eggs than we can deal with. Raising chickens is not our favorite activity here and we started out just producing for ourselves. If you are a current customer, rest assured that we will continue to provide for you. We will have an egg surplus beginning in November or December but we don't plan on increasing the number of meat chickens we raise in a year - 100 is enough for us.

July 20, 2010

Our calf, T-Bone, seems to really like his new father-figure. We put Porter in with him and Sugar on Saturday. Any fears I had about how this would work out have been dispelled. Porter didn't try to nurse and he's been calm and pleasant both to us and to his pasture-mates (the two rams plus Sugar and T-Bone). He's interested in breeding and regularly checks Sugar for heat.

He did knock the sliding door partially off the track and moved the hay feeder into the creek. We've learned that if he pushes against something and it moves, he will keep pushing. The hay box is now screwed to the fence and when I get the door back on track it will be temporarily bolted fast to the barn underneath. One of the rams is limping so he may have gotten in the bull's way but Porter hasn't shown any overt aggression to them. He probably needs a hoof trim.

The garden is doing very poorly. Our soil doesn't drain quickly and the foot of rain we received in June stunted it to the point it hasn't recovered well. The corn is doing well but not much else. Just before it dries out enough to cultivate we get more rain so the weeds are pretty bad too. I'm hoping the scattered thunderstorms moving through this evening miss us so I can get the tiller in there later this week. It's almost time to plant the fall planting of root crops and lettuce. Hopefully they will do better.

I cleaned out the winter bedding pack from the cow barn last weekend before moving Porter in and will clean out the sheep barn in a couple weeks. I plan to remove a post and change my 4-foot door into an 8-foot door so I can maneuver the tractor in and out. It still involves a lot of hand forking but the loader bucket (with the teeth adapter I made) loosens it up and makes it easier to fork. Then I fill the bucket and dump it outside into a large compost heap.

The lambs are growing well as is the calf. We only get about 1/2 a gallon of milk per day and he takes the rest.

July 10, 2010

Here are some pics. I wish someone would develop a good Blogger app for the Droid. I'm attaching them to this email but I can't do any editing.

June 12, 2010

I started "rotational mowing" today. The animals tend to overgraze the pasture nearest the barn and leave the further area undergrazed. Today I mowed those nearer areas and tomorrow I will put up temporary fence to keep them off the mowed area until it regrows. The pic was taken after I used the jeep to pull the tractor out of the mud.

Porter is staying outside for the next three or four weeks until we move him in with Sugar for breeding. His little stall is a mess. We strung hose up the hill so he would have water up there and we'll take the little bit of grain he gets twice a day up to him.

Maybe I can get more pics tomorrow.

June 5, 2010

We had more heavy rain last night and today so our creek flooded again. This one is looking upstream where we get runoff from the fields and woods above us. I had a temporary fence here blocking the sheep from going under the fence. It's now gone. The bull is in this pasture now, though, and he's too tall to walk under that bottom wire.

In this one,you can just see the top of the culvert in the background. All of the debris washed up here. The temporary fence that was buried last night is in this shot.

This is closer up. The top end of the culvert is just visible.

This is looking out at the downstream side of the farm. The large wooden fence posts are my neighbor's. The creek overflowed the bank here and ran across his driveway and pasture out to the road.

Ironically, I'm waiting for the water truck to come and fill our swimming pool. Too bad I didn't have a way to channel all of the gutters on our house and outbuildings into the pool. It would be overflowing.

Broiler chicks moved to pasture

May 17, 2010

Last night at 8:30 I went out to close in the hens and found our bull
with his head stuck in the crotch of a maple tree in the pasture. I
tried to push his head up and out to no avail so I had to get the
pruning saw to cut off one side of the crotch. It was only about 4" in
diameter so I sawed through it in a couple minutes. When he was free,
he thought it would be fun to play. I had to give him a whack on the
nose with the wooden handle of the saw to settle him down.

Sugar's been giving us some problems. Now that she's nursing a calf
she doesn't think she needs to let down for us. After a few days of
hardness in the upper part of her udder, though, she finally let down
for me this afternoon. We got 3 gallons plus 2 this morning plus
whatever the calf ate. That's pretty damn impressive for a Jersey in
her 11th month of lactation, in my opinion. This is all good because
I hope to make about 30 pounds of butter in the next 7 weeks or so.
This is the best time of year to make butter because the fast-growing
grass makes for a good balance of omega-3 to omega-6 in the fat. 30
pounds should get us through the year.

Sent from my mobile device

May 6, 2010

In my last post, I said I would tell the story of our new calf's arrival here at Liberty Farm. I didn't know it at the time, but T-Bone's arrival was not the real story. It turns out that Sugar was quite ill. The reasoning behind it is mostly educated conjecture so if any dairy folks are reading your comments are welcome. Anyway, here's the story.

About three weeks ago, Sugar forsook hay completely for fresh green grass. Subsequently, her milk production went from 3.5 gallons a day up to 5 gallons. Great! (we thought). About a week ago she started scouring (i.e. got diarrhea). This wasn't the typical loose manure that cows get when eating grass but pure liquid. We knew something was really wrong last weekend when she refused grain and her milk production dropped like a rock.

Here's where the conjecture comes in. The grass this time of year is high in moisture content and low in mineral content. It is also quite high in nitrogen (protein). The protein caused the spike in milk but the wet, mineral-deficient grass wasn't fibrous enough to maintain good rumen function (hence the scouring and lack of appetite for grain).

Our solution has been to keep her confined in the barn eating dry hay. She has been in there since Sunday afternoon and her appetite has returned with a vengeance. When we first brought her in we supplemented her with molasses and apple cider vinegar. I've been giving her probiotics every other day. Tuesday she was finally her usual self at the grain pan and she tried to eat the plastic tube that the probiotics come in. Her manure is still not the "cow pie" we like to see but it's definitely three dimensional. I'm confident that she will have developed a good fiber mat in her rumen by this weekend and plan to let her out on grass. If she stops eating hay altogether, though, we will confine her for part of the day.

As for milk, we really don't know what's going on because of the calf nursing. By the way, she has thoroughly adopted him and I suspect that she may be refusing to let down for us. We're getting very little milk for the house but the calf is fat and sassy. Once things are back to normal we'll begin separating the calf at night and milking in the morning. There are some training methods for cows that refuse to let down but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

April 29, 2010

Here are some photos that Jennifer took today. Man, when I look at our bull, Porter House, that long body brings to mind visions of ribeyes over charcoal! The new calf is named T-Bone. He's 1/2 Milking Devon and 1/4 Dutch Belted with a little Jersey and Holstein in there somewhere. His arrival here and Sugar's reaction warrant a blog post but I don't have time right now...

April 19, 2010

Our final lambs (I hope) were born during the night to Sonja. That makes eight total and she kept up this year's trend of having one of each sex. I penned mama and babies up together and checked both teats for milk flow. I think both lambs had already nursed. Mama was happy to get some good hay, fresh water and a little corn and oats. Next up is butchering last year's hoggets. They are both sold.

I'm sure any scientist reading this will scoff, but I think our house cow, Sugar, knows that this is the time of year she should be calving and she really wants a baby. If you've been following, you'll remember that we didn't breed her because we wanted to get her on any earlier calving schedule. (Last year she freshened at the end of June.) Anyway, she's been watching the lambs with much interest and lately we've noticed her grooming one of the rams. She licks his head and face just like she would a calf. We've got dibs on the next bull calf born at our favorite dairy. Hopefully, she'll readily adopt him.

Now that we're done lambing I've got wood to cut for next winter and garden preparation to do. Next weekend, though, another plumbing project looms. Ugh...

April 7, 2010

We've had six lambs born to three ewes so far - 3 boys and 3 girls. Here are some pics my daughter took today.
This little guy was born last Friday. I love the pattern.


These two were born yesterday afternoon, less than 24 hours before this photo was taken. The brown one is standing in the salt. Less than a day old and already an ornery turd.


Here's the brown spotted one again with his sister, eyeing that same salt lick.


Here are those two again with their mom, Annie.

First Lambs

The ewe that I didn't think was pregnant gave birth to twins early
this morning. It's hard to fast when the events in the barn are saying
feast.

Sent from my mobile device

March 30, 2010

Today I lamb-proofed the barn. Wouldn't want a newborn wandering through the bars into Porter's stall and getting squished. Thursday could be the first day of our lambing season. The timing isn't ideal with this being Holy Week but Luther made that decision for us when he went through the fence back in November. The call of nature is stronger than our best-laid plans, I guess.

It's supposed to be in the 60s and 70s and sunny here the rest of this week. Things should dry out nicely. I plan to prune the apple trees but beyond that probably won't get much farm work done. The Sacred Triduum will be our focus.

Anyway, things are growing and greening here. More to come as we get busy on the farm.

March 19, 2010

This is our Ayrshire bull calf, Porter House. He'll be nine months old next week. We just took him completely off milk two weeks ago. It's hard to judge his size by a photo but 1.5 gallons of milk a day up to 8+ months of age really packs on the muscle.

In late June or early July we'll put him in with Sugar for breeding and in October or November we'll put him in our freezer. Because Porter was kept by himself since our other calf went home in November, he's quite rambunctious and has pretty poor manners. I always take a riding crop when I go in the stall or pasture with him so I can slap his nose when he tries to force me around with his head. In the future I hope to always have a group of at least two calves so they can be companions and teach good manners to one another.

If breeding this way with a yearling works well, we'll probably do it every year so we don't have to rely on artificial insemination. We're fortunate to have an organic dairy with Dutch Belted and Ayrshire calves for sale in the spring and summer. My biggest fear about reintroducing Sugar and Porter is that he will try to go back to nursing. He's been separated from her since mid-October but old habits seem to die hard with these dairy calves.

All of our snow is completely gone here and the grass is greening up nicely. I have enough hay on hand to last until mid-April so I may have to buy a bit more.

Lambs could start coming on April 1st. We sheared the ewes last weekend and there are only two that I'm certain are bred with a third being probable. I think our one year-old, Annie, is open and the two (almost) yearlings are also. Thank God for that. I didn't want to deal with yearling mothers.

Anniversary

I just wanted to quickly acknowledge the 4 year anniversary of the Liberty Farm Blog, which began February 9, 2006. This is the 220th post.

February 6, 2010

I stepped out onto the porch to take a couple photos just now and found a few more on the camera that my daughter must have taken after the last time I posted pics on 12/31. See below.

It's pretty much impossible to know how much snow we got on account of the wind. In a few places I can see bare ground and in some places I walked though this morning to do chores it was well above my knees. We had to have gotten at least a foot. The wind is so strong that when I came out of the red barn after milking, the tracks I had made 20 minutes earlier were completely filled in. After my cheese is in the final press I plan to go out and plow/shovel. This is probably fruitless because the wind is supposed to blow 20 mph all day and 15 mph all night. I anticipate being snowed in tomorrow morning but we'll see.

This is me coming home from work the last time we had snow.


Here is the northwest corner of the red barn. The north facing corners of all our buildings are swept free like this with big drifts on either side.


Our house.


Porter House, the bull calf.


Warm & toasty!

February 5, 2010

Whew! I just looked at the clock and realized we were 25 minutes into the Friday night cocktail hour. So here I type, in the beginning stages of a snow storm, martini safely in hand.

The forecast here is for 6-10 inches of snow with areas near a line from Mt. Gilead to Canton receiving a foot. If you draw a line on map from Mt. Gilead to Canton it would go very near my house. We're comfortable with the woodstove burning and the stock are all bedded down dry with plenty of hay. Jennifer went out today and rented Zombieland and from our local redbox so we've got entertainment, too.

I'm currently reading The School On Heart's Content Road by Carolyn Chute and highly recommend it. Having read all of Chute's previous books, though, I just know it's going to end badly. Not badly as in poor writing but badly as in no good for the characters. She's nothing if not a realist.

February 1, 2010

As I briefly mentioned last weekend, I split some of the elm. Saturday night my upper back and shoulders hurt...bad. All I could think was, "I'm too old for this shit." Anyway, I talked to an old guy at Tractor Supply who told me his secret - use a 12# maul. I only had an eight-pounder and had to swing that thing like a uniformed fascist putting the beat-down on a protester. So I bought a twelve pound maul and plan to split a little more tomorrow evening before it gets dark. I'll report back on how it goes.

Speaking of getting dark in the evenings, we are really beginning to notice the lengthening days here just south of the 41st parallel. It's still light after I finish the chores on weeknights (5:45ish).

We'll be weaning PorterHouse this month and we're not sure what we'll do with all the extra milk. We already make about 3-6 pounds of cheese each week. I guess I'll be going on a dairy diet.

Cold enough

It's cold enough in Morrow County, Ohio to split elm today. I know
this from experience...

Sent from my iPod

January 23, 2010

We've spent our weekend so far stacking wood in the shed. This wood was bought from some local guys and from my brother-in-law. I've got some big pieces of elm that need split. My dad says there are two days a year cold enough in Vermont to split elm. I may have gotten in over my head. Good thing my father-in-law has a hydraulic splitter.

Yesterday I went up to repair a fence break and walked into the woods. With all the undergrowth dead and most of the snow off I saw quite a bit of wood down. My problem is I don't know the exact location of our southern property line and don't want to take wood from the neighbor without permission. So last night I got out the copy of our property survey and studied it. I know where the surveyors pin is on the southeast corner and, based on the map, if I walk 138 paces (more or less) on a heading of 266 degrees (more or less) I'll find the southwest corner. I'm confident I can place it within 15 or 20 feet which should be fine for determining where to cut wood. I also might ask our neighbor to the south if I can clean out his part of the woods. If he agrees, there's probably enough wood on the ground for a couple years of heating.

Speaking of our fence, it is in pretty bad shape. We've decided to get a quote on a professionally installed 6-wire high-tensile fence. The low-tensile aluminum fence I installed when we moved here in 2005 was never intended to be permanent. We've got two creek crossings and I want some strategically placed gates so I'll be sure to be seated when I hear the quote.

We made Colby yesterday. The Swiss we made a few weeks ago is plumping up which means the bacteria is working inside to make the eyes. The Monterey Jack from last weekend should have been waxed already but I won't get to it until tomorrow.

January 16, 2010

Chores are done and I'm sipping an aperitif while Jennifer finishes up supper. It's been warm here for a few days and our back country roads are free of snow along with the the places we've cleared here on the farm. Tomorrow is supposed to be near 40.

Yesterday I went to a Ford truck graveyard and ordered some parts to fix the emergency brake on my truck*. I'm also getting a wheel and tire to carry for a spare and plan to get new tires put on the rear next week. Then I'll be all set to go off-road and cut some firewood. This wood will be for burning next year after it seasons in the woodshed. We'll have to buy some seasoned wood to get through this winter.

Today I went down to the neighbor's and brought home 52 bales of hay. This hay is the first cutting of clover that was frost-seeded into wheat. The wheat was harvested and the straw baled and a month later there was a lush stand of clover. It has some straw stubble in it so I hope Sugar likes it. We'll have to feed her a bit more grain (or possibly black oil sunflower seeds) to make up for the lesser amount of protein in this hay compared to the alfalfa we've been feeding.

*I just realized that I haven't mentioned the truck here on the blog. It's a 1989 F-250. Nothing special but the 4WD works and it runs good. It will make a great wood, hay, and straw hauler and the price was right.

comments

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Will try to post this week(end).

Be well.