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Tuesday, August 03, 2010

we're still farming too you know...

Even though all of our efforts seem to be focused on building the new farm we still have farming activities ongoing. The cows have all calved out now...for us that only means three of them. But still, it is the beginning of our little herd of Galloways. This year we lost the first calf...from our heifer. We simply lost him...looked for days. The other two, more experienced cows had no problems and delivered two healthy boys. These two along with our 1 year old steer mean that we have no short supply of beef in the coming years. Right now our freezer is empty and he is starting to look mighty tasty out in our pasture. The two little guys are very cute and now that they are around a week old you can see them playing with each other from the distance. Running and bucking and driving moms nuts with their head butts to the udder at feeding time. Calving season is a fun time of year for us. 

We are also still producing wheat berries and flour on a weekly basis. I love this picture. This is what I view on a regular basis as I get told what I am doing wrong. It looks like Mrs. S is giving me a piece of her mind...I forget what she was talking about, but she wasn't angry. You can see the mill in the background and our little milling room where we mill flour and weigh and package. It is actually a relaxing activity away from the tedium of building and planning. Here, Cindy is just applying the labels to the bags that I have filled and sealed. 

4 comments:

  1. "...we lost the first calf...from our heifer. We simply lost him...looked for days..."

    I have had a handful of cows that seem to like to wander off from their calves in the first days after calving. When that happens, I usually try bawling like a calf to get the cow to let down her milk, then she will start bawling for her calf, and hopefully the calf will eventually answer her.

    Usually the cow has a rough idea where her calf is (or was the last time she saw it) and will start moving in that direction once she "remembers" she actually has a calf out there.

    It doesn't always work, but it is usually worth a try.

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  2. well I certainly wouldn't have thought of bellowing like a calf, but it would have been worth a try. She was a heifer and of course she had no idea what was going on. There were some neighbor dogs that I chased off too so thats my guess. The other cows are good moms and know how to look after their calves.

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  3. Do you wear earplugs to operate your mill? Our old mill that we used prior to the Vita-Mix was really loud.

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  4. Well, we should I suppose. It isn't really loud, but when you are in there a long time with it running it gets bothersome. Usually we run the mill for an hour or two and go do something else. The packaging takes place with the mill shut down.

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