The walk of shame

I was getting married in three days. My nails were done. They looked so nice. My soon to be husband was feeding for me so that I could stay pristine (the struggle is REAL), and I just had to go and ruin it. How do you ask? Oh, let me tell you the tale:

I stopped by the farm to drop some wedding stuff off and glanced at the fencer. The tiny check mark that symbolizes a short was flashing with a vengeance. Tick, tick, #itch. You’ve got a problem. I walked around to see if the weaned calves had shorted the fence out again, a somewhat frequent occurrence given my substandard fence building skills. They hadn’t, but as I did a quick head count I noticed a problem, where oh where was lucky number 16? I walked around the fence, my capri pants and slip on shoes not giving me much protection from the weeds and mud. It had rained the night before and was looking to do so again, and soon. Because of course it was. Why the F not. This stuff never happens when it is 70 degrees and sunny.

I saw the heifer grazing by herself in the top rotational paddock, fortunately the main herd was on the other side of the rotation (which happens to be seven parallel paddocks that run perpendicular to an aisle down a hill – important later). With a heavy sigh, and a quick glance up at the oncoming clouds I entered the paddock and began to give chase. It should have been easy. She fell out of the fence, so she should jump right back in, right? Wrong. She ran to the corner and I gently urged her back with her friends. She ran past me, and I panicked thinking that she might run out to rejoin the herd (to become her future calf’s sister mom if her daddy had anything to say about it – she is starting to be “that age” when a bull starts to notice her sweet brown eyes… anyways…)

I ran to cut her off, and running is not my thing. We repeated the run about a hundred times. Back and forth. Back and forth. I got a stitch in my side. My aggravation with the situation started to ratchet up. She started bellering with all her considerable lung capacity – “Mrrrroooo MrrrrroooooOooo!” I started yelling back, “Go back to your new herd you stupid heifer!” It kept up. I got more pissed by the minute. Sweat was running down my back, weeds were cutting my legs, and the mother flipping sonnofabitching heifer was NOT cooperating. Ugh. 

The main herd started to pay attention. I panicked and yelled: “Stop calling for your mother! She doesn’t love you anymore! She has a new baby now!” I chased her back towards the fence. Hell, I even grabbed the fence and laid it down for her, but of course, she wouldn’t go through. The rest of the calves came up and thought about coming out, but this basic B would not cross the freaking fence.

I grabbed my phone as the thunder rolled. “Eric, we have a calf out.” “No I can’t get her in. Don’t you think I tried that?” Frustration gave me what I like to think was an edge to my voice like Liam Neeson in Taken or something, instead I am pretty sure it came off as hysteria. Which was not what I was going for. He said he was on his way, so I started out to try to find the short, at dusk with no flashlight and the rain starting to come down. My legs quickly became covered with seed heads as I wandered along the perimeter fence checking each insulator to see if it was off. I reached the paddock with the cows and my usually docile animals decided to channel their inner buffalo and started charging en masse at me. My inner voice mumbled, “This is it. I’m going to die here.” 

I plodded along, too pissed to care, as the herd milled around me with murder on their mind. I finished my perimeter check, still finding no short and no power to the fence and started walking along the top end of the paddock when Eric called. He was here, where was I? I started trudging up towards the gate. Surely if I wasn’t in the aisle the cows would just stay down here and eat like good cows. Oh, but no.

I was about halfway up the hill when I heard them start to come, hooves sucking in the slick clay as they headed for the top of the aisle, where their presence would cause the calf to break out of the paddock and rejoin them. I couldn’t let that happen. I fell to the ground and shimmied under the “dead” fence, only to have it light up the wet back of my shirt while I was on my belly in the mud and shock the ever loving muck out of me. Which of course caused me to spasm and throw myself out of my army crawl into an ungainly sprawl right in the middle of a couple piles of manure. I leapt to my feet, wiped God knows what off my face and sprinted for a slinky gate to hold the herd back. I made it just in time. I mean, just in time. I no sooner got the gate pulled taut than the herd skidded to an angry stop.

I slogged up the hill, my feet slipping out from under me with every other step. The rain wasn’t coming down hard enough to wash me off, just hard enough to turn everything into a God damned mess. I got to the top of the hill and glowered at Eric, who had the good grace not to laugh in my face as I explained what happened. Which was wise. I would have probably attacked. Frustration does not bring out the best in me. My grandma would be so ashamed.

We got to work with the heifer. Again we went back and forth, back and forth. I noticed that I wasn’t the only one frustrated now when I saw Eric’s iPhone “flashlight” spin off into the night as he winged it at the heifer when she ran past him. He started to yell obscenities. 

“I told her her mama doesn’t love her anymore.” I added to the string helpfully as he ran by. It was dark so I couldn’t see his look of what I am sure was appreciation. He jogged past me and the 50’ span of fence I had laid down so the heifer could go through. Her little calf friends were all lined up on their side of the fence, so I couldn’t leave my post or EVERYONE would be out. I watched the bouncing light run circles around the paddock after the heifer, and I patrolled my man made hole in the fence.

My phone rang; my buddy John had called. “Call you back. Cow out.” Click.

After another fifteen minutes, or years – it felt like years, we got her back in. Eric left to go finish feeding and I called John back and started relating my tale to him as I tried to make it down the giant slip and slide that was the aisle without falling down again  in order to release the herd from containment. His response? “Well, I had called to complain, but I can’t do that now.” Yeah, that’s right John. You ever want to feel better about your life choices? Call me. Call me when the cows are out and it is now ten o’clock at night and I have freshly manicured nails that are now shoved full of manure and clay and I haven’t had dinner, and I am covered in literal shit and have to drive home. In my freshly cleaned car. That I have to ride in in my wedding dress. Can we all just say muck with a capital F? Hmm?

So I of course do what anyone would do and strip down to my bra and underwear to drive home so I don’t get my car dirty. Which is fine, and a great plan until I get to the bottom of the driveway and see the gates. Which I have to close. That are next to a highway, with traffic.

And my bra and panties don’t even match…

So I wait for a lull in the traffic and run out to try to shut one gate, and dart back in the car so that I don’t get slapped with some sort of public indecency ticket; and the freaking gate falls off one hinge. So I am wrestling with a shitty gate, in the rain, half covered in mud and manure, in my bra, trying to not be seen by neighbors or oncoming traffic.

And THAT ladies and gentlemen, is how a farmer does a walk of shame.

Rootbound

“Build a life you don’t need a vacation from.” That phrase haunts me from its whimsical background as I scroll through FaceBook. Sometimes it is plastered over a beach chair, sometimes it is in fake cursive over a mountain top. The meme sparkles in its simplicity, and I hate it.

I am a business person. I am a farmer. I am a woman with a Great Pyrenees that acts as a reverse Swiffer sweeper and deposits piles of dust throughout my house. Many times I am exhausted. I am brain dead; mentally checked out from a life of constant worry over water levels and pasture rotation, and do we have groceries for tonight, or laundry done for tomorrow? Did I get all the invoicing caught up this afternoon, what should I write in a blog for work’s website?

I think it is the story of the modern farmer to live and breathe a never ending checklist of important tasks in rotation. Most of us have to work a 8-5 job in addition to the farm to make ends meet. I would say that is doubly so as a woman farmer, but that could just be my perspective because Captain America could care less about the dirt on the floor and whether or not the counters are clean at nine o’clock when we roll in from feeding everyone after working our 8-5 jobs and start our dinner. I still care and will numbly fold laundry while the oven preheats or I’ll wash a couple dishes while the Keurig whirs. Given all this, you might think then that I crave vacations as a break from the constant stress, but I don’t.

I crave them for novelty.

I become root bound in my little pot of processes that I do day in and day out. I curl in on myself in a constant stream of chores that I try to perform more and more efficiently every day, until exhaustion and compassion fatigue obscure why I chose this life in the first place. I need to be uprooted. I need to be taken out of my tight little space and have myself gently stretched out into the wide world so that when I get planted again I have room to grow, room to appreciate everything again.

Image by Keith Williamson. Click here to learn more.

I went to the beach with girl friends for a few days, and while I was SUPER stressed about leaving everything I am SO glad that I did. I came back and I am rejuvenated.

Fence down? Eh, no problem. Have you seen how gorgeous the sky is today? Wow, just talk about blue.

Can’t find a new calf? Aren’t they great hiders? Man, it is so nice to wander around the woods looking in all these little hidey holes. This is such a cool tree! Hey, are those blackberries?

New calf was actually out in the yard? Aw! Isn’t he adorable? Breaking through fences already and he isn’t even 24 hours old! You’re a precocious little buddy, aren’t ya?

Folks, even hammering in fence posts becomes an enjoyable act when I have been away from it for a while. CA and I spent Sunday afternoon starting in on the fences for the rotational grazing program that we are implementing and I was humming, laughing, and turning it into a rousing game of “how many thumps of the t-post driver does it take” that I didn’t mind consistently losing. I loved every exhausting minute of it. 

God, it is good to be home!

Oh, and we did manage to get the new baby back in the fence with minimal bruising. (On CA's part, not the calf's.)

The Great Wheatlage Debacle of 2017

CA and I argued over the best way to utilize the wheat that we planted just to keep the hillside from eroding over the winter because the beans didn't come out until almost October and everyone said that that was too late to plant grass seed then. Well, except for my dad who didn't chime in on the subject until after it was too late to plant the grass seed and use the wheat to protect it. Which was brilliant, and would have worked SWIMMINGLY, but we didn't know. 

Dad also suggested using a slit seeder to plant the grass over the wheat, but no one that I could find had one big enough to plant 40 acres with; but that was okay because Mark (the professional farmer who rents my parent's row crop ground) said that what we really needed to do was frost seed it anyway. Which was great, except that you do that in January, and it was February already; oh and BTW, didn't you know? You really need to plant grass seed in August, not the spring. And definitely not just disk up the wheat and plant it in grass like I had discussed with him in the fall.

So, CA and I are staring at the lovely wheat field with tiny baby grass and clover being choked out by the foot high wheat and we get the idea to hay it since using it as pasture would hurt the new grass. (Which I have to baby the shit out of because it was planted too late.) So we think about, and agree that haying it is the way to go. Even though neither of us has ever seen anyone bale wheat before as anything other than straw. The farmer's hereabouts usually either let it go and harvest it or spray it with a desiccant and plant over it.

It is April and too wet to technically hay it, so we will have to rent or borrow someone's equipment to "haylage" it. Which is where you take wet grass and bale it, and then wrap it in plastic wrap to let it ferment and become silage. It requires heavier duty balers as well as a special bale wrapper. So I call up Mark and ask him if he knows anyone who might be able to rent our their equipment or possibly just pay to bale and wrap it.

And wouldn't you know? According to Mark wheatlage is great for cows and the dairy he used to work at always made wheatlage. But he hadn't shared that information with me previously, I guess presuming that I knew with some innate farmer wisdom in my blood that wheatlage would be cow crack. I didn't spend weeks thinking I must be crazy, because I had never seen this done before. No, not at all. That didn't happen.

You know, everyone talks about the barriers to entry of farming and they always talk about how damned expensive it is or how hard land is to get, and that is 100% true; but sweet mother of God what about this awesome pool of knowledge that isn't being shared? 

I read articles where authors are chastising my generation of farmers for treating permaculture and other farming practices as things that they just discovered and I get it. We are a bunch of egotistical millennials. Perhaps we do have a lofty idea of ourselves, but do you want to know why we feel like we just discovered the best farming practice ever? That we must be the originator? Because no one is telling us about them. In many cases we are having to constantly reinvent the wheel, and we shouldn't be.

I have grown up on a farm. I have great mentors and resources at my disposal and I still feel like I am having to pass some sort of weird initiation where all these older farmers are testing my farming instincts in order to give access to their knowledge. I can't even imagine how hard it is for my peers who haven't been blessed with that background. It seriously wouldn't surprise me if I happen to slop my way up a mountain sized pile of cow manure to talk to some old timer about my sea kelp research only to have him tell me that it is great and he has been using it since 1975. Well h-e-double hockey sticks, why didn't I know that already?

All humor aside though fellas, I know you're not doing this on purpose; but please realize that "you don't know what you don't know" and the next generation of farmers needs you to teach us. Desperately. Yes, some of us (myself included) have weird a$$ ideas about grassfed, and organics; but those things don't change the basic knowledge that you can share. We need you to have a conversation with us. When we tell you in September that we want to plant grass seed, instead of just saying that it is to late, tell us about cover crops that could work. Or try something like, "Hey, you know cows, but you don't know much about row cropping. You just said you are worried about erosion, have you thought about this annual crop (corn/soy/sudan grass/freaking rutabagas) that we could plant after the winter wheat; but have out before August so that you can plant the grass for your future hayfield in the best time frame? I know you want forage for the cows. How about wheatlage? Cows freaking LOVE wheatlage."

And you guys and gals, the next generation, my generation? Don't discount others just because they're using Round-Up and spreading nitrogen. Don't turn off your ears the minute you hear row-crop. They have been doing this a long time and just because they don't farm the way you and I do/want to doesn't mean that they don't know what they are doing, or that all of their knowledge is somehow flawed. It is time that we all stepped up to the table and swapped stories. The agriculture community as a whole will be much better off because of it if we do.

Me? I think I'm going to start hanging out at the local Farm Bureau's pinochle night, or maybe Hardee's at breakfast, and hope that I might overhear something new. If nothing else at least the great wheatlage debacle of 2017 did do one thing. It showed me how much I don't know.

I pretty much spent my summer becoming an alternative cow vet.

Well, you may have noticed that I have been pretty much MIA for most of the summer. That is partially because I’ve got like 10 hours of mowing a week to do (when I haven’t broken the mower repeatedly – but more on that later), and partially because this summer has put me through an emotional wringer and I haven’t been able to share it until now. As you might assume being on a farm brings me into frequent contact with death so perhaps one would think that I would be immune to the pains of it, but I am most definitely not.

Early this summer Sweetie Pie calved again. What you probably don’t know, because I didn’t tell you, was that her calf from last year (Honey Bunch) died and I couldn’t figure out why. Despite being treated by a veterinarian I felt like I had failed her, that if I had just done something differently or noticed something sooner I could have fixed it.

So, when SP calved and the sweet little heifer was just another red calf I was disappointed. I know. The fact that she looked like everyone else shouldn’t have mattered, but I still wanted a redo, and the fact that she looked nothing like my darling Bunches hurt more than I care to admit.

Long story short, Captain America milked SP for a few days but with the distance between us and his work and haying schedule that wasn’t a good long term plan so we started searching for another bottle calf to put on her (since she makes too much milk for one calf to eat and it can lead to health problems to leave her with that much pressure in her bag). He found a beautiful little Charolais heifer off of a Facebook group, and I instantly fell in love even though the guy who had her mentioned to CA that she was “tenderfooted.”

Tenderfooted, my right buttcheek. When CA brought her home she was a textbook case for joint ill; in all four joints, and her navel. I insisted that we name her Sugar, and SP’s calf Cinnamon. My world revolved around her.

What followed was roughly two months of being told that vets “don’t treat joint ill in calves,” “just euthanize her,” and “I could do something if she was a horse.” Bovine discrimination is STRONG, ya’ll.

So I Googled, and read Plum’s and Merck’s, and when they didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear I read books on alternative treatments and got her an acupuncturist (whose treatment protocol included Chinese herbal medication that actually did A LOT to help her). I borrowed my mom’s therapeutic laser and gave her photon therapy every other day alongside the acupuncture, Chinese herbs, probiotics, astragalus & Echinacea, conventional antibiotics, and milk thistle (to prevent liver damage from the conventional antibiotics). I soaked her in Epsom salt baths. I gave her Reiki. I sang to her while she ate (even when she was eating at 3:30 in the morning, because by God that baby needed me so I was up and cheerful about it). I chased her around with a fan during the hot days and carried sauce pans of water to wherever she was laying. I took a thousand pictures of her beautiful little nose. I drove her hours to try (and fail) to get her treatment, and finally cajoled our regular vet into opening up on of her joints. He was amazed at how bright she was and how good her joints looked despite everything.

I started making plans for how to do bovine physical therapy to help her stand and walk more easily and looking into long term options for arthritis care.

Then at 6:30 one morning she started making a very distressed sound, which was odd because she had never even mooed at me. She started to bloat even before I could get her loaded in my car. I rushed her to the vet, but she was dead before he got there. She either threw a blood clot in her lung or had an abscess burst and died in my lap in the backseat while we sat in the parking lot.

I was, and still am incredibly torn up about it.

About a month later CA called me in a panic because Sweetie Pie was down and he thought she was dying. We hauled water to pour over her to cool her down while the emergency vet was on her way. She had no clue what was wrong with her, but treated her for low blood calcium (milk fever). She couldn’t stand on her own; so mom and dad (bless them!) drove a sling made for lifting horses and cows over at 9 pm on a Friday night (they didn’t get home from that trip until like 2 am). We lifted her up and hung her off the front end loader periodically for about two weeks before she started standing on her own again. We gave her tubes of CMPK, probiotics, antibiotics, and I force fed her baking soda thinking that maybe it was acidosis.

Then about three weeks ago she started having bloody diarrhea. I begged CA to bring her over to my house and I got her some sulfa, more probiotics, keto gel, more CMPK, power punch, different types of wormer, and everything else you could think of to give a dairy cow who was showing signs of either an infection of her digestive tract or ketosis. She got better after two days and I poured the grain and alfalfa hay to her. She ate great for a week and then started feeling sickly again. As of last week I was buying spinach, arugula, and baby kale for her because she acted like everything else was making her nauseated. She passed peacefully on Friday afternoon - laying on a pile of straw in the sunshine.

Her blood work came back Thursday. She had Bovine Leukosis, a disease that upwards of 40% (depending on which study you look at) of dairy cows in the Midwest are infected with. Some are asymptomatic, but when a cow does exhibit symptoms it is fatal. It is also probably what killed Honey Bunch. There is no treatment or prevention available. The only good news is that it is only spread through blood and, in limited instances, milk or perhaps by biting flies(the sources I have read weren’t 100% positive on that). We will be testing to make sure that no one else has it. Fortunately we don’t reuse needles or dehorn, which can spread the disease pretty quickly. (For more information look here.)

Even more fun? The DNA of the virus has been found in human breast cancer tissue. They aren’t positive how it got there yet, but I would expect there to be more studies on it in the next few years. The things they don’t tell you before you go buy a milk cow, huh?

Another fun test came back today. Sweetie was Johne’s disease positive too. That one, again, is fatal in ruminants that exhibit symptoms. Many dairy cows carry it, and it is much easier to spread than the Leukosis. I swear. I’m going to have to set up a go fund me page to be able to test everyone for all of these things. 

I love that cow, but I really, really wish that someone somewhere would have told me about all of this before I got a milk cow. We followed regular protocols for including a new cow in the herd – you know, keep them separate for a few weeks and look for signs of disease. When they don’t show any signs of anything you toss them out in the pasture, and in my case inadvertently introduce the cow version of Typhoid Mary to the herd. 

Going forward I implore you to learn from my mistakes. Make sure that any bottle calves you bring home have had colostrum and watch their temperatures very closely. If they start going up don’t mess around with antibiotics. Call your vet and try some Baytril – or  Excenel. There is a pretty good protocol listed here. You’re going to need a broad spectrum solution, and seriously if you have a vet locally who does Chinese medicine too, the herbs helped Sugar considerably. I can’t say they broke her fever, but about a day and a half after she got them she had a normal temperature for the first time in weeks. 

If you are interested in getting a back yard milk cow please talk to your vet about getting a test for Bovine Leukosis and Johnes disease before you bring your baby home. Many cows are asymptomatic for all of their lives, but if they aren’t it is very likely that they will die before age 10, and in some situations they can pass it along to other healthy ruminants. Forewarned is forearmed. 

Oh, and if you have a Grasshopper mower with the rear discharge NEVER BACK UP. You crinkle the metal like tissue paper and blow grass clippings directly towards the engine. And if you do figure out that a crinkled guard is the problem, don’t put a new on on and then back up AGAIN thinking that it had to be a fluke. It. Is. Not. 

It has been that kind of summer.

Sweetie Pie, the day we brought her home.

Sugar, getting her electropuncture.

"This Old Rock," the repair show of the future.

Today on This Old Rock, we will be discussing how to determine which type and size of rock to use as a hammer. Before we get started, you should wear some safety glasses and earplugs. When utilizing Stone Age tools safety is very important. Always wear your PPE.

When choosing a rock to use as a beating tool it is important to weigh the benefits of the rock type and the heft.

Now of the local rocks I can easily find laying around my work site I personally prefer a nice solid limestone for a hammering application because the sandstone just doesn’t hold up as well. I have found that they tend to crack when enough force is used, so if you do decide to use a sandstone you should probably keep another one in reserve. Shale types obviously are poor choices for the application we are discussing today, beating a lawn more deck back out so that the blade doesn't keep hitting the guard.

The size and weight of the rock is important too, because you’re going to need one that will fit with what you are hammering. For my particular application I had to be very careful to get a rock that wouldn't hit the blade while I was working on the guard. Could you take the blade off and use a bigger rock? Yes. But that would require tools, and lets face it If I could find those we wouldn't be here today. Anyway, too large of a rock and you can do more harm than help to your application, but too small and you might as well never use the mower again. It will take too long to be a viable repair option. 

So, there is a sweet spot of a rock that is sizable, but isn’t too big to manipulate easily. It may take more strokes to work with a slightly smaller rock, but some of those two handers just aren’t practical. I can’t stress this enough, you need to size your tools properly.

Now, some people are going to be sitting back saying, “Lauren, why don’t you just use a hammer?” And to them I say, “Well, I would. If I could ever freaking find one.”

But I can’t ever find one.

So I’m perfecting my Stone Age tool catalog, and sharing it with you. The great thing about these tools is that they are local, sustainable, and they have no carbon footprint. If you think about it, rocks really are the tools of the future. They’re actually made by Nature. Yeah. Think about that when you’re using your fancy made in China hammer…

Today's episode of This Old Rock is brought to you by:
"Nature and Innovation, Together we will go far."

How to Accidentally Adopt a Donkey in 18 Easy to Follow Steps!

Would you like to know how to accidentally adopt a donkey in 18 easy to follow steps?

1.) Make a friend in Mississippi by bonding over your shared love of horses.

2.) Move back to Illinois and live your life.

3.) Stalk her Facebook page randomly and see that she has moved to Oklahoma and is asking about fence recommendations.

4.) Give her fence recommendations, ‘cause you know, you’re a freaking BOSS when it comes to fencing recommendations.

5.) This causes her posts to show up in your newsfeed so you see that she is rescuing a donkey.

6.) Think that that is cool and follow her progress with the donkey regularly.

7.) See that the donkey has bitten the hell out of her and she wants to put him down.

8.) Be raised by a crazy Chihuahua rescuer so that you think, “Oh, he just bit a little bit. That’s not so bad.”

9.) Call her to try to talk her into giving him another chance.

10.) Realize an hour later that you just agreed to take the donkey.

11.) Curse.

12.) Convince your boyfriend to house a very bitey little stud donkey (which are called Jacks), because the cows need a guardian to protect them from coyotes.

13.) Congratulate yourself on your clever ruse.

14.) Sing Dominick the Donkey, the Merry Christmas Donkey repeatedly for at least a week.

15.) Consider learning to drive a trailer just so you can go get your new donkey friend, who may or may not be possessed.

16.) Panic.

17.) Pay someone to pick up and haul the donkey.

18.) Fall in love with Dominick, your newly adopted donkey.

Sing it with me now!

Hey! Chingedy ching, Hee-haw, hee-haw

It's Dominick the donkey.

Chingedy ching, Hee-haw, hee-haw

Our brand new little donkey.

La la la-la la-la la la la la

La la la-la la-la la-ee-oh-da!

And now we have a little friend, his name is Dominick.

A bitey little donkey, he will sometimes even kick.

When you come to the V-Y, With Dominick you'll be.

Because I could not say no, to adopting a donkey!

See, how easy was that?

Tractor Troubles

I am beginning to feel cursed, ya’ll. Like some outside evil force has focused its unholy powers on us and the planting project, determined to prevent us from finishing seeding the hillside. The last two weeks have been a series of misadventures…

It is like my life is an overly dramatized radio show: “This week, Captain America and his gal try to plant a field. Will the duo overcome the Nazi plot to burn the tractor down? Tune in to find out!”

Spoiler alert, we didn’t foil the plot. The Kubota caught fire, and CA had the most mellow delivery ever. Below is a dramatized transcript of this phone call.

“Uh, Lauren?”

“Yeah, hon?”

“Are you almost back?” (I had gone to get more fuel for the tractor.)

“No, why?”

“Oh, well, when you get back can you come straight out to the field? There was a minor tractor fire.” (Please note that he was completely calm.)

“A what?” (Imagine a note of hysteria building.)

“A tractor fire.”

“Are you f***ing serious?” (Full on hysterical uptick at the end there.)

“Yep.”

“What? How? Are you?! Ah! I’ll be right there!”

I love that man’s delivery to bits. Only he could be calm in the face of a tractor fire. Unlike me. I am the woman who called my mother when the house caught fire when I was 14. What do you do when the house is aflame, you call your mommy. Not the fire department. That would make too much sense. She was thrilled by the way. I believe her response was something along the lines of “Why the hell did you call me and not 911?” What can I say, I don’t do so well with panic.

It turned out to be a minor tractor fire, as far as tractor fires go. It was still drivable, but it was losing coolant like crazy through one of the charred hoses. Luckily the fire didn’t make it to a fuel line, and miraculously the tractor was in the field when this happened and not oh, say, in the hay barn surrounded by a ton of flammable material.

See, only a little fire! AH!

Life lesson/ Public Service announcement: When you inherit a tractor – please make sure to examine it carefully and see if there are any dust screens that need to be cleaned regularly. Dried grass can accumulate and spontaneously combust when you treat a Kubota like the good old Ford, that has no dust screens or actually, much protective shielding at all. You can lose a hand with ol’ Blue, but by golly, she isn’t a fire hazard.

She has her own issues, beautiful old gal.

Blue is such a good tractor. 

Like this past weekend when I was trying to finish planting with her (since you know, the Kubota is now in the shop…) and hydraulic fluid started shooting out of the back like I had driven over a green Old Faithful.

Did I mention that I don’t do well with panic?

I did manage to remember to turn the tractor off rather than just stare in abject horror. So, there is that. I then did the ever popular unplug the hydraulic hose and stare at it, plug it back in and look at the leak. Unplug the hose, re-plugin the hose, unplug the hose, re-plugin the hose, unplug the hose, re-plugin the hose, unplug the hose, re-plugin the hose, and repeat until I finally called CA.

“Hey, so, if the tractor had started to geyser hydraulic fluid and I wanted to troubleshoot it without calling my dad, and unplugging it and plugging it back in again didn’t work, what could I do?”  I am admittedly horrible at mechanical things. I take full responsibility for that. I’m trying to be better, but it is not my strong suit yet.

CA, who was shopping for birthday gifts and home remodeling components at the time, was unable to diagnose the problem via the phone and my crappy pictures.

I don't know why he couldn't diagnose it.
I mean, there is even a drip forming and everything!

And yes, given my lack of mechanical aptitude it is weird that I was the one in the field with the tractor and he was out shopping; but we have a weird relationship. I grant you that. Maybe in retrospect it might have been better to conform to gender roles there.

But then how would I learn? I can tell you that after having to call my dad to help me, I now know how to diagnose a blown O-ring (dang thing had dry rotted)  and will never miss that one again.

Especially not after having to buy all the replacement hydraulic fluid. That stuff ain’t cheap. But O-rings are! And we now have a stockpile of them. Take that Murphey and your stupid law, or Hilter and your evil plot, whatever it is that is making this planting thing WAY too difficult.

Ah well, as mom said, “That’s farming.”

And as I say, “This is why I drink.”

Cheers!

Happy National Agriculture Day!

Apparently this year's National Ag day theme (Yes. It has themes. Who knew, right?) is "Agriculture: Stewards of a Healthy Planet."

Fitting. That pretty much sums up why Captain America and I are raising our cows the way that we are. 

Would it be cheaper to fatten them up on grain? Yes. It takes a lot more grass to add a pound of weight than it does corn, soy, or industrial food byproduct. In fact, grass fed beef cattle frequently take longer to mature for this reason.

Would it be easier to dose with preventative medicine? Yes. Feeding them a few rounds of antibiotics to prevent infection (or just promote weight gain, because that is a common use of subtherapuetic doses of some antibiotics - usually penicillins and tetracyclines) in with their feed ration, also known as medicated grain, would be much easier than monitoring them and then separating and working the sick animals to provide them with individualized veterinary care based on what illness they have. 

No one who hasn't worked cows in a head catch without a squeeze chute can truly appreciate just how much anger a 1,500 lb animal can manifest. Watch your arms folks. They can snap them easily while you're giving injections. Sometimes I think rodeo cowboys have nothing on farmer's reflexes.

Would it be better to do that? For us personally the answer is no. There is a place in the world for that model - I'm not throwing any shade on the family farms that have to do things that way to stay afloat here. But for Captain America and I the choice is simple. Before he and I even met I started asking myself the tough questions.

How do I do my part to help prevent super bugs, or keep bee colonies alive? How do I reduce my carbon footprint? Is row cropping really the only profitable way to farm the land I have? Could there be another way to be able to afford my property taxes? Is all that round up runoff really safe? How would I have to care for an animal to not feel guilty about eating it if I were to be haunted by its ghost? How do I take the best care of the land that I have? 

For me, and for us, the decision to create 200 acres of rolling pastures out of some pretty severely ditched up farm fields in order to support a thriving herd of grassfed cows was the perfect solution. 

By planting a mixture of endophyte free fescue, orchard grass, and red clover all over the hillsides not only will the cows have good forage; but we will stop sending so much topsoil down to Louisiana every time it rains. Plus, we won't have to worry about spraying it with pesticides and herbicides that could wind up in the waterways along with the soil.

Unless we get a creeping buttercup infestation. Then they shall be purified with fire, 2,4-D, the wrath of God, whatever it takes to get rid of those toxic little suckers. Damn buttercups... not even goats can eat creeping buttercups. Ugh.

Anyway, the clover will also feed bees, which will help out the local colonies and maybe even pave the way for a hive or two of our own one day.

Isolating our herd on our acreage and using rotational grazing not only is better for the grass it helps to reduce exposure to some pathogens and will help keep the cows healthier, so even if we do get a bug coming through it should be easier to monitor and treat. 

Basically what all of those decisions boil down to is CA and I doing our part to live this year's Ag Day theme: "Agriculture: Stewards of a Healthy Planet." every day. I encourage you to go out and think about how you could improve your stewardship. 

After all, just a pot full of flowers could help a bee or butterfly, and just buying from a local producer could help a small farmer pay their property taxes and keep working to be a better steward himself or herself. 

Healthy planets are better with healthy grass, which grows some pretty healthy cows!

Make sure to follow farmingfoible on Instagram to see more of our daily adventures.

The seedy underbelly of inheritance.

There is something that I have been thinking about blogging about for a long time now; and I have been hesitant because, well, frankly I’m ashamed and I feel almost that I shouldn’t because it could be considered ungrateful or speaking ill of the dead. However, I was talking to a good friend of mine a few weeks ago about this subject and her comments and commiseration really helped me, and I’m hoping that maybe if anyone else is going through this it will help them too.

My grandfather passed away a few years ago. I have been extraordinarily fortunate in that I have inherited his farm. Purchasing land is very expensive and is the greatest barrier to entry for people my age to get into farming; so my grandpa’s generous legacy has given me, and CA, one hell of a leg up in being able to make our own custom fed cattle farm a reality. I am frequently overwhelmed with gratitude as I’m trying to lay out fences, or while CA and I are seeding out future pastures and hay fields like we did last weekend, but I am also frequently overwhelmed because like many people of his generation I think my grandpa’s thrift bordered on hoarding.

That is gonna be some gorgeous grass! Happy cows!

No, I shouldn’t mince words, keeping what I believe to be every newspaper printed since the 1990’s doesn’t boarder on hoarding – it is hoarding.

So, bonfire you guys?

I am pretty much the only one who can sift through it all and sort the trash from the treasure. Well, I suppose my parents could too; but it isn’t their burden to bear so much as it is mine. So I have been spending a lot of my free time sorting through things and playing a very fun game I like to call: “WTF, Grandpa?!?” The game consists of me finding either a giant quantity of something or something random placed in a location where you would never think to find it; such as finding two large black garbage bags worth of those free return address labels, or the box of quilts stored in a leaky and pretty much open greenhouse so that they have turned to sludge and muttering “WTF, Grandpa?” to myself as I shovel loads of junk and what were potentially precious heirlooms into garbage bags because there is no saving them anymore.

I think that sorting personal possessions is the seedy underbelly of inheritance. You can truly take nothing for granted. I’ve learned so much of my family history in just a few months since I have started this undertaking. That one pen in the box of non-working pens? That is the last remaining giveaway from your great-grandpa’s company. Don’t throw it away! That tiny piece of rusted wire that looks like junk? That is the Lone Ranger’s lasso and goes to your dad’s childhood toy. Better sift through that pile of wet and molding newspaper because in it is what was once a box of family photos. You can’t save many, but you can cry because, of course, they are the one damned box of photos where someone had actually labelled them. Unlike ALL the other photos you have found… Thank you great aunt Della. Those 14 photos I was able to save are precious.

I have taken loads upon loads out of the greenhouse and house. Looking at it you would never guess that I have touched it.

On a good note, I shall never need to buy planters again.

I haven’t even started in on the sheds yet. Oh, the sheds. Oi.

In his later years my grandpa didn’t devote much time to upkeep on the buildings that my great-grandpa built out of already salvaged materials (that giant stringer with the sweet curves came out of a bridge that was being replaced) in the 1980’s. Many of them are hazardous, and if they aren’t they’re just plain leaky. It sucks, but one of my sheds does have a sun roof now, so, that’s a fun design feature? Just kidding. You can’t really walk on the floor in that one anymore. It is pretty shady. And by pretty shady I mean abandon hope all ye who enter here...

The light streaming from above makes it look so heavenly.
"Ahhhh, ahh, ahhh." <-angelic noise

As you can guess there will be a lot of repair by replacement going on in the next few years. Which, frankly, is overwhelming AF; despite how excited I am about fence lines and my sunroof shed becoming a loafing shed for the cows with a permanent working pen next to it so I won’t be slipping and sliding around when sorting calves or worrying that they will get smart and dive under the panels and wiggle to freedom. It does give CA and I a fantastic opportunity to build something the way we truly need it and in a way that it can last the next 30, 50, or 100 years.

After all I don’t leave my grandkids playing an exciting round of, “WTF, Grandma?”

Just kidding. I should totally start stocking up on return address labels now. ;)

The cows are sorted!

According to my FaceBook newsfeed, yesterday was International Women’s Day.

I never really considered myself a feminist, but I am coming to realize that that is because I grew up in a small bubble where I never had any reason to. I have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by strong female figures, especially my mother who never let “That’s a man’s job!” be a thing. There was never  “men’s work” or “women’s work” there was always just work. When we would square bale she was always out stacking the bales as my dad threw them. She was the one who would correct dystocias if a horse or cow had one. Heck, she’s the one who would run the 2,500 lb bull into the head catch to doctor him when he got a wire cut around his nethers that swelled him up as big as a softball so he couldn’t retract it, and the vet said we might as well put him down. Soaking it in Epsom salt and covering it in cut heal twice a day made him so hateful towards her that he tried to kill her every time he saw her, but she did fixed him. She also helped load that big ole boy in the trailer when we had to ship him. Ungrateful sucker. She is the one who runs the family business (as president) and self-taught herself everything from veterinary medicine to accounting whilst keeping the house clean and the grass cut, and clearing a fence row or two with her chainsaw.

In short, I’ve been incredibly lucky to rarely see the discrimination against girls that I read about online. I never watched Disney movies and thought that I need a prince to come rescue me, or thought that all I was meant to be was a Barbie doll. I always knew that I could be an engineer, or a farmer, or a whatever the hell I wanted to be if I wanted to and worked at it. I’m beginning to see how incredibly lucky I was with that.

Case in point, CA and I helped a friend of his work cows the other week, and even though I was probably the one there with the most experience moving cows I got the “girl job” of record keeping. And I resented the hell out of it. Well, I should have known better than to open my big mouth because as we were working cows last night I got the “girl job” again. As in, I was the only one in the pen herding the little buggers. What can I say? My family doesn’t discriminate. Mom, Dad, and CA all stood outside the pen (read as: not A$$ deep in mud) and encouraged the calves towards the trailer while I waded around in the muck and hit them in the butt with a stick. It was glorious. Until one of them went cray-cray and I fell down and almost got trampled to death. Damn heifer. At that point CA jumped over the fence to help corral the crazy one to get her gone. I am super grateful for the help.

I think that’s one reason that farming appeals to me, at the end of the day I think mom and dad were right – there isn’t "my work", "your work", "his work", "her work"; there is just a job to be done, and you work together to get it that way. It is a great equalizer.

So, happy belated Women’s Day, and I hope you don't have as much rain and mud as we do right now!

Hey guys, the cows are sorted!

Agvocacy, Heinlein, and chicken butchering

I’ve waited awhile to publish this, because I know that it reflects a pretty delicate topic. That being said, I think that it is my responsibility as an agvocate and a person to try to explain to others where I’m coming from.

Here goes: growing up on a farm I’ve always been fairly in touch with my food sources. I knew that hamburger came from cows, and that chickens are in fact, made of chicken. So, I guess compared to many I was already more involved with my food than a lot of people nowadays.

That being said, I had never knowingly eaten one of our cows. (Who knows what happened once they were shipped – surely they ALL went on to become someone’s herd bull, right? RIGHT!?!?!) Or any other animal that I had grown. I can remember scoffing at an acquaintance when she suggested that I butcher my own chickens. “I could never do that!” I thought it was horrible. She was horrible. She was heartless. She was cold. But she was right. Somewhere along the line my thinking changed. I guess I’ve got to eat some crow, or more literally chicken.

That’s right. Captain America and I butchered 20 chickens.

Based on the reactions of the two friends I have shared the experience with already I’m guessing that you’re either going to tell me that I am “as extreme as the people who climb Mt. Everest”, or stare at me slack jawed in abject horror. So, before I get started, let me share with you WHY it was important to me to butcher chickens.

A few years ago I went on a cruise with friends and the captain of our little catamaran caught a fish for dinner. I had never seen a fish killed before. Actually, I had never seen anything butchered before. It was a very eye opening experience. I said a prayer for that fish and I swore I would never again take any life for granted – fish, fowl, bug, or beast. Previously I was content to live with a nice protective layer of cellophane shielding me from the reality that there is a smidge of accuracy to the whole “meat is murder” bit, but no longer. I decided that if I was going to continue to eat meat it was my responsibility to make sure it was as ethical as possible.

Basically, if I couldn’t stomach seeing a cow turned into burger, I needed to stop eating them. If I couldn’t actually be a part of my food chain then I didn’t respect the creature that had given up its life for me. I don’t think this is right for everyone, but for me being raised around and loving animals it was a choice I had to make. I felt like I owe it to them.

That’s the number one reason that I had to do this. I love those critters, and I want them to have great lives and then suffer as little as possible. I can eat those roosters and know that they spent their days running around the yard, eating bugs, annoying the dogs, and doing rooster things without ever being locked in a tiny cage or treated cruelly (except by each other because roosters are MEAN). I know that their deaths were as swift and painless as we could make them.

That cellophane wrapper on a frozen package of chicken breasts is the best insulation from reality that I know. Thin clear plastic sanitizes the world. It keeps the messy reality at bay. Those tenders were once living, breathing creatures. Every bite of chicken wasted is a death in vain.

After watching them die and doing my part to turn them from roosters into packages of chicken, I feel like I can better appreciate their lives. My life. The world. How delicate life really is. The careful balance of things.

Yeah. I’m kind of a melodramatic hippy about it.

**Warning: Things might get a little graphic and disturbing from here on in, so if you’re the kind of reader who would respond to butchering chickens with abject horror you should probably not keep reading.**

So, what was it like? This was our process: CA creates a headless chicken and my job is to simply grab the chicken corpse and hang it up so that the fluid drains. That sounds easy enough, right? I got the easy job. The clean job. I didn’t have to murder anything so I thought I choose correctly. Ha. By the end of it I looked like an axe murderer, and CA (the actual axe murderer) wasn’t even stained. Go figure.

I had always pictured “running around like a chicken with your head cut off” to mean running in circles, maybe some zigzags; but the first time I saw a chicken with its head cut off I understood that what I pictured when I heard that colloquialism was dead wrong. Chickens don’t run with their heads cut off, not even a little bit, or at least ours didn’t. They leap four frickin’ feet in the air and flop all over the yard like bloody Koosh balls. Have you ever tried to catch an uncooperative dog? You know where you’ll run up to it and then suddenly it practically teleports 20 feet away? It’s like that, only ickier. Much ickier.

Heinlein was right, the purpose of laughter is to keep from crying. 

Faced with the horrible landscape before me I started cackling like a mad woman.  I’m pretty sure it was either that or start sobbing uncontrollably.

After the fluids drained out, we would cut one down, dunk it in 165 degree water a few times to loosen the feathers and drop it in CA’s homemade chicken plucker (that worked like a fricking champion). If you ever plan on doing this I would highly recommend looking into a Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker. It made the process much more efficient. The spinning tub with rubber fingers removes the feathers very easily. I plucked one by hand in my great-grandma's memory, and that was enough to convince me that some things are DEFINITELY glorified in the sustainable living magazines.

After that, I would remove the feet and pass it on to CA to clean it the rest of the way. He has been field dressing deer and other wild game for years, and I’m guessing that’s a transferable skill because he rocked. We discarded the organs to become dog food. As my grandpa would have said, “waste not, want not.” Also, by home butchering we were able to be sure that every usable bit got used.  That made the hippy part of my head very happy. 

The next step was to place the chickens in a circulating cold water bath until we finished cleaning them. Then we wrapped each one in butcher paper and put it in the chest freezer.

We easily could have added another step and boned the birds, but I prefer to roast them whole so that I can toss the carcasses into a crock pot and make my own broth. Plus, truthfully, I was exhausted. It was only about six hours of work, but it was pretty draining. Though, now I have enough chicken to last for about six months which is pretty cool.

So, yeah. That was my weekend. How was yours?

This is not the greatest post in the world. This is just a tribute.

Okay, so it might be the greatest tale in the world, but probably only if you can picture it properly.

I don't know what it is about me taking a vacation that motivates the cows to go above and beyond their regular shenanigans. 

"I say, old girl, did you hear that the mistress is going to Tennessee to spend a wonderful weekend in Gatlinburg with her girl friends?"

"Oh? Jolly good."

"What kind of surprise should we send her off with do you think?"

"Oh I know. Why don't we all break out through two fences and go graze in the soy bean field. That'll give her an awfully good fright. Don't you think?"

"Oh, now that's a bloody marvelous idea old girl."

"Smashing."

No. I don't know why my cows are British, but they are. Deal with it.

So, the night before I left for Gatlinburg I heard a moo echoing across the hills. I thought to myself, "That sounds like it came from the bottoms. That's impossible. It must be a trick of acoustics. The cows can't be down there." I didn't even stop to lock up the puppies. I jumped into the Mule and drove down the lower road (basically a field road), just to convince myself I was hearing things.

I probably should have given you a spoiler alert, I wasn't hearing things. I got to the bottoms and looked across the drainage ditch to see the ENTIRE herd grazing in the bean field. I'm not just talking grown cows, the old girls brought all the calves with them on their little jaunt. I saw red and spun around as fast as I could, racing back up towards the house, passing the puppies who were having BIG fun running free down the road for the first time. I was momentarily convinced that I would never see them again, but you know what? I had more important things to worry about. The cows were out. In the BEAN field. Is there a grass fed exception for when your cows are jerks and get out into the bean field? Does it count if there aren't bean pods yet? Thank God the Missouri cows are good cows. Ugh. I sped past the pups and left them for dead.

I grabbed a change of shoes and threw grain at the horses to keep them at the front of the paddock, and not at the back where I planned to open the gates and rustle the cows through like a cowboy out of a Roy Rodgers song.

What actually happened was me getting to the bottom of the hill and finding that my ATV wasn't quite all terrain enough for the job. So I took off running and screeching like a banshee at the herd of cows. Yippee ki yay my friends.

I swear that the cows think I am possessed.

Between my heavy breathing and my cursing I am sure that the neighbors probably think I am too.

Who am I to argue with results though? I was able to circle around the herd and start it moving out of the bean field and up the hill towards the hay field without having an aneurism or passing out from lack of oxygen, so I consider it a win. I'm really not a very good runner, but when the cows are out I somehow turn into a cross country athlete capable of leaping downed trees and ditches in a single bound. It's kinda like the Matrix, only with spider webs and low limbs instead of bullets.

So, I go charging up the hill after the cows waving my arms and any deadfall I can grab around in a weird move reminiscent of an ancient tribal dance that is FREAKISHLY effective at making the cows head towards home. Only instead of chanting, picture it with Tourette's. That's me when the cows are out. Then I start winging the deadfall at their heels, because I am out of shape and I can't run anymore. I am also not able to hit the broadside of a barn, let alone a heifer clocking at 35mph. It motivates them though. Those ole gals ignored my open gate and ran straight through the vinyl fencing (twice) to get back in their pasture.

But the bulls didn't.

Brisket and Dale decided to get in a headbutting contest all the way up the hill. If you haven't ever seen two 2,500lb animals attack each other it is a thing of beauty. It is incredible. It is majestic. It is EXTREMELY infuriating when you just want them to go back in the damned fences where they belong because you had other things to do tonight rather than chase them all over God's creation.

There is a certain level of mad that a usually rational human being can get to when working with livestock. At this level of mad it doesn't matter that the creatures you are working with can very easily kill you. I think it must harken back to our primal days, because you transform into a predator. Prey animals must fear you. Long story short, you become a total moron and decide that you can take a 2,500lb pissed off hunk of beef. It doesn't matter that the other 2,500lb hunk of beef is having problems standing up to your chosen target. You're an apex predator and you will be respected, dammit! Or die trying I guess. (FYI: I don't recommend doing this. In retrospect it was incredibly stupid.)

So what did I do? I took my stick and I threw it at Brisket's nose.

Yes. Brisket, the bull that was smart enough to try to drown the other bull in the lake last year. Brisket who can push Dale through a high tinsel fence. Brisket the bull who shoulders and charges into the tractor and budges it.

I hit that bull in the face with a half rotten stick from 40 feet away.

He turned and looked at me and I about peed my pants. Oh, he was mad. How dare I have the audacity to mar his money maker with a stick? I suddenly regretted my actions and tried to figure out where I could run that he couldn't get me. The Mule was too far away. The board fence wouldn't slow him down much, but maybe? Nope.  I was going to die this day, trampled to death in a hayfield. I faced my fate's narrowed and slightly hate filled brown eyes, my last thought's prepared to be: "There are worse ways to go I guess." and "I should have grabbed another stick."

Then it happened. You know those moments that can only occur in movies, like when the bad guy is crossing street and gets hit by a chance truck or a train? What happened next was like that. Only it was Dale who broadsided Brisket and shoved him right through the fence. One minute Brisket had turned to face me, and the next his eyes bulged out and Dale was churning up dirt as he rammed his big black head into Brisket's side repeatedly, half tossing him forward. Brisket forgot his hatred of me and tried to turn to face Dale, but he was well within the confines of the paddock before he broke free to lock heads again.

I stared at the hole in the fence amazed. He didn't even break new boards! It was incredible. It was magical. I was alive! I guess he owed me from the day I hit Brisket in the head with rocks and dirt clods until he stopped trying to drown him, but still. Dale is officially my favorite cow. Sorry Sweetie Pie, I love your hugs but he saved my life.

And that, ladies and gentlemen is how I got covered in seed ticks and spent my entire vacation itching.

Oh, and the puppies made it home safe and exhausted from their big adventure. God, I LOVE livestock!