From the category archives:

Cow

Winter’s Here

December 10, 2010

Winter arrived this week. We were about as ready as we ever are. Thanks to Birch we only have one sheep breeding group. There’s one ram lamb left, but he’d need a ladder as the saying is, which also means he’s not about to tangle with Birch. We have sheds for everyone except the turkeys, [...]

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Eating Elly

December 1, 2010

Naming Chickens? I took that survey and of course announced that I’d eat a named critter. I’d much rather eat someone I’ve known and loved rather than a nameless critter on a factory farm. (Cool new map that shows you the factory farms near you.) As a matter of fact, it’s our 20th Anniversary today. [...]

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Heritage Hesitations

September 18, 2010

We’ve made it a point to pick the breeds of all of our animals off of the ALBC endangered lists. We have a whole host of them: Tamworth pigs, American Milking Devon cow, Chantecler chickens, Toulouse geese, Saxony ducks, Percheron horses, Midget White turkeys. We also have Icelandic Sheepdogs, Icelandic sheep and Icelandic “Settlement” chickens [...]

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Labor Day Labors

September 7, 2010

It’s a spectacularly beautiful day today and very pleasant after yesterday’s fall preview. I got into the beehives, today, as usual weeks after I hoped to. The July split was doing exactly what I feared they were, putting honey and brood into their honey super while ignoring the black plastic frames in the hive body. [...]

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Hurricane Danny

August 29, 2010

Danny (our American Milking Devon steer) was a year old yesterday. That’s roughly half his life. His mother waited an extra week and then left a nice dry shed to have him under a tree in a storm, actually “Tropical Depression Danny”. I carried him back to the shed while Lisa led Ella Mae. I [...]

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Barter piglets for heifer?

August 22, 2010

I miss my cow. I like having Danny around, but I miss Elly. I miss our time together every morning. I like the hard stop it brought to every single day. I had to be calm and relaxed, or it wasn’t going to go well for anyone. I miss the geese telling me all about [...]

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So bizarre

June 22, 2010

Yesterday was a little bit tough for me. All of the beef was ready at the butcher. You know, the beef that used to be Elly. I called to see what she dressed out at and how much it was, to estimate the number of freezers to bring. It was 680 pounds, so four coolers [...]

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