Busy Week

Happy Friday Everyone! 

It's been a busy week at the Pastures of Rose Creek. After two full days filled with many long hours and lots of hard work, we have  succeeded in working ALL the new cattle. 

What does "working" mean you ask? Working cattle means assessing each cow's health and well being and learning as much about them as possible. 

With the assistance of four wonderful vet students, a professor, and several family members, we had to accomplish a handful of things:

We checked each cows age by assessing the condition of their teeth. 

We vaccinated them to help them stay healthy. 

We had a lot of great help from friends and family!

We checked to see who was pregnant.

And which calves belong with which mom.

 We issued fresh new tags to help identify who is who among our cows. 

Overall, it was a lot of hard work, but we are extremely grateful to everyone who pitched in to make this possible!

Nearly a Chicken Nugget

Hey Folks,

We posted some pictures on our new Facebook page of some of our farm animals. Living on a farm we enjoy being constantly around animals. While some of them provide for our livelihood, others are pets or guardians. Occasionally these lines become blurred.

Case in point, Ferdinand.

Ferdinand, or “Dumplings” as our grandmother called her, was a poultry chicken. Her origins are not completely clear, but she probably grew up in a chicken house and was on a truck bound most likely for a processor the fateful day she fell out of the truck and bounced onto the road in front of our house. When we found her, she had wandered in our front yard, undoubtedly confused but cheerfully optimistic about the fortuitous circumstances that had helped her escape fate as a drumstick.

At the time we had a flock of bantam hens and roosters that roamed freely all over the yard, their metallic-hued feathers reflecting in the sunlight. Compared to the others, Ferdinand’s plain white feathers made her easy to spot. At first, we weren’t quite sure what to do with her, surely she wasn’t smart enough to stick around, not wander off into the woods, or into the jaws of some lucky coyote. In the very least we hoped she would at least lay some eggs for us.

Contrary to our skepticism, we noticed that Ferdinand had taken to her newly found freedom with what can only be described as “zest.” This chicken was a real risk taker. Dad, who loves hanging out in the back yard in a lawn chair, sat down one summer evening with a slice of warm pizza and cold beer. Not realizing he was being stalked, Dad sat the plate down on his lap to take a sip of beer. When BAM! In a flash of feathers, Ferdinand reached out with her long neck, yanked the pizza of his plate, and took off with dad’s slice of pepperoni pizza dangling out of her mouth running just as fast as she could go.

Another time Ferdinand got an eye infection that made her really sick. Dad who has touch with animals that rivals a university-educated veterinarian performed a delicate, but necessary operation to remove the infected eye. Not only was dad’s surgery successful but after only a few days in a cardboard box and some antibiotic ointment, Ferdinand was back in action.

Though she was tough, she was the only chicken of ours to let you pick her up, or keep you company as you walked around the yard. When she wasn’t plotting to steal your food, she would even hop up in your lap and let you pet her. And when you stroked her feathers she would coo.

I only have one picture of Ferdinand, but it is a great one. In the photograph, she is sitting on her tree stump and is nestled against her boyfriend, one of our bantam roosters. The two of them look like one of those content older couples that have celebrated many wedding anniversaries together.

Ferdinand was part of our family for many years before she passed. She showed us that chickens can be warm and friendly and funny and definitely provide more than just a source of protein. Ferdinand also demonstrated that relationships can occur in the most unsuspecting of places among the most unlikely of creatures - something we would have never known had Ferdinand not escaped that produce truck.

Thank you for reading and we hope you have a great week!

Turning Back the Clock on Farming

Hi Friends,

We wanted to share with you a great article about young farmers featured in the New York Times. According to the Times, young people disenchanted with sitting in a desk all day, are picking up a pitchfork and choosing the farming profession instead.

And surprisingly, many of these young farmers have decided against industrialized farming. Like us, they are working to embrace many of the same small-scale farming methods used by their grandparents and great-grand parents before them. 

Can you believe that it has actually been less than a century since conventional farming methods merged with modern industry?  

As a means to combat rising food prices during the Cold War, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz began a large agricultural subsidy program. This subsidy program pushed farmers to maximize their crop yield by planting their crops “fence row to fence row.”  The U.S. Department of Agriculture then compensated these farmers by buying whatever they couldn’t sell on the open market.

While the subsidy program had the desired effect of bringing down food prices across the United States, as the individual calorie became cheaper and cheaper to supply, farmers had to plant more and more to make up for their falling crop prices.

Inadvertently, quantity of the yield became the modern farmer’s new focus of attention, and in order to stay competitive in this new market farmers were forced to divert more money, time, and finite resources on techniques and equipment that would maximize the volume of crops their land could produce. 

Many farms today rely on specialized equipment; indomitable GMO seeds that come with non-negotiable patent protection clauses, and lots chemical fertilizer - anything to bolster volume and gain an edge in a highly competitive, industrial market.  

Quality is often sacrificed in order to meet the demands of an industrial fostered market.  The practices that once helped farmers make names for themselves as having the plumpest tomatoes, the biggest watermelons, or the sweetest, crispest, onions now lag behind on the list of priorities. 

We really hope that more farmers and consumers alike can work together to change this practice. It would be wonderful to once again see farmers storing heirloom seeds from their best plants, or experimenting with soil and compost to grow the better tasting crops.

In the meantime, at the Pastures of Rose Creek, a new truck can wait and we are very thankful our old farm tractor is working just as hard as it did twenty years ago.  So, this week we are giving many thanks for the fortunate condition of our farm and the wonderful community we live in.

Well, back its back to work, those fences certainly are not going to build themselves(Moo.)

Daffodils and Baby Cows

 

  We are starting to see our front yard populated with the same daffodils that our great grandmother planted at the farm over a half-century ago. Though short-lived, the daffodil’s beautiful yellow blooms are always the first to arrive and usher in new life on the farm. 

For us, daffodils are both a reminder of our family’s history in this place, and a welcome sign of our farm’s future potential.     

And so when three calves were born this week, the significance of daffodils and springtime on our farm took full effect. While, two of the babies were anticipated, the last birth took us by complete surprise. 

  We are all very happy to see so much new life on the farm and hope that the good fortune will continue. Besides being just plain adorable, there is something encouraging and uplifting about watching a newborn baby calf learning to walk on its wobbly legs.