August 12, 2019 - Morning, with Meat Chickens
Meat chickens, making peace with their fate on their last morning. PLEASE NOTE: Chickens were harmed in the making of this post. If you’re not comfortable seeing photos and descriptions of where chicken comes from, please don’t continue. This post is for those who are interested in learning more about the chicken butchering process–whether you’re...
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July 15, 2018 - My Cow
I haven’t written a post in all this time because I’ve been stymied, blockaded, unable. I wanted to write posts, lots of different posts, but I couldn’t. Because of Glory Bee. I’m going to try, like really try, but it’s so hard. Because every time I even think about writing it, I burst into tears....
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April 5, 2018 - Somebody Got In Trouble
And guess who it is! Unbelievably, our year-and-a-half-old Jersey bull suddenly, inexplicably, decided to start sucking on Glory Bee last week. I’ve had plenty of calves suck on other mothers over the years, but this bull didn’t even grow up with Glory Bee. He’s her boyfriend! I noticed the milk supply taking an abrupt nosedive...
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March 25, 2018 - Gingersnap Has the Last Laugh
This is Gingersnap. This is Gingersnap when she was baby, in one of my all-time favorite videos. That’s her mama, Moon Pie, with Gingersnap (her baby) on the left and Pumpkin (Glory Bee’s baby) on the right–both of them nursing on Moon Pie at the same time. Gingersnap and Pumpkin were both born in early...
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May 3, 2017 - The New Imperial Potentate
What new mischief is afoot in the field? Gingersnap is especially curious and excited….and nervous. And confused! She’s 13 months old, and barely understands what’s happening, but she knows she likes this new thing! He’s just her size and everything, and mommy is always busy licking the butt of that other new thing that she...
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April 18, 2017 - Little Bo Peep
What do we see across yonder barnyard? It’s a baby! And it’s a pretty one! Look at those white socks on all four feet, white underbelly, and white face (the white face being the Hereford stamp). Moon Pie’s proud, and I can’t blame her! Moon Pie is a Brown Swiss/Jersey mix and this baby comes...
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February 16, 2017 - Fred and Jumbo
A neighbor had a couple of ducks he’d gotten in a trade for something else. He didn’t want the ducks, so…. This one is a female jumbo Pekin. She looks like a goose next to the regular-size Pekins I have. So that one was easy. It’s the next one… This is Fred. Fred is a...
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December 15, 2016 - Holiday in the Barn
Got your holiday shopping done yet? What about the cows? Have you gotten anything for them yet? Do you think they aren’t festive, that they aren’t waiting for Santa, too? And what about the goats? (Clover, the Christmas Queen, my all-time favorite holiday goat picture.) They gave you milk all year. Now’s the time to...
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October 27, 2016 - Milk Train
You see what they’re doing, right? That’s Glory Bee at the head of the line. You can see Pumpkin’s little legs on the other side of her. Pumpkin’s sucking on mama. But so is Moon Pie, behind her! And Moon Pie’s calf Gingersnap behind Moon Pie, sucking on Moon Pie! It’s like….a milk train. A...
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October 25, 2016 - Raising Chicks In the House
My new chicks have arrived! It’s a batch of up and coming layers–Brown Leghorns, Silver-Spangled Hamburgs, New Hampshire Reds, White Rocks, and Speckled Sussex. Just a few of each. It’s fall, so that means it’s too chilly to keep chicks in the barn unless I use a heat lamp. My barn is 100+ years old....
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October 17, 2016 - Tips For Training the New Milk Cow
Cows are not innovative trailblazers motivated to leap tall building or climb mountains, risking life and limb and stability to conquer new lands or reinvent the wheel. They’re steady, solid, dependable, stable backbones of family farming, born to graze here in the morning, graze there in the afternoon, chew their cuds in between, and vote...
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September 28, 2016 - A Boy for Blossom
I was running water for the cows yesterday morning after milking–which is a lengthy process with big tubs and dry weather that has the cows trying to drink the water even while you’re filling the tubs–and kinda zoning out from boredom while making sure the cows weren’t knocking the hose out of the tubs, when...
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September 22, 2016 - Let Sleeping Pigs
Let sleeping pigs…. ….make friends with the chickens…. ….show off their bums…. ….and look ridiculously cute because when the pigs wake up, they root around the yard, turn over every stone (literally, like in a rocked wall garden), and generally tear everything up. So. An effort was made to block their escape path, which is...
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September 16, 2016 - Why Milking Machines Suck, and Should
My friend Jerry dropped by the farm one day and I showed him my new milking machines. He’s interested in mechanical things, so I showed him how they all go together–the inflations and lines and so on, describing how they’re attached to the cow or goat, and bringing out my old Surge milking machine also...
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July 12, 2016 - The Easy Way to Milk Goats
In the days following the recent massive flooding in West Virginia, I was milking goats the hard way, by hand with a flashlight in the barn. To call that process challenging would be tantamount to calling the rain we had here on June 22 a light sprinkle. Boy, did I ever miss my goat bucket...
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June 20, 2016 - The Birds and the Bees and Glory Bee
Traffic pileup outside the hay stall in the back barnyard. Babies in the way! Here comes one! Gingersnap, Moon Pie’s baby. How many different ways can I embarrass my cows? That’s Blossom, with her girly unders exposed to the world, AND she’s peeing. AND–does that look like she has a fifth teat? I must inspect...
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June 7, 2016 - Calf Update
I haven’t updated about Dumplin because….there’s been nothing to update about Dumplin. She was with the bull last summer during the same period of time as Glory Bee and Moon Pie, who both delivered calves in April. Obviously, the bull wasn’t shooting blanks and he hit them up right off the bat. He was here...
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May 25, 2016 - A New Complete Milking System
Got cows? Then you’ve got milk! And the baby doesn’t need all of it. You could use the original cow milking system….you know, your hands. After all, hand-milking is a low-tech operation. You need hands and a bucket. Clean up is as easy as putting the milk bucket in the dishwasher. But milking the cow…....
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May 23, 2016 - The Mother Duck Rides Again
Remember the white Pekin mama who lost one baby then trampled another? (See here if you missed that one.) I took the four babies she had left and put them in a pen for safekeeping, along with seven Blue Swedish ducklings I’d gotten from a hatchery. She wouldn’t leave them. She was dedicated, committed, obsessed...
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May 17, 2016 - The Little White Duck That Could
I love duck eggs. They make a great fried egg, and they’re awesome for baking. Duck eggs are huge, super jumbo size. I buy special dinosaur egg cartons for them, and I sell them when I have enough. I don’t always have enough because they hide them. The ducks are free-ranging, so they make their...
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May 2, 2016 - The Jumbo Journey
Some chickens were harmed in the making of this post. Don’t continue if you don’t want to see some pictures that might include dead chickens. On Saturday, we butchered nearly 30 jumbo Cornish crosses. This is the first time we’ve done the jumbo Cornish. They are advertised as ready to butcher in 6 to 8...
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April 29, 2016 - She’s Back on the Job!
We were out yesterday afternoon and came home to find Glory Bee hiding down by the creek. Of course we had to stop and check on her, and found her with some new company! Glory Bee is a third-time mommy, and pretty relaxed about the whole thing. She let us get the baby down on...
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April 19, 2016 - Rodeo at the Barn
In other words, I’m milking Moon Pie. First, I have to separate baby Gingersnap from mommy. Baby Gingersnap doesn’t like this part. Moon Pie thinks she has a babysitter, so she goes out shopping. And everything is fine for a while, until she realizes THE DINGO STOLE HER BABY and she has to stand in...
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April 11, 2016 - She Picked A Cold Morning
It snowed all day here on Saturday. April! Really??? Then Moon Pie sneaked off to the back of the upper pasture on Sunday morning to make something. Things are happening according to plan, except for the part where she had her baby in a back field. It’s April, time for calves, so I was trying...
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April 4, 2016 - The Whole Herd
Here she is. And look what she brought with her! A baby. And it’s a lil heifer. This cow is a Hereford, like Beau the bull, and the baby is half Hereford, half Angus. Glory Bee isn’t sure what to think about all this. She has so many new friends! “When is this going to...
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March 22, 2016 - 36 Chicks and A Plucker
The meat chicks are here! They were nearly too excited to stay in the box. That’s 35 male Jumbo Cornish X Rocks. They’ll dress out at three to four pounds in six to eight weeks. Notice there’s one different one in there. That’s #36, the extra they threw in. It’s feather-footed, so probably some kind...
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March 7, 2016 - Three Girls, a Bull, and a Blossom
Dateline: The boonies, Michael and Sarah’s farm, Sunday afternoon. A two-year-old dairy heifer. Grazing undisturbed in bucolic country charm. Lo, she is alerted from her pastoral ease by an odd arrival. Hark, what mischief awaits…. ….in yonder trailer? Go forth, young heifer, and multiply! And then, yes, then…. ….the world she had known since birth...
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February 29, 2016 - Steady Boyfriend
Look who’s here! He was unloaded here on Saturday. He’s a year-old polled Hereford bull. And he’s ours, as in really ours, as in no more hassles with finding bulls to borrow! He lives here. He doesn’t have horns, which I like, and Hereford cows are famous for their docile temperaments, which I also like....
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