… and now it’s time for hay. We’re excited to try oat hay. The alfalfa hay has been stellar and we think the cows will also be excited with some bales of oat hay to mix it up a bit. Brent sowed his oats in fall to try it out and see if oats will [...]
Archive for the ‘farming’ Category
Oh spring. You are here. The cows are happy. The grass is growing. Diverse plants wait for their trip through the rumination machine. Brent manages the pastures to keep the fields strong and the cows conditioned.
These are the stories I hear when Brent comes back from a hard day in the pasture. Over the years, we’ve both managed humans of various disciplines. Dancers, Actors, Volunteers, Friends, Children, Geeks, Math students, Students and Cats. After a year of working a little bit with the cows, I’m starting to recognize similar techniques [...]
It was show time at our new corral. Thankfully and gratefully, we were able to have a helping hand from friends. Today was our annual cow blood test. The kids are on vacation so we needed some help keeping them happy while we gave our new cow pens a whirl (thanks G!). Our absolutely awesomely [...]
Project Cattle Pen is in full effect. Concrete has been poured. Posts have been placed. Barriers have been mounted. Brent spent a lot of time designing this beauty and running it passed me for feedback. As he does have a software developer background, the final design exists on a whiteboard. This same whiteboard was carried [...]
Another day of brown matter, only this time it’s identifiable. The girls moved up to the pens today. A couple of cows need a pedicure. And when mommy gets a pedicure, what better time to get your ears pierced! We have eight calves on the farm so far. Two of them are tagged and [...]
As a kid I used to LOVE alfalfa sprouts. Sometimes on sandwiches, but mostly I’d eat them straight out of the little plastic box they came in. Here we are, just twenty-nine years later and we’re growing alfalfa sprouts by the hectare. This effort will not end up a green-note in sandwiches. If all [...]
Like Finding a Beige Bolt in a Field of Dirt That Isn’t There
Posted: March 15, 2012 in farmingTags: farming
Brent is in the tractor with his disc harrows hitched up. We have many, many hectares of grass for the cows ( google says: 1 hectare == 2.47105381 acres). We also have many, many hectares of old vineyard and old crop fields. The soil is pretty soil-like despite years and years of fertilizers, [...]
The Big Mamas are here. For those of you playing along at home, we’re starting a cow farm and we’re establishing our herd. After much thought and planning by Brent, he decided to fill up the herd with fifteen mama cows. They arrived in good form and really, really love our hay. Two of them [...]
The office where we write has been five degrees C ( for those impervious to Celsius, that’s a solid 41F ) and dropping. It’s very, very, very “fecking” cold. I curse myself daily for not getting that last twelve rolls of insulation I’ve been meaning to pick up. The cold here doesn’t last that long, [...]
