… 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 work with the soils.  He has to fluff, rake and bale.  We’ll see how much the field delivered and how well it works for the cows.  After that, it may crop up in our rotation.

(gotta love the farm paronomasia)

More importantly though, is this horrible song I’ve been singing all morning thanks to Brent’s play on YouTube Wars:

Maybe I was a grumpy kid.  Maybe I wasn’t much of a morning person.  Either way, my sisters spotted my vulnerability and struck hard singing this horrible song.  I hate it even more as I reflect on the pure joy my sisters would soak up as they sang that song and watched me squirm.  I don’t think Brent knew this chord it struck within me as he clicked play.  And to that, I give you this.  I also squirm with this song.  I don’t appreciate the density of earnest notes.  But when you stick it on a muppet, suddenly it streams with harmony.

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 two above are standing there.  Yeah.  Standing there organizing.  They’re thinking about that rumor about greener grass.  Two minutes later, they sit, they ruminate, they dream.

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 accented Scottish farmer friend helped us work the cattle.  Once the vet arrived, we were ready to see how the concrete, the screws, the barriers, the terre held up.

When Brent and I first talked about this design, we had a tall order of putting the pens under cover in case it rained.  Thus far, we’ve experienced drought conditions, I think we got sun brained.  Of course, our first run of the pens was presented with one of the hardest downpours I’ve seen here in the Gers.  But only for twenty minutes at a time and no wind.  Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait out lightening.  Nothing more daring than working livestock around large steely things in a lightening storm.  Working in the rain didn’t stop us.  It just made the tea and cake afterward taste that much better.

The girls did great.  With so many unknowns like “gee, will their horns fit through the alley?” and “will the calves escape?” and “will they go in the pens at all?” – we now have a pile of bug fixes to work through for our next run.  I’m sure Mr. GrassPunk will share the details.  Most strongly I left our run through with the feeling that I’ve never felt more panicked about concrete.  When I made concrete, I was all like, “whew, concrete.  Just like makin’ bread in my kitchenaid.”  Then, when you see your concrete in action with giant masses of steak on legs testing your work, you think, “shit, I suppose I could have used a bit less sand and maybe not so wet.  Is that going to hold?!”  Everything is still standing.  There is some settling ( we only finished the work yesterday!) as well as a few bumps to strengthen.

Aside from the blood test, we also tagged a few more calves and did a few inspections on our mamas ( Heather, we named a calf after you, just so you know ).  For me, tagging in the alley was much better for everyone involved.  Brent had an easier time catching the calf, the calf was safe and calm in the alley and I had a bit more confidence piercing baby bovines.  We might get the hang of this.

After a hard few hours, lots and lots of rain, a well napped baby, we wrapped up and got set to do the rest of our daily chores.  Brent did his final rounds with the bovines and I got the kids up-to-date with their food and childish needs.  Lucy and I made pizza.  Because if I could order pizza and they would deliver, I would do that on this day only.  But as there is no take-out nor is there delivery and since I make everything I possibly can except for sugar, wine and coffee, we made our pizza and it was the best pizza I ever ate.

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 out to the cattle pen site as a specification when he worked with one of our neighbors.  While we were in the design phase, I tried my best to stick to my roots and play the role of “tester.”  Only instead of thinking: USER, I thought: COW.  As a former software test engineer, I’ve spent many hours staring at a whiteboard while some geek hand waves an important feature.  Asking all the important questions – “can I eat it in a box?”; “can I eat it with a fox?” – I can’t help myself and go write something up with more detail.  There exists a paper version of Project Cattle pen, but it’s hardly to scale.  My three meter and six meter barriers appear to be of equal size.  The paper version, however, is more resistant to spasmodic one-year-olds carrying paper towels.

Brent’s work also has to cope with holes that can or cannot be dug, barriers that arrived as the wrong size as well as important design “gotchas” that became apparent after the work (read: concrete) has been placed.  All these things so far have been recoverable and Project Cattle pen keeps on truckin’.

This neighbor of ours knows a lot about leveling and concrete and such things, which was hugely helpful. I know nothing about leveling and concrete and such things, so I learned a lot.  He taught me how to mix concrete.  I got to know our new concrete mixer by mixing Lucerne seed a week ago.  And just like my “pig fucker” kitchenaid, it goes ‘round and mixes shit.  He gave me the recipe for concrete, which is written on the back of my recipe for chili.  One of the boys helped shovel in the dry ingredients and suddenly we had concrete.  I felt empowered.

more to come on Project: Cattle Pen …

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 the others need their tags done.  Everyone’s doing it.

The cattle move went very well.  When we started, there were two Black Hawk like things sniffing our alfalfa (Dude, a little close this time you think?).  Also, there were two LOUD sonic booms.  It was a fun-filled military show in the French countryside today.  Despite loud noises and crazy helicopters, we finally see the calming effect of cows.  Cows are older, had their baby or four and are really in no hurry to get anywhere.  They were barely fazed by such intrusions.  Brent moves the herd all the time.  The daily “new grass” move is calm.  When he does a long move with a facebook of heifers, running and general giddiness is the theme.  But they stop.  Quite quickly.  With the cows, everyone slows down and moves like cows.  There’s no rush.  We chew.  We moo.  I love the cows.  There was a hiccup at the point where the fence led them into the pens.  We recovered.  We have some improvements for our pen approach plan.

Now that the girls are here and our calf ear tags have at last arrived, Brent wanted to tag the calves.  The pens are partially completed.  They are beautiful.  I heart the new pens.  They are not done.  Our calf tagging plan involves a full set of pens.  With our partial set, Brent laid out a method that was very Gascon.

The deal with calf tagging is you need to catch the calf and pierce both ears with a little plastic tag and a very quick, strong, relatively painless clampy thing.  But see, there’s the mom.  She’s usually right next to the calf and extremely interested in the calf’s whereabouts.  I can relate.  My children are very important to me and I constantly worry about them.  Any separation can lead to worry, panic and aggressive behavior.  Otto is away on a school trip right now.   He’s never been away this long, ever.  Inside I’m mooing.  The act of catching a calf to tag it seemed scary to me.

With our half pens, this was the plan:

-        I stand in a newly installed pen with tagging tools

-        Brent gently works the herd to catch a calf

-        Brent hands the calf to me in the pen (safe away from potentially aggressive mama)

-        Calf gets tagged

-        Calf happily returns with mama and the herd

This is what happened:

-        I stood in the pen ( in my expensive jeans and cashmere sweater. Dumb girl. )

-        Brent worked the herd and caught the calf

-        Brent carried the calf to me (further than planned.  He’s very tired tonight), while mama cow was watching, but totally chill and calm

-        Brent rolled under the gate and helped the calf be still for the ear piercing.  Those little barely-a-week-old calves are strong!

-        Together we held the calf while one of us tagged

-        Calf happily returned with mama and the herd

It was a day of brown.  It was a day where “in sickness and in health and in tagging calves” must have been listed in the fine print of our wedding vows.  For some crazy reason, I didn’t imagine myself laying my entire weight, fancy jeans and all, on a calf to keep it from running so I could tag it.  I had visions of a weaker calf.  One that I could sit on while my white, cashmere sweater stayed clean.  It suddenly came clear why the local farmers wear these aquamarine overalls when they work with the cows.  Up to this point, I’ve not rolled around in cow-brown nicely mixed with straw.  It helps keep your perspective in life.  When a job needs to get done, these things are unimportant.  We worked together.  Every cow was calm and we managed to tag five of the six we were trying to do.  The last one was tricky because mama cow was giving Brent the “hairy eyeball.”  We’ll give it another go tomorrow.  Only this time, I’ll wear my overalls.

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 works well, those little seeds will end up grilled with frites as we work hard to get great grass turned into great beef.

Brent has been working steadily getting the fields prepared before the rain.  Then he went to get the seed in before the rain.  Then it rained.  Let’s skip to the end after the rain hit, but before he gets the seeder going where we share that moment of joy when all his debugging came clear and the broadcast seeder went ‘round.    It goes now, the seeder.  Thankfully there’s more rain coming.

Seeding is actually quick to do compared to the discing and rolling he’s been doing.  Seed preparation takes a bit more time.  As I’m new to this, I can see where seed prep could go a bit faster.  Preparing alfalfa goes a little something like this:

Mix up Activator B, that’s ‘B’ for “Brown” (I’m not sure what it is, but it’s unidentifiable brown matter that is organic)

Add Activator B to big bag of alfalfa and mix … with your hands or a cement mixer so I’ve heard

Let it set for a minute to work magic

Take picture of cute cat

Add any other seed you intend to broadcast into the grass party, then let ‘er go.

Brent had me add a splash of cola to help it all bind.  The kids have been staring at that bottle of cola for weeks.  Each day I’m asked if “Daddy has used his Coke yet?” or “Can I have some of Daddy’s Coke?”  (they kids don’t get Coke at home.  yeah, I’m one of those).  At last Daddy’s cola product has been opened and the kids haven’t noticed yet.  It’s so intermingled with Activator B, I’m not interested in sharing with the kids.  I think a celebratory cola product is in order as Brent completed his first paddock of alfalfa.

Mixing Activator B into 25 kilos of alfalfa with your hands takes you back to playing in pebbly sand.  As the brown goop gets mixed in, you feel like you’re about to create France’s largest chia pet.  Alfalfa seeds are very small.  I have visions of alfalfa sprouting under my nails or in the crevices of my camera.

I mixed a couple batches of seed today.  There is still much more to do.  We will always be seeding each year, but not this much.  The old vineyards, the old corn fields and the old sorghum fields need an introduction to their new life as grass.

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, vine spraying and mono-crops.  Brent is out there getting them “online” for future grass and hay.  Our cows are a bit spoiled.  This disc-ing business is touchy.  Brent knows WAY more on this, but it seems you can’t disc when it’s too wet or a bit wet or a bit wet followed by lots of sun (you can make bricks that way).  While talking through the disc plan, I can’t help but think of the Farmers’ Almanac.  I used to read it as a child.  My mom kept a copy in the bathroom.  I’ve never been a bathroom reader, I suppose I’m efficient that way, but the Farmers’ Almanac gave such incredible data on weather and other things, I could sit there and thumb through it for many minutes.  As a Southern California native where it’s 72F and breezy at all times, I loved reading about weather.  Apparently, it fluctuates between cold, hot, windy and rainy and not always the same from year to year.  Who knew?  We have rain approaching this weekend.  All the farmers are out working the fields to get seed in the ground and start germinating.  Each day things need to run smoothly.  The weather is checked daily.  Sometimes the rain starts this Friday, another time it’s pushed out to Sunday.  The farmers need to keep on tractoring and hope nothing breaks down.  Or in Brent’s case, lose a bolt on your disc harrow.  He did a quick look around when he noticed and couldn’t find it.  Then, he went to plan B.

Plan B is: “if the discs work, keep on disc-ing.”  The discs work, but he can no longer lift them with his fancy hydraulics.  So everywhere he drives, he discs fields.  He decided to plan a route to the back of the farm that would give us most bang for the disc while I searched the field for the bolt.  Along the way, we now have lovely disced grass that should grow some interesting foliage as seed blows around.

I popped Zélie on my back and walked the freshly worked field searching for a large beige bolt.  The field was brown.  The bolt was beige.  I must admit, I was pessimistic.  Z and I kept it up.  Of course I wore the wrong shoes.  My urban Campers were no match for the freshly worked soil of France.  With each step I was reminded of walking in the hot sun on Coronado beach looking for a spot to place my towel, crank up 91X and start working on my Spring tan.  “Lulu POP!  Lucy POP!” would bring me back to reality.  The reality was, there was no way I was going to find that bolt.  We did the entire field.  It wasn’t there.

In other news, yesterday another calf was born successfully.  A little girl.  I think we’re calling her “hooptie.”

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 already calved and arrived with baby. The day after, one of the first-time moms popped out a female calf successfully. It’s the year of the ‘h’ so we have Homer, Hibou and Hermione. Hermione was named by a guest visiting the day of the birth.

After a few days of mingling, Brent set off to merge the herds. After our last experience of merging herds, let me tell you now … we learned a thing or three. I feel comfortable offering advice should anyone fall into this circumstance. Tip number one: don’t start up a grass-fed beef farm, have a baby, move into a house missing windows and doors in a country you don’t know the language all that well all at the same time.  Any one of those items is awesome, but all at once is doable, but tough. Tip two and three: get your fences cranked up to eleven. Tip four: don’t buy a facebook of heifers; They’re giddy little teenagers who tend to bolt if someone insults them. Tip five: don’t buy heifers that insult other heifers and expect them all to get along. At the moment this will be our last herd merge. From here on out, we stop buying cows and start selling grass-fed meat.

Herd Merge 2012 went VERY WELL. Brent and I talked through the plan with quick alternatives should a “moo off” turn ugly. Oh yes, there was mooing, but the girls handled it as classy bitches. The plan was
1) move our current herd to green pasture
2) let mama cows work out the hierarchy in the pens
3) let mama cows out to explore fresh grass near old herd
4) move mama cows adjacent to old herd with big, fat hay bale for each group
5) remove hot wire that separates the two herds
6) two cows facing each other … but they are one
(seriously, planning cow moves is not unlike moving data around in the computer world. Just a bit slower after you compile and then run your program).

There were a few moments that stood out. When Brent first walked the new girls out to the paddock, a calf was left behind. Brent said, “watch that calf.” At the time, I’m also watching four kids fish by a lake while carrying Zélie on my back. I’m hoping the kids don’t fall in the lake and that that calf doesn’t bolt. A calf can sometimes bolt into a safe place and take days to find. This happened to our neighbor and I didn’t want this to happen to us. When I’m carrying Z on my back, I don’t go very fast. Homegirl is heavy. I told the kids to go watch a movie while we deal with the cows. I went around and closed the gate so the calf wouldn’t escape. Not soon after, the cows walked at cow speed back up to the pens and picked up the calf. Yeah! Cows are great. They’re cool. They’re slow. They’re over that giddy part of life. Heifers are crazy.

Brent made some quick judgment calls with respect to the plan and suddenly the new cows were next to the old herd separated by a hot wire. Cut to the next morning, with plenty of hay for everyone, Brent removed the hot wire and they were one.

Later that day, there were challenges, head butting, licking and munching. It takes but one head-to-head rumble to tip a temporary fence. Brent’s permanent fences held strong, but the temp fence fell down twice. We shooed them back in to their grass paddock and all was fine (I say “shoo,” which is accurate for Brent. For me “shoo” means holy fuck! Cows! What do I do? “Allez!” I say. In my mind, I flip through all the cow moving techniques to get them where you want them. Most of the time, I stand there arms wide, extended with my stick and that does the trick.) While shoo-ing the cows, Brent had me unhook the temp fence so he could work with it without shocking himself. I did just that. Then it slipped. Then I heard words I’ve never heard Brent say, directed at me. Then I’m reminded of our wedding vows which I don’t recall ever stating “thou shalt not zap thy husband.” And I was SO SORRY for sending 15 gigawatts through my ever so loving and wonderful husband. The reel the temporary fence was on went flying into the air and then broke. Brent is resourceful and managed to get it all working for the cows.

As I write, the girls are basking in the Gascon sun, ruminating about all the lovely grass they will eat in the days to follow. The calves are running around, then napping, then feeding. This morning, we had another first time mom pop out little Hüsker Dü (you can tell when we start naming the calves. I think we are going to have too much fun with ‘h’).

The herds are now merged. Now we can move on to the biggest IKEA project I’ve ever tackled, the cattle pens.

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, so it’s almost quaint. But quaint it ain’t. The snow hasn’t melted for a week or so. And did I mention that it’s cold? Am I whining? I can’t be too upset, our toilets flush and our water runs which is more than I can say for some of our friends. We’re locked and loaded for spring. Bring on Spring.

If you keep moving, the cold wears off and you get in the zone. Sit down for ten minutes and the chill sets in. Today, we’re above the negative temperatures and things are dripping away. The show must go on in this cold and each day Brent is out there feeding the cows and keeping on top of our next pile of work. He says that it’s cold, but it is stunning. Gorgeous pasture, woolly cows and sweet smelling hay from our first cut last Spring reminds you that we’re just about through this winter crap and moving on to the busy time of seeding.

Brent parks his tractor out in the cold with a view for a few days with a little bale of hay to keep it warm.  When it thaws, hopefully it’ll get running again.  We learned a few things about running a tractor in the cold.  We’re not a tractor heavy type of farm, so with a little muscle, he keeps things running.