For the Love of Cows!

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Our fun-loving herd of momma cows, yearlings and calves give us countless hours of joy each day.  As we enter our wet weather season, our already spoiled herd gets even more pampered.  It's definitely a labor of love when Michael adds fresh straw to their bedding every evening.  All our efforts of producing our own straw and spreading it daily are repaid many times over when we see the pure joy the cows receive as they run into the barn and frolic in the fresh straw.  Calf #27 (pictured above) is playing in the straw the following day.

Throughout the day, the herd feasts on haylage which is pickled hay that we produce ourselves on the farm.  Our nutritous and tasty haylage keeps our herd healthy and happy through winter.  We show how we harvest and preserve our haylage here:  http://www.verdanthillsfarm.com/pastures-and-haylage.  We have another satisifed haylag customer...just see Calf #33 below.

We enjoy spending plenty of time with our herd just scratching them behind the ears and hand feeding them cabbage and carrots.  We have become good at listening to their needs through subtle body language and understanding their unique personalities.  It's our job to keep our herd healthy and happy.  And we are glad to do it for the love of cows! 

-Rich

Fall Harvest and New Beginnings

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Fall and particularly the month of October is usually a more relaxed time for us to harvest our produce, plant our winter veggies, and make improvements.  With our record rainfall for October, we worked around Mother Nature and are finally catching up!

We are thankful for our Fall Harvest of winter squash (butternut, spaghetti, delicata, and buttercup).  We are offering our winter squash to our local McMinnville customers at $1/lb.  More info about our produce can be found here:  http://www.verdanthillsfarm.com/produce/

We just finished planting our blueberry bushes.  Michael worked hard in the spring to create our mounded rows and made planting our 65 blueberry bushes an easy task.  We planted four year old bareroot Earliblue, Bluecrop, Blueray, Duke, and Jersey varieties and will be excited to provide blueberries to our local customers over a long 4 month season in the coming years.  Rudy (our farm dog) is standing ready to keep the birds away and to eat a few dropped blueberries as well!

We have our winter spinach planted and have the hoops installed.  If you remember from last year, the voles and freezing temps killed off my spinach before we harvested a single leaf.  I'm determined to produce a good spinach crop this year and have my plastic cover ready to install at the first sign of frost.

As we take a few moments to reflect on our past season, we remain thankful for our customers who support our farm with their purchases of our grass-fed beef, pastured eggs, and produce throughout the year.  We also are grateful for our support network of our fellow farmers and friends as we continually explore better ways to farm.

Feeling blessed and grateful,

Rich

Final Calves Arrive....Yes Another Set of Twins!

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Every year Michael prepares his calving kit with multiple straps, sprays, gloves, and lube hoping for easy calving but ready for complications.   This year was no different except Michael was prepared for a long calving season that would last about 2 months.  We are happy to report that our calving season is officially over! 

Our final calving is from our first calf heifer (cow #411) who is so gentle and kind.  Michael made the call early on that 411 would be calving twins.  I admit that 411 looked very wide.  But none of us believed Michael.  Well, Michael was right.  Twins!  

Michael has been checking on 411 every 3 hours day and night for the past week because he wanted to help her with the twins.  Michael finally told her yesterday morning that waking up in the middle of the night was really killing him and she just needed to have the calves now.  411 started labor about 2 hours later and quickly and easily delivered her twin calves.  What a great way to end our calving season!

Thank you, Michael and our wonderful cows.  And to the calves....welcome to the farm!

-Rich

Conservation and Black Gold!

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We strive to conserve our natural resources on the farm.  A big part of our conservation is recycling our manure which is our black gold!  Since we started, our manure pile was exposed to our bountiful Oregon rain throughout winter.  We were losing valuable nutrients due to rain exposure and some of those excess nutrients were being carried away into our creek. 

A big Thank You to our friends and partners at the Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District.  With their help in securing grant funding, we were able to build our manure structure which helps retain our nutrients and protect the creek.  With plenty of room under cover and strong concrete walls and floors, we can store all our manure out of the rain this winter and more quickly compost our manure.  Since we don't use synthetics, our manure is especially important to the health of our soil and pastures.  It will be exciting to spread our nutrient-rich manure back into our pastures come spring!

Twins Again!

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Last season, Michael predicted that cow #310 would have twins, and he was right.  This season, Michael's prediction that cow #310 would have twins again fell on deaf ears with me.  Well to my surprise, Michael was right again.  Momma cow #310 calved twin bull calves.  Both momma and the calves are bonding in their own stall and are doing great!

Michael predicts that first calf heifer #411 is currently pregnant with twins...and this time I'm listening!

Life is Precious and Fragile

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Momma and Calf Resting

During calving season, we are constantly reminded that life is both precious and fragile.  We welcomed our second calf of the season (#627) into the world at 1 am Saturday morning under a sky filled with meteors showering down.  This strong calf was immediately up walking around and bonding with his mom (#324).  What a sight to behold!

How fast things can change.  Michael was up before sunrise to check on the calf.  Sadly, the calf had not eaten and wouldn't suckle from his mom.  Michael tried bottle feeding with no success.  Michael, being prepared, brought out the esophageal feeder and explained my role in helping to tube feed the calf.  We knew we needed to get colostrum into the calf.   

Patient Momma Cow After Milking and Her Calf Bottle Feeding

We milked momma cow last night, who was incredibly patient with us as novice milkers, and we taught the calf to feed from the bottle.  

Calf Feeding From Momma

Michael successfully taught the calf to suckle milk directly from momma cow this morning. We could not have saved our little calf on our own without the support and advice from our dear friends and wonderful vet.  

Welcome into the world #627!  You have a great momma and lots of people who care about you.  Yes, life is both precious and fragile.

 

 

Celebrating Our First Calf of the Season!

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Our first calf of the season (#626) was born on August 7th.  #626 is friendly, playful and a voracious eater.  Momma cow (#425), who is a first calf heifer, gave birth with minimal assistance from Michael.  After momma cow was in labor for about 2 hours, we brought her into our birthing suite where Michael applied a little bit of lube and gave a gentle nudge.  Within a minute, her little calf was born. 

We kept momma cow and her calf in their separate pen for a few days so they could bond with each other and we could bond with her calf.

Momma cow is a naturally great mom.  She immediately began licking off her calf, chewed off his cord, and guided him to her teets.  It was amazing to see this transformation, and she made our jobs easy....we just sat back and watched!

What a great start to our calving season.  Only 7 more calves to go!

 

Thank You!

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A big THANK YOU to our beef customers. You helped us sell out of our 100% grass-fed beef for the 2016 season within a few weeks. Your support for our small family farm is much appreciated!

We will have a few additional beef shares available for the 2017 season and have started taking names for an interest list. If you would like to tour the farm, meet the cattle, and understand our better-than-organic practices, please let me know.

Strawberries and Jam!

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We have a great crop of Seascape strawberries this year! With Emmetts's help, we harvested 10 gallons this morning. With the heat, they are tasting very sweet. As usual, they are grown without synthetics or sprays.

The Seascapes will continue to produce through September.  We are delivering berries into McMinnville as we deliver to our egg customers in McMinnville.  

We have also been busy making some great strawberry jam with just our organic strawberries, organic sugar, lemon juice and pectin.  We cut back on the sugar so you can taste the strawberries!

Haylage Harvest Almost Complete

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You can ask my family and close friends....I always obsess about the quality and quantity of our haylage. I'm excited to report that we have met our quantity goals for the year. We might still get another cutting from some of our fields. You can see how our season started which was good but you can see below that I still had room in the storage yard.

Now that our storage yard is almost full, I can breathe a sigh of relief.  I'm happy to report that the quality has been good with a balance of grass and clover.

Moving Day for Cows and Chickens

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Moving day is always fun. The cows are excited to move into fresh pasture, and the chickens are eager to get onto the pasture and follow the cows.

The cows get their water, shade structures, and minerals moved into the fresh pasture. Chickens get their mobile coop, water and outdoor roost moved. Notice Emmett skillfully towing the mobile coop into position! As a team, we can get everyone moved in about 30 mins.

After the move is completed, our reward is to sit back and watch the animals have fun!

Intensive Rotational Grazing

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We practice intensive rotational grazing where we divide up our pastures into smaller blocks (or paddocks) for our cattle to graze. We size the paddocks so that the herd moves every 2-3 days into a new paddock. Soil and pasture health are improved naturally with our controlled grazing. 

Michael makes setting up our movable cross-fencing easy and fast with his invention of a stake holder bag (my old golf bag) and colorful harness to hold the spool of wire.
 

The Many Ways We Use Our Beef

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Our beef customers are coming up with great ways to prepare their beef...like making stir fry, tacos, fajitas, roasts, burgers, and steaks cooked sous vide.

We simmer the beef bones over several days to make our flavorful beef stock that we use to make gravy, sauces, and soups.

For me, I like starting with one of our well-marbled steaks and season with salt.

Right before searing and slowly cooking on the grill, I will also add some thyme. 

Haylage Season Begins!

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Haylage harvest has begun! Over the next 2 months, we will be harvesting enough feed for our cattle to thrive during the winter months. For those who don't know, haylage is pickled forage. You can find out more about our haylage here.

Today was the first step...all the equipment was prepared and the grass and clover has been cut. More tomorrow... we will bale the cut forage and wrap the bales. Cutting grass under a blue sky with fluffy white clouds and a sweet scent in the air...what's not to love!

A Weeknight Meal

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One of the perks of our diversified farm is that we eat really well. We are still pulling out pre-cut frozen green beans, bell peppers and zukes that Emmett and I harvested and prepped from our summer garden last year. The grass-fed beef comes from our farm of course. This is our quick weeknight dinner. 

RooRoo Recovers!

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The other day RooRoo, my Barred Rock chicken, got "loved" a little too much by Rudy and was injured really badly. Thankfully, my dads knew this chicken was important to me, and my Daddy brought her to the vet. For almost a week RooRoo lived inside our house with us until she was well enough to go outside again. She's back with her flock now and is growing her feathers back at a rapid pace. The hole Rudy made in her neck is now healed, and she enjoys the company of her flock.

Thank you to our loyal egg customers for buying my eggs.