Downsizing from Dairy

With only two milk cows left, I guess I can't call this place a dairy farm any more. Of course we do milk old Neon Moon, for the house and for the calves, and some day Bama Breeze will have that calf....but there is no hungry herd waiting in the barn any more.

Thus I changed the template of this blog...finally...to reflect that...and took off the "not your average stay at home mom..." part too. Coming up on the ninth anniversary of the day I decided that it would be fun to blog. Guess you could call me a stay at home grandma now.

This does not mean that agricultural activity has ceased at Northview Farm. We are as busy as ever, I swear. The boss is making hay between the rain storms, and has managed to keep most of what he has on hand from getting rained on...quite an accomplishment this year. He has always made good hay. 

Lots of gardens. Lots of woodchucks. They are eating all our beets!!!! We picked peas and beans yesterday before the storm and had them with dinner. Yum.

The kids have the place full of poultry, including turkeys, chickens, and guinea fowl....and of course, the old peahen.

 You should have seen us the other night when the red sex link hen decided to dump all her brand new guinea keets out in the yard and abandon them.


It was evening chore time, calves to feed, the cow to milk, the pipeline to clean and sanitize...when the drama happened.

The poor little keets were just hatched, some of them still damp, and they could not take even a few minutes without heat. Thus Becky put them all in her shirt while the rest of us ran for.....stuff.....

A pair of light bulbs in a holder that we use to keep the milk pump from freezing in the winter. A lead cord. Newspapers. Wire. Etc. Etc.

Within a very short time an emergency brooder was built, and most of them survived and thrived.....although it does puzzle me every time I come downstairs in the dark and see the light in the heifer barn.

There are plans for other animals, as  time allows. We have always raised good pork, and we have two cows to supply milk. The kids want lambs. I love sheep, but the boss is not enamored, so that is on hold for a bit but....

Other than taxes and paying off the remainder of what it cost us to make milk the years after 2009, we run this place very cheaply. A good part of day-to-day living expenses could probably be paid with the income from diversified livestock. Or we can eat them ourselves. Even when we couldn't afford to butcher a beef and were living on game that awful winter, we ate well.....

So anyhow, things have changed, but they have remained the same too...

Favorites

The nice young man who bought Broadway and Rosie put up a video of them going out to pasture with his herd for the first time, on Sunday, on Facebook.

It was wonderful to see them. I don't permit myself to linger in memory, but try instead each day to focus on forward, ......but...it was wonderful, wonderful I tell you, to see the red and chocolate roan of their bright spring coats, as they romped with their new herdmates, drawn by fresh green grass like filings to a lodestone.

I cried. 

All fifteen times that I watched it. Could have been twenty as far as that goes. Or more.

 I can't help it. I still think of myself as a dairy farmer. Do two cows count?

Here's Lookin' at You

A̶b̶b̶e̶k̶i̶r̶k̶
Tequila

Lars

Neon Moon

Zipper

Bama Breeze

Castiel

There's one in every crowd....Cedar Key

Life Goes On

Spent a great deal of time yesterday working in the barn, rearranging and changing to better accommodate the little beef steers and bulls and attend to the comfort of Bama Breeze and Neon Moon. Bama decided that this would be a fine time to go dry, so I won't be milking her. She should calve back in June if all goes well.

Moon is doing well, and adjusting nicely to being milked by the short lady who always milked the other line. Wouldn't you know that the only remaining cow in milk stands in the only stall in the barn where I can't reach the pipeline?

I took Grandma Peggy's old plastic step stool over to the barn and hauled it up in the stall for last night's milking, after having the hose fall off the previous two, since I couldn't get it plugged in right.

Moon thought it was all good fun and wanted to lick the step stool and toss it around. I got her milked though. She is very gentle and will get used to me, I'm sure.

Thank you all for your kind words and deeds. We discovered that we have incredible friends and supportive family beyond anything we could ever have imagined. As the chaos recedes I will get my thanks to you all individually, but for now....... 

I will leave you with a couple of pics from Alan's phone. He has been boiling sap with a friend....plus one of Peggy Ann.

Life After Cows

One last pic of Broadway, my favorite cow, and probably the best one I ever bred.
I miss her the most.

People have been telling me, for years, ever since it got really hard to pay the bills running a small dairy farm in one of the highest taxed and most regulated venues in America, that there is life after cows. That you pick up, go on, do something else, and maybe are relieved not to have to worry so much, juggle so many balls, always be bound by the constraints of animal needs.

 Can't say as I ever believed it. I started milking cows for a living on someone else's farm 35 years ago. The job has been my compass, salvation, nightmare, and joy ever since. You can raise good kids on a farm....it's a great, if difficult life.

However, starting today I guess I am going to find out if what folks says is true. With my heart clanging in my chest like the clapper in an iron bell, I helped load our heifers on trucks on Saturday, and all but two of the milk cows yesterday. Saturday we had help from family members. Yesterday it was just Ralph, me, and a bunch of strangers. Can I just say that it was one time that I really, really wished that I was a girly girl and could sit in the house and do my nails or something

Yesterday ranks well up there in the top ten worst days in my life. There were many factors involved in our decision, high fuel and feed costs, several years of disastrous wet weather and flooding, the 08 and 09 dairy price disaster, and such, but paying several months worth of income twice a year in school and county tax was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

This year it was maybe lose the farm for taxes or sell the cows. And so.

If you want to buy them, they are hard-working pasture cows, that will make milk on low quality feed. They will run out to grass and graze all day and come in and fill the milk pail for you. They are over at Hosking's Sales. You can even bring home cows whose names are known around the world...thanks to Blogger and the Farm Side. Broadway, Carlene, Foolish, Cevin, Asaki...yes, I had to sell my cow, Asaki....Baja, Camry, Zulu, Scotty, Dalkeith, Monday, Betty, and Lucky and the rest are selling. All but two.

Friends in Ohio will buy Bama Breeze so she will stay. at least for a while. And Liz is buying Neon Moon to maybe breed a calf for Peggy to show when she gets bigger. We saved back a handful of small heifers that wouldn't bring what they are worth to sell so we can pay the damned school taxes this fall, and a set of dairy steers for the same purpose. 

I spent yesterday afternoon holding a sleeping Peggy, her sweet small hand curled around my finger, strong as a good milker's hand would be. Life after cows, right there in my lap.