Last Sunday, we had a big birthday party here at the house for our oldest daughter.  It was a great chance for us to get together with a bunch of families we really like, and definitely provided as much fun for the grownups (about 10) as for the kids (about 20).  But, as we finished setting up the buffet line, I realized that our spread of lunch food was not really all that healthy–and that we were about to serve it to some of the people most supportive of and inspiring to us in raising what?…healthy food!

I thought “Ugh!  How inconsistent!  I guess I’m showing my true colors here.  I mean, what am I looking forward to the most from this feast?  Sliced tomatoes? Nope, I want the cool-whip-marshmallow frosting and chocolate cake!”  I was a little embarrassed as all the kids ran out back and lunged for the red Gatorade and Yoo-Hoo (though someone else brought that, so I can’t be held responsible).

But, pretty soon it occurred to me that we are doing this whole “natural and sustainable” thing gradually and taking much joy in it, and that we will have a million more opportunities to learn to throw a party without compromising on the quality of the food we celebrate with.  Next time I’ll remember that happy children will run around in the yard like a bunch of puppies having the time of their lives even if there are no sugary drinks.  And next time, I’ll plan ahead to make it pot-luck so we don’t end up needing to rely on so many handy-dandy processed foods to feed a crowd.

Gradually, Chris and I are learning to do things differently from the way we were raised.  This whole sustainability thing doesn’t happen overnight for anyone, and there is always more that we could do.  But rather than dwelling on the fact that we served corn chips that were most likely GMO corn at our party, we’ll continue down the path of “adding in” new stuff that we think is really great, like home-cured bacon, sweet-potato pie, and bulk quantities of wheat (from the Greens) as soon as we get a flour grinder.

Steven and I are learning first hand the work load increase that any small farm, grass fed dairy incurs. Steven wakes up one hour earlier to make his trek out to the paddock where the cows are grazing. (The walk gets progressively shorter since the rotationally grazing mob is on their way back to the barn. Every day, the walk is 30 feet shorter.) For the majority of dairies, they cut out this trek to the pasture by keeping the cows in sandy stalls or a dry lot and bringing them hay and grain.

Ivy is the cow. Milk is her game. She is a dehorned, black Irish Dexter cow and despite her eight years as “just a cow” she has become a quite trusty and calm milk machine. Steven halters her and leads her to the barn. He built a milking stanchion last year in hopes that one day he would be able to lead one of these dual purpose bovines up onto the raised platform to get a taste of this solar powered butter, cheese, ice cream, and milk. The crest of Ivy’s shoulder is just above my waste, so you could imagine the problems one may have when trying to milk udders that are so close to the ground.  We milk with a “short bucket” and a raised cow.

Day after day, Ivy gets more and more comfortable with her new roll. She knows where the stanchion is and will walk up into it and put her head through to chomp down on some delicious alfalfa cubes. I’ll admit, she liked my husband way more than me at first. She landed three kicks of about 30 tries when I first tried to take a turn at milking. Now when I see her shifting her weight, I rub the cow equivalent of a shin on her back leg until she calms and levels her weight back out. When you’re so “personal” when the cow and your head is totally in HER space, you can tell when she starts to have thoughts of kicking.

Milking is definitely a learned technique. You just have to learn it by doing it. Steven gets her going and the bucket gets all foamy. I tried and I was barely able to get a squirt out! Now, I am proud to say, that I can hum the melody to “I’m a Soul Man” to keep a rhythm and milk our three quarters of a gallon. Oh, yeah! Sure, she still gives Steven more milk, but my skills are growing.

When Steven milks both morning and evening, we are getting just over two gallons a day.  All this milk, what to do? What to do? Well make butter of course! Dexter milk has a fair share of cream. The lush alfalfa, clover, and orchard grass pastures make fine milk with plenty of cream. One quarter or more of each jar is cream after 24 hours. It takes longer to separate and float to the top than Jersey milk because the fat globules are smaller.

We’ve been exploring Gelato making. So far, we’ve had two batches that were C to F grades. This was due to our rookie mistakes. Now we are just pulling out two more batches, one vanilla and one Nutella. They are better but we may need to get a gelato maker as it seems that the speed of the paddles are slower when making real gelato.

For all of you who don’t know why one would go through the trouble to milk a cow I’ll just sum up some of the reasons. First, Ivy is 100% grass fed. Her milk has benefits similar to meat that is grass fed. The milk fat is healthy. Ivy is not fed “preventative” or sub therapeutic  antibiotics. So this is not in her milk. She is not given any bovine growth hormones to increase her production. Her body is cycling like a natural cow, a healthy cow, a womanly cow, as God designed. She’s giving the amount of milk that God intended her to give, not artificially over-producing for the sake of business profits.  Hormones come from the cow into her milk mainly in the fat molecules, so if there are added hormones (or naturally elevated estrogen due to the cow being pregnant) they are found in the cream & butter.  Ivy’s cream and butter, on the other hand, contain (probably) higher levels of CLAs and better ratios of EFAs.

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Anyone else have experience with a milk cow that you’d like to share? Anyone milking a Dexter? Anyone have any stories about Raw Milk benifites that you’ve experienced?

I’m moving the cows every day between 5:00 and 6:00 pm. We’ve got 6 Dexter cows, 6 Dexter calves of all ages, 1 Dexter Bull, and 5 Belted Galloway yearlings. All of these bovines are grazing paddocks each day that are right at 0.14 acres. That’s just over 1/8 of an acre. At this time, May 30th, each paddock is starting at knee high and over, of alfalfa, clover (ladino and red), orchard grass, and a little Max Q fescue. There is a small amount of weeds and I’m starting to see crabgrass and some other grasses that I haven’t identified yet. We are now on our second rotation since…. I believe March 27th of this year. This is the date that we let the cows off of their winter paddock by the barn and stopped feeding hay. We did supplement with just a little hay to help them keep from bloating though. When we first started rotating the cows were grazing most of the forage off, after a couple of weeks we were able to get the right paddock size that caused the cows to trample any forage that they didn’t eat. This has been spectacular for the regrowth!

Now, in the second rotation the grass is tall and the cows are continuing to do lots of trampling, now as much as 40 or 50%. If we were grazing existing pasture I might feel bad about all that trampling but we have to keep reminding ourselves that 13 months ago this “pasture” was all dirt! Being crow crop land for 30 years or more, the organic matter was very low and this trampled forage is helping to build soil and create the excellent soil fertility that we desire. It’s amazing to see how long moisture is held in the areas with tall forage and or trampled forage. It’s also great for us to see how soil life is thriving. We see many insects in the fields, worms in the ground, and dung beetles working hard to bury the manure! This is actually really important because the manure (fertilizer) is being moved closer to the plant’s roots, flies aren’t able to reproduce in the cow pies, and holes are left in the ground that help to absorb and store water when it rains.

On to some pictures of this years forage.

First is a picture of the grasses just starting to grow. We have really bad rows showing because of using a seed drill last year and it was worrisome to me in the beginning that we may have not left enough grass standing last year.

Next is a picture from just a little later. This is when we were allowing the herd to graze just a little each day, in preparation for the start of full grazing on the spring lush.

These pictures are probably 2 weeks into grazing. Each day the forage residue is a little different but this is a pretty good look at a typical move. The cows are eating tall (first rotation still) spring growth and leaving shorter, damaged forage behind with a high amount of manure deposited.

This is probably 2 weeks of rest.

The rest period on the first rotation was around 50 days but here is a picture at about 25 days rest. There is really no comparison to how it looks now.

This is my little girl sitting right in the middle of the salad bar at about it’s maximum height. I feel that allowing the forage to get tall and mature helps them to develop the root system that will benefit us in the future. Not to mention that our cows are our only tool to manage the farm at this point and they can only eat so fast!

Getting back to the thought that I had when starting this post, Moving the cows IS the best. I have such a great time moving the “mini mob” onto new forage each day, taking note of how the last paddock looks, now the new paddock looks, providing water and minerals to the animals, and walking backwards through the field to see how it’s all recovering and what is working the best. We do have an area that was trampled really badly when it got too muddy and it’s really interesting to see how it’s recovering over time too. If in the future we can get away from feeding hay at all, and just rotate cows onto clean salad bars each day, now that would be the ultimate job for me!

Do any of you have the same feelings about moving cows, have experience doing Management-Intensive Grazing or mob grazing, or have a similarly gratifying “chore” on the farm? I love comments!

After looking at her a few times, noticing that her tailhead was becoming more pronounced and that she had a little discharge, I had to take another look at her teats…  The hair around them looked like someone had sculpted them with hair gel and they were not wet, but looked awfuly clean! My first thought was that the new weanling Belted Galloway bull claf may have nursed from her. That quickly was disputed by the fact that she’s not too fond of him. Then I got the bright idea of searching around for a calf, just in case. Remember, it’s very dark by this point so I started at the water trough and walked the fence line in their enclosure. With every big, dark, shadowy pile of manure, I thought I might be walking up on a calf but finally one of these tiny dark piles moved on one end and lifted up it’s HEAD!

I quickly forgot how cold my hands were and got down on the ground to check her over. Using the light from my cell phone I discovered that she was a heifer and after only a few seconds I herd mama come running. Black Lady is a 7 year old cow so she knows how to take care of her babies. I actually started running too because Black Lady has some impressivly sharp horns. She chose a great time her have her calf because it was pretty mild and dry this week. It’s now back in the 20′s at night but at least the calf is dry now. The next morning I went back to check on her and got these pictures. We’re pretty excited about her because she’s only the second heifer to be born on the farm. It’s great to show up to the farm and find a healthy, active calf that needed no human help being born. I sure hope this continues for years to come.

Feel free to leave name suggestions in the comment section. She was bred at Lonesome Valley Ranch so her name will be Lonesome Valley _something_ or maybe LV _something_.

One of the great things about farm life is the changing of the seasons. While Steven is already waiting for spring, I find myself enjoying the onset of winter and it’s accompanying changes. Today was the day we decided to bring our mobile chicken coop in from the pasture. As you can see in the attached photo, we hoisted it up onto a base of straw bales to give them some extra protection and bedding material. We’ll soon install a heat lamp to keep the hens warm and (hopefully) somewhat productive in the cold weather, when their production typically drops dramatically.

I hope to provide some more updates on the winter plans for the cattle and pigs soon as well. Long story short is that our barn is a busy place these days, compared to the rest of the year when the only farm animals inside are the hens that make their way back from the fields. This actually makes the barn a really fun place for the kids… they can cross the barn and watch calves nursing, feed some chicks, or play around with a piglet. It also seems like a good chance for the animals to get more comforable around us again, after spending 9 months out in the pasture. In the blink of an eye it will be spring again, so I’m looking at the bright side instead of just gloves, ice, and mud.

Coco is a 5 year old bay Hackney pony that is the perfect size for the kids to ride until they are about 12 years old. With Anna bding 8 now and other kids still on the way that should keep a pony busy for many years.

We met Scott and his two daughters in Dyersburge TN last night and brought her home. She seems to have really good manners so far but I’m sure we’ll have alot of work ahead of us if we want to be comfortable with her as a “child’s pony”.  We’re probably going to teach her to ground drive because I’ve already taught two horses to drive and I’m pretty comfortable with it. Then, after she’s used to a bit and bridle we’ll try to talk my little brother in laws into getting on her back.

What I love is that she’s not tiny like a miniature horse. Instead, to a small child she’ll actually feel like a real horse. I’ve always wondered how in the world you train a pony to ride, since an adult usually can’t get on them, I guess I’ll find out now.