Farm Share Info

Our Farm Share is members only. There is a yearly fee of $35 to be a member (similar to Costco or Sam’s club). We require a first time Farm visit and get to know one another to make sure you know what your getting, where its coming from, how it was grown, why something was done as well as who grew it for you to put on your dinner plate. The member is able to come to the farm and purchase goods raised or grown on the farm by appointment. It helps us know what to produce, how much to produce and gives us feed back on how we are helping our members consume more nutrient dense foods grown and raised without pesticides and antibiotics.
Please contact us directly by email at Stablefood@Gmail.com for more information.

Is Spring really here?

This seems as though it may become the first beautiful work day we have had in a while. At least I hope so.  I have many plans for today,                 and tomorrow… and Monday….. I’m so behind on my work load.

Well, it’s already after noon, twelve thirty, and I have barely finished morning chores. But I did get the strawberry bed covered with netting. All winter no one has bothered the strawberry bed. Until yesterday, still rainy and freezing cold, some industrious hen decided it needed a complete overhaul. Nothing is left except the carrot I have tried so hard to keep. I am hoping the strawberry crowns will send up new leaves, they were a gift from a KFC’er in Texas. The carrot was a volunteer from within the strawberries. Everything she has is heirloom, her garden has been going so long that she just lets everything go to seed and either thins or transplants things to their respective sections of the garden as they come/sprout in the spring. She doesn’t remember what carrot it is. It is about 3+ inches across the last I checked. The cow got it once, the deer got it several times, but today, it’s BACK and about a foot or more grown. Carrots seed in 2 years, so this farmer is hoping for seeds from this carrot to not only plant in the garden but on the south hillside for winter cattle feed, they can pull and chomp themselves. They already got my beets I was overwintering for Kavass. I hope Butthead enjoyed them. I won’t get to this summer.

The older cattle are NOT in the pasture that I want them in, that I put them in this morning. But, until I get a few more posts in the south fence and get the charger on it they are where they are happy and not in the barn eating expensive alfalfa. So be it. For today at least.

The new, used chest freezer has been plugged in for about 20 hours and is at 0 (zero). It gets sun a couple hours per day. I am going to make a shelter for it today and also this week I will get some insulation board with reflective siding on it and make a box for it with a lid for an extra “comfort” zone. Maybe it won’t have to work so hard in the summer to stay cold and no one needs to go into it every day anyway. Now let’s see if Steak can pay us back for the freezer, the fuel to go and get it, his purchase price, the fuel to go get him, the milk that started him, the alfalfa that kept him his 2 winters, the taxes on the land that he grazed, the electricity for the water he drank. Then there is the time this farmer and her husband spent raising him, feeding him, herding him from one pasture to another, pasture maintenance,  pasture seed, cleaning any stall he occupied, washing his water tubs, hoof trimmings, caring for the milk cow that provided his milk, salt, the day to harvest him, the emotion of loosing yet another friend, the fuel and time on the backhoe engine to lift him for harvesting, the new skinning knife (desperately needed and will do others as well) the time to drive and deliver him to the butcher shop for hanging time, cut and wrap, the fuel again, and the return trip to put him all neatly wrapped in white paper in freezer camp, then there is the few hours its takes us to inventory what came back and notify share members freezer camp is open. Wow! Didn’t mean to go there, but there is a lesson there. Food doesn’t just appear in the grocery store for you to purchase. Someone had to do all the above to get it there. Do you know where your food comes from? Do you know your local farmer? Did ‘your’ steak or burger have a decent life? And end? Was he loved? Ever… Hugged? Kissed on his nose? Mine was and will be… was yours?

This is not an easy life…    physically and emotionally… but it is mine and I wouldn’t trade it for an office and a 2 hour commute ever again.

Later, evening feeding. I cannot find the bovine herd. I have walked the perimeter of the barn pad, from which I can see 90% of our pastures. 4 steers and one milk cow are nowhere to be found. There is a hill, it is steep, that I cannot see the south side of. But it is beautiful back there, under an enormous ancient oak tree that few know about. I went ahead and fed the mares. Pearl usually hears the Dodge Diesel go down to feed the mare pasture and brings the boys back… still no cows… hum… I search the fringes again. Standing in the garden looking over the south pastures, I holler, “UUUUP!” my call for anyone out there to “heads up” and get home or make yourself known to mom. A tanish orangish body pops over the Southern most ridgeline, high up, it is steep, Butthead, those lazy mowing machines all come charging over the ridgeline and plunge headlong down the steep hillside. Where did all that energy, happiness and agility come from? All the young steers leave Pearl behind, they are already on the second, lower ridge and she is still cresting the south, steep hill. She has been in most of the winter and isn’t in shape for this terrain. Her normal pasture is slightly sloping, North face of the hill the barn sits on. Oh, my, here she comes barreling down the hill!  Full udder flopping in the breeze, how can she run like that? I took the truck back down to gather them and bring them all back to the barn for the night. They a re finally ‘getting it’. Out in the am, in in the evening. This will work for a few more days, then I will not put Pearl out with them and they can learn to stay out on their own again for the summer.

To raise a Jersey Bull

Wow, doesn’t seem as though It’s been a week since I last wrote to you all. I have really been thinking hard on Steak. I must caution everyone that read ‘What’s butter got to do with Steak’.  Steak was a 2 year old Jersey Bull. I did talk about hugs and kisses with a Jersey bull. The most notorious breed of Dairy bull to KILL their owners. Yes I said ‘KILL’. They are not to be taken lightly. Bulls are not your friends. They do a necessary farm job, keeping the cows pregnant. There is a country song that says ‘don’t mess with the bull, he can get real mean’, this is very true. So why on earth did I give MY bull hugs and kisses? Because it kept his 1400 pounds of fence destroying, truck totaling, possible human killing machine centered, peaceful and content. Usually a bull is raised at a distance. Always expected to back up and go away when you enter his area. That’s how we raised him, but he also liked contact, so when he was contained or there were 2 of us humans, we allowed him contact. Through his stall fencing.  I would NEVER recommend anyone that didn’t absolutely need to, to keep a bull. My bull keeping is a transient thing. Once Pearl or any other dairy cow I have is confirmed pregnant at the time I want her bred, he is destined for freezer camp. He has only two purposes on this ranch, cover the cows and attend freezer camp as soon as possible thereafter. Steak was raised on pasture by Pearl as a foster. She taught him manners, we reinforced them. We taught him to lead and follow with a halter and lead rope. Be respectful of our space and our pitiful human wants and desires of a bull. He was well mannered even if a bit boisterous. He could have easily let himself out of his stall, the round pen (which he would pick up and move around as he saw fit when he was in it, just for entertainment), the pastures… any time he wanted. I guess we kept him happy enough that he didn’t feel it necessary to exercise his muscle to get what his whims were. He patiently waited his turn as I fed down the barn isle, he gratefully accepted his breakfast, lunch and dinner and late night snack allotments with more grace than his neighboring stallions on occasion. He didn’t complain if I was a bit late with his meals or if the ducks washed their beaks in his water tub and it need to be dumped and cleaned again. Not every bull is terrible, they just have the ability to be incredibly dangerous. What made me think I could raise and keep a bull? Stallions. I have raised, trained and sold more stallions than I can account for.  This gave me the confidence to raise a bull to cover Pearl and the necessary tools and experience to be firm and loving. BUT, bulls are not stallions, not even close.  None the less we did accomplish raising one nice boy to his eventual purposes. We also never for one minute would have hesitated to do what needed to be done at any given moment if it ever became necessary, even if it were a bad time for us to have harvested him, we were ever on our guard around him. Even watering him, I was on the outside of his stall. I had a difficult time getting his half barrel out of his stall one day and he wanted fresh water. I didn’t want to go in with him, I knew it wasn’t safe, being here on the ranch alone more hours a day/week than I care to think about, I couldn’t get it out. It had too much water in it and was too heavy. If I squirted him just a bit with the hose I knew he would back off and go to another corner, but I hated doing that (it really insulted him to be ‘showered’) and it was no guarantee that if I went in his stall to dump his water that he would stay in the other corner, no, he would come over and see if he could help and then maybe want to rub his huge head on me and get some lovin. Which translates to ME getting SQUASHED into the rails and PRESSED on by a huge bull head and all his weight, while he thought he was getting loving, he would effectively be seriously destroying my body like a rag doll. Nope, not this farm girl. But he wanted clean water, what to do? He knew what I was trying to do and he had his own idea of how to get it. He got his top knot under the bottom edge of the barrel and lifted it in the corner against the stall rails and all the way to the top of the 5 foot rails for me to receive, dump, scrub and return with clean water. Well… ok. But I don’t want to go through this again. So I got him a shorter tub that he could push out from under his stall anytime he wanted clean water. I could see from across the barn that it was out of his stall and that was his gracious way of telling me he needed his clean water. Steak, you will always hold a special place in my heart. I’m not sure any other bull I raise will ever be as grand as you were.         Will we raise another, we are at it now.             Your Milk Maid