Our first miniature jersey calf was born on the farm last month which precipitated a lot of changes on the farm! Now our morning chores include milking a cow, processing that milk, and separating cream from the previous day’s milk. It’s been a fun adventure, to be sure. But we’ve decided in the future we will do our best to ensure our cows give birth in the spring instead of the middle of winter! But Luna came to us bred, so we’re rolling with the punches here.
A Few Lessons We’ve Learned:
1 – The more food your cow has, the more milk she’ll produce. Hence the reason we want to have our cows calve in the spring in the future! We’re going through a round bale every couple of days right now.
2- Spend the extra money to get a cow that’s been milked before and is a proven mother. In all our years raising animals, we’ve never had one that’s as good of a mother as Luna has been and it’s made our lives a thousand times easier!
3- Build a milk station. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but make sure it keeps the mom’s head in place so she can’t back up. That first week when the milk comes in she won’t want you touching her, no matter how tame she is. Having a way to hold her in place while you milk her is a lifesaver.
4 – You don’t have to milk at 6 am! Yap, you heard me right. We are milking our cow at 8 am and it’s going great. The important thing is just to do it at the same time every day. We might try to do it a little earlier once we are separating the calf at night, but right now there’s no need.
To our surprise, the milk from our Jersey Cow tastes exactly the same as the milk you’d buy from the store. It’s a relief to have a healthier option that tastes just as good. And now we know that the cow who provides our milk is treated very well. It’s also been really fun to have the kids go out with us in the morning to help with the milking.
Farm Update:
Since I last wrote, we purchased a bred Mid-sized Jersey Cow (Luna) from a farm in Arkansas. She’s been the perfect, friendly, easy-going, food-obsessed family cow for us. And now that she’s had her calf and we’re getting milk daily she’s even more beloved!
We butchered our first grass-fed cow in December, but unfortunately, we had to do it after Benjamin had an eye injury and so the first shot wasn’t true. This meant in the split second it took us to get the second shot off, her body was coursing with adrenaline, turning her meat gamey. 🙁 We’ve learned our lesson and will handle things differently next time. But for now, it doesn’t look like we’ll be buying dog food for a looooooong time!
The first registered IPP Boar arrived on the farm in January! His name is Pants and he’s been very enthusiastic about doing his job. haha. We can’t wait to see the piglets that will come from his presence on the farm! We have three litters due around the end of March. Since we want to offer only the best breeding stock, only 2-3 piglets from each litter will be selected for registration, the rest will be feeder pigs.
Speaking of which, we’ve been living off our pork from butchering our last batch of pigs, and let me tell you – pork street tacos are the BEST! I haven’t cooked with pork much in the past because it’s been too expensive to experiment with. But now our family is living on pork chops, ribs, ground pork tacos, pork burgers, and more! One of these days I’ll remember to get pictures and share some recipes with you guys.
The big push on the farm right now is clearing pastures. Since our land had been neglected for 12 years before we bought it, our two largest pastures are covered in small, thorny, locust, and hedge trees. Every spare minute we have we’ve been out mowing down the leftover weeds so we can get to the trees and get them out of the field before the next growing season starts. It’s a lot of work, but MAN, the pastures are looking so good!
We built a new barn in our front pastures which opens up about twelve more acres of grazing space! The animals are loving it, and I’m loving not having to water them (since they can now get water from the pond). Life is good. SO good.
Family Update:
The new year brought with it quite a few challenges for our family.
In December Benjamin was clearing fence lines and had a thorny branch sling back and stab him right in the middle of the eye. They ended up having to put a stitch in his cornea (who knew they could even do that??) which will stay there for about five years. His eyesight is a little blurry with the stitch in, but thankfully he can still get around pretty well without glasses.
Also in December, I had a four-wheeler fall on my leg. I have been limping ever since and just found out that it’s because my ACL was torn in the fall. The surgery is in March to try and repair it. When the surgeon asked what I did for a living and I told him I ran a farm he groaned. Lol. I don’t think he trusts me to stay off my leg post-surgery (and for good reason – I probably won’t!).
Our family got hit with COVID-19 in January but all of us have made a full recovery. Except for Benjamin, who still smells bleach everywhere. Our poor family has just been hit with the gambit, and it’s only February! We’re hoping we’re just getting it all out of the way at the beginning of the year and the rest of the year will be smooth sailing. But who are we kidding?
But you know, I don’t believe life is supposed to be easy.
We grow a little bit with every challenge that we face. Our family grows closer as we tackle the impossible together, and individually our confidence grows as we see what we can accomplish. When I was working a safe job, with a consistent income and a relatively easy life something always seemed to be missing. Like a small part of me itched for an adventure. Something to test my mettle.
Well, we found it out here on the farm!
