It’s not often my cows and global corporations cry together, but then it’s weaning time. Seis has been fed by her mother, Cinco, for so long, she has no idea what it’s like to go out and get food for herself every day, and by the sound of her voice, I’d say she thinks it’s [...]
I spent the summer farming as much as possible, playing hooky from my consulting practice, limiting my volunteer work, squeezing out my writing, and ignoring my housekeeping. It was my fourth summer as the sole farmer on the farm. Finally I felt I perfected every mission critical task and process. I was gung ho to manage [...]
I harvested the last of the asparagus in my former vegetable garden before I turned the cows into the south pasture for the second time this season. It has been a three week streak of me doing farm work in every available hour, and I am feeling smug about my accomplishments. So many seasons past I [...]
I am trying to go with the flow. I thought it would improve my technique to know the origin of the phrase. According to UrbanDictionary.com “go with the flow” was first known to be used by Marcus Aurelius who ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180. I remember my Grandma Best, a lifetime school [...]
Cinco, named for Cinco de Mayo 2008, gave birth to Seis, a girl, on Sunday, March 6th, 2011 at approximately 7:00 am. Seis’s father is the hunky Norman. Cinco and Norman have the same father, a pure-bred Devon from Foxhill Farm named David. Cinco’s mother was half Red Angus, half Devon. Norman’s mother was a [...]
It is still deep winter on the farm. A few feet of snow surround the house and it’s raining sideways this morning coating my world with ice. It’s raining inside, too. The collar around the wood stove chimney is dripping noisily on the heat shield and the floor. I have the whole area wrapped in [...]
After a couple more blizzards, rain on snow, a sand storm of sleet, and an accumulation of three feet of snow with a hard ice crust — the charm in my last blog post is completely gone. There will be no photographs of my lovely farm here today. I don’t want to confuse beauty with [...]
A snow storm from the midwest and a rain storm from the Atlantic collided over the farm during the night, and this morning it’s a complete white out. There was no sunrise, just a cross-fade from black to murky grey to silent white. I started morning chores early because the cows and the goats were [...]
Really? Is that a burger you’re eating? Burger is a beautiful thing if you know where it comes from. I hope you know the cow your burger came from, or the farm, or the values of the brand that made it. Otherwise you are very likely eating Canadian slaughterhouse floor sweepings mashed into cows born [...]
The farm is my lava lamp, always in mesmerizing motion. The chickens swish from one side of the yard to another, across the snow, looking for food, hiding from the hawks. The cows and the goats circle the hay feeder, wander over to the water trough, take a lick of salt, head-butt each other, and [...]