It’s Sunday morning at Wild Type Ranch.  We returned late last night from 2 days at an Angus cattle sale in Fredericksburg, TX.  Everyone else is having a well-deserved lie-in, but I’ve already gotten too used to the summer early rising schedule to sleep in.  [Between needing to leave early for farmer’s markets twice a week and the need to get out and work before it gets hot here in Texas, our summer schedule typically starts at dawn and involves a mid-day shower and siesta]. 

While we were away at the sale, we’ve had a blessed 1.5 inches of rain.  Judging by the flattened sweet corn patch we also had quite a bit of wind accompanying what is likely to be one of the last cool fronts of the spring.  Quiet and cool are two things I don’t get much of, especially lately.

The economy is affecting us almost as much as the drought has.  Cattle prices are down, customer purchases at the market are smaller, breeding season has been delayed by poor grass and hay quality.  We’ve been making lemonade out of lemons as much as possible, but it’s still too easy to get discouraged, over-worked and lose sight of why we are here.

Cup of coffee in hand, Tess, our blue heeler, and I set off across the wonderfully wet grass in the refreshing cool breeze–I’m actually wearing a sweatshirt this morning!  A quick check of the cattle we purchased this weekend and those we brought back home because they didn’t sell for a price higher than what we could get if we harvested them for beef, shows all to be well. 

Tess and I cross into the paddock where our heifers are, to check if any are in heat (ready to be bred) or any appear by the silver scratch-off patches on their rumps to have come into heat while we were gone.  It is a well-known fact when trying to A.I. (artificially inseminate) cattle, the most likely time for them to come into heat is whenever it will be most inconvenient to breed them.  Looks like we got lucky while we were gone.  Now I park myself in the middle of the paddock, having successfully climbed over the fence with a full coffee cup, and watch. 

Emmy Lu, one of our heifers, comes up for a scratch.  Evangeline, her full sister (they are the product of embryo transfer, so were born of foster mamas at the same time) can’t stand to be left out and gives my knee a lick before Tess decides I need protecting.  A game of tag ensues between Tess and Emmy Lu, neither taking the other seriously even though they usually take on the roles of predator and prey. 

It’s Sunday.  I’m lucky to make it to church once a month, since our church is 80 miles from the ranch.  Sometimes I feel like this life I chose, expressly to live in line with my values, leaves me little time to reflect on said values.  This morning, I’m feeling a part of the web of life.  I feel that deep sense of peace that comes from believing that things will work and that I’m in the right place. 

I’m thankful to my parents, both devout Catholics, who were wise enough to teach me that sometimes the most holy thing you can do on a Sunday morning is to go sit in your garden, or go take a walk.  I remember a sign that was posted at the entryway to their wildflower garden:

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth

One is nearer God’s heart in the garden

Than anywhere else on earth

Namaste

Life has been pretty hectic at Wild Type Ranch lately.  My husband has had to make two emergency trips to Australia since the beginning of the year, each time leaving my boys (ages 7 and 9) and I to take care of the ranch while attending school an hour away.  Considering spring is our calving, breeding, embryo transfer and gardening season, we’ve been a little harried.  Add to that attempting to get our “in town” house packed up, cleaned up and ready to sell in preparation for moving out to the ranch full-time at the end of the school year, and you can see why the blog posts have been few and far between.

Y’all have been on my mind, though.  I’ve written dozens of posts in my head while making those hour-long commutes between town and ranch.  I’ve also realized this is a kind of therapy, so I’ll stick with it for a while if you will….

I had a guest at the Farmer’s Market today.  I’m not sure she was really thrilled to be there, but she did manage to lay an egg nonetheless.

Saturday’s market starts at 8:00, which means leaving the ranch well before sun-up.  I usually get everything loaded and my car hooked up to the freezer trailer, so all I have to do is unplug the trailers and drive off about 5:45 am.  On Friday I knew I would be getting home after dark, so I left the lights on in the workshop where the trailer is parked, so I could easily back in and hook up.

Apparently, one of our more mechanically inclined hens had been hanging out in the workshop.  Because the lights were on, I suspect she didn’t realize it was night, and didn’t return to her coop for the night.  When I came home, hooked up and shut up the workshop, she was now trapped in the workshop.  This morning, I drove off in the dark with her nestled down on the trailer, between my two big beef freezers.

Once I got to market, I kept thinking I heard chickens, but figured I’d been spending too much time alone out at the ranch.  An inquisitive 8-year old  spotted her just before market started.  I knew I had to get her caught and contained before she recovered from her shock at being transported 75 miles in the early morning dew.  I had visions of having to let her loose inside my car.  Since we just went through a bout of stomach flu involving said car, I figured this was just the final sign that it was time to have my car detailed.  Fortunately, I remembered I had a milk crate full of bungie cords on the trailer, so we caught her and kept her in that for the day.

I’m not sure she was exactly happy, but she was safe.  And she did manage to lay an egg.  She’s back home and happy now.  My dilemma is what to do with the egg.  Given it’s trip to town and back, I don’t think it meets the 100-mile “local food” limit for the market…

Amanda, over at Beef Daily Blog, is hosting a discussion about ranch chores, which got me thinking about my own chore philosophy.

I can’t say I was a big fan of chores as a child.  Now that I’m a Mom, I have come to the conclusion that a good chunk of what’s wrong with our society, our economy and our food/health status could be fixed if all children grew up doing chores.

My boys go to a Montessori school where there is no homework.  Instead, parents are asked to pledge they will involve their children in daily life activities, such as laundry, grocery shopping and cooking.  I am convinced that, if a parent does so consciously, the children learn more of value that way than any amount of homework can teach them.  It is especially so out on a ranch, but true enough in any home.

When children are responsible for helping take care of their environment, they are truly a part of the family. Face it, especially when they are young, having children “help” often just isn’t much help.   It is tempting to do it yourself.  BUT, if you are taking the time to teach them or to work beside them, they are gettting serious “quality time” from you.

I think we unconsciously teach our children to be passengers when we take care of all their needs.  Without participating in life chores, how can we expect them to suddenly be competent parents or responsible adults once they leave home?  Chores teach children responsibility.  Perhaps as importantly, when children inevitably fall short on their responsibilities, they can experience the consequences in ways that are sooo much cheaper than learning that lesson later in life.

At our ranch, our boys are part of the food chain all the way through.  They are there when we artificially inseminate, help name the calves, go with us when we take beeves in for harvest and they really love a good steak.  In fact, we joke that at our ranch, we know our beef “from semen to sewer”.

Children don’t need to be on a ranch, though, for chores to contribute to an appreciation for where their food comes from.  Chores such as gardening, cooking, grocery shopping or going to the farmer’s market help promote healthy eating habits.  It’s amazing what vegetables children will eat when they grow them themselves.  Especially if you get some of the cool varieties, such as purple ‘green’ beans, rainbow chard, purple carrots, zebra striped tomatoes or blue potatoes.

All this adds up to self-esteem.  And it’s a lot cheaper than therapy, martial arts classes or reform school!

I’m trying something new:  Once a month, I’m going to attempt to outline an entire day here at the ranch, no holds barred.  Here’s the last day in February at Wild Type Ranch:

We woke up to howling winds and a drop of 50 degrees from yesterday’s unusually warm temps of 85 degrees. The winds here blow with gusts to 25-40 mph, sometimes stronger, and if you spend a day out in them, your ears hurt for another day.  Today the wind blew the door past where it should comfortably go on the new tractor.  My wonderful husband, Ralph, spent an hour welding up a suitable repair, in the middle of too much other work.  [note to single women–if you are planning to live a rural life, I strongly recommend finding a husband who can weld AND cook].

My first chore (before coffee!) is to check for heat in our yearling heifers.  Nothing happening, but I note a case of pinkeye, so that changes the entire day’s priorities.

After a cup of tea and a discussion of the day’s battle plan, we begin to move cattle around.  We were planning to “synchronize” our heifers for breeding starting next week, but the pinkeye outbreak means we have to bring all the heifers up to the barn to check them out and treat the affected ones, so we move that plan ahead by a week.  In retrospect, it works out, as we were hoping to be able to go back to Illinois for my sister’s annual Christmas caroling party, and to do so, we need to avoid calving between Dec 18th and 28th, which means avoiding breeding between March 12 and 27th. We take duties as stewards of our animals’ welfare seriously, and check our cattle at least twice daily during calving season.  Consequently, vacations are planned a year in advance.

Before we can work with our heifers, we need to free up some space in one of our smaller paddocks.  We have had a few older cows out with our bull for 30 days.  These girls didn’t breed last spring, but were put in with a young bull, so it may not have been their fault.  Each one of our cows is an individual–it’s hard to make the decision to cull them, but we also have a responsibility as producers of registered stock to make sure that the genetics we are selling are sound in every way.  We decided to give them one more chance before we let them go, but if they aren’t bred now, they will have to go to the sale barn.

Next, we gather our heifers, weigh, check for pinkeye on each one and move them to the paddock outside our kitchen window, so we can detect estrus if they are ready to be bred.  To help us determine which heifers are ready for breeding, we put a patch on them so we can detect any “mounting” when they come into heat. The patches are kind of like scratch-off lottery tickets, with a silver coating over the brightly covered base.  One of my boys used to tell me “look Mom, that cow won” when he would notice a rubbed patch after a cow had come into heat.  We A.I.  (artificially inseminate) most of our cattle in order to get the best genetics into our beef and registered Angus and Red Angus herds.

Once the heifers are moved and patched, I water the 250 feet of potatoes we planted yesterday along with the rest of our spring garden (mostly greens, peas and carrots and the first rows of beans) while Ralph cooks up a quick lunch to get us through the afternoon.  Breakfast was a piece of toast with vegemite, so lunch is really welcome!

I’ll ‘fess up to taking a 20 minute nap on the couch after lunch.  After that necessary refresher, it’s time to sort off the cows that will be having embryos implanted on Monday and Tuesday.   We work closely with Dreamcatcher Ranch on embryo transfer and selling our bulls.  Ralph puts out big round bales to the various paddocks in advance of tonight’s expected freeze.  Cattle need full bellies to stay warm in windy or wet weather.

Once cattle work is done for the day, we start on the other end of the production chain: beef.  We picked up beef last week, but because the local farmer’s markets haven’t started for the year, our freezers are unusually full.  We’ve got a few orders and a quarter to fill, as well as inventorying what we have on hand before markets start April 1 (we sell at the Georgetown Farmer’s Markets all season).  That takes both of us the better part of 2 hours.  Ralph leaves as the sun goes down to cook us up a wondeful supper, while I finish reorganizing our portable freezer trailers for next week’s delivery points and orders.

I come in after dark, and am glad to find that Ralph has gathered the eggs (usually my job, if I am here) and has a glass of wine waiting for me.  18 eggs today! Spring is definitely on its way!  Supper, a much needed shower and e-mails back to family in other parts of the country and world finish out the day.

We’ve had chickens at our ranch going on three years now.  I think I’m only beginning to appreciate their value to us. We got them initially to help control the grasshoppers and flies around our ranch cabin.  We thought we’d get a few “yard eggs” and maybe have some extra to sell.  Now, we’re planning to expand our flock by 100 hens, and have chickens follow our herd as we rotate them through the fields.  The main economic benefit is still likely to be from the pest control, but egg demand is sky-rocketing, too.

At the moment, I only live at the ranch on weekends and school holidays, so I’m stuck in a suburban neighborhood during the week.  I miss my chickens when I’m in town. Every time I throw food into the garbage or even put it into the compost barrel, I think about them.  Our chickens eat virtually everything we don’t.  Between the dog and the chickens, not much goes to waste at the ranch.

The chickens have become my boys’ main chore out at the ranch.  They take pride in gathering the eggs each day, feeding them and helping keep the nest boxes freshly stocked with hay.  Our latest batch of hens are Ameraucaunas, which tend to like to lay their eggs in places other than their nest boxes. So every day is like an Easter Egg hunt,  especially since this breed lays green-blue eggs of varying hues.

And the taste of the eggs is out of this world!  The deep golden yolks have a better nutritional profile as well.

The hens have also become an integral part of our gardening.  Besides keeping insects down, we have learned that if we turn the soil a few weeks before we plant, the chickens will do a great job nipping all the little weeds that sprout and our garden is much more weed-free.  They love the grubs we turn over too.  I’ve got one black hen that comes running every time I head to the garden, in the hope she’ll get grubs or discarded greens.  The flip side is that we’ve established a running battle with the flock to keep then out of the garden once it’s planted, but I’ve gotten pretty handy with a roll of chicken wire and some pliers.

NPR’s Morning Edition this morning reported the economy has more people looking to raising a few backyard chickens and more cities passing ordinances allowing small urban flocks.

If you’re interested in getting started, you can find plenty of help on the internet: Backyard Chickens.com is a great place to start.  Mother Earth News printed a good series a few years ago, too.

I am a small beef producer.  Last year, Wild Type Ranch sold about 11,000 pounds of beef at Farmer’s Markets and through local delivery.  Not only do I know the life history of each animal we harvested, I also tasted the beef from each one.  Often, I know the entire pedigree.  All this information helps us design our breeding program and select genetics that make our pasture-raised beef more tender and tasty than anything Donald Trump puts his over-priced name on.

I also know the names of the animals we harvest.

It freaks people out; “how can you eat something with a name?” they’ll ask in horror.  “Don’t tell me it’s name, just sell it to me!” is another common comment.

We name ALL the cattle born on our ranch, not just those we believe will go on to reproductive glory as cows or bulls.  Not to do so would be hypocritical.  The founding principle of our ranch is “respect for all life”.  The cattle destined for beef are no less worthy (in the most universal sense) than those destined for breeding.  Their “best use” is just different.

Our registered cattle mostly have names related to music (such as Pink Floyd, Sinatra, Layla).  I give the kids free rein on the unregistered calves.  Last year, we had all the planets-starting with Jupiter who was the biggest, Mars was red, etc.  I had to draw the line at Uranus, though.  Even I don’t want to eat beef from Uranus.

*****

For additional discussion, visit Rebecca, over at Honest Meat who is bravely delving into our disconnect from our meat and how it affects our food choices.