Isn’t this adorable? We forgot all about this, until today, lol! When our cats can’t get into a bucket to lap up remaining calf milk, they soak their paw in the milk & lick it off… When we saw Blake doing it today, we all started laughing and said, “THE PAW STRAW!” all at the same time! 🙂 Oh, these barn cats are just soooo entertaining…
We’ve been watching these cocoons on Grandma & Grandpa’s bushes all through the winter. Here’s a pic of them in January:
And here are some pics from today – little baby praying mantises… God never ceases to amaze me through the beauty of His Creation! 🙂
http://www.westonaprice.org/about-the-foundation/brochures
Click any of these links to read brochures about:
We do our best to follow their diet… totally a work-in-progress, but we are definitely making progress!
Last Wednesday we split up the cows that we put together in Gondor the day before. We moved the summer-beef & heifers-to-breed up to Gray Heaven & left the dairy girls in Gondor. In the 1st pic, you can see the yearlings (last year’s calves) watching on the left in The Shire. Little did they know, they’d be joining them shortly, lol! 🙂 The 2nd pic shows the first group enjoying the grass in Gray Heaven.
Next we moved the yearlings to join the others in Gray Heaven. The less groups we have, the easier it is for Mike to move temporary fence for rotationally grazing each group…BUT, too many in a group can be a challenge, too. So, 2 groups it is. 🙂
The third pic is the yearlings on their way, & in the last one they are entering through the gate of Heaven. 🙂
Mmmmm – sounds fantastic! Thanks, Jill! 🙂
http://pathsofwrighteousness.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/real-food-no-sugar-vanilla-ice-cream/
Yes, these are locations found in the “Lord of the Rings” movies… My THREE boys, LOVE these movies! (Not-so-much for me, though…I am just not big on movies – especially fantasy types…) But I DO like naming things! 🙂 So, we have named all the fields on our farm after locations found in these movies. This way, as long as we tell one another what field we’re working in, we can find each other quickly, if we need to.
In the winter, we keep our cows in a “sacrifice field”. This is a field that has lots of trees for shelter & is too rough for us to make hay in. (Years ago, it was covered in pine trees when the farm was leased to grow Christmas trees on.) When you are “grass-farmers”, the grass is the base of your farm. Therefore, you don’t want your animals ruining your nicest fields, which is what happens in the winter/spring with snow/thawing/mud. Since there is no fresh grass for the cows to graze on in the winter here, we feed them our hay – either square bales or round bales that Mike unrolls for them. We’ve named this “sacrifice field” Mordor, because it is not the prettiest. The cows LOVE to scratch on all the trees, so most branches are missing on the underparts of the trees, and the ground is pretty “pocky” from their hooves digging into the mud.
We keep the cows in Mordor until the other fields are growing nicely & ready for grazing. Yesterday was the day to let the cows out to begin full-grazing for 2012. They were so excited! 🙂
In this pic, I am in the truck, driving out of Mordor, and the cows are following me out…
Next, they are about halfway to their new field, Gondor. They are getting sidetracked by all the yummy green grass along the way, lol! 🙂
Now I’ve pulled into Rohan and I’m waiting for them to catch up. Mike and the boys were behind them all to keep them moving. Can you tell the cows are running?! 🙂
They made it into Gondor. Look how their heads are all down to EAT… 🙂
Augie-the-calf was our first bull calf of 2012. It was fun introducing him to his namesake today, lol!
Augie-the-man has a blog, too – here’s the link to it! 🙂
This cutie and her mama belong to the Sarver Family. Mama’s name is Oreo & they’ve named her calf Macadamia. 🙂
Roberts' Farm Blog 