Keeping a family cow. For real.

     About 6 years ago I met a miniature cow.   That was when the seed was planted.  I started talking about wanting a cow.  Sometimes, I would talk about it just to annoy my husband but other times I was really pondering if it was something we should consider.  I started asking more questions and doing more reading.  First thing was to sort through the myths of keeping a cow as well as making sure the information gathered was based on actually keeping a homestead type cow vs. industrial dairy cow.

     Books by John Seymour were extremely helpful and the most practical of all the books.  Yes, the other Family Cow books were very helpful but not as practical for someone that just wants to keep a cow or two not run a cattle business.

     So fast forward a few years and I make contact with our local lady who specializes in homestead specific cows.  Not Big-Wall-Of-Meat cows.  Not miniature cows either because they aren't that practical.  No.  These are heritage cows or crosses.  She listened to me and understood what I was looking for and what my personal fears and concerns were.  Did I say fear?  Yes.  Fear.  Big animal that could run me down or gore me.  So she was breeding me a specific cow.  A Dexter and Jersey cross called a Belfair.  The size and efficiency of a Dexter, the milk and cream of the Jersey.  Efficiency is important.  Nobody needs a cow that will eat more than she gives.  Heritage breeds excel at this.

     Now I have to convince my husband that this is a good idea.  I'm not going to bore you here with the ins and outs of all the reading I did, or the history of my family and food allergies and looking for ways to healthfully feed my family or the ways to be self-sustaining.  I will tell you that part of my research did include considering dairy goats and what I found was that while in a pinch I can see them as being good options, for the long term and not pinched, we do not really prefer goat milk or meat.  It does not pay to invest in something that you will never really love.  What I did was make a loaf of fresh bread, smeared it with fresh (I had just made it) butter and handed it to him.  He did not put up much of a fight.  No fight at all actually, one bite and he agreed, we need a cow.

     I did, just as I did with the alpacas, go spend time with my friend and her cows.  I learned how to milk.  I asked a lot of questions.  Two years ago we brought Zoey home.  She calved the following May and the real test began, milking daily.  Well, not exactly because she has a calf and that was part of the selling point of keeping a family cow.  If I am unavailable to milk I can just leave the calf with her and there is no issue other than not having milk in the house.

     Now this brings me to the part of the story where I recall people being concerned, many years ago, that I was buying 12 acres and "What was I going to do with all that land?"  and I replied, "Anything I want."  Later I was asked, "What was I going to do with alpacas?" and now the question, "What are you going to do with all that milk?" and, "Nobody needs that much milk."  To the people who questioned me, I am just glad that I do not have your lack of imagination.

     First of all, because I am sharing the milk with the calf, it's not more than I can deal with and second even now while I am cow sitting for a cow that does not have a calf on her we are by no means unhappy with our glut of milk.  This brings me to the meat of this post, what DO I do with the milk?  Is keeping a family cow worth it?

      The answer is simply YES.  In fact right now I am feeding three cows.  One, Hannah, is just here temporarily, Zoey, and her calf, who is 17 months old now.  Roughly 8-10 flakes of alfalfa a day.  Zoey is due with calf #2 next month and Hannah, is a Jersey in milk.  Alfalfa is currently $12/bale as long as you buy direct and not from a feed store.  I get about a gallon a day.  Grass fed, non-pasteurized milk, last I checked is $12.75.  From two day's milk I can collect about a quart of cream.  Sometimes this is turned into ice-cream or caramel but most of the time I turn it into butter.  It yields about 1/2 a pound.  A pound of raw, lightly salted butter is $11.00*.  From the buttermilk collected after churning the butter I add three tsps. yeast, 2 tsps sea salt and enough flour to make an elastic dough.  Buttermilk bread with no sugar or additives.  A large loaf of buttermilk bread is??? $4-5.  Yogurt is also a favorite around here.  We prefer the whey drained from ours and a half gallon of milk yields about three pints of yogurt.  Today we made our first soft crumble cheese.  I am excited to sprinkle it over tonight's salad.

Yogurt, out of the thermos and into the strainer.

      When Zoey was in milk I did not get quite the same yield as I get from Hannah.  That may be different this next time around since last time was her first baby and they are different breeds.  Hannah definitely has a higher feed need.  But you can see that the cost of feeding these cows is much less expensive than buying (assuming you can in some states) quality dairy and bread products.  Also, keep in mind that Zoey's calf from last year will be next springs harvest, so some of that feed cost is going into next springs meat.  All this plus you know where it's coming from, and what it was fed, and you are directly responsible for it's quality of life.  If you are a label reader and you could write your own label for your food and know that it is the truth, this is the ultimate.

     All of this does assume that you have the time to make all this but it doesn't all happen every day and some of it doesn't require much direct supervision.  The butter, I pour in a food processor, turn it on and walk away. While it's spinning I start the yogurt on the stove. The Yogurt, once you bring it up to 180 degrees and hold it there for 15 minutes, you cool it back down to 108, add your culture, put it in a thermos and forget about it for a day.  We drain it after that, which is our preference, but you don't have to.   When the butter separates you will hear a distinct watery noise from your food processor.  Strain the buttermilk from the solids and put the liquid in your mixer.  Rinse your butter under cold water and let it continue to drain.  Add your yeast and salt to the buttermilk in your mixer and mix in flour with the dough hook until it is elastic and not sticking to the side.  Knead by hand into a ball and place in a bowl to raise.  This will take an hour or so and now is when you clean up, add salt to your butter and "squadge" it, as John Seymour would say. When most of the liquid is squished out, put the butter in a mold or container.  I freeze our extra so that there is butter when milk is not as available.
      When the dough is double you can punch it down and place it in your bread pan for a second rise.  When it's double again bake at 375 for 20 minutes.  This is great bread for sandwiches, or just toast. 

Cream in the food processor

butter solids separate

Strain out the buttermilk

press into molds and chill

buttermilk dough

     There you have it.  Milk, butter, yogurt, and bread.  That's not even touching cheese if you are so inclined.   That's what you can get with your own cow.

buttermilk bread

Now for the REAL.  

     She will not always be in milk and you will still have to feed her.  Just keep in mind the lovely beef from the calf one day.  If, at all possible, you might work out an arrangement with another local dairy cow owner to be in milk while your gal is dry.  That would keep the two of you in milk most the year long.
     You will be milking mostly once a day to keep production up.  It will rain, or wind, or snow on you but this is true of all livestock.  I don't recommend just jumping in with cows if you are not already acclimated to farm life.
     Cows are masters of the passive aggressive.  They can be stubborn and willful like a two year old.  Temperament of your dairy cow is important because they don't always want to be milked and it takes time and training to get her to a routine of behaving herself.  She will still pick up her foot and knock over your hard worked for milk pail and yes, you do cry over spilled milk.  IF she does it too often the term Kicked The Bucket will take on a whole new meaning for you.  When you are not ready for it she will lift her tail and defecate.  That's a special kind of passive-aggressive because you can't really yell at her for it.  Sometimes milking just stimulates that.  But I would be lying if I didn't tell you that sometimes I'm sure she does it on purpose.  There is also the flicking of the tail.  It seems so casual, natural even, but the third or fourth time she has slapped you with it you will realize there's more to it than that.  You can tie up her tail and she will learn.  Just like that willful two year old, she can be disciplined.

     There is much to consider, as with any livestock, before you commit to it.  I am here to say that six years later after really thinking about it I am a very happy cow owner.  Zoey is a great cow.  I was fortunate to get her while she was young and be part of her training so now even though she out weighs me and has horns we have an understanding.  Much like training our LGD's when they are small so that when they are bigger we have good manners, cows are very much the same. 

      Not much is needed in the way of equipment for milking.  You can strain using one of the reusable coffee filters but when you do decide to invest in more permanent equipment I recommend www.shenandoahhomesteadsupply.com

Are you interested in trying?  Cricket Bishop will work with you and even offers "leases" so that you can try this lifestyle without the full "I bought the cow" commitment.  

*prices based on OrganicPastures.com

Hail in June

June 12th and yesterday it hailed. 

Today continues to be cold and dreary and my poor shorn alpacas are out shivering.  I tried putting coats and sweaters on them but they would have none of it. 

I have just a few mamma's due anytime soon.  I hope they wait till later this week when the temps are supposed to climb and be in the 90's.  Never boring in the Sierras.

This week starts El Dorado county fair and all that that entails.  Just to complicate things the trucks transmission went out.  We are borrowing cars and trucks to get around.  Thank goodness for the generosity of friends.  If you're in Placerville this coming Friday, we will be in the horse arena at noon with alpacas and llamas.

Farmers market started this month and with it all the wonderful community that comes out and joins together at the park Saturday mornings.  Wonderful friends and music come together and purchase locally produced crafts and garden fresh veggies.  We are so blessed to have such a group that keeps this market going.  Katie of Stardome Alpacas of Cool and I set up and have our handspun alpaca yarn and and hand knit gifts available as well as some commercially produced alpaca items.  The most popular being alpaca SOCKS!  Warm and soft.  We are still working toward our goal of getting our own sock machine and providing our area with socks made from our own alpacas.  Keep watching here as things start coming together!!

A Day in the Life:

It's that time of year again, time for me to update this blog and talk about all that is new on the farm.  

Of course it's spring so some of what is new is baby ducks, chicks, and goslings.

We are agisting a friends llama here and she is due the beginning of June.  

We had two arrivals over the winter, unplanned breeding, but they are doing well.  Noel was born the end of December, a deep brown little girl.

 Janos, as his name suggests, was born in January.  He has had a rough start dealing with both a herniated umbilical as well as some defecation issues and weepy eyes.  He hung in there and we got him a special belt to help with the tummy and started him on antibiotics.  5 months later and he is keeping up with the best of them.  

It has been a cold and extremely wet winter.  Only now, more than half way through May, is it starting to dry out.  Our Fire Wise council is still cautioning us that the fire threat is high this year because while the ground is damp it also increases the grasses.  Last year over the 4th of July we were evacuated for the nearby fire.  This is the second time within 3 years of having a fire threaten our area.  A better way of viewing it though is that after living here for 17 years, we have only been evacuated twice.  That's not bad considering the way California doesn't manage it's forests.  It also means that with the fire and back fires and logging they have done to clear the burnt areas I am optimistic it will be another 17 years before I go through that again.  I can hope.

Last year, after doing my diligent research, my husband and I made the jump and invested in a dairy cow.  A Dexter/Jersey cross to be exact and her name is Zoey.  She is small as cows go and not without challenges. 

     I can say that the early efforts of working with her as a young cow have paid off immensely.  May 5th 2016 we were surprised by an extra set of eyes being unaware that she had been bred before she left her birth home.  We knew it was a possibility but we didn't know.  A little boy.  We don't name him, he will be going to freezer camp this fall.  It did speed up our original plans but in a good way!  It has been a learning curve to to figure out how to get milk from her when she wanted to hold it back for the calf.  And cream!  We had to learn that she could even withhold the cream.  Who knew!  Well, our mentor did and she gave us some helpful hints on how to get around it and get our share of the goodies.  All part of the plan was to leave the calf on her so that we were not required to milk daily should the need arise.  When we were ready to ween him we tried a couple different nose rings that black him from nursing but swing forward when his head is down so he can eat and drink without issue.  This cuts down on his stress (and less mooing for us) because he is still with his mom but has to eat like a grown up.  We get about 1/2 a gallon a day, give or take.  What do we do with it?  We drink it for sure but we also make yogurt and butter.  I also take the leftover butter milk and make a nice buttermilk sandwich bread.  

I am often asked how much money we save by raising and butchering our own meat and now with the addition of milk, butter and bread. (cheese will happen soon) The answer is: We don't.  Don't ever go into this thinking your budget will somehow be relieved by not needing to purchase these items.  What is relieved?  Your stress.  Daily I read articles about what they have added to industrially raised food, sprayed the crops with, injected the meat with....It's never ending and only serves the bottom line of the industry.  I know what my animals eat and I don't use chemicals.  My dairy is not pasteurized or homogenized.  My bread has 5 ingredients: sourdough starter, yeast, flour, buttermilk, and salt (sometimes, I indulge in some honey).  No HFCS.  That feels pretty good and I enjoy the routine of making it all.  

What about the alpacas?? Well they're fine.  We are looking forward to some new little additions this summer.  The 4-H boys are sheared and ready for county fair in June and state fair in July.  I am about half way through shearing all of them but it's been a late start, did I mention it's been a very wet winter?  Just two days ago it felt like a late fall day, rain and cold.  But I do have some very big plans this year concerning our alpaca business.

     Together with a neighboring ranch in Cool we will be making our own alpaca sock brand made with our fiber not a co-op.  Stay tuned as there will be a Kickstarter project to try and get this off the ground faster but by hook or by crook we are going to make it happen.  They will be machine washable as they will be blended with another natural fiber.  

You see, the socks I sell now are made in PA and sold out of La Jolla, CA.  They are great socks, I really like them but they are 45% micro fiber.  Several articles have come out now discussing the microscopic fibers washing from our laundry into the ocean and they are from all the polyesters, nylons, and polar fleece that so much of our clothing is produced with. It's starting to really accumulate and I don't want to be a part of that.  https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/will-clothes-companies-do-right-thing-reduce-microfiber-pollution  Yes, there will still have to be some nylon/spandex in our product to give it some stretch and the one size fits most aspect that people come to expect from socks but we will be pairing our alpaca with a natural fiber that will still give it strength, softness and wash-ability.  I don't know about you but I'm not a fan of clothes I have to remember to not throw in the washing machine.

So please stand by for our Kickstarter project and support our goal if you are so inclined! 

Hope But No Promises

Farm life is a lifestyle full of hope and no promises.  No promises anywhere, anytime.  There is no promise that tomorrow will be like today because livestock and the weather, by their very nature, are going to change things up for you.  

Today you have 10 chickens but later today a coyote might come through and now you have six.  You look again 25 days later and you have 7 and number seven has 7 little chicks in tow.  The sow you were sure you had bred turns out she was just fat, but 20 days later you find you were just off on your breeding date and now she has little piglets suckling on her.  There was hope, but no promise.  

You can’t make any promises either.  You can have plans but you had better get used to being fluid on those plans.  Yes, you planned to meet your friend for lunch but as you were pulling out of your drive you look over and see your precious Petunia Pig on the wrong side of the fence tearing through your neighbor’s garden.  By the time you have lured her back to her pen, fixed the fence, and cleaned up you’re well beyond late and looking at an early dinner if your friend still has time.  

You did promise you wouldn’t bring home any more farm animals but, “It was a good price” “It was abandoned” “We don’t have one like this! Think of the breeding possibilities!”   Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

Hope.  Hope springs eternal and hope is sometimes all we have to cling to in this precarious lifestyle.  There is hope that the pigs will all stay penned.  The hope that when we finish this grow out we will have a freezer full of food that we trust where it came from.  The hope that with the work of raising, growing, and caring for one thing we will be able to trade for the items we still need.  The hope that our friends, that live differently, will understand when we are an hour late because farm life happens.  The hope that even when one of our herd/flock dies and our heart is broken that there will more life to follow.  The hope that that tiny seed we pushed into the dirt will spring up as food later this summer if we water it.  It seems unlikely but 30 days later, there are the leaves, pushing up and encouraging our hope.  When the hail comes down and batters those leaves, we persist and plant some more because we hope.

I write this the day after finding a cria that died over night.  Yes, he showed signs that something wasn’t quite right but I couldn’t find anything definitively wrong (not without $$$ of tests) so this was unexpected.  I am sad.  His birth was the hope of bringing in new blood, new color, and new temperament to my herd.  In his death, following the necropsy, I have found a weak point in the genetics of my herd and learned that I need to move a different direction.  The loss hurts but we cannot mourn for long because just around the corner is the hope that last summers’ breeding will bring new life this coming summer.   

Farming is not a lifestyle for those who need promises.  There are no promises that even when things seem ok that tomorrow a different truth might emerge.  The learning curve on this point can be quite steep.   You can hope and as you learn to go with the flow of things your hope will become grounded and your optimism will grow.  You will find that hope is worth waking up to. 

 I promise.

Time To Get Ready

It's February.

     Time to start seeds.  Time to get fiber processed before the spring shearing rush. Time to think about getting new chicks.  Time to get equipment ready for shearing.
   
I've sent about 50 lbs. out to Heart and Soul in Penn Valley to be cleaned and turned into roving.  That will make getting it spun up into yarn happen a lot faster than if I clean it myself as well as make it more enjoyable for me.  This also means nice clean fiber available for other spinners will be available for sale.   This year I have a bit of motivation for getting more product available.  You see, come September the World Gold Panning Championship will be held in El Dorado County.  I am planning on having the ranch open for any visitors exploring this area of the divide as well as products to show off what our beautiful alpacas provide for us.

     Next on my list of to-do's will be to get some dying done.  As usual it will all be natural dyes. I am spinning whites as fast as I can so that I can offer a variety of color this summer at the farmers market. 

     February has started out with snow on the ground and high 20's temperatures.  We had great rainfall totals for January and I am hoping it continues for the next three months.  It makes work sloppy and muddy but it sure beats drought and higher than usual fire danger.

     While the ground is soft I will be pulling some ground cover plants to be replanted later after I re-landscape an area that has been left fallow for some years and hope to revive the garden area in front of the studio/guest house.  It will involve fixing the drip irrigation which has also been left to sit for last few years as we have coped with low well levels and too many holes in the main line.  My goal will be to not only get the water set up and on a timer but get flowers back in and screened from the veracious chickens.  I could pen up the chickens but that means they can't do their job of keeping the bug population in balance.  So I would rather protect the plants.  It's odd but it works.

     This month also brings us the bitter sweet moments where we will have to say good bye to the puppies that have given us so much joy these last few months.  Some will go to their new homes this week and others will stay on a little longer to get more learning time in with the older LGD's as well as time to get big enough to handle themselves at their new job sites.  My feed bill will be relieved but my heart will miss their fluffy little faces.  I will breed again.  My oldest and my first LGD's are eight years old now.  It's sad but these are not long lived breeds.  Sasha is showing her age lately and it will be time to bring in younger workers.  I never imagined when I started an alpaca ranch how much these dogs would come to mean to me.  I love having their eyes, ears, and noses on guard duty.  They do what I cannot.  Now I can't imagine ever running a ranch without them.

    For those of you who also keep fruit trees, now is also the time to prune and spray Neem oil.  This is best done on a windless day.  Fruit trees are some of the most rewarding to me.  Once established they need so little from you and give so much back year after year.  As the saying goes, "The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago and the next best time is today."

     Last I would like to ask you to keep in mind that now is the Time that your local 4-H kids are getting ready to purchase, hatch, or otherwise birth the market animals that will be available for auction at the next county fair.  Know your farmer and support these hard working kids.  Your purchase is tax deductible, and you will get some fine meat for your freezer.  Your support continues "making the best, better."


  

Happy New Year! Welcome to the ranch.

Well we went from no water to El Nino and you won't hear me complain.  Well, maybe just a little.  The soft muddy dirt means that the alpaca toenails are now pretty unruly and a mess to trim up. 

Lots of changes to our little homestead and alpaca ranch this last year.  We brought Greyson home.  He is our newest herdsire and I am hoping for some lovely grey.  He is a sweet gentleman who really loves his pellet treats. 








Next, over the summer we lost our sweet Reighnee.  This was not the first time she had gone downhill but we were able to get her back on her feet last time.  This time after Three weeks of hand feeding, trying to get her C1 going again, she gave up.  I miss her terribly and look for her even now when I go out.

We were expecting two cria this this year. The first was another sad day on the ranch.  The poor guy was badly deformed in the face with no eyes, nose or upper pallet.  He was the offspring of two I have bred many times before so we were really unprepared for such a travesty. 






The second was a perfect, textbook birth from an outside breeding with Embervanna.  He is a beautiful boy, almost a carbon copy of his dad, Keanu.  Watching his development carefully as we hope he will be a hirdsire potential in a few years.  Just love his coloring.  That undercoat will develop to a grey!  We dubbed him "Gambit".




In the homestead news my next big thing was bringing home Zoey.  Zoey is a Dexter and Jersey cross heifer and I am just tickled with her!  Never did I think I would be a cow person but I do love her.  She fits right in with us.  She will be bred with a low line Angus and we look forward to fresh milk in the spring of next year.  She is a small breed and it fits right well with keeping heritage breeds on our little farmstead.  She does have horns that I am learning to respect.  Fortunately she is young so they are not full length yet and so we are learning together. 

Last summer we had to shut down our fodder set up.  It was always in a temporary location and the invasion of varmints and ants had me at my wits end.  Couple that with higher temps causing the seeds to sour and we just shut down.  We have a container waiting to be the new fodder location.  Money and time were the challenges and having both at the same time doesn't happen very often.  So we have just worked at it a little at a time.  Cleaning it out was the first battle and then insulating it.  Following that was sealing it up.  For that we used a product called Metacrylic.  It takes many layers but when you are done painting it on you have a very water proof surface.  Then my husband worked in the plumbing and the lights.  This week we got things started again.  We still have work to do.  The heat that was sufficient for the smaller previous fodder space is not enough for the bigger container, the ceiling still needs more insulation and paneling.  Then the last part will be expanding so that there is enough feed for the animals we have added over time.  Everyone will benefit from this especially my pocketbook.

We had a small "oops!" in that Obadiah and Ellie got too close while she was in heat.  I thought the worst but was reassured by many breeders that a 1st gen inbreeding  line breeding would be just fine and possibly give very desirable traits.  Ellie has turned out to be a great first time mom.  All six pups are healthy and normal.  We have truly enjoyed our puppy time and even more pleased to say they all have good, working homes to go to. 




That puts this blog back up to date again. 

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being a speaker along with my dear friend on our local radio station, KFOK. We were asked to talk about homesteading here on the divide.  A broad subject.  The thing I wanted to share the most, that I want to encourage, is to remember that your homestead is unique to you.  Don't get caught up comparing or keeping up with what another homesteader is doing.  Some of us have been at this longer than others and no matter what our situations are very different.  Also that it's not all milk and honey.  Some days just SUCK!  We lose precious animals. We have feed go bad.  We have pipes break and no one to fix it but ourselves.  Don't give up.  The good times outweigh the bad and the milk and honey days are right around the corner. 

California Drought and Small Farm Living

It's another non-winter here at the ranch.  Could not ask for more beautiful weather except that we are asking for wet, cold, snowy weather.  We are asking for a lot of it.  The reservoirs are so low one can hardly refer to them as "lakes" anymore.  Rivers are mere trickles.  The state that provides for much of America's produce is looking pretty sad. 

We are on a well.  This comes with it's own joys as well as challenges especially when you have livestock counting on you for their well being.  First off we have a 3000 gal holding tank.  This gives us a little breathing room in the event of a pump problem.  I am surprised how many other well owners did not include this in their irrigation/plumbing plans.  It was something we had to add years after purchasing our property.  Not that the previous owner didn't have a tank it just wasn't closed.  Not something you would want to drink from for sure. 

What we learned from last years drought conditions was that our well was not recovering as quickly as it does when we have regular winters.  This prompted the addition of a well pump timer.  This means that instead of the tank always filling when the float is at a certain level it only fills for a set amount of time during a set time of the day.  This has saved the pump from working to hard or worse, working dry. 

This means that just like the rest of the state we aren't mindlessly using water.  Anything that needs water is on a timer and/or a drip system.  Public water is not an option for us where we live.  We have never been mindless about our water supply, pumps are expensive and and we still pay for the electricity to run the pump but these last few years have certainly forced us into more restrictions. 

So as I watch the alpacas sun themselves on this beautiful March day I am also doing my garden dreaming.  This years irrigation will be very different from years past.  My son has already tilled the soil with new alpaca manure and we will establish a drip system for each row, keeping water low to the ground to prevent excess evaporation as well as being able to adjust for the water needs of each different crop. 

While we work hard to make use of what we have there is an undercurrent of fear as the drought continues.  If the water source that feeds our well drys up, what next?