Cow in the freezer and milking woes

Early in the morning on August 18, a mobile butcher came in and dispatched Filet, our eight-year-old Angus cow.

Filet had been earmarked for the freezer since we got her. She was a former range cow and was still, even after having her for 18 months, extremely stand-offish. Not aggressive, just not friendly. As an older animal, we knew she wouldn't be worth much more than ground beef (and tenderloin!).

For the actual dispatching, we had her corralled in this "chute" on the south side of the barn.

The animals are very familiar with this chute – it's usually open – so Filet experienced no stress or anxiety when we shooed her in around 5:45 am Monday morning. I didn't milk Maggie that morning, either, but just left Stormy (Maggie's calf) out of her pen for the night. Don and I shooed the rest of the herd into another pasture (including her six-month-old calf Romeo) until the deed was done.

Who was stressed and anxious in the days leading up to the slaughter was ME. I don't like killing things anyway, but there was also a LOT of residual stress left over from our last home, where we had a bunch of cobbled-together and often ineffective methods of confining animals before the butchers arrived, and several times animals escaped. Ug, I hate burchering days.

This is the first time we've had an animal butchered here in our new home, using the services of a new (to us) butcher. The actual dispatching is done by one party (an independent mobile dispatcher) and the hanging and cutting is done by a butchering business in a nearby town.

Since the mobile dispatcher lives just a short distance away, we asked him to drop by in advance so he could look over our setup and make sure everything was satisfactory.

You never met a nicer fellow than this dispatcher – knowledgeable and professional. He assured us the setup was fine. The plan was to drop Filet, bleed her out, then take the carcass to the butcher shop, where it will hang for 10 or 12 days before being cut up.

To say it went smooth as silk is to only hint at how easy it was. This morning Don and I hit the corral about 20 minutes before the butcher was due to show up (which he did promptly at 6 am), shooed Filet into the chute and shooed the rest of the livestock into the sacrifice pasture. It took five minutes and no one was the slightest bit alarmed.

The mobile dispatcher did the job with one bullet. Don (who was out with him) said Filet dropped like a rock and never knew what hit her. In other words, extremely fast and humane.

Naturally this leaves Romeo (and Mignon, her yearling calf) bereft of their mama, so there's that. Romeo is six months old, so plenty old enough to wean, but we wondered how he would react.

The first day, he didn't even appear to notice she was missing. Here's Romeo and Mignon, just hanging around in the sacrifice pasture below the barn.

In fact, except for a few bellows here and there, Romeo has done absolutely fine. It's been over a week now, and he doesn't appear to miss his mama at all.

Interestingly, the whole dynamic of the barn has changed now. Filet was unquestionably the alpha cow. To be honest, she was something of a bully to the other animals, including our Jersey Maggie. Now Maggie, as senior animal, has stepped into the role of alpha, and she's much nicer. In short, things are a lot calmer at the feed box.

However (and on a homestead, there's always a "however"), Romeo has found a major way to be obnoxious. He's discovered Maggie has milk. And since almost all Jerseys are what we call "universal donors" (meaning, very generous with their milk), he's been diving for the udder the moment I release Maggie from the milking stall each morning.

Here Stormy (Maggie's calf) is on the left, and Romeo is on the right.

This morning, I overslept a bit and didn't make it out to the barn until about 6:10 am. Stormy, of course, was locked away in the calf pen, but Romeo was avidly slurping away on Maggie. I got Maggie into the milking stall (forcibly locking Romeo out – he wanted to follow!) and settled down to milk Maggie.

I shouldn't have wasted my time. Poor Maggie had been drained dry. I barely got two ounces and just gave up. I released Maggie from the milking stall, then released Stormy from the calf pen. Both calves immediately dove for Maggie's udder, but Romeo had taken everything. Even Stormy didn't get her breakfast.

Okay, new plan: We're going to have to keep Romeo away from Maggie at night. We can't lock him in the calf pen with Stormy because there simply isn't enough room. (Remember, we had to shoehorn the calf pen and milking stall into a very tight corner of the barn.)

A fall project Don wants to accomplish before winter is to build an awning on the backside of the barn to give the animals extra space and shelter over the winter. We've decided to build a holding pen for Romeo into this awning space.

But that won't help for the immediate time being when it comes to milking Maggie. Filet has been gone over a week now, and this is the first time Romeo beat me to the milk, so to speak, probably because I overslept. I guess in the immediate, I just need to get out to the barn earlier and beat him to the faucet.

It's always something, y'know?

The end of the "Bossy" call

For years -- decades -- we called in the cattle using our universal cattle call, named after the very first cow we ever owned: "Bossy bossy bossy bossy BOSSY!!!"

We didn't use it often, just when we wanted to call the animals from one side of the property to the other, and they always answered it. Younger animals learned from older animals what the call meant.

On Wednesday, I used that call for the last time. I called our remaining three cows into the feedlot, closed the gate, and conveniently left for errands in the city while the mobile butchers, Potlatch Pack, came to put them in the freezer.

Two cows and a heifer went into the freezer in early July. One heifer (on the hoof) went to some friends. That left three remaining animals (two cows, one heifer) to meet their fate on Wednesday.

It's bittersweet, folks. Bittersweet.

No more animals at the feedboxes.

No more animals scattered in the pasture.

But it's all part of our plan to move. It would be almost impossible to take livestock with us, particularly since we have no idea where we'll be moving to. Once we settle in a new place, we'll populate it soon enough with bovines.

But in the meantime, the feedlot gate remains open. Why close it?

Sigh.

Friday roundup

Goodness, I have been utterly scatterbrained this week. It's been busy, yes, but that's no excuse for the absolute blog silence. Apologies to all my loyal readers!

So here it is – Thursday – time for our "Friday" Roundup. These, as you recall, are so we can all check in on what steps we've taken, big or small, to inch us incrementally toward greater preparedness (regardless of what day it's posted).

Here's what we've done in the past couple of weeks:

• We butchered five animals last Wednesday.

We were getting way too crowded – not just at the feed boxes, but also too many for our property to easily support. Now we're down to ten animals, a far more manageable number. We're not expecting any calves this year either, since we currently don't have a bull.

• In anticipation of sorting out which animals to butcher, Don built another "airlock" gate. We're putting in fences and gates across critical pinch-points on our property to assist when we need to sort out animals.

We tested this latest "airlock" when shooing the animals not getting butchered down to the pasture for a couple of days. One of the targeted animals escaped, but since she couldn't get past the airlock, it was a simple matter to get her back where she needed to go. As Don and I lose our farmhands (the girls), we need to come up with ways to work smarter, not harder; and airlock gates serve that purpose.

• After the butchering was done, Don took advantage of the livestock being down in the pasture to clean up some more of the muck underneath the feedbox awning. We didn't want the livestock in the pasture for more than a day or two, since the grass is just starting to emerge and we don't want it trampled or eaten down too early; so after a couple hours of scooping poop, we closed the gate and brought the animals back up from the pasture.

• I planted seeds indoors:

• 25 cayenne peppers
• 25 basil
• 10 Brussels sprouts
• 10 broccoli
• 18 tomatoes (6 large, 12 paste)
• 10 red bell peppers

The broccoli and Brussels sprouts are just starting to come up.

It's always fun to watch an infant plant push upward.

• We picked up the four hazelnut trees we ordered and paid for last fall.

For some reason I expected these to be a lot smaller than they are, so I'm delighted they're already at such a height. Unlike the walnuts we planted last May (and may take as long as 15 years to produce), hazelnuts should bear a crop much more quickly.

Hazelnuts (sometimes called filberts) and walnuts are the two types of nuts which will successfully grow in our area. Having a permanent source of plant protein (nuts) is a valuable addition to our farm.

• It's been raining an awful lot, precluding much work in the garden, but I got a bit of a start at weeding some beds.

I noticed this little guy...

...at the edge of the pond...

...keeping a sharp eye on Lydia.

• One of our pear trees, which bears prolifically, had two large branches growing out at awkward angles.

These would get so heavily-laden with fruit in the fall that we had to prop them up with tomato cages.

So I sawed off these two large branches, and nipped off a few smaller branches growing at odd angles. The result is a much nicer-looking tree.

• I've been admiring the birds we've been seeing:

Quail:

Western kingbird:

Robin (possibly my favorite bird):

Killdeer:

The spectacular mountain bluebird:

• We ordered two pounds (!!) of flower seeds, specifically a species called lacy phacelia.

These flowers were among the mixed seeds we planted in the orchard last year.

The bees went absolutely ballistic over them.

Come to find out they're extraordinarily heavy nectar-producers. They're also friendly to cows (some farmers even plant them for grazing). We're planning on sowing the mounded hillsides of nasty clay dirt that was piled when the pond was dug. This will not only stabilize the slopes, but provide endless food for the bees.

• I'm working on the talk I'm giving on May 6 at the Northwest Preparedness Expo in Prosser, Washington. This is put on by an nifty church-based group called the Lower Valley Assembly whose purpose is "to promote the advancement of self-reliance and security within the Lower Yakima Valley in accordance with the laws of nature and the commonly held Judeo-Christian principles by which the United States of America was founded." Hopefully if anyone's in the area, you can attend the expo.

That's what we've been doing around here. How has everyone else done as far as preparedness?

The joys of Flyover Country

Yesterday we butchered four animals. These ladies were two troublesome mother/daughter pairs, three of whom were horned, and they routinely caused problems either by escaping fences or attacking other animals.

I hate butchering days; not because I mind animals being butchered, but because I don’t like causing anguish among the rest of the herd. (I tend to anthropomorphize a lot. Maybe it’s a woman thing.) Whenever possible, I like keeping the rest of the herd out of sight from where the animals are being butchered.

So when the region’s most revered mobile butchers, Potlatch Pack, rolled in yesterday morning, we had the herd down in the pasture and well away from the four targeted animals, which we kept in the rocky driveway area where mud and other complicating factors were minimized.

Don stayed outside to watch one of the butchers, a fellow named Chance, do his magic. I stand in absolute awe of Chance’s sharpshooting skills: one single clean shot in one of two preferred locations (either between the eyes, or better yet, a spot between the eye and ear). On this particular occasion, he peeked around the corner of the house and dropped all four animals within 15 seconds of each other. They literally didn’t know what hit them; they didn’t panic; they didn’t even realize their fellow herdsmates were down. The animals didn’t even kick or struggle. They just – dropped.

Chance and his helper had the animals processed (gutted, skinned, quartered) within a few hours, then with a cheerful wave they were on their way. The carcasses will be hung in a cooler for about ten days, then cut, wrapped, and frozen.

Whenever I read about someone in their ivory tower complaining about the backward rednecks in Flyover Country, I think about the wonderful, humane, efficient people working for Potlatch Pack. I know the type of people among whom I prefer to spend my life. Give me the “backward rednecks” like the Potlatch Pack folks any day.

New and exciting medical discovery

Okay, I need to make a confession: I lied.

Last post, when I put up that cute little ballet video, I said I was having a "busy few days." I lied.

The fact is, I woke up Monday morning in extreme pain from a tweaked lower back. I have no idea what I did, but it hurt. I do not have a history of back pain, so this took me entirely by surprise.

So when I said I was "busy," what I really meant was, "I’m in too much crippling agony to write anything even remotely interesting."

All day Monday, I pretty much moved as little as possible, and whenever I did move, it was to show me what advanced old age will look like.

But we’re butchering today, so yesterday – bad back or no bad back – we had to negotiate most of the herd down to the pasture, keep a couple of other animals out of the way in a barn stall, and retain the targeted animals in the driveway area (which is mud-free and will be easiest for the mobile butchers to do their work). This meant, bad back or no bad back, it was an all-hands-on-deck shuffling of animals, always a kinetic enterprise.

Rather to my surprise, after our half hour of mobile excitement, my back felt considerably better. Afterward, Younger Daughter and I headed into the city for some errands. By evening, I would say my back was about 75 percent improved.

This morning, it was back to crippling pain. But animals must be fed and stalls must be cleaned. Now, as I write this, I feel about 50 percent better.

So while I don’t know what suddenly plunged me into the agony of back pain, one thing appears to be coming clear: chasing cows helps. So does mucking manure and forking hay, as long as it’s done slowly and within the boundaries of whatever it take not to jar me back into agony. I claim this treatment as a New and Exciting Medical Discovery. Maybe I'll patent it.

This afternoon, after the butchers have come and gone, we’ll bring the herd back up from the pasture and return them to the feedlot. Gosh, I’m sure it will make me feel much improved.

Bonus: We’re having the year’s first snowfall, always pretty.

A picture is worth a thousand tasks

Consider this photo:

This photo was taken about 9 pm and represents the conclusion of a thousand tasks that occupied our day.

First, the dishes are done. Third time today.

Second, those are a bunch of tankards on the counter we're just about to card and pack for a shipment going out tomorrow. Don's been working on these all week long.

Third, that's 18 pints of canned pinto beans on the right. I soaked them overnight, simmered them for a few hours this morning, and canned them this afternoon.

Fourth, those two white upended buckets on top the jars of beans are cleaned milk buckets, because I'm milking Polly again. This is because we butchered three animals on Monday, including Polly's yearling steer calf Chuck. We castrated Chuck when he was a few days old, but apparently we didn't get "everything." He suddenly started acting like a bull. The last thing we need is another bull around the place, so when we called the butchers to dispatch two other animals, we threw Chuck in there as well. However now Polly needs to be milked twice a day, so I'm back at it.

Fifth, the pot on the stove is frying down bacon bits. I had accumulated a lot of el-cheapo bacon ends in the chest freezer. With the meat due back from the butchers in a couple of weeks, plus the fact that we now have a smaller chest freezer, space is at a premium and I need to clean it out as much as possible. I've been meaning to can up bacon bits anyway, but it takes a long time to fry everything down and drain off the fat. That pot on the stove is the third batch I've fried down today.

Bottom line: the photo above represents a LOT of work. Don and I are both wiped. I'm off to bed. Good night.

500 pounds of meat

We got the call from the mobile butchers that our meat was ready. This is the combined beef from butchering Ruby and Chester a couple weeks ago, cut and wrapped and ready to pick up.

This is the best time of year to drive to the town of Potlatch because the scenery is so beautiful with all the winter wheat beginning to green up. It's like driving through Ireland.

Here's the inside of the butchers' walk-in freezer, with trays of meat neatly wrapped and labeled.

These folks keep their facility squeaky-clean. We like doing business with such an ethical family-owned company.

Here's the meat, loaded in the car.

On the road again...

I zoomed in on this kestrel from quite a distance so it's a little blurry, but they're such handsome birds.

While I was gone, Don had the unenviable task of cleaning out the chest freezer in an effort to fit all the meat in. He did an impressive job.

We ended up with one section completely full, and one section three-quarters full. We also put 70 lbs. of ground beef in a neighbor's freezer.

The exact total came to 510 lbs. Figuring in feed costs and other expenses, we estimate it costs us about $1.40/lb for our beef... and that's for ALL cuts, from ground beef and cube steak up to T-bones and tenderloin.

This much meat is quite timely, because lately I've been collecting a few depressing headlines, to wit:

• Fruit and Vegetable Prices Are Rising
- The cost of fresh produce is poised to jump in the coming months as a three-year drought in California shows few signs of abating, according to an Arizona State University study set to be released Wednesday.

• Soaring Food Inflation Full Frontal: Beef, Pork And Shrimp Prices Soar To Record Highs, which included a charming graph:

• Why Meat Prices Will Continue to Soar
- The average price of USDAchoice-grade beef has soared to $5.28 a pound, and the average price of a pound of bacon has skyrocketed to $5.46. Unfortunately for those that like to eat meat, this is just the beginning of the price increases. Due to an absolutely crippling drought that won’t let go of the western half of the country, the total size of the U.S. cattle herd has shrunk for seven years in a row, and it is now the smallest that is has been since 1951. But back in 1951, we had less than half the number of mouths to feed.

• Beef prices hit all-time high in U.S.
- Come grilling season, expect your sirloin steak to come with a hearty side of sticker shock. Beef prices have reached all-time highs in the U.S. and aren't expected to come down any time soon. Extreme weather has thinned the nation's beef cattle herds to levels last seen in 1951, when there were about half as many mouths to feed in America. "We've seen strong prices before but nothing this extreme," said Dennis Smith, a commodities broker for Archer Financial Services in Chicago. "This is really new territory."

• Why Meat Prices Are Going To Continue Soaring For The Foreseeable Future
- [T]he supply of meat is going to be tight for the foreseeable future even as demand for meat continues to go up. This is going to result in much higher prices, and so food is going to put a much larger dent in American family budgets in the months and years to come.

• A Perfect Storm for Higher Beef Prices
- The price of beef has been rising ever since the Great Plains drought forced ranchers to reduce their herds. The price went up even more this winter because cattlemen did not want to transport livestock to market during the coldest part of the winter.

For the last few years, we've been striving with greater effort towards food self-sufficiency on our farm, and these headlines illustrate why. I don't know if anyone can ever be truly self-sufficient (our "circle" of self-sufficiency isn't closed by any means), but at least we can work toward that goal. And meanwhile, I urge everyone to try their hand at food production of some type. Any type. Prices aren't coming down any time soon.

These prices increases are going to hit a lot of people hard. As it is, I know a lot of people who are simply unable to afford beef. At least now we have lots of ground beef we can donate to our church's food bank.