Category Archives: Enloe Farms

Spring Calving Season is in Full Swing

March is the start of our spring calving season, and we have had six baby girls so far. Last year we had all bull calves, but this year looks like it’s going to be a heifer haven!

The Farmer has been wanting to get some new heifers to replace some of our old cows (we have a couple that are almost 14 years old). The problem of replacing old cows with new cows is that the ones we are wanting are twice as much as the ones we are selling.

But since it looks like we are going to have a bumper crop of heifers this year, we have decided to keep several heifer calves and replace one bull. Otis (our bull) has been a great addition to the farm. He throws some mighty nice calves, and he’s so gentle that the kids can walk up to him and pet him.

The other advantage of keeping calves from a bull that we have had on the farm for years is that we know the heritage of our breeding cows. Background tracibility in cattle is very important when selling processed beef.

Sounds like a plan…we’ll see.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

Wintertime has been very hard on the cattle this year. Missouri weather is very unpredictable. No matter how hard the weathermen try to figure it out, it often eludes their best predictions. The most constant thing about our weather is that if you hang around long enough you will definitely see it change.
The fall started out very nice and colorful, but quickly faded into 50 shades of brown as the grasses and leaves began to die. Although we did have some nice weather through the fall, when winter decided to hit, it hit hard! When the high for the day is a negative, that’s too cold for anybody, and this past week we had about 8 inches of snow on top of the coldness.
As you can imagine, this weather begins to take a toll on the animals, if they are not properly cared for. When the weather gets this bad, The Farmer feeds the cows a little grain with their hay. This especially helps the lactating cows, because a nursing mama’s body is working especially hard when it’s nourishing herself and her baby. Sometimes hay alone often lacks the necessary nutrition.
I took some pictures of the snow from the warmth of the house. With my new camera The Farmer bought me for Christmas, I’ll be able to stay in the house this year and take all the pictures of the farm. Well, maybe not when the weather gets nice, but as you can see there was no way I was going to stomp through this storm to take a few pics for our blog.
In case it’s not clear, those black things under the snow are our cattle waiting to be fed.
I hope it’s warmer where you are.
Have a Blessed New Year for 2014!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

The Farmer had one week of vacation left for this year, so he decided to take off and spend it with the girls and me. What could be more fun than spending a week here on the farm enjoying the sights and sounds of the blessings God has given us here on the farm?
 
So we wake up the first morning and The Farmer says to me, “Are you ready?”
 
“Ready for what?” I ask expectantly.
 
“Ready to start on the shed!” he exclaims.
Oh, right…I had forgotten this was a working vacation.

“Well of course I’m ready,” I say, “but I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that without help. The sidewalls are too high.”
 
“We’ll figure something out”, he assures me.
 
“Maybe we should call the boys over and see if they can help”, I comment.
 
“Everybody’s busy. We can do it ourselves,” he says dismissively.

We walked out to the shed and sure enough, those walls were high. The sidewalls, which we had planned to cover with tin, were 13’ high. I’m 5’2” fully stretched out and shamefully afraid of heights. The only thing I could think about was if The Farmer was going to be the one screwing in the screws, then that left me to be the one climbing and holding. I don’t do either one of those well.

So putting on a brave front, I climbed up on a 5-gallon bucket to hold up the first piece of tin, which had to be held up 4’ from the floor. I made sure my end was straight and secure, and waited (and waited) for The Farmer to screw it onto the wall.

Okay, this isn’t so bad, I tell myself, the first minute or two. It’s not as heavy as I thought. All I have to do is hold this up and he’ll have it done in no time. Wow, my muscles are starting to ache—still speaking to myself—and I think I let my end slip a little (and said as much to The Farmer, who waited patiently for me to tug it back into place).
“Can I let go, yet?” I ask.
“Well, can you hold it until I get a screw in it?” He inquires.
“How many?”
“A couple at least,” he says, as he picks up the level to mark where the screws are going to go.

Oh my gosh! I’m not going to be able to hold this much longer! Breathe, breathe…

About the time I think I’m going to drop it I hear The Farmer say, “Okay, that’s good. You can let go.”

Dropping my heavy, aching arms to my sides, I watch as he screws in several more screws, checking to make sure my end was held straight. We hang up a couple more pieces at that level, me counting down the minutes I have to hold the tin up and he diligently measuring and screwing in all the screws. At last, we stand back and look at the next row to hang.

“Well, we’re never going to be able to hang that row without help”, I summarize.

But The Farmer wasn’t so easily put off. “Oh, we can do it.”

I was sure he couldn’t see the height difference between my arm’s reach and where the tin needed to be held, so I stretched out my arm, as high as I could and said, “Look, this is as high as I can reach”.

“You can use the stepladder,”  he instructs, “and I’ll get the wagon and climb up in it ”.

Okay, that was a quick fix, and I’ve never seen anyone fall off of a stepladder, I assured myself, I’m sure I’ll be fine. We picked up the next piece of tin, held it against the wall, and I began climbing up the ladder. The first two steps weren’t so bad, but when I began to put the tin into place, I wasn’t high enough. So I stepped up one more rung. Still can’t reach.
 
“You’re going to have to go to the top step,” The Farmer stated as he patiently held his end of the tin.
 
“I can’t.”
 
“Why not?”
 
“Have you never read the instructions on this ladder? It says not to stand on the top rung.”
 
“You’ll be fine”, he assures once again. “Just be careful and don’t lean against the wall too much.”
So as I begin to precariously climb to the top of the ladder, I consider my fall route, just in case. It shouldn’t be too bad, I tell myself, I’ve seen my boys jump from heights higher than this 6’ stepladder. I’ll just jump away from the ladder, and hopefully miss the 5-gallon bucket I left underneath the ladder. And I need to fall away from the wall, or should I try to catch myself against the wall? Securing the tin to the wall and getting it lined up with the first row, I begin to lose my grip on the tin.
 
“Lean into it”, calls out The Farmer.
 
“You told me not to lean!”
 
“Well, lean in a little to help you hold the tin. But be careful not to kick the ladder out from under you”, he states obviously.

Securing my position, as much as possible, I successfully held the tin until he got enough screws in that I could let go. We hung the next few pieces without incident, and my confidence grew as each piece of tin was firmly fixed into place.

Wow! I was impressed. We hung all this tin up without injury. Looking at the third row that needed to be hung, reality set in once again. “We make a great team,” I encouraged, “but we’ll never be able to do the third row without help. I can barely reach the bottom of the third row even if I stood on the tiptop of the stepladder. You’ll have to wait until one of the boys can come over to help you.”

But The Farmer isn’t so easily discouraged. “Let’s sit down here and consider our options. I’m sure we can figure out something.”
This unwavering ability The Farmer has to look at a situation and conquer it comes from the encouragement of his Father who often told him, “There’s always a way to accomplish a thing, you just have to figure out the answer.”

I, on the other hand, am not so gullible; there are many things in life that I can’t accomplish. But I sat down with him anyway, to contemplate the situation (and to drink a cup of coffee).

We tossed around some ideas and decided to use the stock trailer to climb on top of, which seemed like a great idea because we would be able to stand on a large, flat surface. But when he pulled the trailer into the shed, and I began to climb the stepladder to discover that the trailer was still a large step away from the very tip top of the ladder, my confidence began to waver. “Maybe we should have the girls come out and help,” I suggest.

“I think we’ll be okay.” His confidence in his own abilities is so frustrating at times.

Wow…this is really high (back to talking to myself). I’ll be okay, I can hang off a rafter if I start to fall, except I’m not sure how long I could support my weight, since the tin proved to get too heavy for me at times. If I do fall, I need to tuck and roll, I’ve seen that done when people jump from rooftop to rooftop on action films. Be real that’s not going to work. If I fall, it’s going to be a splat! not a roll. Maybe I can catch myself between the trailer and the wall…

“Hey! Can you grab this piece of tin?” I hear The Farmer urge.

“Uh, no.” I can’t quite reach it.”

“Try harder.”

So I do and I did. I managed to get the first piece up on top of the trailer. Climbing up the ladder, The Farmer noticed he forgot the drill. So he climbed back down and started up again, going back down to get the level, oh, and the saw. He gives into my idea of having the girls come out to help, which was fortunate, because it ended up that we needed one of them on top to help me hold as he cut around the rafters.

As we began to finish that row on the wall, my fear of being on the trailer began to diminish. I was semi-confidently walking back and forth handing The Farmer the drill, or saw, or level. After climbing off the trailer (with much trepidation), I was feeling very proud of what we had accomplished. Between The Farmer, myself, and two teenage daughters, the use of a 5-gallon bucket, a couple of ladders, a wagon, and a stock trailer, we were able to do in eight hours what a crew of capable carpenters could have done in two.

“Looks great! So, what are we doing tomorrow?” I ask expectantly.

“We’ll be closing in the attic over the workshop,” The Farmer replies.

I look up to assess the situation. “You’re kidding, right? We’ll never be able to do that without help.”

The Before…

 The first row

 The second row with the wagon

 The third row using the stock trailer

The cleanup

 

 

The After…

The attic (which we didn’t need help with) 🙂

 

Be A Mama, Mama

During calving season, we are always watchful. Although most of our cows are all seasoned pros (some too seasoned, as one is 13 years old!), problems still may arise during the birthing process. A calf may be too big, or turned wrong, or a heifer (first time mama) may not tap into her natural instinct and take care of that little wet thing she suddenly finds laying on the ground next to her.

The first calf born this season was born to a mama that had already calved 3 other times. I consider her a pro, so there shouldn’t have been any problems. And there wasn’t when she had the calf, but later, as The Farmer watched, he noticed that the calf was still in the same place where it had been born and that mama was too far away for safety’s sake. Upon further investigation, the cow just didn’t seem to be responsible at all. In fact, another cow was watching over her baby closer than she was. When the calf would get up to nurse, the cow seemed impatient and uncaring, walking away and kicking at her baby to get him to stop. Fortunately, he was very persistent and seems to be doing well now.

In the short video below, The Farmer is tagging the calf. Usually, he is looking over his shoulder hoping not to get mauled by an overprotective “mama bear”. However, even after her precious bundle of joy runs across the fence into the neighbor’s woods, this unconcerned mama is more interested with chewing her cud than keeping watch over her helpless newborn.

The calf continued to run over the next hill and through the fence.

After waiting around until almost dark to see if mama assumes her responsibility, The Farmer finally decided to intervene. He crossed the fence and began “mawing” like a baby calf (he’s quite good at “maw” calls). Finally, mama’s interest awakened enough for her to investigate. She came to the “rescue” about the time The Farmer coaxed the calf close enough to the fence that he poked his head through. Mama and baby were reunited and walked away without so much as a “howdy-do” or a “thank you” to The Farmer.

As I watched this unfold, I thought about human moms in general (I always compare cow mamas to human mamas, you wouldn’t believe how much we are alike) 🙂 This was a sad comparison, though. I thought about how some mamas have children and then seem too eager to abandon them. Having a baby is easy (I should know), but the endeavor of the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year labor of raising children is the most important part of parenting.

When I saw the cow look up from her grazing and ignore the situation until the calf crossed the fence I grumbled, “It’s too late to care, now”.  Nonetheless, that’s how some parents are. They allow their children to run, to make their own decisions, to watch out for themselves, while they are busy with work, or play, or whatever takes them away from their job of being the adult authority figure, and only show interest when they’re child crosses the line–gets into trouble, leaves home, or causes embarrassment to the parent.

If God has allowed you to be a parent, then be a parent. Be vigilant, watchful, alert when it comes to your children. Guard them against danger, difficulties, and error. Don’t ignore them until they cross over the fence and someone else has to chase them back. If you have had a child placed into your custody, then be a PARENT.

Protect them from being harmed or damaged (physically and emotionally)

Arm them with the tools they need to succeed

Require them to be responsible

Earn their respect by being a good role model

Notice them; they need your time and attention on a daily basis

Transfer them to their own life (allow them to move away) when you have finished raising them, by preparing them along the way

Fall Has Arrived

The days are slowly becoming shorter and the nights are dipping down into the 50’s. The official first day of autumn is just around the corner, but fall has arrived early on the farm. Our fall-calving season is in full swing, and we have six brand new baby boys kicking up their heels in the field. (Which is very exciting because steers are worth more than heifers).

We had some beneficial rains in June and cooler than normal temps in July, which left our fields green and fertile. Unfortunately, the weather turned dry and hot, and now our fields are beginning to suffer the consequences. We got less than 1” of rain the last two months.

Our cattle are on a rotational grazing cycle, which means we move them every three or four days into a fresh paddock of grass. Because of the dry weather, we have to move them more often to keep the grasses as healthy as possible. Believe it or not, the cows always tell us when they need to move on. When The Farmer jumps on the four-wheeler, if they are ready to move, they begin bawling, “Mooooove! Mooooove!”  So he lets them into a new paddock, because happy cows make happy calves. 🙂

Local County Fair

The Farmer and I took the two youngest to the local county fair. Sorry to say it was anything but fun. Too small, too unorganized, too expensive. 🙁
Wouldn’t be a county fair without goats, pigs, and horses
Blue Ribbon Winners
Carousel
Funnel Cakes, Corn Dogs, and Cotton Candy
Ferris Wheel
Mud Run (hmm…)

 

How Does Your Garden Grow

e779d-gramingreenhouseFor many years The Farmer and I  put in a fairly nice sized garden. We planted about 12 tomato plants, 2 rows of green beans, some peppers, onions, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers and whatever other plants my Dad would give me from his greenhouse.

My parents own A & N Greenhouse, out on Hwy 47 towards Potosi. (you know where that is if you live locally) It’s too late this year, but that’s the place to go when you want really good garden plants and flower baskets.

Ok, back to my story. As I was saying, we

used to put in a nice sized garden. A couple of years ago, Daughter #1 enlightened me to the efficiency and ease of square foot gardening.  I really loved the idea. The Farmer made boxes for the plants, we put down a weed cloth to deter weed growth,  we sectioned off the boxes into 1 ft. squares, and then we planted the vegetables according to a chart that I had drawn up. I was really excited to do this, because square foot gardening was supposed to be easier (less weeding), until I saw The Farmer re-seeding the yard around the boxes. When he was finished, the garden was full of grass seed. It didn’t take me long to lose interest in this gardening style (there were still weeds!)

So the gardening set idle for a season or two, until we determined that we were going to have fresh garden tomatoes on our BLTs. We both like the idea of having a garden, but he doesn’t have time to weed the garden and I don’t want to. 🙂 So, necessity being the mother of invention, we came up with what I thought would be a simple plan–patio gardening.

Here’s what we did:

Early one morning, The Farmer went out to get our special mix of highly organic soil. This is the field where the cows winter. A visitor came as he was mixing the fertilized soil with peat moss. At one time these tubs contained protein supplement for the cows. I guess Otis (the bull) remembered, but wasn’t interested when he found that The Farmer was filling it up with dirt.

The Farmer mixed the soil and peat moss, and loaded the tubs into the bucket of the tractor. He used the bucket of the tractor to lift the tubs on to the back deck. I know it looks like he does all the work, but I planted the tomatoes and peppers, and harvested them each time we used them…and cooked ALL the bacon (everytime). 🙂

We only did 3 tubs. You can see the remnant of the sq. ft. garden in the background. I planted 1 tomato plant and 2 pepper plants in each tub. I later discovered that I should have planted the pepper plants in a tub by themselves. Live and learn!

Update: the buckets worked well. We had plenty of tomatoes that summer, and they were easily accessible. This method does require a LOT of watering, especially on hot, humid days. But the weeds are minimal.

From The Pasture To The Picnic

It takes over a year to get the perfect steak on our picnic table.

The calves are born in the spring. They stay with mama until weaning time, which is sometime in November. At this point, we put them in a pasture by themselves where they stay until they are well over a year old. Soon afterwards, their diet is supplemented with locally grown hormone-free/antibiotic-free corn. This is what gives beef it’s highly prized marbling texture and increases the meats flavor and tenderness.

At the beginning of the next summer, when we see the calves approaching their optimal weight, we begin contacting our customers and set an appointment up with our butcher at Swiss Meat. A quaint locally owned family business (but that’s a story for another day).

After two or three weeks processing time, The Farmer and I pick up the meat and bring it back to the farm so our local customers can pick up their meat from the farm where it was raised.

The steak that took 16 minutes on a hot grill took 16 months to prepare.

      So we savor every bite!

This is what we had for supper last night. I also made Homemade Peach Cobbler for dessert.

I added the recipe >>Here<< or go to the "Recipe” tab on the right of this page.

Checking The Cattle

The other day Baxter and I went out to check the cows, and I couldn’t believe the enticing aroma wafting in the breeze. I stopped the 4-wheeler and just sat there for a bit enjoying the sweet smells of the summer pasture. Mmm…

The field is covered in little white flowers, which I think resemble some type of small daisies, and The Farmer thinks that it is a weed called Snowcap. But whatever they are, they make the fields look beautiful.

Baxter and I found the herd laying around under the cool shade of a small group of trees in the field. The babies are looking so good. With the abundance of pasture this year, mama is doing well, so baby is doing well.

Look at this baby! He was born in March.

Not bad for 3 months old.

We have other babies on the farm, also. A few weeks ago we discovered that we had eggs; not chicken eggs but Kildee eggs. The poor mama laid her eggs in our busy driveway. These birds like to lay their eggs on gravel or small rock, but I’m betting they didn’t realize how busy our driveway would be. I put a little table over her nest to keep the eggs safe from some crazy motorist.

When the Kildee perceive someone or something is going towards their nest, they run in the opposite direction. Their nature is to lure you away from their nest. They begin running, then they begin to squawk, and if that doesn’t get your attention, they flap around and at times appear injured. It’s quite a routine.

Unfortunately, when The Farmer was bringing in the bales of hay, the mama bird (I assume) about worked herself to death, because she is nested in front of the gate where he brings in the bales. So every time he brought a bale through the gate she would begin her ritual.

We are not the only ones awaiting the arrival of these new babies—so is the cat!

Update: The eggs are missing! I don’t believe it was the cat’s doing, because there is no physical evidence. So I choose to believe that the mama and daddy birdies rolled their eggs off to safety where no human being nor cat being will be able to ever harm them.

(I Do believe in fairies; I DO believe in fairies…)

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Visit From The Vet

Visit from the Vet

The Farmer and the vet from Crawford County Veterinary Clinic 

We worked the cattle on Saturday, but today we had a visit from the vet. He was here to do a preg check on all the fall breeding cows. As each one went through the chute, the vet would tell us if they were pregnant and give as an approximate point of how far along they are.

We had 16 cows that needed to be preg checked. Unfortunately, two were open (not pregnant) and one of them was #11, the crazy cow that jumped the fence on Saturday. She jumped it again today. So we don’t know if she is bred or not.
The Farmer is not happy. 🙁  And well he shouldn’t be. This cow knows exactly what to do to get out, and she’s not soon to forget it. Our choices are to build a higher fence, give her lead poison, or wait until she’s too old to jump. We can’t afford to build higher and lead is too scarce, so I guess we’ll just have to wait until she gets too old.

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Working Cattle

 

cow face

Working cattle is always a learning experience, and this year when we worked our herd we learned a lot.

We learned that it pays to be prepared and organized.

As each cow or calf comes through the alley, we have to be prepared with what we are going to do to them. They are all given a fly tag (to ward off flies), treated for lice, grubs and other unwanted parasites, vaccinated against pink eye, and various other infectious viruses, and then weighed. Our calves also get a shot to prevent respiratory problems and blackleg, which can actually wipe out a whole year of calves. Fortunately this disease is preventable with vaccination. So these shots and tags all have to be kept separated and organized.

We learned that sometimes it takes several hands to do one job.

Although the Farmer is very proficient in what he does, he just can’t be in three places at one time. As the cattle go through the alley way someone has to encourage them along, and someone else has to open the sliding gate and shut it behind each cow or calf, and then the Farmer shuts the head chute at just the right moment.

We learned that a 13 year-old farmer’s daughter is not a big enough threat to keep a 1500 lb. cow from going over the fence.

Usually a cow’s moo is worse than their bite, so we had Daughter #5 standing at the top of the gate to ward off any wayward cow that may have gotten a crazy idea of trying an escape while they were in the holding pen. And it worked. Although we had a crazy cow escape (#11), she didn’t go through the gate; she jumped over the fence! Well, she jumped on the fence, it broke, and then she went over. But still the same result. Several years ago we had a similar incident in a sort of make-shift lot that we used to work our cattle in. So when we built our existing lot, we purposefully built it high enough so a cow could not go over (or so we thought until this year). The crazy thing jumped a couple of times and then finally busted through the boards and went right over, like she was a trained horse or something. Whatever…she didn’t get a fly tag so I hope she gets bitten by a great big horse fly!

And the final thing we learned this year is working cattle in the rain is no fun at all!

Although the day started out a little nippy, the sun soon came out and we were plenty warm about a half hour into the process. Unfortunately, the sun was overtaken by some ominous looking rain clouds and it began to pour. It didn’t take long before we were all soaked and covered in mud, which wasn’t too bad because it washed away some of the manure that we were all covered in from working the silly cattle in the first place. They are so uncouth.

cattle shute
Son #4 setting up the scales so we can weigh the cattle. Our largest cow weighed 1550 lbs. and our largest fall calf weighed 732 lbs.

working cattle
Daughter #5 still holding her post after the rain had let up a little. Notice she’s staring down one of the mama cows.

 

 

 

cattle pen
If you look closely, you can see Son #1 and the Farmer separating the spring cows and their babies from the fall calves.

 

 

 

 

 

d9585-storm
All the cows and calves have been separated and will soon be back on the pasture.