Cowmomma's Cupboard

Finally, I find myself ready to tackle trying to get our status updated on all the web sites having to do with the ranch.  Regretfully, the 4B is no more.  Dan and I have moved, and are now living in Florida, in town.  All our lovely critters have been re-homed except Maily the beagle, she is still with us.

This past year has been a wild ride.  Kind of like trying to hang on to one of our bucking bred cattle.  We lasted the 8 seconds though and now have landed, and we're trying to get a bead on our new surroundings.  My head is still spinning though.  For anyone else dealing with the cattle market, farm sales, short sales, and Fannie Mae- you have my sympathy. 

I am learning what grows in my new climate and experimenting on a small scale with hydroponics and aeroponics.  It is amazing to be growing peppers and chard outside still at this time of the year.  We should have Michigan maple syrup- B grade again for sale in a few more months. 

We are thinking about getting calves from some of our cattle and in a year or so setting up with just a couple head down south here.  We both really miss the cattle, chores, the chickens, cats and donkeys and our big garden. But, we are also enjoying being able to travel together after being so tied down the last many years with the ranch.

I am writing, working on the sequel to Funny Farm and a murder mystery.  Hope to start making some real progress now that we are getting situated.  for those of you who follow my blog, I will try to be more faithful about posting news.  Thanks for your attention!   My biggest news is that Red Baroness just delivered a beautiful white heifer calf with brown freckles.  She and Cali Rae, and White Lightning are now at Hanging Tree Bucking Bulls in North Carolina.

Tax time!  Time to look at we do and how we do it.  We are in the state with the highest unemployment in the country and the county within Michigan with the worst figures.  We doubt that Dan will be getting called back to his "other" job at the boat plant any time soon, so we are looking at diversifying a bit more this year.

So far we have kept a pretty tight focus on raising bucking bred cattle and our few other offerings have been byproducts of that operation. Our eggs come from pastured chickens that provide pest control for example. I think we are going to branch out just a bit this year and offer a few more items.

We are going to start another flock of chickens and are going to try the heritage breed from Ohio, the Buckeyes in addition to the Auracanas we have had good luck with. We will have some chicken for sale periodically as they stop laying and are going to try some ducks- Khaki Campbells, and turkeys- Narragansetts also.  We hope to be able to offer some duck eggs for local bakers.

We are going to expand our small fresh herb business and offer more fresh cut meal sized portions and plants for folks to keep themselves. We are relocating our raised beds to a sunnier location as the tree next to the old site has grown so much that it is now throwing too much shade on the old location.  We are excited to see how our asparagus comes up if spring ever arrives.

Our biggest task as we look at these things is to figure out how to do things so that we use recycled materials, and human labor versus mechanization, since at our place human labor is in long supply right now.  We may experiment with using the donkeys and cattle for energy production though.  Dan is going to see if he can engineer a charging mechanism for the fence batteries that can be powereded as the animals walk inside a wheel device.  We shall see.  I remember something like this set up in North Africa when we lived there as a child so we should be able to make it work here.

The exterior wood burning device Dan built has saved us two tanks of propane this winter though we have not been able to efficiently burn cow pies yet. Back to the drawing board on that and we will need to lay in a stock of wood for next winter so we are not cutting it in the snow.

We are becoming much more frugal and doing away with extravagances but I would not say we are suffering.  We are eating well.  We are warm.  Everyone is healthy.  We are occupied and entertained with an assortment of good books and NPR.  Forward we go.

Imagine my amazement when I opened my newsletter yesterday, and there was my baby girl, Cali Rae- bucking the lights out.  I figure there are going to be folks out there who are not familiar with bucking bred cattle and so am posting this entry to make sure you all know that these animals are not made to buck, they are bred to buck and then treated so well that they feel wonderful, and demonstrate their athletic abilities with little encouragement.

 Cali Rae is the first calf to be born here are the 4B Ranch.  That was two and a half years ago now.  The photo in the Jan 22, 09 newsletter was taken at Buckin Buckley last June when we bucked all our unbred females to make sure they had the athletic ability and temprament for this sport.  They had only a flank rope looped around their hips, which they were easily able to kick off in 6 seconds.

 Professionally, only bulls are bucked as females are more valuable for breeding. They have two ropes placed around them, neither fastened both looped and the rider has one in his hand- it comes off when he lets go.  The flank rope like you see in the picture of Cali is fastened with a loop with a couple of inches of slack in it when pulled.  If itis too tight it usually discourages bucking.  Some bulls do best without a flank.  You have to know your animal to get the best performance.

 If anyone has questions about the sport or care of bucking bred cattle, feel free to contact me or add a comment here.  We don't use whip, cattle prods, drugs or beating on our animals.  They are our companions and we love them and their amazing athletics.

The shift to winter brings us a last minute flurry of chores to get the animals ready for the fierce Northern Michigan winters.  Our cows are all getting calf tummies on them and seem ready to snuggle up and watch the snow fall.[Read More]