Wow! Time has really slipped by since the last time I caught up on our farm activities. Two months have passed. We have been working on so many small farm tasks, keeping up with a very busy cabin visit season and working on hog proof fence.

The hay season went on and on waiting for bales to dry that were left in the field when we had a foot of rain. We have a lot of hay; almost 800 big rolls. That will carry us for a few years in the event of a drought next year. We started to feed three weeks ago.

It was one of the wettest fall seasons we have ever had. We were not able to plant winter grasses (rye, oats, etc.) since the paddocks are too wet to get equipment in.
The heifers and steers we had at the home place did their job and ate all available grass and weeds in the areas we let them graze in and they were moved to Rocky Branch for the winter. This is the set of cattle that escaped some time ago. The grass at rocky Branch had grown lush and thick after we cut hay. It was 18 inches tall and beautiful. Then, we were hit by army worms. In a matter a days, the fields were reduced to stubble. I made a decision not to try and salvage the grass with massive use of pesticides. Beside it being too wet to use a sprayer with a tractor, we have enough hay to not subject our cattle to the chemicals. It is tough just go out day after day and see the grass disappear. I suppose the worm poop will be good for the soil and next year's grass.

The first new calf of the fall calving season came October 11. This is a day earlier than last year. We have had a lot of calves and once again we have had more bull calves (future steers) then heifers. We had a set of twins this year. Unlike the last set we had that were both heifers (same sex), these were a bull and a heifer. This means the female heifer will be fallow and not able to reproduce. She is a freemartin. We will use her as a beef calf the same as a steer. We brought her, her brother and mom to the barn at home so we could be sure the cow allowed each to nurse. Sometime the cow will favor the first calf born. In this case, the bull calf. He was very aggressive and the heifer calf did have problems initially getting milk. We brought another three cows to the barn after they had calves too. One cow did not drop her milk initially; an odd situation for a mature cow, and her calf was born light. We were able to get the calf to nurse and she also got milk off the mama of the twins. Another cow brought home had mastitis in two of her four tits. This is an inflammation of the udder. If you do not treat it, the cow will lose the ability to produce milk in the quadrants affected. We milked out her blood-stained milk and treated her with an antibiotic. In a few days, she recovered and has a very large, good-looking bull calf. The other cow we have in the barn had a calf that weighted only 20 pounds. Very odd situation. The calf lived for a day and died in Eva's arms in the cool of the evening after we had given it some of its mama's milk. The mama was very upset, but since that time the bull calf of the twin set has adopted her and is nursing her. Out at Rocky Branch where the cows are, we lost two calves. One was born still born. A totally mature healthy looking calf dead on arrival. This seems to happen once every year for no good reason. The other calf we lost was a case where we had to call the vet out. The calf had twisted the uterus during its attempt at birth and in the process died. Raising cattle is not for the faint of heart. Your hope for the best, but expect some bad luck.

Now that all these cows and calves are healthy and happy I wanted to take them back to Rocky Branch. Javier talked me into keeping them here for a few ore weeks for the guests in the cabins to see, and for the grandkids to play with the calves.

We had a few season ending tasks in the berry patch and have applied a pre-emergent to try and control grass and weeds next year that affects the growth of the newer plants. This may be the last year we will do this and in time use a weed trimmer and hand weed pulling to control weeds. The blackberry bushes are all pruned and look good. They will get a small clipping in February. The blueberry need a touch of pruning on the first bushes planted in 2005, but not much. This is done about this time near frost. If you did it earlier, they would re-sprout and the tender new growth would die when hit by frost. The blueberry bushes are turning a bright shade of red as the leaves prepare to fall. I have flagged all of the plants that are weak or died and need replacement. We will order replacement soon and plant them near New Years.

The fencing project drags on and on. Javier and I took a welding course at the local community college and learned to weld plate and pipe; so building new and re-building old braces to handle the woven hog wire took a lot of time. We are down to the last 2,900 feet but have run out of wire and post clips. The clips will be available next week and the wire is in Mt Pleasant to purchase. Hopefully just a week or so of work will finish this project to keep wild hogs out of the farm. This has been a major project than enhances the value or our land.

Out at Rocky Branch, we will tackle another fence project that has not been done but needed to be completed. This is adding a hot electric wire in the paddocks that contain our breeding bulls. The breeding season starts just after Christmas and without a hot wire, the bulls will jump the fence to get to cows in heat even though they have hot gals where they are. I guess they think the cows across the fence are sexier. We need to get up 5,000 feet or so (a mile) immediately and up to 9,000 feet if we have time. This is a permanent fix to a problem we have every year. We are going to use a 25 Joules energizer. This will make even the toughest bull think twice about taking on the fence. One touch and it has a "born again" experience or at a minimum a real epiphany. Karl wanted to get this fence up several years ago, but we just never got to it. Lat year Eva and I had to re-capture and move the bulls many times. We start on this work now.

We harvested a number of steers for beef and used a new processing plant in Mineola, Tx. Our customers appear to be satisfied with the new arrangement. This is a USDA inspected facility and we have some beef for sale here at the farm. This includes ground beef and other cuts. We have more steers that will be ready for harvest in January, so if you have an interest please get in touch.

Eva has been very busy with her scheduled cooking classes that were all sold out in November and October. She also had a number of private classes for groups that wanted their own class and menu they selected. We took a stab at catering to a wedding party here on the farm. A sit down served tenderloin dinner for 80 under a tent. Thanks but no thanks. It was an elegant evening, the food was wonderful, but I do not think we are going to be wedding caterers on the farm. We did an away reception with tenderloin and more for 250 that went very well. We also had a few dinners and lunches at the farm. Some were associated with large groups that rented all the cabins.

I will try to be more timely on what is happening on the farm.