Farm Fresh Blog

You know you live in a ranching community when you go to church and someone says,

"The water tanks are full, the grass is green, and the cattle are fat. Thank you, Lord."

This has been an unusually wet year. Our ponds are overflowing and the cattle are standing in grass up to their bellies. Anyone with livestock will tell you that few things make you feel more secure than the sight of a barn full of hay and pastures full of grass.

Paper money is an abstract form of wealth, and depending upon world events sometimes it's no better than Monopoly money. 
My Edward Jones guy may argue against this point, but for us, good pastures provide a better sense of security than the stock market. I'd rather have fat cattle and good pasture than stocks and bonds. It's something I can see and understand. A dear friend of mine, also a rancher, points out that every calf that hits the ground is like a walking CD. Yes, the cattle market goes up and down too, but when the cattle market tanks, I can still eat my cows. They are tangible objects that don't disappear like figures on a computer. When the stock market crashes, I have nothing to show for the money that has disappeared with a blip on a screen.

This kind of wealth is also not so complicated that we forget where it really comes from. Farmers and ranchers are tied to the land, and more often than not, they are quick to give thanks to God. I once read somewhere that the more intelligent someone was, the less likely he was to believe in God. The implication of the article was that only simple people believed in a higher power. Anyone who was smart enough to question things knew better than to buy the whole God-package. I would imagine that the person who wrote the article would also argue that intelligent people were smart enough to find air-conditioned desk jobs too.

And ironically, he would probably make this argument over a steak dinner.

My experience has been that people with full bellies and full bank accounts tend to be a bit more liberal in their beliefs when hard work isn't involved. Success can foster arrogance, and it seems that the further we get away from our dependence upon the land, the more we get out of step with God.  Maybe it's as simple as the office.

Perhaps if you live and work in a place like this it's easier to say, "Look what man has created. There is no God."

On the other hand, this could be your office, and each morning you could arise and say, "Look what God has created."

It really may be as simple as office space. If you are surrounded by the accomplishments of man, you have to search a little harder for God amidst the chaos, for God does not shout, He whispers. In some places, it's just easier to hear Him.

Retired K9 Officer Aja lost her battle with cancer today. We shall always be thankful that Aja was a part of our lives. As befitting an officer, Aja was wrapped in a flag and buried under the pecan tree in the pasture that faces the mountain. Her happy, goofy face will now brighten Heaven. Here's a salute to K9 Officer Aja.

We tap dance with the predators around here. Just before dusk each night the coyotes gather up and sing. Although four coyotes can sound like forty, I'm still pretty sure we have a double digit coyote pack around here. It's tempting to actively hunt them but to do so would simply open the niche for a less stable pack to move in, so we opt to manage our livestock instead.

We have Livestock Guardian Dogs for the sheep and goats, and if they are grazing in pastures away from the barnyard, we escort them with Border Collies and return them home when their bellies are full. Micromanaging the small livestock is easier than cattle. One would think the cows can take care of themselves, but baby calves are vulnerable. For this reason, we kept the first time mothers close to the house until their babies were big enough to discourage an attack. We do have tiny babies now, but their mothers are veterans who will kill a dog in an instant, so we assume coyotes would fare the same. 

It's hard to keep weight on nursing mothers that are penned, so last week we turned them loose. Naturally we had a baby born in the forest, but she was born to Daisie Mae, a battle ax of a cow who thinks nothing of tossing dogs or humans. (Homegirl needs to head to the auction barn as soon as her baby is weaned.) 

We still check these cows daily to make sure all the calves are still alive and take note of any cows getting ready to have babies. Trace comes with us because, like a Trunk Monkey, you never know when you'll need a Border Collie. I'm sure there are better trained and fancier working cow dogs out there, but Trace does a fine job and doesn't have the bravado that would get him killed, so he's #1 CowDog when working pairs. This is because Trace has enough sense not to take the fight to the cows. 

With cow/calf pairs that attitude can get you killed. Lily has a no-nonsense approach that is best used in other situations. Trace's stare/retreat/regroup/"I'm still here" approach tends to work better with pairs. He gets the job done without upsetting cows or getting killed. Sometimes retreat is the better part of valor, or as Shakespeare's Falstaff says when he defends a seemingly cowardly act of playing dead to stay alive, 

"The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life." 

In other words, doing what you have to do to live another day is a part of valor.

Trace lives by that code. Here he is with Daisie Mae, the Battle-Axe-Bitch-Cow. Trace walks out with Other Half.

The cows notice him in the tall grass and decide he is a predator that must be stomped.

Retreat. Regroup. Reconsider.

Daisie Mae decides that it's easier to just take her calf and move. It isn't showy, but the cow moves and everyone is still alive. 

 Although Lily would call this cowardice, she has been kicked and run over many more times than Trace, so when you hang your hat up at the end of the day, if the job got done and nobody ended up at the vet or in the ground, I guess it's all good. 

A dear friend of mine once described me as being afflicted with "catastrophic expectations," where your mind races towards the worst possible conclusion to even the slightest bump in the road. She recognized the disease because she suffers from it too.  If someone is more than a few minutes late, we immediately assume they're dead in a ditch somewhere and begin making funeral plans in our heads. As you can imagine, a career as a crime scene investigator did nothing to dull my sense of catastrophic expectations, and neither does living on a farm.

It works like this:

If you have a favorite goat, that's the one who will die. If a particularly beautiful baby goat or lamb is born, that's the one who will die. If a calf is missing, the coyotes got it. That lump in the yard is a dead chicken. The bushes the Labrador just stuck his head inside will contain a copperhead. It happens often enough that things like that are always in the back of your mind.

If you have enough animals, someone is always in crisis, on the verge of crisis, or recovering from a crisis. Sometimes just right out of the blue, tragedy hits you. If you have sheep and goats, you are always worried about worms, coccidiosis, accidents, and predators. I just got coccidiosis cleared up in a wether who wouldn't maintain weight. He's starting to bloom. Now I have to worry about occasional diarrhea in one or both of the bottle baby goats. Is it the formula? Is it the spring grass? Is it the fact that they are now eating alfalfa and pelleted food too? They aren't sick, just runny every few days, so we just keep playing with variables.

Aja, the retired patrol dog, appears to have Inflamed Bowel Syndrome, which is in essence, a wasting away disease where her bowel is rejecting food. This is apparently common in some lines of German Shepherds. It can be somewhat controlled with the use of anitibiotics and steroids, but the longterm use of drugs brings its own problems, and they don't always work. Thus we find ourselves juggling her diet. Commercial dog food just doesn't cut it now. She does best on raw food, including raw meat, cooked meat, and cooked eggs. She looks like a prisoner of war now, but she is happy and so we continue to juggle her diet to find things her stomach will tolerate. I worry about her and don't see a bright future in the horizon, but we take it day by day. If she's eating, I'm happy. If she doesn't, my mind immediately jumps to catastrophic expectations.

This week we had a new calf born to our nasty tempered escape artist cow. This old bitch will kick a dog or toss a human in an instant. I've wanted to get rid of her for the last two years. Other Half has a lot more patience because she is a valuable cow who produces nice calves. She has always produced bull calves. I finally got Other Half to agree to sell her as a pair as soon as she calved this year. Someone else can deal with a cow that tries to kill stockdogs and leads the entire herd off the property.

Naturally Nasty Cow produced a heifer calf this year. Since we probably want to keep that calf, it means we still have to keep the nasty cow until her calf is weaned. When I first saw the calf, much to her mother's distress, she had fixated on Tiny and was trying to keep up with his little band of horses instead of her mother.

I guess one red butt looks just like another one. The horses tolerated this pretty well. Eventually her mother reclaimed her. The next morning the calf was missing. A veteran of "catastrophic expectations" I immediately assumed the calf had been killed by coyotes, or bogged down in the creek during one of her mother's escape attempts, and then killed by coyotes. We did eventually find the calf, but I won't stop worrying about her until she is large enough to fend off predators on her own. This kind of calf is definitely fodder for catastrophic expectations.

The Livestock Guardian Dog puppies are ten months old now and are right at the age where they want to escape their responsibilities and run the forest chasing hogs and deer. This is a dangerous sport. The hogs have little piglets. This week The Boyz disappeared for almost two hours. I was worried sick because I had just seen a herd of pigs near the fence where the goats were grazing. I drove off in search on a 4-Wheeler and ran smack into hogs with piglets. We parted company quickly, but being a veteran of catastrophic expectations, I was then certain both boys were bleeding or dead after a hog attack. Two hours later I found the little bastards playing in a watery bog beside our pasture like drunken frat boys. The entire time I had been worried sick, they had been having a party. I was not amused.

All livestock guardian dogs roam, it's in their DNA. It's why so many end up in rescue. You have to train them through that stage. Some never get out of the stage and you just have to adapt their environment so they can't escape. When Briar was this age she was horrible about climbing fences. Since she didn't leave the property, I really didn't worry about it until the day we saw her climb the fence like a giant white ape to attack the garbage man who fended her off with a trash can. Time for hot wire.  Briar eventually outgrew the stage and now she is a reliable guardian dog. And the Anatolians will be too, but they still have to be monitored through this stage. Thus it's time for tires.

We fitted them with wide Bite Dog collars and chained them to tires that they drag around the yard. It doesn't keep them from moving but it sure does elimate that digging under the fence and have frat parties in the forest. If you don't immediately see them, follow the drag trail of the tire.

Naturally this also feeds my catastrophic expectations because even though we've taken precautions, I still obsess about dogs hanging themselves, thus if the boys can't be loosely monitored, we still will lock them behind bars. It's just not worth giving myself an ulcer.   

If you live on a ranch, you get used to tragedy laced amid the beauty like a rattlesnake hiding in a field of wildflowers. It's just there. You can choose to focus only on the wildflowers, you can choose to focus only on the rattlesnake, or you can wear snake boots and keep on going about your day. I wear snake boots. I don't deny the snake exists, I expect it, plan for it, and work around it.  Some folks call that "catastrophic expectations." I call it planning for reality. If bad things happen, you're prepared. If they don't, you're pleasantly surprised.

I felt the stirring so many years ago when I tended goats browsing scrub brush the first time. It is an awakening inside the soul that reaches as far back as biblical times, people tending goats and sheep as they graze. It is a quiet time, filled only with the sounds of birds, crickets, the snatching of limbs, and the patient grinding of teeth. It is a time of reflection. It's a time to get right with God.

The Bible doesn't mention it, but King David would have had an easier time of things if he'd had a Border Collie when he was tending the flocks. They sure make my life easier. We have a central barnyard where the sheep and goats are loose most of the time, but we also have three leased pastures and our own larger pasture where we can graze animals. The hitch is that with the exception of the barnyard, none of these other pastures is fenced for sheep. All the pastures are wild. Think hundreds and hundreds of surrounding acres filled with heavy brush thick with predators, creepy crawlies, and the occasional steep drop-off into the creek. These acres also contain horses and cows who don't always mix well with small animals.

One cannot simply open the gate and turn sheep loose around here. They may or may not come home, and the zombies will eat anyone outside the barnyard after dark. But that's where all the grass is! Grass up to your knees! Browse so thick that only goats want to be in there! The only answer is to use the dogs. After all, that's what I pay them for. And they pay for themselves.

Mesa turned a year old this winter and she is already invaluable around the ranch. I haven't put a lot of training into her yet, I just use her around the farm, and she is ever so handy. She is quick to figure out what the goal is and make it happen. It's easy to micromanage a dog around the barnyard, but in deep brush, you just have to sit back and let them work. I can't see them most of the time. The rules of the game are simple:

Keep the sheep between the deep forest and the perimeter fence. When asked to gather them up, roll the sheep and goats into a ball, and roll your ball back to the barnyard.

This is peaceful, easy work unless the horses show up. When that happens the humans must snatch up bottle babies, who don't flock well with the herd, while the dogs gather everyone else up quickly and push them through the gate before galloping horses can trample young goats. The dogs and the herd are getting pretty good at these fire drills.

I am most impressed with Mesa. She has excellent distance. She gathers better than Lily, and drives better than Trace. Although we use all three dogs, Mesa seems to do the bulk of the work. Lily stays close to me as I sit on a bucket, and Trace sits on a 4-Wheeler with Other Half. Lily and Trace don't work much unless there is a problem. Mesa takes care of pretty much everything else.

I don't have to watch the sheep thick in the brush. I just watch Mesa. She watches the sheep. I'm fascinated by her commitment to task. She waits until a sheep strays too far,

and then she dispatches herself waaaaay around the animal,

pops up in the forest in front of them, and points them back to the flock. I don't tell her a thing. She has assigned herself this job.

This is the product of countless generations of breeding working dogs. It's not about registration papers. It's not about looks. It's about whether or not the dog can really do the job. I have great appreciation for the saying,

"The bullshit stops when the tailgate drops."

And it does. The proof is in the pudding. Does the dog really work? I watch this tiny little dog thread her way into the forest to return a sheep to the flock without any direction from me and I am thankful to the generations of ranchers who bred these dogs for a job.

I cannot do what I do without the Border Collies. Calling sheep with a bucket of grain isn't gonna cut it when they're standing in grass up to their elbows. The brush is too thick to tend them on horseback. You simply must use the Border Collies. And that is what they live for.

These photos are a perfect illustration of tending the flock. This Jacob wether has strayed past the invisible "no fly" barrier and the dogs have dispatched themselves. Mesa has popped up in the forest in front of him as Lily stalks in like a hired gun. 

No rush. No barking. No teeth. Just a promise. The wether has to make a decision. 

He chose wisely. 

This scene plays out over and over again without drama. The dogs allow us to graze the small livestock in the wilder areas. We can utilize terrain otherwise cut off to us. It isn't field-fenced, and so you still have to sit out there with them. I sit on a bucket and admire the scenery. Other Half sits with Trace and plays on Facebook. He can do that because the dogs work for him. And THAT is why we have Border Collies. 

Yesterday I posted some pictures on my personal Facebook page with a footer that confused some folks who also read my website farm blog.

An old friend of mine in another state asked what was the deal between Failte Gate Farm and Red Feather Ranch. Well, that's a good question. It's been causing a problem for some time now so I guess it's a good time to straighten it out.

Before Other Half and I got married, I raised goats at Failte Gate Farm and he raised cattle at the Rocking RL Cattle Company.  Then we got married. Because of different locations, different accounts, and tax issues, we kept the farm names and paperwork separate. Then we sold my farm to buy the big ranch we live on now. We named this location Red Feather Ranch. We couldn't find any other name we agreed upon and since Other Half calls Trace, "Red Feather", we named the ranch after his nasty little Border Collie.

We still ended up keeping things separate because by that time I already had a Goat Milk Soap business under the name "Failte Gate Farm." I had the business cards, the banner, the works. The Dairy Goat Association has the name registered for me.  But now we're up here full time. We officially live at the Red Feather Ranch. All cattle and horse operations are under the Red Feather Ranch.  I end up fielding a lot of questions about the two names. No one in Texas can pronounce "Failte"  (fawl cha or fawl sha) or knows that it is Gaelic for "welcome." This has led me to go ahead and make the switch.

I will slowly begin the transition from Failte Gate Farm to Red Feather Ranch. I'm still not sure what I'm gonna do with the Dairy Goat Association since the Red Feather name was already taken by someone in California who is apparently no longer registering goats with that association but bought lifetime rights to the name.

I also have to figure out what I'm gonna do with Facebook since there is a Red Feather Ranch Facebook page and a Failte Gate Farm page. I manage both. At the moment, the Red Feather Ranch Facebook page is more geared to Other Half's cattle stuff. We'll have to see how I sort that out. Bear with me! It might get a little wild for a while,

but we'll get it all settled down soon.

The steady rhythmic squeak of the treadles is soothing as the soft fiber slipping through my hands twists itself into yarn at my fingertips. The wheel needs oil but I can't shake myself away long enough. This process of taking animal hair and turning it into yarn has me mesmorized. Still waddling like a baby along my journey into spinning, weaving and knitting, I discover that like tending sheep and goats, this tugs at pastoral roots deep in my soul. I am a child again, playing Jacob's Ladder with string in my hands.

As my fingers slide through the white fiber I wonder about the animal that gave this season's wool. And the farmer. A tiny piece of vegetable matter flicks past my fingertips.  Did the farmer, like me, feel that twinge of annoyance each time they saw a sheep dribbling alfalfa onto her neighbor's back as she placidly chewed hay? Did they run their fingers along the backs, parting the fibers to check the wool? How did they shear their sheep? Did they do it themselves or did they hire it out. Did this wool come from a farmer with 50 sheep or a place with 500 sheep?

Wool is sunshine metabolized and I can feel the warm rays of the sun as it slides through my fingers, is pulled into the wheel and is twisted into yarn onto the bobbin. I still get a thrill. Fresh into my journey, I don't want to forget these images or have them lost, jumbled behind more mundane thoughts when the mind wanders as the fingers spin. The most important lesson I have learned thus far is that there is no right or wrong to spinning. That knowledge is tremendously freeing. There are as many different ways to spin as there are spinners, and the proof is on the bobbin. Are you producing a yarn you are happy with? If so, keep on doing what you were doing.

I am learning as I go. Once I have produced a single ply yarn, I learn that I must produce another yarn and ply them together in the opposite direction so the final product is stronger and more balanced. Alrightie then. Away we go. There is a simple joy to learning as you go. Perhaps if one knew all the work ahead, the step by steps may seem so daunting that one would be afraid to take that first step. But if like a baby, we wobble around in unbalanced wonder, we get to enjoy the process. And we get a true understanding as to why handcrafted items cost so much.

Once the yarn is plied, another trip to Youtube reveals the next step in the process. We must now wash it and hang it dry. It is shameful the amount of pride this brings to a woman of my age. It is like successful potty training. You want to show everyone but the world is not as impressed as you are. Ah well, more's the pity.

My dear friend and mentor, my Spider Woman Sheep Mother, has told me that part of your soul gets spun into the yarn. I understand this now as I begin to knit with the yarn I spun. I don't know how to knit. Seriously. Just like spinning, I'm learning as I go. I lean heavily on Youtube and tips from friends. I had absolutely no interest in knitting before I discovered the allure of wool. Knitting and crocheting were things grandmothers did. Why knit socks when I could buy them?

That was before I discovered the emotions that run through you like a warm current of sunshine as you run fingers across soft fiber. Your fingers read the wool like braille, telling you the story of the sheep, the rancher, the spinner, and finally the knitter. You feel them all, a piece of each, twisted together with sunshine and a prayer.

Unlike my attempts at knitting with commercial yarn, this yarn recognizes me. My fingers recognize the yarn. It is very forgiving of my novice attempts at knitting, and we learn together. What does it want to become? Is it a scarf? Is it a cowl? A headband? The yarn is alive, and I'm knitting a life.

I watch my sheep graze in the pasture and my fingers itch to knit their wool. My churro are coarse haired sheep and already I'm thinking of carpet boots for next winter. Do I have a clue how to make carpeted boots for myself? Nope. Not a clue. But I have sheep. I have a spining wheel. I have Youtube. And I have a dream of sunshine, grass, sheep and yarn.

We got a break from the rain for a few hours this week and so we snuck the babies outside to play in the Great Outdoors, otherwise known as Water World. While Water World may be an amusement park for human kids, goats don't see the joy of playing in water, so they stayed on high ground close to the barn. Nevertheless, they were thrilled with this new world beyond their pens.

We're still kidding out, but these are the little faces that are already here:

Sparrow/Jethro 2016 Doeling

Our little "Mowgli" child found living with exotic deer:

Newest addition to my fiber flock:

 Watching the kids is enough to tire a good dog out.

His clean dress shoes, his $60 haircut, and the platinum smile he tossed my way told me he wasn't from around here. He and his children had just stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad. They were from the Land Of The Pretty People. I smiled back at him and trudged with dusty boots to the refrigerator case for a frappuccino. On my return the family was still at the front counter trying to assemble children and purchases. There were two men and five children. The men looked enough alike to be brothers but I couldn't sort out children. It didn't matter, they were all beautiful and I admired the group as I stood behind them in line.

Money can buy nice clothing, but how do you keep children that clean? I reminded myself this was merely a snapshot in time. The father ran his fingers through the younger daughter's hair and chastised her for doing such a poor job brushing it. I heard the words, but until he'd pointed it out, I hadn't noticed the child's slightly windblown hair. She was beautiful. I compared her to her older sister, a gorgeous tanned child in a white cotton eyelet dress and nice leather cowboy boots. Her hair was straight and tamed. Nothing was out of place on this child. To my eye, the whole group of them could have been models from a catalog. Then it happened.

Cheez-Its flew all over the floor at their feet. The groan of frustration said one of the children in front had opened a bag of baked cheesy crackers and spilled them everywhere. In my world, we call this a mess. It's okay, kids make messes. We all do. Accidents happen, it's what happens after the accidents that matter. Accidents are teachable moments.

It was a moment alright. Making no effort to clean it up, the family stood on top of orange crackers and ground them into the tile of the convenience store. The mess could not be denied, and it was growing larger as each child stepped on crackers and broke them into tiny pieces under their feet. These were not little bitty kids, they were old enough to know better. I waited for the father to have the child clean it up, or clean it up himself. Surely he would not leave this kind of mess. Apparently he would. He just pretended the mess wasn't there under his feet.

Perhaps he needed some modeling. So while he continued to stand at the counter, pay for his items, and ignore his mess, I asked the clerk if she had a broom so that I might sweep up the cheesy goodness before it spread all over the store. He heard me and ignored me. She smiled and assured me that she had a broom and she'd handle it when she got a chance. This was a convenience store on a major highway on a Sunday afternoon, it may take a while before she'd get the chance to clean up Cheez-its that were now crunching their way around the store and out the door.

Gathering the rest of their purchases the Perfect Family walked away from their mess. It was a teachable moment.  The Perfect Dad just taught his children a powerful lesson. You can walk away from your responsibility. Someone else is paid to clean up your mess, let them do it. I was aghast. My mother would have beat my ass.

The door swung shut behind them and the clerk and I locked eyes. I said it.

"Wow. Just. Wow."

We shared a laugh about the fact that while we just had to deal with Cheez crackers on the floor, he was stuck with the lessons he taught these children. The clerk pointed out that these kids would be responsible for taking care of their father in his older years. Not only will these lessons come back to roost for him, but they will affect all of us. This is the generation responsible for our future too. We reap what we sew.

I am profoundly grateful to my mother for the example she set when we were children. We learned how to behave in public. We learned responsibility. We learned that if you make a mess, you clean it up. It is not someone else's job to clean up after you. If you steal Bang Caps from the Piggly Wiggly, she will DRIVE your tiny butt back up to the grocery store, inform the clerk of your sin, and make you beg for forgiveness and wallow in humiliation. She will also do the same thing when your brother steals bubble gum. That kind of crazy makes an impression on a kid. I became a cop. He became a surgeon. Neither of us has been arrested since then.

So we may have been dressed in clothes from the Sears & Roebuck catalog instead of Gap Kids, but I'd venture to say that in the long run, we were much richer children.

Life is full of little mysteries. This little goat is one of them. Her life thus far is surely the stuff of a Disney movie.

Last week I got a call from a friend asking if we could take in a little goat that had been found wandering on a 2000 acre ranch. There are no goats on this ranch. This little girl was found with a herd of axis deer.  The rancher watched her for hours, waiting for a mother to appear, but no mother ever came. She bedded down with the axis deer. Eventually, he took the baby and she ended up with a relative as a bottle baby in a subdivision for two weeks. She had a loving family, but they were no set up for goats and so they reluctantly sought out a home for little Patty, so she now lives with us.  Who knows how Patty ended up wandering with Axis deer.  There are Angora goats on neighboring ranches but they are not close. We will probably never know exactly what Patty is, or where she came from, or what happened to her mother, but that's okay. We'll give her a loving home where her Subdivision Family can visit her.

At our house Patty lives in a dog crate in the stall with Archer and his mother.

Archer is a Lacey/Arrow cross:

Soon Archer and Patty will have more new friends because at 6:30 am more babies were born.

These kids are a Feather/Jethro cross.

 Large, lanky buckling

Doeling with a Peacock Feather marking on her side

In a few weeks babies will be ping-ponging all over the pasture, and the little foundling will be as happy as a mountain goat, bouncing along with them. This little kid surely has a backstory that is the makings of a Disney movie, but we'll never know what it is.