Notes From The Prairie

Hay Time

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:40:08 +0000

This year was especially difficult for any farm, ranch or livestock owner. Drought hit hard in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Ponds dried up, whole fields of corn and milo failed, and here in SE Kansas, hay harvest was half what it was. Last year large round bales of hay sold for $35 a bale. This year they are selling any where from $90 to $120 a bale and will probably reach $200 by February. I have seen so many ads for free animals due to no hay and many pictures of very thin animals. It’s a sad sate of affairs and I seriously thought we may have to sell off all our animals and start over another year due to the hay prices. I’ve been hanging on and doing all I can till spring. Well, how wonderful it could be if we could bale this pasture ourselves and have the peace of mind knowing that all the hay we need to feed our animals over the winter is stock piled away, but every year we just haven’t had the money.

Well, this year the Lord gave us a great Christmas blessing by sending us a tractor, swather, baler and bale lift and other misc equipment at an awesome price and then opened the doors for us to be able to buy it. We are very excited we’ll be able to bale our own hay and not have to worry about feeding our animals over the winter. It was a great blessing indeed.

We interrupt this spring to….

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 13:33:18 +0000

bring you winter! Brrrrrrr……..It’s been cloudy and rainy and down right cold the last few days. Sure makes chores uncomfortable. I much prefer the heat. With all the mud I can’t get in the garden either. It’s past time to plant cabbage and other cold weather crops, but I can’t get in there long enough to get it taken care of. Hopefully the weather will straighten up soon.

I did get all the girls injected with their Bo-Se shots last night. I’m HOPING I didn’t OD them. I’m on a quest to get the girls looking like they should and it’s become quite the challenge. As soon, if I ever, get my camera back from the shop, I’ll have to take pictures of before and an after if there ever is one.

Until then….I’ve been blogging in my personal blog that I keep and trying to stay warm. Back to homework this week among other things. Maybe garden season will come soon.

End of Kidding Season

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 22:13:18 +0000

Yesterday morning marked the official end of kidding season for us with the birth of twins out of our Nubian doe Grace. She was the last to kid. A beautiful carmel colored buck and a carmel spotted doe. They were born at a very hectic time here, but they are healthy and Grace is excellent on the milk stand and is turning into a good milker. We’re very happy with her, although her babies are loud mouths! LOL

I got my dairy mix just about where I want it and it’s showing in the milk buckets as well. We’re feeding a mix of whole oats, flaked barley, a little crimed corn, BOSS, shredded beet pulp, Calf Manna and yeast. They’re doing very well on it and I’m pleased. We copper bolused all the girls here last weekend and are getting ready to give their Bo-Se shots. About time to worm again too and the older group of kids need to be wormed too. Everyone is doing very well and growing like weeds. This weekend all the bucks in the older group will be banded. We’re saving out 1 or 2 and the rest all go to the freezer in the fall.

Sweetie is due to calve in about 2 months. We’re getting ready to build a milking stall for her as she’s not “quite” as tame as our last milk cow, but I’ll think she’ll be fine. We still have not decided if we’re going to bottle feed the calf or milk share. I believe it will really depend on the sex of the calf. If it’s a heifer calf, we really want her as friendly as possible, but with the way calves get scours, leaving her on mama may prove to be best. We’ll play it be ear when the time comes.

New Additions

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:39:55 +0000

I’ve been wanting to add another dairy cow for quite some time, but just haven’t been able to find the right cow. Originally I really didn’t want to drive far, but dairy cows are very few and far between around here…..well, I shouldn’t say dairy cows are…..FAMILY milk cows are. So, I broadened my search to cover neighboring states. Finally about 8 hours away I found the perfect cow. Well, maybe not perfect, but close. A bred 3 year old Jersey heifer due to calve mid to late May. She beautiful and very sweet and praying she throws another heifer calf. She’s a little on the thin side when we picked her up, but we’ll fix that in no time. I was really wanting a Mini Jersey, but at $3000 and up? Ouch.

Our other problem that we ran into was we couldn’t find a bull any where to breed our other cow to that has been dry for almost a year now. No one was willing to let us borrow a bull, due to legal reasons I would suppose and that left us up a creek and even with the new cow, as soon as she freshened, we had no way to breed her back. Well, not too far from this gal, we found a beautiful, registered, red Dexter bull whose temperament thus far is just the greatest. We got an excellent deal on him due to him being PHA positive, but that didn’t matter much to us since we were crossing him over to Jersey cows. So, not only did we solve our bull problem, but perhaps I can get those Mini Jersey cows after all. I’m very pleased with what we got and look forward to the milk supply.

Mooooooooooo!

Snow Storm Coming!!

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:35:15 +0000

Wonderful SE Kansas is expected to get 9 to 12 inches of snow starting tonight and running through Wednesday morning with strong winds. We’ve done everything we can think of to prepare. We’ve put hay all around exposed water lines to keep them from freezing, hauled in hay for the animals, put blankets on the horses, put the lambs in the building with the goats and closed up the goat shed to block the strong winds coming. We’ve split wood and hauled a bunch wood up on the porch to keep the fires going. What else is there to do? Not much. I have Steve running to the co-op for me to pick up feed and we have plenty of milk for the bottle babies. I think we’re buttoned down and ready…..I hope.

New additions

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:40:15 +0000

We went and picked up some new additions to our farm this past weekend. 7 beautiful bred nanny goats and 3 speckled face lambs. The lambs are so cute and adorable. I think the fact that God likens His children to sheep gives sheep a special place for me in my heart. I thoroughly enjoy their sweet nature, but I must admit I often stop and wonder what it is in sheep that God sees that would prompt Him to compare us to them? Of course, even His own Son is called a lamb. The lamb that takes away the sin of the world.

Besides the new additions, we’re also considering changing the name of the farm and our website. The last server that hosted our site kind of hosed it all up and so we’re considering letting that domain name expire and pick up a new name. Will post that if it happens. Until then, chores, chores, chores and waiting for the winter storm headed our way today.

New girls in their new home.

First snow of the season

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:51:56 +0000

It’s been a super dry year. Hardly any moisture this year, but we finally had not only our first snow of 2011, but our first snow of this winter. I hope more is to follow. Sure is pretty outside, though I am having some trouble finding things to do inside to keep myself occupied.

My little snow dog enjoying a romp outside in the snow

Turn Around Time

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 14:29:29 +0000

As usual, Christmas marks the turn around point for me. All fall is putting things away, shutting things down for winter and making sure everyone is bedded in and ready for the winter, and then there’s the race to the holidays. As soon as Christmas is over it’s like, “OK, now’s the time to think about spring”. Time to start thinking about what we want to plant this spring and where. Time to plan what critters we want to bring in and what fences need to be put up and shelters built to bring in those critters.

This year it looks like we’ll be adding some more things to get off propane. Every year propane eats our lunch in the winter, it’s so expensive and worse, comes at the time of year when hours are short and money low. So, this year we’ll be adding either a wood cook stove or an outside wood boiler or both. We’ll also be putting up new fences for sheep and goats and adding more poultry this year. We’ve already added a pair of pigeons and will be adding more next weekend. Should be fun. We’re also headed to get some quail and a mini Nubian buck. I’m looking forward to next weekend!

Thoughts about directions

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 03:36:42 +0000

When we first moved out here we were so excited to get into “farming”. We bought chickens, got a Boer goat, got Hampshire sheep, got pigs, ducks, geese, you name it. We enjoyed all the critters, but my what a lot of work!! Then feed started steadily going up. It was costing more to feed the animals than to feed ourselves. We were pouring hundreds of dollars a month into animals that weren’t really paying their way. So, gradually we got rid of them all stating they were too expensive and that they weren’t paying their way or weren’t good for anything. So now we have a few horses, some chickens and of course the bunnies. But we abandoned our ideas of self sufficiency have slowly fallen by the wayside and slowly we have decided that getting rid of the animals might not have been such a good idea. But what animals would serve us best? What do we need to set up this place to house animals? What breeds of those animals would serve us best?

Lots of questions to ponder….

Pidge

Land Of Milk & Honey Farm — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:04:13 +0000

We’ve decided we really do better with smaller homesteading critters than some of the bigger ones. I’ve always like pigeons and we have had some Frizzle pigeons in the past, but haven’t had any in quite some time. Well, we finally got our first mated pair of Archangel pigeons. Thanks Tracy and her son! They are a beautiful pair. We’re also supposed to pick up some white Homing pigeons after Christmas and hopefully are headed to eastern Kansas to pick up some Coturnix quail. We’ve raised Bob White quail before and they are a lot of fun. Hopefully we’ll get to come home with some of them too.