My new babies....

My mom bought me two beautiful heifers. One of them was pregnant and was supposed to have a calf in April. We got a message from Leasa, the lady we are buying the cows from, on Saturday saying that Roseanna was in labor. I was really happy, and a little sad because I wanted the baby to be born on my birthday, April 27. We were in the middle of Walmart and I was very surprised.

Later than night mom got another message from Leasa. Leasa said that Roseanna had not had a baby. Then she said "She had two!". Roseanna had given birth to twin heifers. I went on the internet and searched for baby names for girls and decided to name them Rose and Rachel.

This is a picture of Roseanna (the big, red momma), Rachel (standing under her momma), and Rose (who is napping). I got to go see them the day after they were born. When I saw them my first thought was "they are so cute"! They are very small. About the size of an average dog.

This is Delicious. She is the pig that I am raising. Isn't she adorable! 

Attack of the roses....

It took two full evenings (and some extra time put in by Jay and his father) but our pasture is completely fenced. And it feels wonderful. Though tonight began the battle with the roses. Wild roses have grown up all around the edge of the field and have gone crazy. So now we have to cut everything away from where we put the fence line.

The first evening of fencing was beautiful. I could not have asked for a better night. Alex toddled around the field and road in the RTV. Tonight was not as beautiful. The air was cold and damp and I left Alex at home with mom. However the three of us, and McKinley of course, had a great time. It was followed up by feeding the horses which is one of Aeryn's favorite activities.

I feel blessed to be in such a beautiful place embarking on such an amazing adventure.

Not one baby, but two...

Yesterday while walking around Walmart, I received a message from Leasa, who we are buying our cows from. It said "roseanna's in labor!!! let you know asap!!!!"

Needless to say we though that Aeryn was going to faint in the middle of the store. We had not expected to get a message like this for about a month. But here it was. The day we had been waiting for. Unfortunately we were not scheduled to make the drive to Nottingham until today. (I am currently blogging to stall Aeryn from wanting to get into the car right now because we are not scheduled to be there until this afternoon) I am sure that there will be a second blog today for Aeryn to describe her excitement. I am in no way capable of describing what she was feeling inside. All I could think to myself was "But we have not strung the second line of wire..."

Fortunately we drove by the field after our shopping trip. (I in my geeky way, wanted to show my mom the beautiful pasture) What did I see as we drove by, the second line of wire! Jay had been out there working without us. Now all we have to do is clean it up a bit and cut down some wild rose bushes that are falling over the line a bit. Aeryn and I have the best partner in this cow adventure that we could ask for. 

So we went home and had dinner and waited patiently for news of the new baby. A few hours later Leasa again sent me a message. This time she said she had exciting news. I asked if we had a baby and she said no. And then after a slight pause she said "We have twins". Roseanna, the beautiful, hard working, mamma, had delivered twin heifers. It was not the bull that we had been hoping for, but we would work with it. 

So we are about to get in the car so that Aeryn can see all four of "her girls". She has named the twins Rose and Rachel. They are beautiful and we can not wait to meet them this afternoon. 

The one that is facing away from us is Rose!

The one that is facing us is Rachel!

And the adventure begins...(Sort of)

Tomorrow the kids and I will be getting into the car, and driving two hours to see the cows that we are buying. I was going to leave it to Aeryn to announce the purchase. But she is a bit behind in her blogging. Do to a connection through a friend we found two young heifers, one who is due to have her first calf in April who were for sale. They are beautiful!.

We have been to see them once already and Aeryn fell in love. I have to admit so did I. I can already tell that I am going to have a fondness for the two year old, Roseanna. I have decided that I really like big red cows. She just looks like she needs a hug. I can not wait to see her calf. This cow is going to be the start of our beef herd and nothing could make us more excited. I just look at her and see all of the possibilities and happiness that she offers my children. 

 This next little girl is Lola. She was six months old when this picture was taken. Aeryn has developed an affinity for big black calves. I guess that should make our herd look interesting. Red and black all over the field. Lola reminds Aeryn of Big Mack which is why I think she likes her so much. She also has the potential to be a really sweet calf. However it is going to require a lot of work. Aeryn got Big Mack when he was a month old and started him on a halter. Lola is quite a bit bigger. As a matter of fact I am pretty sure that she is now the size that Big Mack was when we took him to Cheshire Fair. This is going to be her Fitting and Showmanship animal. I am such a proud mamma right now. Aeryn is such a determined little girl and she really has her heart set on this.

Aeryn is also realizing that getting ready to bring our animals home is NOT an easy task. We started putting up fencing a couple of nights ago. It started with a trip to Tractor Supply with Jay, to get fence materials. I had no idea what I needed to get so I told him to just throw what we needed into the shopping cart. Then Aeryn thought it was a good idea to ask WHEN we were going to work on fence. Needless to say we left Tractor Supply, picked up Alex and went to work on fence. It was a great evening and quite a learning experience for both of us. As someone who has never strung electric fence before it was quite interesting. A bit easier than barbed wire fence.

Aeryn will have more to say about our adventures and we have also added a third author to our blog. AmberMae! She will be blogging about her experiences with farming as well because her Amazing Auntie bought her a pig for Christmas. The pigs were born two weeks ago and she is very excited to see what happens. Watching her and Aeryn oooh and ahhh over the video that was posted of the new born piglets was fantastic. So be looking for posts from her as well. (As soon as I get her set up with a blogger account.) It will be a good experience for her to chronicle the life of her pig "From Birth to Bacon".

~Michelle

Want to know what I did in 4-H?????

Hi! My name is Aeryn and I am currently nine years old. I am part of this really amazing program called 4-H. My mom was part of a 4-H group when she was my age. She had a lot of fun and met a lot of really cool people. She is hoping that I will do the same. My mom was in a dairy 4-H group called Hill and Valley. The leaders in my 4-H group are all adults who used to be members when my mom was in 4-H. She likes to call us "Hill and Valley the Next Generation". Won't she be surprised when she finds out that we have an attitude all our own. Moms, I tell you these days. Always expecting you to be like them. I am taking my 4-H experience and making it all mine. 

 "What is 4-H?" you might ask. Well let me tell you about my 4-H group. I belong to the Switch & Horns 4-H group. We are a bunch of young kids from the ages of 5-18. We get together an learn about animal husbandry. That is a fancy word for taking care of animals. We do community service and help around our local communities. We also raise, train and show animals. Some of my group members show, dairy cows, sheep and beef cows. Other groups show horses, rabbits, pigs, dogs, goats....You name it, you can show it. 


We show our animals at local county and state fairs. Last year was my second year in 4-H, but my first year showing. I got to lease an animal from a family in the group. His name is Big Mack. He is a black Simmental beef animal. A steer, which means that he is a boy, but will not be able to have any babies. I had so much fun with Big Mack. I learned a lot working with him. I will use a couple more posts to tell you about the great times that we had together.
For now I am going to leave you with these pictures. They are of me and Big Mack. He quickly became my best friend and I will always remember our time together, even though I know that at some point he is going to be dinner. That is the purpose of beef animals. 


Until later, 
~Aeryn 

Passing the Torch....

When I was a young girl one of the most exciting thing for me was going to the farm. At the age of nine I joined the local 4-H group and began spending all of my free time at a dairy farm in my hometown. It was, and still is, a family run operation of a milking herd made up of Holstein and Brown Swiss cows. I immediately fell in love with Holstein cows. For those of you reading this that have no idea what the differences in breeds of cows are or even that there were different breeds, Holsteins are what you imagine when you here cows. The big, black and white, spotted animals in the California "Happy Cows" commercials. 

I showed dairy cows for almost ten years before I became to old to participate in 4-H. At this same time in my life I kind of lost my way and got away from farming all together. Never did I imagine that I would raise a little girl who would later join 4-H and grow to love it, and the animals, as much as I did. As I sit here writing that I can not help but smile, because in her I see the same amount of joy and passion that I had at that age. 

This will be Aeryn's third year in 4-H. She joined as a Cloverbud in second grade. Now she is a member of an amazing beef club and eligible to show at the local fairs and shows. I LOVE this 4-H group. It is comprised of leaders that were 4-Hers in my group when I was younger, and their families. I could not imagine a better bunch of people to be around and to teach my daughter the things that she needs to know. 

Last year she got to show for the first time. Our friends the Plantes' were generous enough to lease us one of their beef calves for Aeryn to train and work with and take to the shows. Aeryn got this beautiful black Simmental steer named Big Mack. I will not go into the details of how that went because this blog is for her to post as well and I will let her share the details. But needless to say, she became addicted. 

This year, since she liked it so much, I decided that I wanted to buy her her own animals. We are lucky enough to have an amazing friend who is willing to let us put beef animals on his property. So I started to look around for people who had beef animals for sale that would be willing to part with them at low prices. I could not believe when I got a message from one of my friends, and Aeryn's 4-H leader, Kim saying that she had a friend who was selling an animal who would be a great project animal for Aeryn. 

In actuality this friend, Leasa, was selling two to three animals. All registered Simmental heifers. Leasa and I exchanged messages and it was determined that I was pretty sure that I wanted all three animals. (Nothing like jumping in with both feet huh?) We are in the process of hammering out the final details. 

Now for the purpose of this blog. Aeryn is in charge of the new farming operation. She gets to do most of the work, and the research involved and I thought that a blog would be a good way to share our adventures that we are having. It will be great for her to have something to look back on and say "oh I remember that". It will also be a great way for us to share both perspectives on what we have going on. Along with embarking in starting our own beef herd, we will be having pigs, turkeys and chickens. What better plan than  to give Aeryn the ability to journal everything. So, from now on, you will be reading post from her, OR posts from me. I hope you enjoy sharing this experience with us.

It is all about passing the torch, now it is time for Aeryn to feel the same joy and excitement that I felt at her age. Only I can already see her taking it farther, and more seriously than I ever did. What an amazing little girl she is.