We generally don’t like to go too long between disasters here on Truelove Farms. When things go smoothly for too long you tend to start to get a sense of impending doom, a creeping dread that keeps you awake in the hollow hours of the night. The waiting is what gets you. When the catastrophes come at regular intervals, at least you know what you’re in for, and even if it seems as if things have gone to shit, well, thats where things where headed anyways. Here on the farm, we prefer disasters you can set your watch to.
The crisis of the hour is out of season calving. It’s been my goal over the last few years to downsize my beef herd and perhaps faze out cattle entirely. If I could go back in time and take my younger self by the shoulders, after I was done cursing his general damn-fool ignorance the first specific thing I’d caution him against was buying cows. Beef has generally been a source of ire and misfortune here on the farm. Almost as soon as I had cattle they began breaking out, lacking the capital as I did for proper permanent fencing. Plastic step-in poles and polywire do ok when the herd is content on fresh pasture, but do little when a young steer is hungry and obstinate.
Nor is the land here really sufficient for proper grazing. There isn’t enough pasture to keep a decent sized herd, for one thing, and the quality in most places is sparse at best. Producing proper grass-fed beef on any real scale was never a real option. Without the economy of scale to make operations worthwhile, raising cattle has always been more of quixotic endeavor, too demanding of labor for too little return. Without proper fencing or chutes, moving and loading animals has always been arduous. Without proper genetics or forage the quality of beef has always been variable and underwhelming. Without close or reliable slaughterhouses, at least until recently, merely getting an animal processed was a challenging task in and of itself.
And a those are just the basic problems. The particular disasters have been nearly too numerous to count: difficult births, dead calves, fights between bulls, midnight break-outs, one slaughterhouse’s e-coli recall (no fault of our own, mind you), and one steer who knocked me down, escaped the loading pen, and, after a long pursuit, had to be killed in the parking lot next to the abattoir.
Raising chickens has never proven so dangerous or so dramatic.
The disaster of the moment, as I said, is winter calving. I sold off my main Hereford bull nearly two years ago precisely to get out of cattle breeding, but in typical half-assed (or in this case one-testicled) fashion, I failed to properly castrate a young bull calf, and that bull calf grew up. Though I thought I had separated him from the breeding stock in a timely manner, apparently he sowed a few wild oats before heading off to slaughter. The first bovine accident was born about three months ago. Another hit the ground last week, and a third arrived today. I see at least one more heifer who looks to be in the family way, and there may be others not yet showing.
It’s January now. It hasn’t been a bad winter so far, but it’s early yet, and things will change. I had planned on an easy, recuperative winter: I downsized the number of pigs I have to feed and house, and processed the laying hens for soup chickens. The hay is stocked up, the farm store stays mostly closed, and the daily chores are light. The plan for a quiet season off seemed on track. I should have known to be on guard.
So now it’s time for worry and guilt, for kicking myself for poor husbandry and for scrambling to figure out last-minute solutions. I got today’s calf suited up in a cold weather jacket, and unsuccessfully chased his rather spry compatriot for a good while, attempting to dress him the same. At least for the moment, I reasoned that if he’s fit enough to outpace me, he’s strong enough for another night outside. Tomorrow, a day that should have been about as close to a day off as I get this time of year, I’ll instead need to fence off a more sheltered part of the barnyard as a maternity ward, and see about shifting the cows and calves up into better winter housing. With every bitter night or blowing snowstorm that arrives this winter, I’ll have added concern and anxiety on my mind. Whatever plan I may have had has given over to this new, calf-filled reality.
And now the clock starts ticking on the next disaster.
The Edible Complex 