June at Big Rock: Cow Dramas and Sagas

In this newsletter:

A new calf… Goodbye George… Bonus baby… Garden update… Nathaniel’s work gets featured… BONUS bonus baby… Cordelia Rises… Cute picture of Granger hugging Nathaniel!

Little Gin has her first calf!

June 19th brought our first calf of the season! Little Gin (Ginny’s daughter) had herself a beautiful heifer calf, without any assistance from us! Little Gin and now her new daughter, Natty, was bred and born at Big Rock. June 19th happened to be father’s day so this calf felt like an extra special surprise. We named her after Nathaniel as an ode to the timing of her arrival. We also happened to have the chance to watch The Journey of Natty Gann that night after Clancy fell asleep—a great watch for a mature audience.

George’s time has come.

Back tracking to Flag Day, was a bittersweet day that had been approaching for me with mixed emotions. After nearly two years of raising George, Granger’s calf from 2020, it was finally time for him to go to the butcher. I won’t lie, I wanted to cancel! I am not attached to him in any special way, I’ve just gotten use to him being around. I’ve swore up and down at him often enough when he is the jerk that makes a break for it when everyone else follows Granger to a new pasture and makes me work to get him in but I guess maybe that is the endearing part of him that I did enjoy and will miss.

We are sharing half of him with family and will be thanking George for countless meals to come this and next year. That is the special thing about raising our own beef. We can thank them by name.

We recently had a Hipcamp family here that had two girls, the older was maybe ten. She said that in her opinion it wasn’t a good idea to name animals you’d end up eating. My response was that we spent years caring for and loving each animal that goes to butcher, how could we spend two years caring for an animal with no name and then go on to eat it and have no name to say thank you to? The animals we butcher live beautiful long lives, first in their flesh and then in ours. I hope it gave her and her parents an intimate understanding of what it can mean to be conscious omnivores as we had a suspicion they might be vegetarian or vegan after they made a big pot of grain pottage flavored with juniper berries and sagebrush gathered from the ranch for dinner the night before.

George--his first day earth-side, his first winter, second winter, and last day.

The cow drama partially lies in the sadness of saving goodbye to George but mostly lies with Ginny. Poor Ginny is such an easy keeper and cows can’t be put on diets that she is having some vaginal prolapsing. Seeing this required us to get a vet involved, which also required us to get the cows herded into the chute for the fourth time this year, probably a record.

It was hot and the cows were exceptionally touchy and protective over the few day old calf so we had a hell of a time getting them herded across the dry lot and into the chute system and holding corrals. They were so blind with hormonal protectiveness that my mom’s seasoned cow dog, Lou, nearly got trampled by a raging Little Gin. We couldn’t use Lou which made the task difficult. Thankfully we did manage to get the cows where they needed to be and got Little Gin and baby Natty separated into their own pen where she was safe from being stepped on by overprotective cows.

Thankfully the vet did not see any damage done surrounding the prolapse and was able to estimate that the calf would come end of July, making Ginny the last to conceive. The late conception and prolapse are both very likely a result of her being over-conditioned AKA obese.

Ginny, Little Gin and their offsring are all purebred Herefords. A breed we fell into because we have friends that loan us their Hereford bull. Ginny came from them. We like their size, their mothering instincts, and their easy nature. They calve well and keep through the winters well. They were bred to be highly efficient when on the range.

Being on our lush irrigated pasture is too good for them. This has made us question the way we go forward. We may need, dare I say it, less efficient cows—like Granger. But this is stressful to think about selling Ginny and Little Gin and adding 1-2 other cows that aren’t bred to be so efficient. We are invested in our animals and attached to them. The way forward is unclear but to keep animals that we know are not suited to the care that we are able to provide is unacceptable for us to do knowingly. Ginny will continue to have these problems and Little Gin is likely to develop these problems to. We can’t knowingly cause this.

For the time being, we keep an eye on Ginny, so long as the prolapse stays inside other than laying and urinating then she can go on without veterinary assistance and will hopefully calve unassisted. She may or may not need stitching after calving. When the right time to move her along is an unknown for us.

EDIT!

Later the same day I wrote this(6/29) Nathaniel came in to report that Ginny had her calf and it was up and running around! What a relief! We think she had it sometime in the night before(6/28-6/29). She had a lovely heifer calf that is a great size and seems to have lots of pep. The vet’s fetal aging was waaay off and we are happy that she doesn’t seem to need any prolapse suturing. We will keep an eye on her the rest of the week.

Growing Green

The growing season is popping! Summer Solstice literally brought summer temperatures overnight. All the plants in the high tunnel/greenhouse exploded in a two week period. It is really incredible to see plants grow inches within a matter of days. This unfortunately has included my volunteer salad greens. I have been aggressively planting successions of lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, radish, and carrot. I also need to plant a succession of beets and peas. I haven’t even planted beans yet! I honestly don’t know where to plant everything, I am running out of easily watered and weeded space.

My front raised beds have been getting mowed down by none other than RATS. How I loathe rats. They chop at the base and leave the plants there. It is just plain malicious damage. I am at a loss as to what to plant in them since the rats have mowed most of what I have planted in them.

I think I need to set some sort of safe traps or find some concoction of essential oils to repel them, if they can be repelled. Thankfully my high tunnel has not fallen pray to any sort of predation other than some minor aphid trouble isolated to kale. Although my basil is getting eaten by something with a big buggy mouth.

Gardening is relatively a new frontier for me, I don’t feel like I have generational knowledge flowing from me as I need it but I do hope that Clancy will grow up and feel that way.

Here is the Greenhouse on June 13th and June 30th. An incredible amount of growth has happened!

Big Rock Woodcraft Frames

Nathaniel made frames for a local artist and family member, Amelia Morton. His frames of her artwork are on display at the Sisters Artwork Building until August 8th I believe. Her unique pieces displayed in these custom walnut and maple frames built by Nathaniel are for sale! Below are only two of many!

It was really fun to attend her open house on the 24th and see Nathaniel’s talent paired with another local artists talent!

BONUS Bonus Baby!

I’ve spent the entire year pregnant! Not sharing this exciting news has left me feeling like a big fat liar every time I send out a newsletter. We didn’t mean to wait until I’m 6-months pregnant to officially post about it, family has known from the very start.

The first trimester and a half I spent in different states of pregnancy misery so it felt easy to check out and not share. Then I thought we might as well wait until we knew the gender which we found out on my birthday in May. Then we had to do genetic testing to make sure everything was all good after the anatomy ultrasound, which it was but it took weeeeks. So, now here we are at six months getting it all out…

We are so excited and only slightly( or a lot) overwhelmed to be having a daughter in October!

The misery this pregnancy started out as meant that I had to let go of anything extra, I often couldn’t feed us so Cordelia had to take a long snooze. That is the beauty of sourdough though! The starter can be dried and brought back to life at the right time. I am really enjoying getting back to GF sourdough with my kitchen gal pals (Cordelia and baby). The fun of sourdough is that there are so many different ways to do it, every time I take a break and come back to it, my methods change and I learn more. It is really enjoyable to do something so forgiving yet technical.

Gosh, I could include more, but I have to stop somewhere! I will leave you with this shot of Granger hugging Nathaniel since this newsletter has been all about the cows and we can’t leave our Ranch Mascot and cow matriarch out!