Farm Tour Success!

We had a fantastic time on Saturday during the Home Grown Farm Tour.  The first car showed up at 10:03am and the last car left at 4:30pm with only a 15 minute break all day without someone here.  We had about 40 cars out to the farm and sold quite a few frozen chickens. We also took orders for pork and turkeys.

We of course had a lot of locals, but also had an amazing amount of people from St. Louis.  A couple of people said they found out about the Farm Tour from our mesabifarm.com website instead of the official Farm Tour website, so that was definitely exciting!

It was exciting to see the looks on kids faces and talk to adults who were interested in our methods of farming, our chicken processing setup and how we treat our animals.

We also had a local reporter that chatted with Dan for quite a while and took pictures.  She wrote an article that posted online today that highlights Mesabi Farm along with two others on the tour.  Read the article here:  Daily Journal Online

After finishing with the tour, we got cleaned up and headed to SayersBrook Bison Ranch for the Field Dinner.  The dinner was fantastic and a nice treat to be able to go out without the kiddos for a few hours. I'd encourage more locals to go to the dinner next year.  Here's what they had on the menu...

                               

All said it done, we had a great time participating in the tour and have already been asked if we'd participate next year.  We agreed and already have some ideas of ways to improve upon what we did this year.

Farm Tour Reminder

For all of our friends in the St. Louis area, don't forget the Home Grown Farm Tour is this Saturday!  Our farm will be open from 10am - 4pm.

For more info, go to: www.homegrownfarmtour.com





            

Sit 'n Sleep

I realize it may seem odd to some people that I post pictures of Samuel's sleeping positions.  Just bare with me and all will make sense. A week or two ago, I posted this picture...

It was the first time I saw him sleeping on his back in a normal sleeping position.  If nothing else, he's usually on his belly with his knees curled up under him and behind in the air. About a week after I took the above picture I found him in his most bizarre sleeping position as of yet.  Here's what you need to do if you'd like to replicate his position.  First you have to have a slatted headboard (or footboard, I suppose).  Then you shove a teddy bear into the slats to act as a pillow and then twist your arm back behind you.  Like this...

Then use your other arm to support yourself while you snooze.  I suggest closing your mouth so you don't snore, but Samuel prefers to keep his open...

HAPPY SLEEPING!

When the cows came home

Well.  They're here.

Meet the Jerseys.  The two mama cows in the back are our milk producers. We've been getting about 6 gallons of milk per day from them.  The two bull calves up front are just a couple of weeks old.  The one on the right will be a breeding bull.  See how his eyes are wide-set and you can see lots of white around his eyes?  That means he'll be an assertive, if not aggressive, bull.  At least that's what my Dad used to tell me.

 This little guy was a little scared to come out, so Dan had to help...

They have to be bucket fed milk for a while, so they had to go into a stall in the barn.  They didn't want to.  It was a close match, but eventually Dan won.

Then the Angus arrived.  Actually, the little bull calf in front is an Angus/Highland mix.  I call it an Angland.  I suppose it could be a Highgus too, but that just sounds silly.  See Mama behind the baby?  She's large and not particularly happy at the moment...

After coming out of the trailer, they promptly got as far away from us as they could.  As in over the hill and down the pasture. 

Dan assures me they're still on our property, although I've only caught a glimpse of them once since they arrived  Of course, I'd likely see them more if I actually went in the pasture instead of looking from the garage door.  I'll get around to that one of these days.

When 1 = 6

Remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned we were looking into getting a milk cow?  If you recall, I said I wanted one cow.  Well, Dan's made all the arrangements and we have a total of six cows coming.

Yes.

6.

Cows.

2 dairy cows = 2

2 bull calves - 1 for breeding and 1 for meat  =  2

1 heifer and her calf  =  2

2 + 2 + 2  = 6

And apparently cows require equipment.  Lots of equipment.  Our UPS driver has been here every day dropping off cattle supplies.  Hopefully we have everything we need because Dan is driving to the dairy farm with stock trailer in tow tomorrow morning.

Oh, and one of the dairy cows has been bred, so we could have a pregnant cow.  More bang for the buck I suppose.

Pictures coming soon!