Got Eggs? Give us your favorite egg recipe.

Egg production has really slowed this winter.  We are all excited about the changes in the season and the chill in the air that winter brings, but the chickens are another story.  As the days shorten and the temperatures drop, egg production decreases drastically.  On commercial farms all of the birds are in climate controlled environments with one square foot each and where the light is manipulated to give optimum production.  In a free range model you are at the mercy of the elements, so we have peak production times and these lulls during the year.

This makes it extra tricky to have enough eggs during certain times of the year for our CSA members and an overload during other times.  During the Spring I know we are going to have eggs, or something with eggs in it at least once during the day!  We plan on increasing our production with the increase in our number of CSA members and use an old cotton wagon to produce another mobile house about twice the size of the one we currently have.  If anybody has any great recipes using eggs please send them to us!  We will post our favorites on our blog.

On to Greener Pastures

It is the time of the year when most of the grass at the house has played out and it is time to move the cows to new pasture.  Luckily, that pasture is about 1 mile down the road.  I had some great help from our neighbor's son to get the cows loaded on the trailer and over to the rented pasture.  We started at about 3:30 on afternoon and moved 6 trailer loads by dark!  By the time night caught up with us we only had two cows left.   The next afternoon we loaded the last two and we couldn't find the other 60 cows we had turned out.  They had busted through some of the electric fencing and were nowhere to be seen.  We walked for miles trying to find them.  They were all bedded down over the top of a hill and we had went past them twice.  I have lost a cow or two in my life, but I was kind of embarrassed about losing 60!  We called them back to the trailer to turn out the other cows.

It was nice to see those last two cows join the rest of the herd.  There is nothing better than watching cows graze on new pasture!

SNOW

We love it when it snows!  

The cows were starving when it came time to feed hay that afternoon.  They ran across the creek and swarmed around the hay David was putting out.  Good quality hay is a necessity during these winter months as our pastures start to slow down their growth.  We will feed hay for about another week and then move the entire herd to their winter grazing grounds down the road to about 200 acres of stockpiled fescue.  Hay is great, but nothing beats pasture.  The calves will be moved to wheat, oat and rye grazing on our other farm about 20 minutes away.  

Wow!  I just realized that our cows get to travel more than we do!