Canada Day

Finally summer holidays and all the good stuff that goes with it. The girls are anxiously awaiting their new holstein calves we ordered, we have one steer waiting for more male calves to be born. Unfortunately for us, the last four calves have been heifers. So there are two more due this weekend and we are hoping for some boys so we can start calf project #2 for the year. The 6 bottle raised calves are doing awesome. Only the youngest Augustus, is still being fed. They are living with three cows and a young calf in a nice pen with grass for them.

Today we planted a bunch of lettuce and brussel sprout seedlings (or something else, our bookkeeping sucks!) that we started from seeds. They look good, John rotovated us an addition to our garden because we had so many seedlings to plant and ran out of room. Then Matty and I were checking out our larger plants and WOW!!! we have itsy bitsy cauliflower heads, broccoli heads, miniscule brussel sprouts and tiny kholrabi's. Absolutely amazing!!! Lettuce to eat next week and more veggies the week after.

The cows have settled in the far grazing area, happily munching their way through the pastures and grassy areas. I went out to do a calf count last week and stood on this field that John had plowed last fall and I had planted this spring shaking my fist at the entire herd yelling "get off my grass!!!" The grass has grown so much they were actually eating it!! Once this rain stops, I am going to go check out the rest of the areas that I planted and see how things look.

The hay is growing well, but its definately behind where it normally is at this time, so we will probably be starting haying a bit later than usual. It would be nice to get some warm weather after this rain, then things should really start growing. Our two old mares, Dagmar and DeeDee are enjoying their pasture, they are so funny. They will not adventure at all. They stay in their small pasture and won't enter the forest area at all. The other two horses are very happy for now. They are visiting a friend's property cutting down the three foot high grass for her. Very happy and fat. It will be a bit of an adjustment when they get back here next week. But they will get lots of adventure as all the kids want to learn how to ride and I can't think of two better mellow horses than Tango and Pika. Pika is so mellow, she doesn't even want to trot, that's too much effort. And she is a nice little horse, a good size for the kids.

Peter is expecting his 20 day old turkey chicks on Tuesday, so he has some work to do on the inside pen for them. Then while they are getting large enough for an outdoor pen he can fence off the pen we have decided on for them. So lots to keep us all busy for the summer months.

A Late Spring

Dalmation

Gussie (Augustus)

Well spring is late this year. The first aspen to flush at our house on Buckhorn Rd. flushed yesterday May 18th. I've been keeping track of the first flush since we moved there in 1989. The earliest date was April 28th, the latest on May 25th. But spring is here and the grass is growing, the rhubarb is almost a foot high, the pasture is almost ready for the cows, the carrageena is starting to leaf out, the hummingbirds are back in force, the lilac tree is green, the black currants have leaves and blossoms on the way.

For now it is warm and the rain has stopped after giving us 3 to 4 inches in the last 10 days. The sun is setting after 9pm now giving us the long days that always end in the kids going what? how can it be bed time already? The cows and calves have been moved to a staging area about 200m west of their maternity pen. This small field allows the calves to get used to a bigger area with lots of room to run and to get used to finding their moms at a distance. What I always get a kick out of whenever I got to check the cows on pasture whether its just this small field or when they have full movement over the back 400 acres is the babysitters. Yes cows have babysitters. The calves tend to be in a group with a smaller amount of adult cows watching over them. The cows may change, but usually about three quarters of the calves can be found grouped together. Today there were three very large cows lying around with about 14 calves. It must be a great way to control predators and keep track of the calves. There are always a few calves that figure they know better than their moms and are always getting yelled at by their moms. If you make a calf squeek in the bush guess what happens? Any bull, cow, or yearling within hearing distance rushes towards the calf. Some of them very aggressively. They are a herd and will protect any member of the herd. I think its pretty cool. As well I have trained my cows to come when I call. Yep, I have a call I make a sort of YOO-HOO-OO-HOO-HOO and they know that is the "good sound" and come to see what I have to offer them. In the middle of the summer, I can take the quad and drive into the middle of a field where the cows are and start calling. Even though there was no cattle in sight, within minutes they start calling and filing into the area near me. I totally enjoy this!!

They know me and the older cows and bulls know the routines of the seasons. Right now, the bulls are fully aware that they are getting ripped off! They get an extra month of detention while the females are starting to get to eat grass. They are kept away from the girls until June 15th to delay the calving until the last part of March. But they know it and just bide their time. The cows know its time to stretch their legs and enjoy some freedom after the long winter. They are ready to eat grass, clover, aspen and whatever else interests them. They will be given access to the 50 acre pasture just behind where they are now. And if they don't get the access soon, they will effect self release. Then in a couple of weeks when we are ready to let them onto the next pasture area, the females will run to the gate when we start to drive them. The older cows know the routine and there is nothing more valuable to your herd than a bossy, smart cow. She will readily go through the gate and lead the others to where they belong.

In the fall, when the frosts start to come, the cows are ready for hay. They have had enough foraging and are ready to have room service and sit around with no adventure. Starting in Sept. last fall, my black angus bull: Fatty DingDongs could be found standing in front of the gate into his winter pen. He had enough of the hard life and was ready to come back for the winter. In the summer he comes to see me when I call, but seldom wants a pet, in the winter he is a lot more sociable and sometimes when he hears me talking walks to the fence to see if I will come over and give him a good scratch. The angus/highland cross bull: Spirit Calf is very eager to come when I call in the summer, but has always been a bit stand offish, not as friendly as the angus. But he knows me and will always come when I call.

And now we are all waiting for just a bit more growth, some more sunshine and then they can run freely over their first pasture!


April Moon



Chocolate

Kids love living in the country!

Today I did some wandering around my farm (on the quad) and ended up at the small creek near McRinney Road. It was babbling along quite happily and I thought of the "city folk" who buy little waterfalls for inside their condos and felt truly sorry for them. I know, I know IF these people really wanted to be in the great outdoors they would be. But then is that really true? Does living in a rural area perhaps fall into the same category of "you don't know what you are missing when you don't have kids until you have them". John commented the other day that people know what they grow up with and change something takes a different attitude. All the pioneers were willing to change their lives and move to the frontier and try something different. To grow up in the city and move to the country really then takes more of a pioneering attitude.

Just as many mainlanders and islanders are unwilling to give the interior of BC a chance, I think many city dwellers are unwilling to give country life a chance. Perhaps the fact that kids shoes get muddy and in the spring your dogs are dirty 24/7 has something to do with this. But I think perhaps, to live in the country is to give up some of the convenience of the city. The convenience store down the block, no next door neighbours for kids to hang around with, a longer drive to hockey practice, the kids take the bus to school instead of walking and usually the driveways are longer for snow plowing.

However, the best part about living in the country is the life the kids have compared to city kids lives. When Peter was young and we ended up walking down a city street to a cross-country meet at an elementary school, Peter would always comment on the tiny yards and be amazed that they could even fit a trampoline in there. And all the questions he had about how the kids could actually play in such a tiny yard and what could they do? At the time our house was a large rancher 35 feet across by 130 feet long (including the built-in shop). The house wouldn't actually fit onto many city lots so you can see where he was coming from. A house in the country, even one on just a few acres offers so much more for kids. Lots of room for a trampoline and usually a dirt/sand pile that is eventually going to be used for landscaping. A gravel drive with lots of rocks for looking at or breaking. We once got a load of riverstones for landscaping which provided hours of enjoyment to the kids. They still go back to it and break rocks just to see whats inside. The amount of insects on a country yard is also amazing. Kids love bugs, snakes, frogs, salamanders and locating birds nest and broken egg shells. There is just so much more for a little kid to do in the country. And as they get older there is even more for them to do. Yesterday Peter took a walk with his gun just to see what he could see. In the summer the girls hunt for wild strawberries, raspberries and saskatoon berries. They can walk down to the creek and look for animal prints and try to catch the fingerlings hiding in the shade. They can put their hand out near the hummingbird feeder and wait for the tiny birds to alight on their outstretched fingers.

Our current house is average sized but the yard is huge. With a little thought things can be put into perspective. Our lilac tree is so big that it would take up more than half of most city yards and our "little house" which houses the birds, plants and office would be two houses away in a city. Our front yard is the size of a city park, the parking area as large as a city parking lot, our piece of forest near the house would be a major green strip left in a modern subdivision, the ancient log cabin located across the driveway would be a heritage home and made into a museum, the row of black current bushes and saskatoon trees scattered around the yard provide enough berries for a u-pick operation. In a city, the walk down to Tabor Creek could be a mountain biking/hiking route, the area around the road access to Tabor Creek could be a city picnic area, the raptors, cranes, woodpeckers, various song birds, ducks and ravens make the area so rich in bird life that it could be a bird sanctuary in the city. The wildlife: bear, coyotes, white tail deer, moose, squirrels, hare, beavers are abundant enough to have a wildlife viewing station. The garden is large enough to be a community garden located in the inner city.

Twins

Gray rejected twin

Twins!! trouble right from the getgo. I keep telling my human twins that I am not as bad as the mom cow who just accepts one of her twins and knocks the other one away when it tries to feed. 14 years and I still have my twins around so I guess I really wasn't as bad as a mom cow. And now, they are awesome little calf feeders. So awesome that this morning when I found the knocked about little gray bull calf in the pen with the mom cow doting on her black bull calf and literally knocking this little guy to the ground, I thought, well the girls would like another little calf to feed. (Yeah like they would like a hole in the head.) Regardless, this little guy wasn't gonna make it. Just how much rejection can a calf a couple hours old take anyways? So I loaded the little guy up and pulled him in the sled. He was far too active and large to put in the entranceway to the house, so I pulled him up to the girls bunnies enclosure. At 10 feet by 10 feet with a canopy and wrap around walls this was going to be his new home. The bunnies got put back in their old pen and I placed my new gray calf in the enclosure. 

Black accepted twin



With calfs and all things to do with cattle, patience and perserverace are necessary. Perserverance okay, I can do that, but patience is not a virtue that I am that familiar with. But I was patient when I sat in the maternity pen and watched the little calf try to nurse and get kicked away over and over again. The best place for a calf is with its mom, but if that is not going to happen, then one must take action. After about the 8th time of watching the little guy get beaten up by its mom, I took action. I loaded him on a sled and brought him to the bunny pen. The perserverance came next. He wouldn't drink the colostrum from the bottle. Matty and I stuck with it for about half an hour with only getting about 8 oz in. Then we took a break and went to check on the other twin calf. It was doing just great so I tried again with the bottle with Petra. And this time he was interested in sucking and we got him to drink 3/4 of the colostrum. Now he can rest and in a couple days, if all is well he can go up to the barn with the other bottle fed calfs.

The Evolution of Borean Angus

Borean Angus Calf

 If you let it happen, ideas get formed and are dynamic. Sort of like one thought flowing into another thought and eventually a whole new idea is formed from the original. That is sort of what has happened with our cattle ranch. We were going to raise registered Black Angus bulls and heifers for sale. A good idea with the popularity of Black Angus bulls being high when we first purchased our Black Angus pregnant heifers and bull. Within a couple years we realized this probably wasn't the route that we were going to take. First off, the registered bull sale is in April and the goal of registered bull breeders is to provide the largest long yearlings possible for the sale, hence these ranchers were calving as early as January. Well to us, calving in January in Pr. George just didn't seem like a good idea. The first two to three months of their life would be spent in the bitter cold of winter.

In the spring of 2007 we were raising black angus. We had sold all the Highland Cattle that we had except for a Highland x Angus cow named Bess. Unlike our other Highland crosses, she had no horns so we kept her. That spring when the Black Angus calves were being born and moving slow and sleepy, Bess produced a dun colored baby bull calf. He was robust and vigourous and after 4 hours I was hard pressed to catch him. This was a sharp contrast to the purebred angus which seemed to sleep for days, often so sleepy that we were afraid they were dead. So we decided not to castrate him and keep him as a bull. We were castrating all the non-purebred bulls at this point. We gave him a name, because he was quite a light color: Spirit Calf.

And the next year we gave him the run of the herd. Spirit calf was released for the first three weeks of the breeding season. He was 15 months old. I had read in a book that a young bull can be expected to impregnate as many cows as he is old in months. Sure enough the next year we got 15 of our calves sired by Spirit Calf. They were everything we hoped for, robust and vigorous and not sleepy. They had hybrid vigor and grew fast. The added bonus to this bull is that we get a variety of colors of calves, from white, to blonde, red, brown and black. Spirit calf (the bull) is one quarter highland and three quarters black angus. His offspring are one eighth highland, just enough to give them more robustness at birth and hybrid vigor and growth. The meat is very good, the same as black angus.

Spirit Calf at 2 years old

 We had to give our new breed of cattle a name: Borean Angus. Something a little different for the sub-boreal forests that they spend their summer in.

The Calf Project

Chocolate (CoCo) a jersey cross steer



Matty with Dalmation, Charles and Micro




After years of seeing the ads for holstein day old steers in the Bargain Finder, this year we finally called them up. The net result is that Matty, Petra and Georgina are now feeding 5 calves in the barn, 2 holsteins, 1 jersey x and two orphan black angus bulls. The black angus are mine, the first from "deer cow" who decided last year to jump the fence and get impregnated two weeks early so she had her calf when there was still over two feet of snow on the ground. And then instead of following the sled with her calf on it to the maternity pen, she bolted. Peter tracked her by foot through the thigh deep snow half a mile back, John on skidoo much further back. She returned that night, but the next day wasnt interested in her calf. What a cow!! The second black angus was born rather limp. He managed to flip around and get himself soaked in the mud. Cold, muddy and limp we kept him in the kitchen overnight feeding him a small bit of packaged colostrum that evening. I slept on the couch to keep track of him overnight, and around 3am he started moving around. By the next morning he managed to get up with some help and that evening he stood by himself. At three days we moved him up to the other calves.



Petra with Charles, Georgina in background



So now the girls get up a bit earlier for school and we mix up the milk and carry up the pails to the barn. This time of year the sun is just rising as we head up the hill on the road and we crunch through the icy puddles with Patch and Rio (our dogs) alongside us. Patch is ready to help if there is an errant calf/cow that needs chasing and Rio is happy to help lick the milk out of the pails. At the barn, Petra takes the youngest black angus "coffee" and feeds him his bottles, Georgie helps Matty and passes the pails over the fence to Matty. This is where it gets interesting, Matty's holstein "Charles" is trouble, he's big and piggy. It seems whenever, I peek in the barn to see how they are doing, Matty has her arms around Charles, verbally scolding him and wrestling him away from the other calves milk. Charles laps his milk in a pail, the three others have pails with nipples, the other day when we were looking at the pails we noticed their labels: calf -a pic of a calf- teria. They are calfterias OMG!!

Not for everyone

Thats what I was thinking as I was wearing my bright orange rubber boots standing in 6 inches of water fixing the barbwire fence with the kids. This isn't for everyone. Seeing as the world's population is getting more urban and BC is just the same, it seems that less and less people are interested in standing in 6 inches of water fixing a barbwire fence.  I would be too if it wasn't part of something so much larger, a whole flavor of life with lots of hands on experiences and challenges all while doing something constructive and building a future. This morning my three daughters were feeding their dairy cow steers and our orphan bull calf, which in itself is an awesome event to witness, when we noticed that 10 of last years calves had managed to break down a fence and were milling about where they weren't allowed. So with teamwork and some quick footwork, we got the older calves put away and fed the calves and still got everyone to school on time. After school, the fences needed fixing. Sounds like just another chore doesn't it? But when Petra fixes the smooth wire, Georgina watches a cow get ready to give birth, giving us updates every few minutes, and Matty, Peter and I tackle the broken barbwire fence, its not a chore. Its fun and when the fence is fixed, we all look at it and praise ourselves because it looks better than before. The snow is melting, its calving season and spring is in the air! It may not be for everyone, but it is for me!