The Bovine Bugle

Our own Paul Bunyons go to work

About this time of year for the past few years we cut a couple loads of firewood for a relative that camps at the lake all summer. Our relative uses a short length of wood in her camp stove so we usually take some wood we have stacked and dried and cut it in half or thirds to have it the right length for her.

I ran the chainsaw, cutting the 3-foot lengths of hardwood into 1-foot pieces. Ben picked up the cut pieces and threw them into the back of the pickup. Some of the pieces were too big, and Ben split them with a splitting ax. Justin and Noah then stacked the wood in the back of the truck. It took us about an hour to finish the load. After lunch, Justin, Noah, and I delivered the wood to camp while Ben clipped some of the heifer grazing strips. The boys spent more time visiting with Meri Lee and playing in the lake than unloading wood, but that was okay. The part the boys like best about doing firewood for Meri Lee is that they all get a share of the pay for the firewood.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

Logs become lumber right on the farm

We've been in the lumber business the last couple of days. A man who lives here in Franklin, Lloyd Richard, has a portable sawmill that he brings right to the farm to saw our logs. He has been here 5 or 6 times over the last 15 years or so, and several of the buildings here on the farm have been built with lumber he has sawn. It gives me a little more satisfaction seeing a building built from lumber that came from logs we cut and hauled from our woods.

Lloyd was sawing white pine into 3-inch wide boards to use as batten on the utility farm building we built a little over a year ago. The narrow boards will cover up the spaces between the wide pine boards we used to side the building. I could watch Lloyd mill logs all day. It's just so interesting watching the logs being milled into just the lumber you need for the project you are working on. As Lloyd sawed the logs, I "tailed the saw," pulling the fresh cut boards off the saw rig and loading them onto the wagon. We ended up sawing a little over a thousand board feet. We call the farm building the boards are meant for the "Horsebarn" because it replaces one of the original farm buildings that collapsed a few years ago due to heavy snow. We called that building the "Horsebarn" because it housed the horses when they were used to do the fieldwork here at Howmars Farm. Cowboy Noah (my son) really thinks we should get a horse so that we could keep it in the new "Horsebarn".

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

A new calf goes four-wheeling

I was mowing the lawn after dinner last night when Dad came up the road and asked me if I knew a cow had calved out in the pasture. I knew a cow was due to calve today so I assumed it was her. I told Dad once Ben got back from cross-country practice we would go down and get the cow and calf. Of course the cow was at the furthest point from the barn.

Ben had a quick bite when he got home and then we headed down to the pasture on the four-wheeler. It was one of those really warm, calm July evenings and a crescent moon was hanging low in the western sky. As we drove down the pasture lane the air was heavy with the scent of the flowering plants lining the sides of the lane. All the dry cows were crowded around the new mom and calf. The cow was the one due today, Queenie. We were very happy to see that the new calf was a heifer. We placed the calf in the basket on the back of the four-wheeler. As Ben drove the four-wheeler back to the barn I walked behind holding the frisky heifer in the basket. Queenie followed along right at our heels, not letting her calf out of her sight. When we got to the pasture gate I had to drive a couple of the other very "maternal feeling" dry cows back down the lane.

Queenie followed us right up to the front of the barn, and when Ben scooped up the calf in his arms and went through the barn door, Queenie followed them right in to the pen. We made sure Queenie had fresh water, hay, and grain before parking the four-wheeler.and heading to the house. Before going to bed, I went down to check on the new mom and her baby. They were all set for the night.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

Processing the chickens and a friendly chat

We had a nice visit with the folks who process our chickens at their poultry processing plant, Dave and Judy. After dropping off the chickens earlier in the day, we returned to the plant to pick up the frozen birds. We loaded the 60 packaged and chilled birds in boxes of 10 into the back of the truck. We also picked up 30 turkey chicks to bring home to raise. With the truck loaded, Karen, Judy, Dave, and I had a nice visit for about an hour. Dave and Judy have kids about the age of two of our boys, and both our farms produce maple syrup, Christmas trees, and compost, so we always have a lot to visit about. While we chatted away, Justin and Noah had fun playing with the cats hanging around the lawn.

One thing we talked about is how hard it is to get people and restaurants to buy locally grown, locally produced food. Most often the biggest issue stopping people from buying our products is the price. Why pay more for our product when they can buy it cheaper from a big supplier? People don't seem to appreciate buying their food from a farm where the animals are raised in a good environment, where they are processed locally, and where the money goes directly to the farmer and not to all the middlemen along the conventional food distribution highway. Dave had a great quote from a friend of his, "Farmers are the only people who pay retail for everything they use to produce their product, and then sell their product at a wholesale price".

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont
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Get junk food out of schools: Creating Healthy Kids
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Nine weeks later, chicks become chickens

It's hard to believe that 9 weeks have passed since the meat bird chicks arrived here at the farm. They have grown from fuzzy little yellow balls that you could hold in the palm of your hand to 6- to 10-pound birds that you can hardly hold onto with two hands. I had made arrangements with Dave and Judy Adams at Adams Turkey Farm in Westford, Vermont to process the meat chickens. They raise several thousand turkeys and have a state-inspected poultry processing facility. I have been bringing our turkeys and meat chickens to them for several years for processing because they do such a wonderful job.

Ben, Karen, and I loaded the 60 chickens into the back of the pickup truck for the 35-mile ride to the Adams' farm. Noah and Justin rode along with me to give me a hand unloading the birds. The trip down was fine, although we did eat some sawdust and feathers as we crawled around in the back of the truck catching the chickens. Dave and Judy were already hard at work on some of the other 150 chickens they had to do that day. I told Dave we would be back to pick up the processed birds after the evening milking, hopefully around 6:30. Noah, Justin, and I headed back to Franklin, with a quick stop for a doughnut to reward my helpers for their good work.

--Read more about a visit with the poultry processors tomorrow.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

A drought, and taking care of the compost

We hadn't had rain for a few days and things were drying out around the farm. It looked like we might get started turning the 600-foot compost windrow we had built during the winter. While Ben clipped the grazing strips with our two-wheel drive tractor, I used our four-wheel drive tractor with the loader bucket to shape the compost material into a 7-foot wide, 4- to 5-foot tall windrow. This is the size windrow that will fit through our Sittler windrow turner. We purchased the turner (with a generous grant from Stonyfield Farm) through a Toronto, Ontario company called Global Repair.

The next afternoon the windrow was ready to turn. Ben had greased and prepped the turner and hooked it up to the two-wheel drive tractor. We use this tractor to operate the turner because its transmission has a creeper gear range. This allows the tractor to move very slowly, which allows the turner to turn the compost material fully and reshape the material into a nice, conical-shaped windrow. The row turned very well with Ben only getting hung up once. Traveling at a speed of less than 20 feet per minute, it took Ben a little less than an hour to turn the 600-foot windrow. For the amount of material we stacked in that windrow over the winter, the first turning went really great.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

The grazing paddocks need a clipping

The cows are making their second rotation through the grazing paddocks. That means its time to start clipping the pastures. After the second time through the pastures, much of the grass left by the cows is heading out and too mature for the cows to graze, and weeds such as buttercup, thistle, and dockweed are getting tall. We use a Rhino rotary mower to clip the mature grass and weeds so that the next time the cows go through, the grass is plentiful and just the right height for grazing.

Ben does the majority of pasture clipping and this year took on the duty of changing and sharpening the blades on the rotary mower. He informed me that we really needed a new hand grinder to do a good job sharpening the blades. On our next visit to his uncle's farm and home store, he found just the grinder he needed. I told him if this would insure his maintaining the rotary mower then I would gladly purchase the grinder for him to use. With 45 acres of pasture to clip with a 6-foot mower, I wanted to keep Ben going any way I could. Hopefully in a month the pastures will all be clipped and set for the rest of the summer.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

Stonyfield Farm CE'Yo Turns 50!

Our CE'Yo Gary Hirshberg turns 50 next week. (Ssshhh. It's a secret.) The best birthday present he could get is to hear from loyal yogurt eaters and readers on our web site. Use the comment box below to send Gary your birthday wishes, or any advice you might have on turning 50!

The heifers explore their new home

I lead the young heifers and steers to their new paddock this morning after chores. It's interesting watching them explore a new place. They are so much like young kids, having to stop and check out every little thing, going over rocks and through puddles instead of around them. When they finally made it to the open meadow they put up their tails and took off on the run. After a few times around they settled down. I wonder if this is where the expression "high-tailed it out of here" came from.

I headed back down to the house for the usual coffeebreak after morning chores and the young stock followed me part of the way down. After the break we moved the dry cow group into the grazing strip the milk cows had just been in. The dry cows do a good job cleaning up what the milking herd left behind and the "leftovers" are just right to meet the nutrional needs of the cows during their dry period. The cows that calve in the summer almost always have fewer problems than the cows that calve in late fall/early spring.

>--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

Machinery on parade

The past two days my neighbor has been cropping some hayfields down the road from my house. This year he had his brother bring in his big machinery to do the job. The day they mowed the fields three different mowing rigs went by including a self-propelled windrower and a tractor pulling a disc mower that unfolds and mows three rows at a time. The next day the machinery to harvest the hay went by the house. This included a self-propelled chopper, a rig costing more than $250,000, a dump wagon, and two large dump trucks with large forage boxes on the back to haul the chopped hay somewhere miles away.

Probably I watched a half million dollars worth of equipment going by the farm over the past few days to harvest a few little meadows that once were harvested by a few men, some simple machinery, and a few horses. Technology has changed farming greatly, speeding up the how we do things on the farm, and allowing the farms to become bigger and bigger. But at what cost? My mom, who grew up on this farm and remembers when horses did everything here, has often said that maybe the old days weren't so bad. The pace of life was slower, you really knew your neighbors, and the community was closer. Have times changed for the better? I really wonder. When people ask me about our organic farming practices, I tell them I'm regressing back to the way my grandfather farmed. I like to think we are moving in the right direction.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

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Garden planting begins in earnest

With the garden tilled, wife Karen marked out the rows and began planting while son Noah and I were building a new stretch of high tensile fence up behind the house. We plant a big garden to have fresh vegetables through the summer, and to have plenty to freeze and store for the winter. We buy most of our seed from an organic seed company, High Mowing Seeds in Wolcott, Vermont. Karen planted most of the garden, setting out the bedding plants and sowing the vegetable seeds. Planting the seed potatoes is my job. They were the last thing to be put in to the garden. The green beans and the sweet corn we planted this year were seeds we saved from last year’s garden. We can't wait to see how well those seeds germinate.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont