04/27/2026
It was quite a day! Saturday, Jim loaded 3 calves from Cheyenne Farm, 1 from the White Oak farm and then 2 from the Broomstraw farm for the cow auction. As I’ve mentioned before, we’d love to keep all of our cows, but it isn’t possible - we only have so much land and also the calves never seem to self ween and by the time the mama cow is getting ready to have her next calf, if the older calf is still taking the mama’s milk, it is taking the nutrition away from the younger calf that needs it.
By the time Jim loads the cows, takes them to the sale, and comes home, it is usually late afternoon. He usually checks the farms afterwards to make sure all is well. He knew a cow was missing from one farm because somebody saw her in the woods while they were mushroom hunting. He went searching, but couldn’t get her before it was too dark. We woke up fairly early to run to the store and get barbed wire to fix a section of fence Jim saw was compromised and then Jim went to the farm to see if she had returned on her own (sometimes you get lucky and that happens) - we weren’t that lucky. Since we had no leads yet on her whereabouts, Jim worked on his tractor until someone called to let us know they saw a cow. But, not only did they see a cow, they saw 20! So it turned out we ended up having a whole herd out at the Broomstraw Ridge farm and only 1 cow out at White Oak - the farms are about 1.5 miles away from each other as the crow flies. In the end, we got all cows back to their respective locations, Jim’s tractor is fixed, and we have temporarily mended some fence but have a section of fence to go fix.
And while all may have seemed well on Cheyenne Farm, the cows broke my garden fence and got into my high tunnel and ate some of the plants I planted. I got them out, but have a section of fence to fix there, too.
I must say, our community is great to help out when we asked if anyone saw some lost cows. Thank you to all who sent notes and shared our post!!
Happy Birthday, Jim! Do you feel (insert age here) yet?!
