How a city girl, gone country grieves (and raises cows): Cow-rear change? Me Etc.

 How a city girl, gone country grieves 

(and raises cows)

 I met Kimberly through farming. She, like me, has been dropped into this life and is learning to love it just like me. She is a Christian, however, our pasts are nothing alike. I've asked her to share her story on my Blog over the next weeks or months or however long it takes. It is filled with much grief and loss but will hopefully make you laugh and smile and grow and grieve along with her.

I’m pretty sure nature and God have colluded and added an additional five weeks to January this year. Honestly, this has been the LONGEST January on record. 

It’s long because it’s been unseasonably colder. 

It’s long because the days keep coming but the cash flow slowed. 

It’s long because I have three cows that were supposed to calve at the first of the year and I find myself going from window to window and porch to porch peering through the binoculars following cow rears across the pasture. 

It’s just been a long dang month and if I never see one again, it’d be too soon.

So let me back up about 180 degrees. As Wendi has mentioned, I also "fell into farming." Let me tell you, there’s a whole lot of manure in that statement, figuratively and literally. 

(I’ll also add that if you are trying to read my posts and follow some sort of order or timeline ... don’t. I do not have A.D.D., but I do have "can’t focus on one storyline at a time," which makes for a melded, colorful mess!) 

Instead, just get a cup of coffee and hold on for the ride.

In my original post I believe I mentioned, oh so non-descript, that one day everything changed in my perpetual vacation world of "stay-at-home-mom" here in East TN. 

I lied. 

The earth opened up, I was swallowed whole, and I’m living in a totally different dimension with my head still spinning and muddy boots. 

Or is that poop? 

That can’t be poop. 

I don’t do poop.

The idea that became a proposition that became the end of life as I knew it was that:

1. We were starting a farm. (Okay, I can handle this.) 
2. We’re starting a cattle farm. (Okay, cows equal poop, so you can handle this.) 
3. We’re starting a Texas Longhorn cattle farm and we’re going to raise them for meat and sell it and even, like, sell the horns and hides and oh, honey, did you know this is a heritage breed?
4. Oh yes, they’re the original beef cattle… blah, blah, blah. 
5. (Shaking my head doesn’t even begin to describe my response, which wasn’t very kind, so we’ll skip this part).

So back to 2014, when all this began ...

Here we are on the small hillside of about five acres, in December and 20 degree weather, building fence to get ready for cows with horns. 

Rule #1: don’t build fences in 20 degree weather. Barbed wire is already, well ... barbed. Add that it’s wire, and heavy, and in 20 degree weather, it’s like rolled steel. You don’t know what rolled steel is until you’re trying to pull it from post to post, hold it, hook it, and not let it go because it’ll take an eye or half your face off. 

So far, I am not loving this farming idea. 

And then the husband/wife love affair begins to see the initial fractures that farming brings; bickering, fighting and general disdain. Initiate mother-mode; designating tasks! I thank my God that I had boys. Yes, I am that mother that sent her city boys turned country outside in their coveralls and gloves and hats and boots (they were 12 and 18 at this time) with my husband, who’s the only one with ANY previous iota of an idea of how to build fence (except he forgot about the 20 degree part) to finish the task.

By January (there’s that month again!) the fence is basically done and the husband is "shopping" for his first herd. This part gets a little strange, because while the husband wasn’t a recluse, he also wasn’t very social. For a whole month, he spent all his time at home after work either on the computer looking for longhorn cattle or on the phone calling breeders of all kinds and just getting more and more excited. 

I, on the other hand, had just started my position with the ministry working from home, so I was nonplussed about the whole thing. Although I admit I did start to wonder if he was dating someone else, because it was so unlike him to be on the phone and online so much. Oh yeah, he was having an affair alright. He fell in love with the Texas Longhorn breed, and I simply cannot compete with those kinds of racks.

On February 1, 2014, our first little herd arrived in our newly (painfully) fenced pastures and 4 Corners Ranch was born. This was the beginning of our "production herd"; the idea being that we would raise the steers from the herd and process the meat for consumption and sale; a two to three year process. 

Oh but wait; we have a better idea! 

The next thing we know (with some serious seed money) we’re buying an entire herd of 42 longhorn cows by the end of March of the same year. This all entailed leasing land (five acres, as it turns out, is not quite enough for the original herd of seven), connecting with local breeders and setting up a beef processor, USDA permits, farmer’s markets, licensing ... the whole works. A whole new and somewhat disturbing world opens up when you get on this side of food production, but we’ll cover that much later.

By the summer of 2014, we very quickly discover that the need for grass-fed only beef is grossly unmet. We literally processed just about everything on four hooves to keep up with the demand. We attended the beef master program that fall, only to find that we don’t qualify for help because we are raising an "exotic" cattle breed. 

While it was a bit of a (major) letdown, we pressed on. What had started as an idea has now become an avalanche, and we’re literally knee-deep in beef with all the trimmings and learning more and more the dire need for our product.

1. We started selling beef as a means to pay the debts (49 cows ain’t cheap).
2. It became selling beef because folks need what we have
3. Now we’re DELIBERATELY producing a quality beef product because we’re passionate about educating folks about better health care through better self-care. 

This journey has revealed so much about the food industry, friends, family, foes, neighbors, cattle rustlers, longhorns (for which I now have a love affair), connections, health, and spirit. We’ve been tested, taunted, abandoned and yet appreciated. We have made some seriously amazing mistakes and invaluable connections. We learned that not all friends are real and yes, (almost) all cattle rustlers are crooked. 

But I digress.

Thus I embrace the cow-rear change: In order to produce in this industry, you’re dependent on the cows to produce more cows. Few things are more frustrating than being so sure a cow is due "any day now" only to find out I’m way off. 

But I’m not alone. 

The vets apparently were too, since we had these three "rears" checked! Springing is a term to describe the cows "whatsits" when she’s getting close to calving. It’s, uh, extremely evident there is pressure "there" with a pushed out appearance. Their udders also will fill up, but not all cows will milk alike so that can be misleading. 

All three of the rears (I mean this as both an insult and actual body part) I have been watching for nearly the whole month of January have been "springing" and with every below freezing night and muddy thaw, we’re scoping the slopes for baby calves to no avail. This becomes both a blessing and a curse, as we really don’t want frozen calves nor do we want muddy ones, but we’d sure like to have calves now! I am also convinced these particular rears have bionic hearing; they are "on the schedule" so to speak this year. 

At this point, I’m really starting to believe they’re in on the collusion with God and nature for the multi-week extension to January.

And it’s snowing again. Ugh. January……