First baby calf of 2011!!!!

Koyuki had her very first calf today!!! No problems, a week early, but otherwise very healthy! Mommy is very protective and only let me get close once. Unfortunately I didn't have my phone to take a pic at the time so you will have to settle for the longer shots. The calf is a little girl!! She is an Angus x Shorthorn and is mostly black with a brown tinge to her hair. Will know better after a few days what her true color will be.


Next up is Sally! Can't wait, she is ready to pop any day now.

I also picked up a very large hay field quite close to here! Approx. twenty acres of grass mix hay. I will be doing on shares which makes it very easy. If everything works out and I can count on it every year I will be able to turn the two fields across the creek into rotation grazing. The current pasture is not nearly large enough at 5 acres to handle 20+ head of cattle and 15-20 pigs. That way I can let the cows and pigs harvest the first crop and fertilize the second for me!!

Wish me luck with the weather!! I still have a list a mile long of stuff that needs done before second cutting hits!

Kenny!

Timber sawing and other things

Well, it is Father's day so I am finally getting a break....well sort of! Basically, I got to sleep in an extra hour...then everyone started fighting! That is life on the farm with young kids. Some day they will be gone and I will miss the days like this.

But I digress!

This week was a productive one. I finally got John out with his sawmill to finish cutting the wood that I cut down back in the winter. He brought the mill out on Thursday but we got rained out so he brought it back out yesterday. His schedule is pretty booked so I we had to get it done so he could move on to the next job.

I also had a chance to go out on Friday night when I got home from work and sit down in the pasture with the cows for a few minutes. I haven't had time to do this in a while and it is like my relaxation time. It also keeps the cows used to my presence so they allow me to check them without them running off.

I was kneeling down and letting them come to me when I took the pic. We will start having calves starting in 8 days. They will be spread out over a couple of months and I can't wait!!.


At work my construction guy finished up the benches for the homeowner. For anyone who may not know all the lumber and slabs for these benches came from a large cherry tree we took out of the lawn last year. I have several more slabs left that we will make into tables and such. I also had some new ones cut out of some elm yesterday that are phenominal!!







I am also going to throw in a few pics from the lumber milling. I was able to sell some awesome cherry boards to help pay for some of the sawing. I also now have all the lumber I need, short of some posts. To build the new cow shed. Not sure yet when I am going to take that on but it would be nice to have it done before winter. I need to get a lot of other things done first though. I also need to draw up the plans to be absolutely sure how we need to build it to do what I need it to do.

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend!!

Kenny

Couple of piggie pics!

Well, just dropping a quick post before heading to bed. Spent Monday night and tonight preparing for the lumber guy to come tomorrow. Dropped three more trees that I need cut up and did some much needed cleaning!

We are getting ready to sell off the unneeded piglets so if you would like to get one please contact me so I can finish one out for you. My contact info is in the last post that my wife put up.

I also managed to get all the fields fertilized last week so they are nice and green now and the second cutting is shooting right up!! Grow baby grow!!

The other morning it was a little chilly out.  Checked everyone before I left for work.  Everyone was nice and warm and piled up snugly!!

Red balls just gave me the "what do you want!?" look!

 

 Lastly, above is what happens when you get a crazy red neck buddy who comes down to help you cut down some timber while drinking beer and then decides the log looks like a fun place to ride!  Don't worry, he didn't get hurt and we were going really slow at this time.  

He did help a lot though so I was glad he came!

Goodnight all!  Talk to you soon!

Kenny

Meat, Meat!

Conser Run farm

Summer 2011 Grass fed beef family pack sale

Every ounce of our beef is 100% USDA inspected so you can feel safe feeding your family with this naturally healthy beef.

Our grass fed beef is dry aged for 2 weeks to concentrate the meaty flavor and tenderize the beef.

We are now selling family packs in addition to halves and quarters of our naturally grown all grass fed Angus beef.

Summer 2011 Family pack=$88.00 each

One "Family Pack" contains a total of appx. 17 lb of meat in shrink-packed packages.  It will fit in 1 cu ft space in your freezer and will be fresh up to a year.  Average price per pound is around $5.20.  The contents of the family packs are as follows.

1. 1 of chuck or English roast (appx. 2 lb).
2. 1 of cubed round steak (4 steaks, appx. 1 lb)
3. 1 of round steak (4 steaks, appx. 1 lb)
4. 1 rib eye steak (2 steaks, appx. 1 lb)
5. 2 NY strip or sir loin steak (1-2 steaks, appx. 1 lb each)
6. 4 bulk hamburger (1 lb each)
7. 2 hamburger patties (4 patties in a pack, 1 lb each)
8. 1 stew meat (1 lb)
9. 2 of beef stix (0.5 lb each)
10. 2 All Beef hotdogs (1lb each)

 

Please e-mail me at ken.r.merrick (at) gmail.com or call at 330-353-2768 with any questions or to reserve one today.

We would like to get orders in by the end of June 2011 as they are scheduled in to processor the last week of June and will be ready for delivery or pickup the first week of July 2011. We will deliver product to north canton area or you can arrange pick up here at the house. We have -20C deep freezer to keep your purchased meat fresh.  If a group pickup can be arranged we can work something out for a farther delivery on a case by case basis.

This has been a crazy busy year so far!!

Well, I got all the first cutting baled.  I now have approximately half of what I need to get through the year.  Still a lot of growing season to go provided the weather doesn't get stupid.  With the extremely wet spring we endured so far I fear that we will now go for most of the summer without any considerable rain.  That will yet to be seen.

After raking all the hay on the rental fields I brought rake home with truck and took baler back.  Then, after baling and hauling were completed.  I brought tractor and baler back on the trailer.  Barely fits but it fits!!!  Have baler will travel!  I actually went from this field to another that I am share cropping with the neighbor and baled up another 16 bales before I got home.

 The first load of hay.  Not the biggest load I can haul by any means but these were wet baled so they are about 1700#'s / bale.  Limited by weight here!  If I am hauling dry bales I can get about 18 on per trip. 

Everyone enjoying the sunshine this morning.  This was right after breakfast.  The first beautiful Sunday morning we have had all year so I decided to enjoy my coffee before starting today's tasks!

Another goal this weekend was to complete the boar's nest...a little duke's of hazzard throw back!!  We built a separate pen to keep the boar in when we need him away from the females, like when having babies or when we need to change the breeding time.  So he gets his own little room in the area where we had the original pig pen.  First I had to remove all the old barn rafters.  Most were damaged or broken and so low that I couldn't stack much hay in the barn.  If you look at the pic below you will notice the new boards I installed when we replaced the roof to take place of the old ones.  They are much higher and allow me to use 95% of the barn space instead of approx 55%. 

After removing the old rafters.  Opens the barn up a lot!!

 

Had Steven's help today.  He is a great worker and we can get a lot done in a very short time!  After constructing the boar's nest we installed a loft over top to allow me to maximize my barn space for hay storage.  I used to be able to get a couple hundred bales in the barn.  I now am expecting between the barn and the loft over the sow pens I will be able to store 500-700 bales.  Depends on how well we stack them!

  

This is a pic standing back looking into the barn.

 

 Now I just have a lot of cleanup tomorrow.  This weeks tasks include baling some more hay for the neighbor, fertilizing the hay fields, setting some more fence posts and some heavy cleanup of the barn area!

Hope all is well with everyone.  We send three cattle to the butcher shop later this month!!!  Can't wait, we are all out of pork and will barely have enough beef to make it till the beef is ready to pick up.  Pigs head to butcher in august!  We are getting ready to pick out the pigs we will fatten for the end of the year this month.  We are planning on doing one batch each year for finished hogs.  The other litter will go straight to market after they are weaned as it is very difficult to fatten hogs here in the winter.  Also going to try a new system for raising them in the winter this year.  Been doing a lot of research into Swedish style hog production and deep bedding technique's.  Very interesting and should work very well!!

Will try to get into updating more often.  Been so busy with hay the last couple weeks I haven't had time to do so. 

Have a great week!

Kenny