A Farmer's Day in the Life || Fall Edition

This morning we have our typical lineup of chores to do here on the farm. Chores change pretty much with every season, but we're settling into the rhythm of fall. After I I do these chores. We need to go ahead and move our cattle herd. We're working through the last of our rotational grazing system for this season. And then all of our pastures will get to rest all winter long before it's time to graze again next spring or summer. We also have a bunch of babies being born and there's a few calves that we need to tend to today. They were calling for a chance of frost over the weekend. So my husband brought in the last of our summer vegetables that I need to preserve and put away. Today I want to cook something from scratch. This is the time of year when I change my focus on all of my meals to cooking what's in season. So today I want to take you guys along for all of that. Just a typical fall day here on our farm. it is that time of year when we are trying to utilize every bit of grass that we have left available to us so we did really good on all of our rotations this summer and even with the drought that we've been having this fall many farmers in our area are already having to feed hay but we Quite a bit of grass left for our cows to graze, but the really important thing this time of year is to not over graze it because this is what's going to set us up for a good growing season next year. Our goal is to keep the cows moving along to graze through all of the mature grass on the farm in this season, so we need them to graze it down so that way it can grow more. have a chance to grow new fresh grass next season but we want to be careful not to overgraze it and damage any of our pastures or any of the grass that we have out there. So it's sort of a tricky time of year to graze. We really want to utilize as much of the grass as possible. We've been putting them on our regular pasture rotation but we've also split up a few of the fields just Just trying to get them to graze it a little more even, but it is really nice having. Having so much grass left available to us, even though we haven't had a lot of rain this fall at all. It's been a very dry fall, but most falls here in Missouri within the last five to 10 years that I can remember have been very dry. So we're just sort of focusing on managing through that. And I think this is probably the best year that we've had on fall pastures and I think a lot of that is just because we have learned so much about rotational grazing over the years. Our farm is getting more and more set up for it every year so we're able to make better management decisions for our cattle. So we're going to continue to graze them around the farm. For about another month and then we're going to have to go on and rely on winter feed until we have a growing season again next spring. When we're out here moving the cows it's important to be very attentive now especially because we have so many new babies on the ground. This particular baby stayed back in the last pen and it just didn't have the ambition or the spunk that the other babies have that were born right around the same time so I got it up and moved it but I want to come back out here later with my dad and try to address the situation see if this calf needs a little bit extra from us. Lori, my milk cow, has been such a learning curve for me. She is just not. the typical beef cow that I am used to. So right now her calf is about five months and I think it's almost time that I need to wean the calf all together because Lori's production has really slowed down. I also have a bull with her so I'm trying to re-breed her for next summer but at this point it's already going to be closer to next fall before she has a baby. When we had our vet out last I shared all about that in my last week's video. I had her also walk down and And test Lori and Lori is still open. So that means she has not bred back yet. And I think a lot of it is to do with nutrition. So even though she gets more feed than any other cow here on the farm, she is still not up to prime condition in order to raise a calf, produce milk. And breed back. So her genetics are obviously just very different than what I'm used to. I knew that going in with the dairy cow, but I don't think I really knew to what extent. So now we are going to try to focus on a different feed program for Lori. I think it's going to be time to wean Ruby Ann so that way Lori can start rebuilding and reconditioning her body after After raising a calf, but all that to say is it's been a fun. Learning experience, but it's definitely been a learning experience and right now I'm glad I just have one milk cow to tend to and try to learn all this through. Now I do think Lori is a little bit different genetically. I don't think she's the type of cow that can be on a grass-fed dairy, which was originally my hope. I just don't think she has that in her. I think she's going to be one that requires a lot of feed her whole life. Life, which is fine. I just need to try to figure out the diet that's best for her. I've been getting some alfalfa hay from my neighbor. I'm working with a few different other feed options and our goal is right now to continue to milk her. I don't want to dry her off yet, but I think the calf is going to have to get weaned and we're going to have to up her feed even more so that hopefully she can breed back here very soon and then have another calf in the next year or so. I'm taking a quick break. from sitting and knocking out some admin type tasks on my computer to share with you guys about the sponsor of this week's video, and that is Homebase. 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Be sure to check out the link in my description or visit the QR code on the screen. Thank you so much Thank you so much to Homebase for sponsoring this week's video. Milking Lori has become a part of my daily routine but it is a part of my day that I truly enjoy doing so I don't foresee Totally getting out of it altogether. It's just trying to learn how to care for a dairy cow, especially one like Lori, who seems to be pretty high needs. Like I said, I've never had a dairy cow before. They may all be this way. For me, it's just more learning how to care for her. She is very different than just caring for our regular beef cows. I have really settled into the milking routine, though. Kind of learned all the equipment, familiarized myself with that whole process. So now I'm just trying to learn the whole... caring for a milk cow and getting her bred back. Now I do think it's important to note that she is a first calf heifer. So what that means is Ruby Ann is her first baby. And even with our beef cows, getting a first calf heifer is the hardest animal to get to breed back. So I always knew that breeding her on this round will probably be the hardest time of her life to rebreed because you have to remember she is raising her first calf. She is still growing herself. She is producing milk and she has to be reproductively sound and ready. So it's a lot going on for her and she just needs a lot of extra nutrition to carry her through that stage. Our routine here lately has been to go out, do the chores, move the cows, and then come back in for a big breakfast. We have been loving these. Fresh milled pancakes where I add some oats and then pumpkin. We had a lot of pumpkins in our garden this fall. We harvest all of them and I did a batch cooking day of pumpkin puree and then I froze all of that. So I've just been remembering to set it out early in the morning and thawing it so that way we can enjoy some pumpkin pancakes. I love cooking with the seasons and getting a big breakfast in us like this about Nine, 10 o'clock in the morning has been working really well. So a lot of times before we go out, I'll fry a couple eggs or something to carry us through. But then after all the chores, we like to have a big breakfast like this. These pancakes with the pumpkin at it are just the perfect fall breakfast this time of year. We are pretty certain this calf is a twin calf. We noticed it is much smaller than the other newborn baby calves and we unfortunately did find a dead baby calf out in the pasture, but no one was claiming it. So our best guess is it was a twin calf to this one and this calf may have missed out on a lot of the the needed colostrum when he was first born because he is just sluggish and not really getting up and going like the other calves. The cow didn't look to have a whole lot of milk so we decided to try to supplement a bottle today to see if the calf wanted it. And he did. So we made the decision to bring the mama and the baby calf up to the lot where we could easily supplement it every day, just trying to get it up and going and hopefully get it healthier to go back out to pasture with the rest of the herd. Over the weekend they were calling for a potential frost so my husband went out and harvested the rest of the peppers and the tomatoes all of those summer crops one last time. He brought in basketfuls of them. I already put the tomatoes in the freezer. Our vegetable freezer is brimful so I need to get the tomatoes out here before long and can them do something with them. Which was my plan all along to just freeze them until the end of the season. We also got so many peppers on this last round so I'm going to go ahead and get them all chopped up today and into the freezer. We love having frozen peppers on hand like this to add into our eggs in the morning or soups and stews throughout the winter time. This was something on my to-do list. These peppers have been sitting on the counter for a few days and I knew I just needed to handle them so I decided to work through a batch of them today and I plan to get to the rest of them sometime later on this week. We did plant a pretty big fall garden this year, so we're going to start having crops like Swiss chard, carrots. We still need to harvest all of our sweet potatoes. We have beets and turnips and different root vegetables out there, but none of that has started to roll in just yet. So I'm kind of that time of year when our summer crops have really slowed down and backed off And now I'm kind of focusing on what we have stored away. We stored so many potatoes this year, definitely a year's worth of them. If I can get to all of them in time, I'm going to have to do a big potato preserving day. We just don't have a cold room or a good place to store these potatoes. So I've been focusing on using them a lot in our dinners here lately, but I know I'm I'm going to have to get. Get them out, chop them up, and blanch and freeze a bunch of them here soon. Tonight, I'm making some scallop potatoes to go along with some pork chops, and then I will run out to the garden before dinner and pick some lettuce. We have a lot of cool season lettuce right now that's ready to be harvested, so we can enjoy some fresh salads with our meals. Scalloped potatoes isn't something I've made a whole lot of, but I had some bone broth in the fridge that I needed to use up and obviously a lot of potatoes that needed to be used as well. I always love to get dinner prepped or planned as much of it ready as possible during the day when I have time because our evenings, especially now with it getting dark much earlier, get so busy that I kind of forget about dinner and then once we come in to do it, it's really getting late for the kids. Today being able to make this dish and I got some pork chops thawing, we're just I'm just gonna quickly grill the pork chops and serve it with some scalloped potatoes. We have been without pork chops for a couple months now. We restock on pork every fall so we are really excited to get the pork restocked and we have been craving some grilled pork chops. I know I have talked with you guys so much before about rhythms and seasons on the farm and the joy I get when it's a change of season. There's just so many things that I enjoy about it. The summertime starts to get long, the days start to get kind of hard, so I'm looking forward. To that new rhythm of just slowing down and settling in, I have a lot of plans for this fall to spend more time in the kitchen, learning how to preserve a lot of different things. Like I mentioned, I need to get to all of the potatoes in our pantry. I need to get through a whole deep freezer full of tomatoes and try to figure out how to preserve a lot of the fall crops that we have coming in right now as well. As always, thank you guys so much for following along. I have really been enjoying sharing these weekly videos with you guys for over a year now, just sharing different rhythms and different seasons here on the farm and everything that we have going on around our farm located in rural Missouri. I look forward to sharing more with you guys next week. Please remember to subscribe to be notified when I post a new video. Thank you so much for watching.