Loose Cow

On my way home from work, I came to the intersection of 10th and 199th. From that stop light I can see Grandpa Ed's house and farm. Today I noticed lots of cars at weird angles up ahead, completely blocking both lanes. As I was sitting there watching I realized the cars were corralling a large cow. "OH crap! One of Grandpa Ed's cows must have gotten out."

I drove up to the situation and weaving around cars to get into Ed's driveway with the intention of letting him know his cow was out. While I was pulling into his driveway, he was pulling out of the drive to the barn in his white pickup (circa 1975). He slowly drove towards the cow, pushing it down the road to a pullout and gate to his pasture. I turned around and follow the pickup; parking side long by the pullout to help block the cow in.

Opening the car door and hoping out, I sunk into the soft grass and mud realizing I was in heels, suit pants and a long wool jacket. Not exactly cow wrestling gear. Grandpa Ed was getting out too, wearing work pants and tall rubber boots; much more appropriate. Walking over the him, I eyed the cow and noticed that it was actually an 800 lb steer. My thought, "Holly Cow!" Grandpa Ed gave me a look of confusion until I said I was on my way home and happened to see the situation. Ed said we should get the steer into his pasture. But just then the steer made a break for the road.

Now, I am perfectly willing to jump in front of a sheep or pig, but there was no way on this green earth that I was going to jump in front of a huge, angry steer. Another man had driven up and waved his arms to try and stop the animal. Not surprisingly, that didn't work. The steer was back out on the road. A third man in a large diesel truck drove towards the steer pushing it back up the road to a gate on a the other side where yet another man was standing and let the steer in.

I asked Grandpa Ed if that is his cow and he said "No, it belongs in the pasture next to mine. People are renting that barn but they aren't there much. The steer got into my pasture a couple days ago. He must have found a way out to the road." I went to check if one of three guys standing by the gate where the steer had been let into a confined space happened to know the renters.

What a sight I must have been - thirty something woman in professional clothes, with mud on my heels, walking up to tell them something about a large steer. I started with "Ed is my husband's grandpa." (In a small town, relations equal instant acceptance.) They all thought the animal was Ed's and no one knew the renters; but the waving-arms-man headed up to check and see if anyone was there. Nope, no luck. Turned out that the pasture where the steer was currently trapped belonged to the diesel-truck-man's parents and he just happened to be there checking on the property since his folks were in Arizona. He said the steer could stay there until the renters could be contacted. "Or," I said off-hand, "We could call Wards." That got a chuckle. (Wards is one of local butchers.)

By the time I got back to Grandpa Ed's pasture to fill him in on the plan, he had retrieved wire and tools and was headed out to fix the fence where the steer had gotten out. I explained that the steer would stay where it was for now. He said good and walked off to complete his chore. I hollered after him, "Call Jeremy if you need help with the fence!" Seriously, the man is 92 years old!

Beef Broker

We don't raise beef, mostly because we don't have enough room but also because cows need serious fencing (see "The Great Escaping Cow" post). Jeremy's Grandpa Ed runs about 30 head of cattle in Ridgefield, which is roughly 15 miles east of us. We sell his beef; we are "beef brokers."

The eating-local movement isn't stronger anywhere else in the country than in Portland. Portlander's are willing to pay lots and lots for locally grown meat and eggs. Recently one of my coworkers said that she was paying $6 for a dozen eggs at the Farmer's Market. WOW! I'm not charging enough! Since all the people I work with know I have a farm they are constantly asking if we have meat to sell. Usually the answer is no. Generally we only have enough food for ourselves and my parents. But when Grandpa Ed is butchering we have lots of beef to sell.

This year 10 of my coworkers, plus our neighbors and some friends in town, wanted beef. Some wanted 1/4 of a cow - about 100 lbs - other just wanted a few cuts. All in all, I figured we could sell 2 whole cows. Jeremy called Grandpa Ed to "place an order".

Grandpa Ed is over 90 years old. He stays young because he just doesn't stop - "if you rest you rust" is a very true statement. He called a few weeks later saying that he messed up the order and we only get 1/2 a cow. That's only 200+ lbs of meat! No good! Fortunately people are very understanding and just happy to get any meat at all.

We don't mark up the cost, so people get the beef at about $2 per lb. That's a great price even compared to grocery store prices. These cows are all pasture-raised and well taken care of. I bet I could charge $8 per lb. But I'm selling to friends and people we spend lots of time with so I just can't bring myself to charging more. Maybe I'm too soft.

*Picture: Grandpa Ed and Jordan

Stats

We are coming into our fifth summer on the farm. We moved in May 2005. That first year we didn't do any farming. It was too late to start a garden, plus we weren't sure where it would go. The pastures were in awful shape - years of too many animals, multiple horses, on just 3 pastures. Fencing all over the place, with little purpose. So we spent the first summer getting organized and helping the pastures come back from near death.

We acquired our first farm animals in summer 2006 - twin rams. We got two sheep - a pregnant ewe and her yearling - in spring 2007. We have had a total of 16 sheep on the farm since then. 9 born here and the others were purchased. Three of the sheep died - two within just a few days of birth and one very sick ewe who died after two months of meds and veternarian house calls. We've butchered 5 of the sheep. So as of today, March 16th, we have 8 sheep - Notag, Lily, Patches, Daphy, Blacky, Buttercup, Norman Jr and Junior. We are hoping all the ewes are pregnant and we'll have a whole new batch of lambs this spring.

The one and only cow we had, we acquired from Grandpa Ed in the summer of 2006. Gladys was only with us for a year.

We added chickens to the farm in March 2009. We built a coop and purchased 7 chicks - 4 buff orpingtons and 3 light brahma's. One of the chickens turned out to be a roaster and was therefore made into fajitas. The other 6 are doing great and laying many more eggs than we can consume - we have 3 dozen in the fridge right now.

In May 2009 we purchased two pigs. The farm we got them from will take a while to describe, we'll save that for another day - let's just say it seemed more like a rescue than buying pigs to raise and eat. Pigs grow fast, very fast, and they were at 'market weight' in 6 months. We plan on purchasing two more pigs this spring.

You probably figured out that we have butchered a lot of meat - 1 cow (400 lbs), 5 sheep (? lbs), 2 pigs (combined ~500 lbs) and 1 chicken (maybe 3 lbs). That is a whole lot of meat for a family of three. We have two large freezers which are currently full of pasture-raised and humanly butcherd meat. Not to mention that Jeremy hunts - we have elk and deer in the freezers too. If the world as-we-know-it comes to an end, we're good (as long as the generator keeps running).

The Great Escaping Cow

June 2006

Jeremy's grandpa called on a Saturday and asked "Do you want a calf?"

Grandpa Ed lives about 10 miles away in Ridgefield on 38 acres. He runs about 30 head of cattle. His calves are born in January. Apparently one of the calves was a "bummer", which means the mother wouldn't feed. In this situation, your choices are bottle feeding or veal. This lucky calve got the first option. She grew up in the small "back yard" of Grandpa Ed house, fed by the neighbor girl. When it came time to wean the calf and turn her out to the pasture, she wouldn't go - she just kept coming back to the yard. So Grandpa Ed called us and asked if we could take her.

A single cow needs about 5 acres of good pature with a strong, electric fence. We have 3, 1-acre pastures; only one of which was in good shape that summer. We have wire fences in relative phases of needing to be replaced. And we had, at the time, an electric fence, but the battery was sitting in 2 inches of water and I wasn't sure if the fence had been run in the past 15 years. Are we gonna let all that stop us, no way!

Sunday, Jeremy took the truck, picked up his dad for extra muscle, and headed to Grandpa Ed's. He brought back the cutest little doe-eyed black angus calf. Plus, being raised by a little girl, the calf behaived like a family dog. She was about 50 lbs when they unloaded her to the south pasture and we spent the next few hours feeding her oats out of the palm of our hands. We named her Gladys.

The problem with calves, like all baby farm animals, is that they grow. Quickly. By the next summer we had a 400 lb cow on a one-acre pasture. And then we learned why they say "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."

The first time she got out, I came home from the office with Jordan (3 years old) to find Jeremy in his suit and tie helping our neighbor unload Gladys from the truck back into the pasture. Apparently a wire fence with a mild electric charge doesn't pose much of an obstacle to a 400 lb cow intent on our neighbor's garden. I'm guessing, though I never had the guts to test this theory, that our electric fence had a charge that felt like static when you touch a metal door handle. This was also the day we met our neighbors - "Nice to meet you. Sorry our cow ate your peas."

Trying to get a full-grown cow to move, anywhere let alone onto a truck, is nearly impossible. Imagine pushing an SUV, in neutral, but that SUV has the ability to turn itself or hit the brakes. And it's 95 degrees outside.

The second time Gladys got out, we came home to her penned up in the wrong place - by the barn, not in the pasture. Our other neighbor Eric had to retrieve Gladys when she crushed the fence and headed back to "her" garden. I imagine she smooshed the fences much the same way I crush a stack of cardboard waiting to be recycled. It took Eric two hours to get Gladys into the truck.

By this time it was August. The grass that wasn't eatten to the dirt had stopped growing and she was consuming multiple bails of hay a week.

The third time she escaped - thankfully just to Eric's yard - we decided it was time for steak. We called for the "kill truck". After saying our goodbyes, I took Jordan and went shopping - there was no way I could be there when they shot her. Jeremy had to stay and it took a while for him to get over loosing our cow.

I miss the hand-feeding, that she came running to see you at the gate and her big brown eyes with long, long lashed. But the roasts, steak and hamburger are amazingly delicious!

Buying the Farm

Five years ago, with no practical experience raising animals other than house cats, my husband and I bought a 4-acre farm. We had no idea what we were doing other than we were tired of seeing and hearing every last thing our neighbors were up to. And we both had a strong desire to raise our own food.

I come from a long line of gardeners. I remember walking amongst the vegetable plants at my grandparent's home, which was in suburban Seattle, and exploring his root cellar - this is probably where my fear of spiders comes from. My parents always had a big garden. My brother and I were given small plots to plant our own veggies. I remember the hedge of raspberries with love and loathing. If you lost a ball behind that thorny hedge, you decided it was time to buy a new ball. But the berries were worth the allowance spent on replacement softballs.

My husband's grandpa is a rancher. At 90 years old, he still runs roughly 30 head of cattle. He is one tough old man and is creditted with enstilling a considerable amount of work-ethic in Jeremy. Spending time on the ranch, bucking hay, taught Jeremy how to 'act' around farm animals - a skill I am still trying to acquire.

But neither of us had ever tried to actually raise a cow, sheep or chicken. No problem. The first spring at the farm we bought 2 sheep, a ewe and yearling, not knowing the ewe was pregnant and within just a couple of weeks of giving birth (to triplets no less, but that story can wait).

What is to follow are stories of the farm. Our first lambs, born in the driving rain. Trying to move a 180 lb ram from one pasture to another. The great escaping cow. The chicken coop that could double as a bomb shelter. And how we manage to balance this rural life with both of us working 25 miles away in Portland, OR at professional (desk) jobs while raising a daughter.