Comments for wobbly.com

Comment on Visiting a Salers farm in the Centre by Susan Lea

Susan Lea — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 04:36:20 +0000

Very interesting! So I gather you didn’t find a bull or cows for your farm?
Those tiny calves make the ear tags look enormous!
Question: At what age do you prefer to butcher steers? They do butcher bull calves around here sometimes, as you said, under 18 months. Also, as you said, I see the problem with trying to keep them separate from the cows. We don’t want ours in pens since they’re supposed to be grass-fed!

Comment on Moving the cows with the carrot, not the stick by Christian

Christian — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:02:13 +0000

Great blog, and while I’m not in the market, not for a few years at least, any idea what a farm like this would sell for? Really enjoyed your older posts about looking for a home/homestead.

Comment on Moving the cows with the carrot, not the stick by Susan Lea

Susan Lea — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:26:11 +0000

In “All Flesh is Grass” Gene Logsdon says he sometimes does something similar with the hay, but he piles it up out in the field where it’s cut. We did it once when our daughter’s grass got really long, but we didn’t have very much hay. It wasn’t too bad piling it on our little wagon and storing it in our hay barn. Our animals LOVED it, but it sure went fast, being so loose! It was fun to make, but I wouldn’t want to depend on that to feed our animals!

Thanks for sharing your photos of your friend’s farm. I hope I’ll have that much energy at 75! That house is to die for!

Comment on Moving the cows with the carrot, not the stick by wobbly

wobbly — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:53:36 +0000

Hello Todd,

This farm was very beautiful. Unlike most farms around here he has a lot of grass (i.e. no cereals) and after a lifetime of farming he knows what he is doing. I don’t know southern Illinois at all – does it have hills and forests like here?

Comment on Moving the cows with the carrot, not the stick by wobbly

wobbly — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:51:03 +0000

The question in my mind was who was going to be the first to point out the finger photos. Thanks Mark, it feels OK coming from someone who is actually a good photographer.

The camera was Jean’s iPhone which I had borrowed to be a phone. I’m still not used to an iPhone. I was going to replace the photos with non-finger ones but I thought the content of the photo was more useful than the photo itself. I didn’t have another good photo of the hay feeder. I might have another one of the house but without the man himself walking home.

But yeah, I stuffed that up.

Comment on Moving the cows with the carrot, not the stick by Mark Griffith

Mark Griffith — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:18:17 +0000

Nice finger in the photos. I still can’t believe your a farmer.

Comment on Moving the cows with the carrot, not the stick by todd forhetz

todd forhetz — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 02:27:56 +0000

Hello from southern Illinois ! I have been following your blog for awhile and wanted to let you know how much I enjoy it . France sure is a beautiful country and I really like the photos you take. Thank you for taking the time to have a blog -and showing us back home about your life in France.

Comment on A frosty morning’s hay bale rollout by Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:59:11 +0000

I love the way the bales roll out and it’s great to see photos of your place in winter – very pretty!

Lots of the horse people here put nets with small holes around their large bales in the paddock, to stop the horses treading on the bale and stomping the hay into the ground/mud.

Comment on A frosty morning’s hay bale rollout by wobbly

wobbly — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:34:41 +0000

There’s a hay feeder that used to get dominated by the three big Mirandaise girls, so I switched to rolling the hay out. Now those three Mirandaise have been sold and the feeder is much more egalitarian when I use it. I still roll out the hay because then you can run the tractor once every few days and lay out a bunch of bales in a section of paddock on a dry afternoon.The cows are still moving to a new grass slice every day and each day or so they get a new bale in that slice. ALso we have plenty of hay and I’d rather have it add fertility to the soil than spend another year aging in the barn.

There’s been a big discussion about hay feeding recently on the grass fed beef email alias. In the case of cows dominating the feeder they suggested running two feeders which drives the dominant cow nuts!

Having the cows in the barnyard is fun! Although you have to get the manure back to the pasture at some point and that’s work.

Comment on A frosty morning’s hay bale rollout by Susan Lea

Susan Lea — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:59:52 +0000

Nice! I like your system of rolling out hay bales. I’ve never seen that here. Farmers just put them out, and the animals crowd around. Your system makes sure no one gets left out!

I sure wish our animals would eat the hay instead of the grass! We have to feed them in the barnyard because if we do it in a pasture, they eat the grass down to the ground and ignore the hay. If only I could explain that they’re just ruining summer’s meals!