Cows!

Where have I been? Well, Riley got better, then I got sick and was sick from Thursday night through Monday. Achey, exhausted, fever, just all around yuck. For now, we appear to all be healthy, but we'll see how long that lasts since it seems that everyone and their brother is sick, just getting over being sick or just getting sick right now. Its going to be a long winter at the rate we're going.

Exciting news though: Riley's getting a TOOTH!! First one!! I first felt it on Saturday and I can feel it a little more everyday, but I still can't see it. But he also is not a big fan of letting me peek into his mouth, so even if it was visible, I wouldn't necessarily be able to catch a glimpse of it. My big boy!!

I got a question on my last post, of what kind of cattle we raise and realized it really justified its own post entirely, as its not exactly a one-word answer. In a nutshell, we raise replacement heifers for a local dairy farm. So we get them when they're about 5 or 6 months old and have them until they're ready to freshen (calve) at 2 yrs old. Then they go to the dairy farm to calve and be milked and come back to us every winter for about 60 days as dry cows. The reason they come back every winter is because this particular dairy is a seasonal, grazing dairy. Ready for your dairy lesson? Typically a dairy heifer will be bred so that she has her first calf somewhere around age 2. Once she has her calf, she goes into the milking herd, is milked, watched to see when she comes back into heat and then bred again. She'll continue to be milked until she is about 60 days out from freshening (calving). At this point, for a number of reasons including allowing for better growth for the calf she is carrying, and the fact that her milk production will decrease anyway, she will be "dried off" and allowed to basically just relax until her calf is born. On a typical dairy farm, this is happening throughout the year and each cow is pretty much on her own schedule-freshening and being bred back whenever. Calves are born year round and there are more cows being milked than not all year long. They can do this because they are housed in barns and fed a mixture of hay,usually corn silage, and likely some other grains, so the seasons don't really affect them. Now, the particular farm that we raise heifers for is a grazing dairy. So there are no barns (other than the one the milking equipment is housed in) and the cows are on grass as their main feed. Well, obviously there's not a lot of grass in the winter (or you know, no grass at all) so what they do is synchronize all the cows so that they all come into heat and are bred within about a one month window, therefore all getting dried off at the same time (December) and freshening generally within a one to two month window (March/April). When the cows are all dry, the owners of this particular dairy go on vacation to exotic places like Belize and Thailand (seriously, I'm not kidding) and the cows come to our farm for their own vacation, from the week before Christmas until about mid-February, and enjoy hay, corn silage (which they only get at our house and they LOVE it!) and just generally hang out, chew their cud...you know, do cow stuff. Usually they hang out on the feed pads out in the open but this year they'll get to hang out in our brand new barns. And just going by MY personal preferences...I'm thinking they'll be a lot happier in the new barns instead of out in the cold! :) So in a nutshell...that's our cattle. Right now we have about 96 heifers out on pasture, they're on pasture from spring until fall. When the grass is pretty much done and it starts getting muddy, (oh and when the barns are done of course), they'll come to our home farm and spend the winter in the new barns with the dry cows. Then in February they'll all go to the dairy, have their calves and be happy little dairy cows. Moo.

Home sick

We're hanging out at home today. Riley woke up grumpy this morning, and after nursing, proceeded to projectile vomit all over Kelly...then I took him while Kelly was getting cleaned up and he threw up all over the couch (and Kelly again b/c he happened to sit down next to us. oops.) Then after I'd changed our clothes, he threw up again all over me and the bathroom-clothing change #3. Poor guy. Its been a couple hours since he threw up last, and he even nursed since then so I'm hoping this feeding stays down a little better. He's been sleeping in my arms most of the morning. I figure cuddling is probably about the best thing I can do for him right now. I'm hoping he feels better by tomorrow.

So hey, perfect time to update the blog, right?! Lots of stuff going on...

First things first. Riley is 7 months old!! So, of course, our attempts at 7 month pictures. These get harder to do every month!

"Mom, do we have to do this?"

(the sign says he is 7 months old...you just can't see it very well.

"Give me this sign, I want to eat it!!"

"I'm outta here. Hey, what's over there??"

"Hey mom, what's up?"

I cannot believe that my little baby boy is 7 months old already. I have no idea where the last 7 months went. I'm so proud of him in so many ways. He's such a fun baby and while I still don't feel like I've quite got the juggling of mom/wife/farm/work down yet...I think we're making progress and I wouldn't trade being a mom for anything!

As for the rest of our lives...its fall! Yep, that means harvest! So much for seeing my husband much! Hopefully he'll start running beans today-though, as is typical of our life, something's broken on the combine (hydraulic line?) so there has to be some mechanical work done first. Hopefully it will be a fairly quick fix so that they can get some beans run before the rain that is forecasted for tomorrow!!! Its been such a weird fall around here...we skipped right over October weather and went straight to the cold of November. Which is a bummer because I love fall and I feel like we sort of missed it! The leaves are changing now, which is gorgeous of course. That's one thing our area is known for, the beauty of the fall leaves amongst the hills. And I have to say that it is pretty beautiful. Sometimes I have to step back and remind myself not to just take it all for granted. Sort of like life I guess...its easy to take the blessings you have for granted and sometimes you need to step back and take a good look at your life to realize how good you have it.

So what else is going on with us? Well, we're building! In fact as I sit here, I can hear all sorts of machinery running and work going on outside. We're building two barns to house dry cows in the winter and heifers in the spring and fall (maybe ocassionally in the summer, but they're usually on pasture then). 2 or 3 years ago we built 2 feed pads so that we could have a better, "non-muddy" area to keep the dry cows in the winter. Well, like all grand plans, it didn't work out quite as well as we'd envisioned. Since it was still exposed to the elements, while it was definitely better than just having them out on grass (which results in hip-high mud, torn up pasture, torn up feeders and deep tractor tire ruts from hauling feed to them everyday), it still got fairly muddy and was still pretty labor intensive. So we are now building a barn on each feed pad. The sides will be open (or at least 3 sides, I can't remember exactly) so there will be plenty of airflow, but they'll have concrete floors and a roof over top of each-keeping out the elements and therefore keeping things cleaner, keeping the cattle cleaner and warmer, and keeping the feed dry. Altogether a good thing! Oh, and all of this SHOULD, hopefully, make things a little less labor-intensive and result in more family time for us this winter!! That is one of the things I'm the most excited about. So here's a sort of "before" picture:

This was the first winter we had the feed pads-when they were all nice and pretty :) This was a drive thru between the two feed pads, where we could dump the feed out the side of the TMR for each group of cows. See the cows eating? Yummy stuff!

This was just a few weeks ago. The feed pads after the fence has all been taken down.

Today they are just moving dirt, it'll probably be a while before there's any real exciting progress. But I'll try to take pictures as we go!!

Oh, I almost forgot about the grain bin! Grain bin is going up as we speak too! I have a picture of that, but its still on my camera. Should be up completely within a couple weeks and then we'll have grain storage on our own farm, yay! It is also going to completely dwarf the original barns we have back there. Wait till you see the pictures :)

So, like I said, lots of exciting stuff going on!

Ok, time to eat some lunch. The boy is sleeping again...and hasn't thrown up in a few hours, so YAY! :) Hope everyone's having a great week!!

Loving this

I am loving this age. I've been saying that since Riley was about 4 months old. And everytime I say it, I mean it even more. A few weeks ago I was talking to a woman in her 50s with grown kids. I was telling her, of course, how much I love the age Riley's at and how he's always doing something new and fun. I loved her response...she said that she's always felt that way with her kids, every age and stage they've gone through has been something new and each age she thinks, "oh wow, THIS is the best". She said that even now that they're all grown up she is loving it and thinking that having grown kids is the best now! I think that's a good thing to think about when you're going through the "oh, he's not a newborn anymore" "he's not a baby anymore" "he's growing up too fast!" etc. to remember that no matter what age they are, there are still so many fun and wonderful things to it. I think that just watching your kid grow up and become their own person is amazing.

So what fun things is Riley up to nowadays....well he's moving! No crawling or anything yet, but he can scoot himself all around. I'll put him down on a blanket and go in the other room for a minute, I come back and he's facing a completely different direction or he's off of the blanket entirely...and I'm not sure how he got there! :) He's rolling over a lot more, and I think it won't be long until he starts rolling to get places as he's discovered he can roll multiple times in a row and he constantly wants to roll on to his side when I'm changing him or getting him dressed. He's also started rolling over in his crib, which I thought would be a good thing because he'd roll onto his belly and maybe sleep better. But in fact, I think he rolls onto his belly accidentally when he's trying to get onto his side. He's always fallen asleep better if he can get up on his side (though I can never get him to stay on his side if I put him that way), well now he ends up on his belly and boy oh boy does that make him mad! Which I find odd, since he loves being on his belly normally. Oh and something that melts my heart daily, he smiles at me when I pick him up from the sitter! I love it!! He smiles at me when I drop him off too. Ok, really he just smiles at me and at his daddy pretty much anytime he sees us :) And he has started reaching for us too, and when I pick him up, he puts his arms around my neck like he's hugging me...its wonderful-he's still such a cuddlebug. He wants to eat ANYTHING he can get his hands on including my hair, my shirt, his feet, the tv remote, magazines, yeah anything. His toes are still the best thing going in his mind and they are in his mouth as much as possible. He's fascinated with the dog and the cats...will just stare at them no matter what they're doing. He's getting really good at sitting up and can stay up on his own for longer all the time.

Solids are going great now! Still doesn't open his mouth that much for them, but sucks them off the spoon faster and will occasionally open for it. Likes bananas, cereal and loves acorn squash. Can take or leave sweet potatoes. Not a fan of green beans though (and I can't blame him, ick!) I got him some pears at the farmers market this weekend, so that's up next! I'm making most of his food and its so easy! And cheap!

We got his 6 month pictures taken a couple of weeks ago. Kelly's cousin-in-law recently started her own photography business and did them for us. She does an amazing job, I'm so happy with the way they turned out! Here's a link to just a few of the photos. This isn't anywhere near all of them...she took over 200!!! These are just some of my favorites :) Now the tough decisions...which ones to print?!