The Cattle Are Here!

"For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills." ~ Psalm 50:10 (KJV)

In addition to growing vegetables, we also raise 5-6 beef cattle each year, and we love it!

Cattle (and animals in general) are so different from plants, and they tend to find ways to spice up our lives - like when they get out and run all over the neighboring farms and can't be found for several hours. They all seem to have personalities of their own. Some are very calm and others are skittish, some wander up and down the fence every day looking for ways out. Some are leaders and others are followers, and the list goes on. So, can you imagine now why cattle make our lives more "interesting"?

Enjoy the opportunity to take a little part in our farm through this blog!

On Tuesday, we bought 5 beef cattle from a man in southern Lancaster County, who also delivered them.

Cattle are bought/sold by the live-weight pounds. We weighed the truck with the cattle loaded on it, and after the cattle were unloaded we weighed the truck again to figured figure out how much the cattle weighed.

Their average weight was 732 lbs.

Aren't they beautiful?

The cattle were very nervous about me at first and stayed as far away as possible.

We got a whole mix of breeds this year!

The breeds are (L-R): Charolais, next two Angus/Hereford crosses, Red Angus, Hereford. There's one more steer that isn't in any of these photos because it's at another farm right now, but it's a Black Angus, and it'll be here soon.

What are you looking at?

The spinach crop this year has been slightly delayed. I planted a bed of it a couple weeks ago, and soon after it rained really hard, and when the ground dried it crusted over. Only a few plants were able to come up through the packed dirt - not even enough to be worth the space it was taking up - so I tilled it under and replanted it. Because of this, the spinach will be a little late coming in;

it'll probably be ready beginning of June.

Also, this past week, I've been trellising the peas.

The first thing I do is drive the stakes in the ground.

Secondly, I string line between the stakes, and...

...thirdly, loop it around each stake so it doesn't come loose.

Competelion...a wonderful feeling!

The onions are growing quite nicely. They're approximently 4-6 inches tall now.

The first CSA pick-up day is only about a month away! For those of you who live in Wayne, your first day is Tuesday, May 25th, and for you CSA members in Lititz the CSA will be starting Saturday, May 29th.

The produce is growing a little slower than I hoped it would be for the beginning of the CSA, but we'll have plenty as long as we get a fair amount of warm weather.

Also, remember our open house coming up on Saturday, May 22. We'd love to have you come to it, and it would be a great way to expose yourself and your children to farming.

Hope to see you in less than a month!

~ Jonathan