During the farm tour we gave last Saturday to 17 visitors, a little girl suggested to Liz that she might not be a "real" farmer because, as the girl said, "where's your barn?".  It's true.  We don't have a lot of the typical infrastructure that you see at "traditional" farms.  We will build a storage facility/barn, but when it comes to fencing, all animals are kept in with portable electric fencing.  For the cows, we use a single strand of braided wire; for the pigs, we use two strands.  Of course, the electric fencing is only a psychological barrier, as it can't possibly physically contain them.  Fortunately, they all train well and don't like messing with the fence.

One of the challenges of fencing this way is that you have to move the fence every day for the cows, always setting up a new paddock of fresh seasonal greens that the cows look forward to. We try to move at about 4:00 p.m. every day, when the grass is at its sweetest.  For the most part, it's a relatively simple chore that Liz and I have mastered well, but occasionally there are problems.  In the last two days, we've experienced this twice.

Trailer Loading

Monday was the day we had arranged to harvest our first grassfed cow.  That meant on Sunday I had to load her up and take her down to the processor.  Without a typical wooden chute and holding pen, this meant driving the trailer into the pasture and creating an opening at the electric fence.  But with 23 other cows in there, the question was how to get the one I wanted onto the trailer.  I'm pretty comfortable separating and driving the cows where I need them to go, but the chosen one didn't want to get on the trailer.  And why should she?  She's spent pretty much her entire life on the pasture and the trailer was strange to her.  So I got a paper feed bag and rattled it, hoping she would like a sweet feed treat to board the trailer. Lots of cows came running, including her, but it didn't work. The grass was more interesting to her, and given that she didn't even know what sweet feed was, this was no surprise. One hour went by. Then two.  Liz had the good idea of setting up a separate paddock, into which I drove this cow and her buddy.  Then, I backed the trailer up to that paddock and waited.   And waited.  Three hours, then four.  They kept grazing, even though they were deprived of water and I had put some water, which they could see, onto the trailer.  Finally, I grabbed a handful of sweet feed and got her to eat some out of my hand. From there, I was able to walk onto the trailer and lead her, a somewhat dangerous situation to be in.  At 10:45 p.m., I finished the job I had started at 5:00.  Almost 6 hours to get her on board.  True, I know we could have "driven" her on board, but using low stress techniques is crucial in our opinion if you're going to produce tender, flavorful beef.  We got it done but it was a long day. The good news is that the butcher says she looks fantastic.

Fencing out the creek

Oh boy, did I mess up yesterday!  We had to bring the cows back through the orchard, as our grass is growing so fast and is hip high in places.  This means we had to fence out some trees, and zig zag the fence along the creek.  Problem was, we didn't have enough step-in posts available, so I suggested to Liz that we not fence the back part, as it was a steep decline to the creek and the cows likely wouldn't go there. She agreed, but she knew better. We had this same situation a month earlier when I persuaded her to do the same, against her will, and, as she predicted, the cows promptly went down to the creek.  But yesterday we did it again, and after Liz and I let them in, we walked over to the prior paddock to pick up the posts, etc.  Walking back, we saw a cow, then two, out in an open field on the other side of the creek.  What!  I ran and looked, and sure enough, there several were down in the creek heading out.  The instincts that cows have to graze while moving is strong.  If they can find an opening, they're "programmed" to keep moving.  Of course I ran over to start driving them back, but then all hell broke loose. They all got out and were heading all over.  Liz grabbed some posts and we tried to drive them through a chute back, but they weren't going. They couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about!  We spent well over an hour herding them back, but in the end, we made a separate paddock alongside the one we had originally put them in.  We finally drove them all back in there, opened up access to the original paddock and gave them all that space.  We went up to the house, took a shower, and then went out to do normal evening chores with the chickens and turkeys.

Lessons Learned

1. I need to do a "dry run" with the next cow to be transported to get her comfortable with boarding the trailer
2. Fence out the creek, fence out the creek
3. Listen to Liz

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