Snow has arrived albeit very little considering how much Buffalo has had fall on them. This forces the cows to get all of their daily feed intake from dry hay. Here are a few pictures of what that looks like on our farm.

This past Tuesday Annika had surgery to have a VNS implant. VNS stands for vagal nerve stimulator. The goal of this device is to interrupt the seizures either before they occur or during. We had to be at the hospital at 6 am and luckily the weather was perfect for driving that morning. The surgery went very well, and we were home by 3 pm.

Throughout the day the wind started picking up quite severely to the point where outages were happening all over. As I was feeding the sheep some hay that evening, I looked across the fields just as the power went out at the farm and all the other houses on the road. Fortunately, we have a generator that is powered by a tractor. Dad and I donned our headlamps and hooked everything up to power up the premises! It was a long day, but everything went about as well as one could want. 

Today I took the day off from my day job as an electrician to take my daughter Annika to Buffalo Childrens Hospital for her pre-op appointment. She is having surgery next Tuesday for a VNS (vagal nerve stimulator). Hopefully this device will stop her from having so many seizures. We got home by 12:30 so I changed into my barn clothes and along with my 4-year-old son William we went to the farm to finish repairing the manure spreader. The beaters that send the manure out of the spreader were completely destroyed from years of use and so I had a new set built by Poor Mans' Repair. My Dad and I did the heavy part of the install over the weekend leaving just some small stuff to finish bolting on it today. After about an hour and a half of work William and I loaded it up and tested it out. all went well and we had just enough time to spread three loads of manure. Very good day!

In the beginning of each year it's important for us to take inventory of our feed and livestock. We need this for our paperwork for the bank as well as for us to start planning on whether or not we need to keep our eyes open for hay to buy. As of today we are sitting on 164 round bales.

Since the inception of this website, I have yet to take the time to do any sort of interaction with it or our customers other than face to face. This year I'd like to change that. Our website needs a drastic update because our herd has changed quite a lot since we sold the milking cows in June of 2021. Currently the herd is made up of mostly Angus and Angus cross cattle along with a couple Simmental, Herford and Pinzguaer. The herd is 100 percent grass fed and grass finished. Grazing is my passion, it's the only way I want to farm livestock. I believe in the health benefits it affords the animals, land, water and the people who eat them. Along the way this year I want to share with you pictures of the cattle, sheep and chickens grazing from January to December. Currently the animals are getting most of their daily intake from stored dry hay, but they have unlimited access to different paddocks. The cows are grazing left over corn stalks every day and the sheep are working over the pastures and trimming the brush along the fence lines. The meat chickens won't arrive until spring so there won't be any pictures of them for a while. To wrap this up, I hope to bring to our customers and whoever else is reading this on a long-distance farm tour that educates and conveys our passion for the symbiotic relationship people, animals and land have together. Let's go!