Winter Ranch Update

I love doing these little ranch updates! If for no other reason, then being able to look back myself and see where we were last year. Instead of a tough poultry season last year, we had the fire in the cover crop we had for the cattle, after the army worms destroyed the first round. I think the lesson from that is that there will always be some problem.

So, the question becomes, how do you handle the problems? Do you find solutions and answers. Or do you give up and throw your sucker in the dirt and pout. I can tell you it’s incredibly tempting to give up, but that just is not in us. Just like last year when we didn’t give up after the army worms. We are going to take the lessons 2022 has served us and use those to do better in 2023.

Cameron and I have had extensive conversations about our goals and what we want to 2023 to look like and how we want to spend our time. Even though the disappointment of the poultry is still pretty fresh, we have decided to go ahead and plan to raise them again next year. Now wiser, and more educated in what poultry nutrition should be and what to look out for. So, while there will likely be another hurdle thrown at us next year, we can be sure it won’t be that one.

A bigger lesson that I am bringing into 2023 is to go with our gut and to do more research immediately when something doesn’t seem right. I tried the good ol google but it didn’t have my answers. All it would have taken was 1 phone call to find out what was the problem if we had thought sooner to reach out other experts instead of relying on the feed mill to know everything. So, I am definitely going to keep that in mind and look out how to be more proactive to problems in the future. Who knows, maybe this small issue in 2022 will save us from a major issue one day!

Beyond that, the ranch is a little quieter these days with the lack of poultry. It is just cows, calves, feeder steers, pigs, and horses to take care of. Almost seems like a vacation ha! Unfortunately, with the dry fall and summer, we are feeding much more hay than we planned, and we are still working through how we are going to come through this year the best that we can.

There is grass in our pastures thankfully because of the rotational grazing. However, there isn’t enough to keep the cows all winter, so for now we are feeding on a patch of pasture that needs the organic matter of the hay and manure and giving what grass there is every little opportunity to grow. It is amazing, the few nicer days we have had it has grown a little at a time. The soil only needs to be above 40 for our cool season grasses to grow and because of the ground cover we left in the summer, it protects the soil from freezing quite as fast.

There is no telling the future, but we know God is in control and that keeps us focused on today!