We’ve been offline. No Internet for us for the last couple months. We’ve taken a step back in time and we have reconnected with the timeless. Up early in the morning: milking cows, moving cows to their daytime paddock, working with the neighbors, clearing pasture, caring for our calves, building fences, tending to the garden, going to market, raising a child, these are all responsibilities that people have done throughout the ages. I will speak for myself here: the last 3 months are the hardest I have ever worked. Without the time for distraction, I can only relate to my experience as an athletic endurance event. There is no end in sight, but Kate, Adalyn, and I have, and we must continue to keep on trucking. Work, work, working away…we are really doing it. We’ve almost become the hard-worn old timers of the recent Madison County past. There is no doubt about it, those folks knew how to work. All day. Everyday. They are our role models. I hear the stories from our neighbor, about how the Old-timers such as Jack Boone, Collie Payne, and Grandpa Buckner would work every other man into the ground. That is what it takes to work this rugged ground. And at the end of many lives that lived here, this steep and worn terrain will wear you down, even the strongest. At the end of my days and almost everyday, I feel a tiredness that overwhelms me to sleep instantly, and I am lucky if I can make it back home before that happens.
Grass Farmers
Our lives have become rooted in not only the land but the seasons as well. When spring hit this year I’d never been hit so hard with the change. In part, this is because our cows are grass-fed. Feeding milk cows on fresh grass is a very difficult game to play. Cows in milk need to eat an overwhelming amount of premium grass. Nothing makes me happier then putting our cows on a fresh paddock. And I am constantly surprised at just how quickly they can eat every bit of it, and then leave the inedible weeds and woody already-seeded grass behind. Then I stare into the face of more work. That field now needs to be mowed of the weeds and a new fence and paddock need to be prepared. The cycle is never ending. The game is never over. It can only be improved. It takes a sizable amount of grassland and fence upkeep, cow management and shepherding.
We are milking more cows than ever before. 5 cows is quite a handful. Pun-intended. Since now we are raising a baby that really does double the workload. Kate and I, for the past few years, have milked together, and had help from Geoff and Andy, but this year, I don’t even want to think about how many hours I spent milking by hand in April, May and June. Hours and Hours, about 7 hours a day, squeezing teats. You could find Kate or me down in the milk parlor until 11 at night, still squeezing, half asleep, grumpy and ready for the day to be over.
Hand vs. machine
Late night after late night of milking began to wear me down. My hands began to give out. I began to feel old waking up each morning. One late night, coming up from the milk parlor, I told Kate I just couldn’t do it anymore. That was a helpful realization. Within 2 weeks, we had our Nu Pulse milking machine.
It is an end of an era. After 7 years of hand milking, I’d say we are the best hand-milking milkmaids in Western North Carolina. If there is anyone who thinks different, please contact us.
I like our machine. Despite Kate and I being the best hand milkers around, you cannot milk out a cow like a machine. I’m telling you, that machine makes their bag look like a sundried raisin. The cows don’t seem to mind either. It’s a real win-win.
Rain
We have been fortunate to have rain in June and July. May was dry, really dry. That got me very worried that the rest of the year was going to turn our land into a desert which would force us out of our profession, but that didn’t happen. The rain is pouring down now as I write this and reflect. We can count on the rain these days. We can count on the sun as well. With the perfect combo of rain and sun, it feeds our herd, which in turn feeds us. We live under a sky of unpredictability.
Our Oak Savannah Grazing Experiment
How to improve the fertility of our land and maintain the health of our herd is a major concern for us. Holistic models are not so common. Others advice needs to be screened and analyzed for impurities and relativity. If our cows could only talk…I feel that they could tell us everything we need to know to improve. They could educate our dim-witted human race. Typically, we would add conventional fertilizer to our pasture but the ammonium will harden our ground, the phosphorous will acidify our soil, the nitrogen will eventually be washed away. We could spray crossbow to knock out the inedible and invasive but the herbicide would leach into our springs and ground water, cause cow infertility, and the toxic stuff would get into the milk. We can pre-drill grass seed and add limestone which we will do, but that takes money, resources, connections, and the borrowing/renting of equipment. It’s all work and time, and an observation of what works in the most natural way. If only cows could talk!
Pastures in a sense, are not the natural ecosystem for these hills. It takes daily input to keep the pasture as pasture. I’ll tell you this… don’t do anything to your pasture, no grazing or mowing, and the cows won’t like it next year. A pile of brush! Rosebushes, ironweed, wing stem, blackberries, etc will begin to dominate, shading the grass and creating a briar barrier that makes the land impenetrable. The cows much prefer the shorter grass, where they can see, and munch on the fresh delectables, and not get their teats cut with every step.
Now, if you graze too much, which is hard not to do when your cows are eating as much as ours do, making buckets of milk each day, the grass becomes too low and not as prevalent.
We don’t have short-term answers for increasing the fertility of our landscape but we do have an experimental solution for the long-term:
We want to change the ecosystem.
We are adding trees, and hundreds of them, planted on contour with the hills. We are digging a swell above the trees to catch the rain runoff and water the trees. The trees will change the ecosystem to more of a savannah: a mixture of grass, bushes, and trees. The trees are both fruit and nut, intended to feed, shade, retain water and nutrients, and create a more practical ecosystem for our landscape and a more healthy dynamic below ground world. The root system of trees will soften and aerate the soil, accumulate, disperse and collect rain and nutrients, and lastly that mychorrizal world will become that much more healthy.
Oxen experiment
Chuck and Charley are our oxen. We are training them to be our team. I’m learning to be a teamster. I almost can’t wait for them to be yoked up pulling a locust fence post out of the forest. Right now, we are learning the basics, “Get up” and “Whoa.” Oxen have their place in history and I believe they will have their place on our farm too.
Going to market
We are at market for the first time. You can find us at the West Asheville tailgate market on Tuesday and the UNCA market on Saturday every other week for now. It’s all growing pains for us. It’s been a hard working year. I believe it will benefit us, when and if things settle down.
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