Winter 2021 Update

  It's been a fairly mild winter overall in central Maine. Though we've had some snowstorms and have recently had cold weather hovering around zero and negative wind chills, it's since gotten back to average temps.  The cattle are happy with their first winter having the new shelter. They still prefer being out in the sunlight even on cold days, laying on top of waste hay in the snow near their feed. But at night they file back to their shelter. Of course anytime the winds come they happily hunker down in there to chew their cud. 
We've been feeding mostly all baleage this winter. We'll offer hay during sustained cold temps but until then the cattle really prefer the baleage. It's good quality certified organic feed and keeps them happy and healthy. 
They're currently being fed in our Northeastern & Southeastern paddocks in some areas that have low production during the growing season. 
 We left out the fall update because we were pretty immersed in the preperation of the arrival of our baby boy who was born in November. But the fall was a nice pleasant one weather-wise. Our herd number has decreased so we had plenty of grass for fall grazing, despite the dry summer. 
 In other homesteading news, we had a great group of chickens this last summer that would forage out a good distance in the pastures and did great on grass and veggie scraps from the garden. We had one fox kill which is not bad for free range birds. They were slaughtered in the fall for our freezer and dressed out at a good size.
The bees did well and we got a nice honey harvest. The garden ended up producing a good amount of garlic, onions and potatoes, plenty for storage for use throughout the winter and spring. Peppers, asparagus and sweet corn did well and tomatoes, peppers and pumpkins did ok.  The chickens ended up getting alot of green beans in their diet as we over planted those and couldn't keep up! The garlic was planted in the fall just in the nick of time. We got a bunch of seaweed harvested by a friend given to us so when putting the aspargus to bed for the winter this year, we top dressed with the seaweed and compost. 
We just sold out of our available beef for Winter/Spring 2021. We will have beef available again in late summer/early fall of 2021 so contact us now to reserve your quarter or half share. 

The herd is happy to be out of the blustery wind

Getting in some late season grazing before the snow flies

Curious cow on a frosty morning

Our newest little rancher born 11/10/20