Daybreak revealed my upper lot fence resting on its side. There was a little wind, but mostly it just got tired. I remember when Dad and I built this fence.
Dad always pointed out how wooden fence posts rot off at ground level. The wood above the ground is fine and the wood below the ground is fine, but right at ground level and slightly below is where the biological activity is highest.
This is why I try to always used treated or creosote posts for my fencing, but don’t use treated wood for the horizontal boards. If the wood is off the ground and nothing is chewing on it, it will outlast the posts holding it up.
In our family, Santa was Mom. She always made sure there were presents under the tree Christmas morning and our stockings were filled with chocolate, candy canes, and small toys that fit in the stocking.
But sometimes we could tell that Dad got in on the gift giving. “Some assembly required” usually involved Dad. One of my fondest Christmas memories is the basketball court Dad built for me.
A wooden backboard with metal rim mounted on the inside wall of the barn with six sheets of plywood screwed to the floor to make a good surface to dribble on. I received a basketball under the tree and then was told to go to the barn to do chores. There I discovered my court.
Because its out of the weather, its aged remarkably well. The only thing I’ve replaced is the net. I don’t keep the court swept clean like I used to, but now I’m shooting hoops with Romeo, just like Dad and I did.
Our friend Derek gave us some Black Currant plants at market Saturday, November 8th. Even though I was tired after market, I got them in the ground, because the weather was expected to change. And change it did, with falling temps, wind, and snow. Feels like winter.
Our fall litters are off to a good start. The white sow farrowed 15 and still has 14 live, snug in the straw.
We practice long lactations at Curiousfarmer. This sow was bred by our dark red boar, 9 weeks after farrowing, while still lactating.
This is highly unusual for today’s swine, but typical for the beef cow. Sometimes we have to look at other species to help us think outside the box. I’m often filled with wonder as I continue this journey away from conventional agriculture.
Above is the #75 cow who we’ve been following in this blog since she was a calf. She’s always photogenic.
Below is a well put together 1st calf heifer. I love her small udder. You need small udders that will outlast the cow.
The calves continue to grow, but I’m not sure they will be bigger than last year’s calves, which is counterintuitive, as last year was dry and this year was wet. On a farm with adequate forage, cattle will do better on a dry year, as every bite of forage contains more nutrients compared to forage on a wet year. When you’re consuming dozens of pounds of forage per day, the amount of moisture in the forage makes a big difference.
We’re having a wet, hot, Wisconsin summer. With several multi-inch rain events and less pigs this year, my pig pasture is getting away on me. So I gave it a quick rotation with the cattle.
I’m super happy with Teddy, my South Poll bull. He’s in the photo below, after six weeks of breeding. He gained weight during the breeding season.
Teddy’s super chill, yet attentive to his heifers. Look at how much slicker his hair coat is compared to the heifers in the top photo. I’m planning to keep daughters out of Teddy and hoping they have his good attributes.
My youngest sister caught this photo of sunset overlooking our hay field. All three sisters and most of their kids made it home for the fourth and we had a nice family gathering. Below is some of the family in front of Vicente’s corn for our traditional fourth of July corn photo.
After a dry winter/spring, the sky spigot turned on and we are green! Nothing ruins a drought like rain.
We turned out the big bulls June 27th and the yearling bulls July 3rd. Below is a photo of two of the big bulls following a cow and a few calves. This pasture was rested eight weeks and rebounded nicely after spring grazing.
She’s a great example of the logic only humans bring to the table, as out of our herd of over 100 Red Angus cows, she’s the only one who’s registered Red Angus.
We continue to open up a little space on our farm for interesting persons to garden. Besides Isabel, three other families are gardening in our good soil.
Malcom Gladwell says, “If you find an interesting person, it means they are part of an interesting group.”
It’s been a dry spring and unseasonably warm. We welcomed over an inch of rain last night though, and cooler temperatures.
We’re wrapping up calving, which has gone well, and planning to make some 1st cutting hay on acres we didn’t graze.
I don’t know that “hindsight is 20/20,” but I do think we work hard to understand our life. The past is neat, because we’ve reduced it to a story. What often isn’t talked about and largely forgotten after the fact, is the unsettled feeling we have when trying to make a decision in the present.
You look at anyone who’s been doing something for awhile and its easy to think that he or she has it all figured out, but if we’re being honest, I don’t think we ever have it all figured out. Whatever we’re doing in life, there’s going to be some level of uncertainty.
I think the important thing is to continue to make decisions, implement, observe and evaluate results, then reconfigure and make more decisions. Try not to beat yourself up about the decisions that didn’t work well. Did you learn something?
I was faced with making bull buying decisions after we got rid of half our herd bulls last fall. I knew I had time, we don’t turn our bulls out until the fourth of July, but I also knew I needed to work on this when I had more time during our slower winter season.
We had used four older bulls on our cows and two yearling bulls on our heifers. After culling, we were left with one older bull and the two yearlings. So I could add bulls to breed my cows or I could move my yearlings up to breed the cows as two year olds and buy younger bulls for my heifers. I figured I only needed to purchase two.
I got a line on a couple coming two year old Black Angus bulls from a local breeder friend of mine. They were priced right and big enough to use on cows. I drove south of town and took a Ranger ride with Matt and checked them out.
They were good bulls and would make good calves for me. I planned to use them as a terminal cross, selling all their offspring as feeders. But I wasn’t 100% sure of their disposition.
I asked Matt if I could show them to Isabel, that’s one of the benefits of buying bulls close to home, easier to observe, and we went back to the pasture they were in and looked at them again. Without Matt and the Ranger, their disposition was a little worse, so we decided we would keep looking. This was October, so we had time to be choosy. If it had been June, we would have purchased them and probably been happy.
I visited a Red Angus herd in southern Iowa and determined most of his cattle were too related to my own. I’m still glad I took the time to see his cattle as you always learn something when visiting with other farmers and ranchers. His bulls were my last best shot for bigger bulls to breed my cows.
I shifted my focus to look for bull calves to breed to my heifers, planning to use last year’s yearling bulls to breed my cows. I planned a trip to Missouri to visit a couple South Poll herds, but couldn’t make our schedule work. I watched a couple of Pharo Cattle Company bull sales online. I was interested in PCC’s Nebraska sale, but again couldn’t make our schedule work to visit the sale in person. I really didn’t want to buy a bull sight unseen.
But then I got an email from Kit Pharo saying they were waiving the delivery fee for the Red Angus bulls. I could buy a Red Angus bull online and have it delivered to Monticello Iowa, only an hour and a half from my farm. This was too good of a deal to pass up. I marked up my catalog and prepared to bid.
The day of the sale came and I bid on 26 bulls, but stuck to my budget of $5000. I guess I’m too cheap, as I didn’t get one. I was disappointed, but I knew I still had time, so I wasn’t panicking yet.
I visited Matt’s herd again to look at his weaned calves. Matt pointed out a bull calf whose birthweight was in the 50s and whose EPDs for calving ease and birthweight were in the top 1% of the Angus breed. Furthermore, the calf and his dam both had a gentle disposition. Disposition and Calving Ease are my top two traits, so I only needed a day to think about it and pulled the trigger and picked him up so I could grow him slowly.
Now I relaxed, as I had just enough bulls if I didn’t find another one, but I kept looking. The Missouri South Poll Association had a sale. I watched it online. The best cattle in the sale in my opinion came from Sassafras Valley Ranch. This was one of the farms I wanted to visit in Missouri.
I contacted Bruce Shanks, the owner of Sassafras Valley Ranch in February and he told me he had a South Poll bull calf which fit my criteria. I decided to take a flier on a South Poll bull, sight unseen, and met Bruce with my truck and trailer in Southern Iowa, saving me about six hours of driving. I’m super happy with this bull’s disposition and look forward to witnessing his progeny’s calving ease next spring.
And now we are nearly three weeks into our calving season. The yearling bulls I used last year did an excellent job breeding the heifers. Fifteen out of 23 heifers have calved, with four of them looking close. It looks like four heifers didn’t breed, as I experimented with a shorter 45 day breeding season. This is perfect for my grass-fed beef needs, so I’m super happy with that decision.
And I’m happy we are moving these bulls to breed cows this year, as their calves have been too large for my liking to breed again to heifers. I guess I would still call them calving ease though, as we haven’t had to pull any calves.
So we’re all squared away for this coming breeding season and excited to see the results in a year or so, but if you had told me a year ago that I would be breeding my heifers to a Black Angus and a South Poll I would have been surprised. Farming, just like life, is a journey.
2025’s heifers and calves are pictured in these two photos.
Carolyn Nation asked to interview me for the Stockman Grass Farmer podcast. I was honored she wanted to talk with me. I’ve been working with Carolyn for a couple years, submitting articles to SGF, but the podcast was our first time talking.
Posted by Curiousfarmer 
Curiousfarmer 