New life

a brand new baby is new life on the farm

It’s that time of year, fall calving season has started! We are anxiously waiting and watching for all the new babies to arrive. It’s an exciting time to see if the planned matings will bring heifers as hoped, and to see the much anticipated new life running and playing on the farm.

I sat in the pasture and watched a birth this week. I’ve seen it before many times but this time God spoke as I watched and anticipated the arrival. I haven’t written in a while. Life has been extremely busy since late spring and most weeks I’ve barely gotten the have to’s done. My “real” jobs have had to come first and even some of them have lacked due to just not enough time. So for Him to speak and say, “Write this” was long overdue!

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Chasing “New”

chasing new heifers

It’s breeding season on the farm and we are in full swing! We have been super busy with cattle breeding. It’s always fun to plan for the next year’s calf crop, but it is also a little stressful! Should we or shouldn’t? That is always the question. Who to breed who to? What bull should we use? It also seems that we, along with every other cattle breeder, are always chasing new bulls. Who’s the next “great” bull? Who’s new?

We put a lot of time and homework into choosing the “right” bull to breed to each cow. It takes a lot of planning and we try to have a wide variety. It does always seem like we find ourselves chasing new bulls, new pedigrees and trying to make something great happen. This year we had a couple of different options and some of those made us stop and really think. One of the items we like to look at is progeny. What do past calves of the animal look like? Are there a lot of calves registered to a particular bull? If there aren’t, it makes you wonder why not?

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Be Different…Be the Gray Brahman

Can you see the one gray one?

We look at cattle, a lot! We look at cattle everyday, really. Somedays, husband and I will just jump on the four-wheeler or side-by-side in the afternoon, and ride through the cattle for relaxation. I know, it’s weird. We talk about our day or whatever is coming up; sometimes we talk about the cows. We make decisions on who should go and who should stay. It’s our time together. Yesterday, we did this as a wind-down from a full weekend and on our way back to the house, I asked him to stop the buggy so I could get out and take a few pictures.

Like a lot of other times, I knew there was a Word brewing in my spirit. I looked at the pasture that was overloaded with cattle. We have brought home the entire herd from the winter pastures. All of the cattle are here at home while the winter grass is dying and the summer grass is trying to take off. There are a LOT of cows all together and it is pretty unusual for us to have most of them all in one pen.

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