Starting the week of March 23 we will start harvesting chickens from the farm. We now have eggs in the incubator, chicks in the brooder, small chickens in the open-ended hoop houses and as soon as the weather stays permanently warm, we will begin to move chickens into the open-sided "sleds". Yes, everything's coming up chickens!
A few new cows with grass-based genetics have joined our herd from a totally grass-based farm in Oklahoma: Ron Crain's Wagon Creek Farm. Mike did experience some excitement on the 6-hour return trip back to Texas, though. Sometime after dark he had called on his cell phone to tell me he was only 30 minutes away from home but had been made to detour off of the state highway he was traveling because a serious auto accident had shut the highway down. He was now traveling on an unfamiliar maze of tiny county roads. He asked if I could help him find his way back to the main highway as he did not have his county road map with him. No, he did not remember the number of the county road by which he had left the highway. So there he was, left to fend for himself, driving in the dark, with a trailer full of big, tired, thirsty animals on unfamiliar rural roads. No one who has not lived in the country can appreciate the thrill of traveling at night on roads that can rapidly change from oil dirt, to gravel, to mud, or worse, flooded. Did I mention another storm was heading our way? I was never so glad as to see Mike that evening when he finally arrived home. We eased the cows into a makeshift paddock for the night until man and beast could acquaint themselves better by daylight.