No Memory Layers

March has been pretty mild at Blue Moon Farm.  Lambish as they say comin' in.   Of course that doesn't mean we haven't had a bite of cold wind chiseling at our necklines now and then.  I've been in a quandary over what to do with the eight black angus heifers we harbor here to mow our grass.  I'm concerned that their unsettled attitude when confronted with novel experiences may hinder my plans to conduct management-intensive grazing on our pastures.  The episode in the squeeze chute and headgate trying to give them a scours shot (whether I should have even given them such an injection is another whole topic to blog about soon) was quite traumatic for those cow-gals and a serious lesson in non-preparation for me.  Having tended these heifers for a fall and winter, my mind is a tangled maze of experiences, ideas and ideals, and images or "patterns" (as Douglas Hofstadter of "I am a Strange Loop might tell us http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/people/homepages/hofstadter.htm).  Most of the events I experience with these gestating heifers of mine are as novel for me as life is for them.

The heifers are supposed to be pregnant.  I didn't have them "preg" checked as experienced hands would suggest.  I considered the event in light of their skiddish behavior since arriving at this little ranch or ours.   A stranger, envision a vet,  walking up behind them one at a time, their heads in succession locked in a headgate after being encouraged to move down a pinch chute from a larger corral.  This vet staged behind the gated heifer pushes his lubricated rubber suited arm up their vagina to his shoulder, spreading their cervix with his fingers, squeezes his hand on through into the uterus and then probes around inside for a fetus the size of a golf or tennis ball depending on the time since conception.  These heifers were with the bull during some of  July, all of  August and part of September).  Why "preg" check them if they are staying with us through their calving and thereafter?  Well, my best laid plans for having cattle on this farm is not experience.  Had I a brain full of experience I could have planned at least one or two other options or outcomes for these heifers depending on how accommodating they are to our farm plan, our ability to handle them and our willingness to put up with their 'attitude'.  Sometimes, it seems, what I expect of a cows behavior and how the cow decides to behave when I present novel situations for them to react to are not similar.

I have no experience handling cattle.  Sure I was around many cows in Montana for the twenty-some years I lived there, but it was not my job to handle them; make them do something I wanted them to do.  The difference is huge between seeing a cow up close and personal and herding, manouvering or driving cows into places or situations in order to handle them or count them or brand, ear-tag, castrate, you name it, them.

This tangled image I'm laying out has a purpose or lesson to share.  Farmers in America today are having a crisis in so many ways financially, technically, and personally.  There are not many farmers in my area with young families.  Most farmers near me mom and pop farmers that cannot afford to split the farm so their children can each go into farming on their own.   In fact, because of modern monster-truck sized machines to do the work on today's farms most or all of the kids have split for college degrees and 'real' jobs in the American economy far away from the farms they grew up on.  So who's going to take over these farms?  Not the kids unless they are failing miserable at the American Dream and maybe those kids are not the right one's to run a farm anyway.  So, some corporation is going to buy out Mom and Pop and the farm will be run by 'economists' who hire left over locals to "manage" the corporations "mega-industrial engineering project" that used to be called a farm.  There is much lost when farm parents die and the brightest of the kids leave the farm for other occupations.  The leftovers in rural areas might not be able to take over or be hired by corporations to serve their agendas with the land.  A city kid like me doesn't bring any knowledge of the particular land at stake.  So who's going to mind the henhouse of the future.  Colleges seem to be training managers for corporate headquarters.  I think we've seen the corporate, mega-industrial "farming" approach and have our doubts finally taking some action for change.  But, "Who?", I ask remains unanswered.  Meanwhile, the memory of the land slips away like the shipload of World War II vets they all were.

Am I driving you nuts yet?  Well, here's my point.  I wish I had grown up on a farm so I understood cow  behavior better:  What to expect from cows under even normal situations; how to respond when my heifers start acting up like teenagers getting their cellphones taken away for an hour of 'time-out' or some such.  This whole dream I have of a cow-calf operation managed as an intensive grazing management scheme;  feeding them sunshine via green pasture and finishing their little beeves on grass is pretty easy on paper.  But, in fact, without the experiences of a child growing up on a farm under the mentoring of farmed honed parents, I'm a bit at a loss to find anything in my braincase that is of much help other than intuition and imagined experience from volumes of reading on the subject of grass farming with cattle.

I used to worry about who would be growing my food when I got old.  Then, Lyn and I decided to find a farm and grow own food and some for our community.  We've struggled through the learning process of raising chickens for meat and eggs and good humor.  We've hutched rabbits with the plan of enjoying raising rabbits for meat and entertainment (albeit, entertainment at a very subdued level, since rabbits are pretty much lumps in the corners of their cages most the time).  We've learned the in and outs of cutting our own firewood to heat our little farmhouse through winters "up north".   And, along with our aging neighbors,  some retired, some going to retire Lyn and I have weathered the winters in Northwestern Minnesota.  Yet, we're missing so much memory of how dad used to do it when we were kids.  Why?  Because dad was not a farmer even though we were kids.  And dad showed us lots of things we need to know to live, but the ins and outs of handling cattle is not one of them.  So, we must learn those tricks of the trade the hard way; one stupid mistake at a time.  Unfortunately, my technical training in biology, especially wildlife behavior, warns me that too many mistakes with these heifers and they will become unwilling to go into situations where they have experienced to much mental trauma from my mis-handlings.  In other words, if they were timid when I got them I could make them wild again by not knowing how to condition them for upcoming novel experiences.  Repeated 'bad' experiences will set me up with cows that run from anything unusual.  And hyper cows are not herded well from one small pasture paddock to the next, especially the small half-acre or so sized ones this little farm is going to provide.

Oh, crap, this turns out to be harder than the reading I've done suggested,  more complex than I planned,  more demanding than I could have imagined.  So, why are we trading in our old farmers for college educated industrial corporate farm managers?  Seems to me its a perfect way to justify the continued direction high tech farming is headed.  Huge machines so one person can farm three thousands acres or a few folks can run thousands of cows on industrial milking platforms or in concrete feedlots.  Genetic altered seeds so we can grow exactly what we want so exactly that it doesn't take any experience to make a perfect 200 bushels per acre.

Sure I'd like some simple answers to my head scratching here, but this is not a short story.  I'm feeling like this farming adventure takes years of ups and downs, ins and outs, shakes, rattles and rolls before the haze clears and common sense and experience take over.  Heck, I'm in my first year at this.  Guess I better just sit back, buckle up and hope the Toyota ranch I'm driving doesn't accelerate out of control.

OK, sun's out for a couple of late March days.  Cows are waiting for their next conditioning sessions with the novice herdsman, a pocket full of alfalfa cubes and some novel activities like following me around this place they need to experience.  I've got wood to split too.  Let's talk about scours (that's diarrhea in cows) next time.  We've all had personal experience with diarrhea, right?  So I know you'll relate somehow.

I saw one of the heifers take a bite of new grass today.  Keep it up sun I can't keep these heifers on hay forever.