Apple Harvest & Processing 2024

 The apple harvest was another success, and lots of work.  We filled 3.5 crates and could have filled another but ran out of gas.  Well, the last tree was mostly too small to deal with because we didn't thin them out as we should have.  This winter will be pruning and getting better prepared for next year's work.

We washed, crushed, and pressed apples over three days to finish with 105 gallons of juice.  We canned 45 gallons of straight apple juice and started 60 gallons fermenting in our big carboys.  We've been so busy and have had tons going on so canning apple sauce and dehydrating apples didn't happen this year, just too much right now.  Hopefully, next year we'll be prepared for some canning and dehydrating.  Overall though, it's been another good apple year for us!

Honey Harvest 2024

This year we harvested 144 lbs of honey from four of our seven hives, which is about 96 pints.  It's interesting how different each year's harvest is in quantity, color, and consistency. Three of the hives are new, so we chose not to harvest from them, rather let them build up their colony in prep for next year.

This year's harvest appears runnier than previous years and I wonder if that was influenced by the heavier spring rains, since the sugar content in the pollen dictates the consistency and color of the honey. I found a great video on YouTube that explains why some honey is thicker than others if you're interested.

 Personally, I prefer the natural state it comes when we harvest and don't mind if some is runnier than others, so I doubt we'll ever attempt to set the honey by adding a set starter.  But never say never, we shall see.

This year we've decided to move our hives, so after we pulled the honey supers I setup two new areas along our southern pasture property line, which is closer to a hazelnut orchard and blackberries.  It will be interesting to see how, if any, changes are seen in our honey production or health of the hives.  Our old setup was out in the open sun more, so I had some makeshift shade, but the new location has trees. It's a much nicer setup and we're hopeful it will be better.

Once we have all the hives moved it will be time to winterize, quilt boxes and candy boards will go on top of the hives to help them regulate moisture and provide resources for the winter since we took most of their honey stores. We'll post some pics after that's all done.

Hay Harvest 2024

 

This year's hay harvest was better than expected, we ended up with 500 bales from the approximate 15 acres we cut and baled.  We didn't have the money to fertilize or seed last fall or this spring, so our expectations were low on how much hay we'd actually produce.  

The spring rains kept us out of the field a little longer than the past few years, so we didn't start cutting until the 2nd week of June, when normally we'd have been done by then.  The extra rain helped with production, but hampered harvest a little as we had a small storm front roll through catching us with bales on the ground still.  We had put up about half of our harvest in the barn when the remaining bales in field got rained on.  We had to wait a week while the bales dried before we could start bucking again.  We turned each bale over by hand to ensure they dried and wouldn't mold on us.  Thankfully, the sun cooperated and our bales dried and we got the remainder put up.

We also shared about 50-75 bales with a neighbor that's helped us buck hay in the past.  They feed a few steers on their pasture and could use the feed to help with growing out their beef.

Bale Count

John Deere 224WT Baler in action

Another hay season in the books, our baler held up and we managed to buck all the hay off the field.  We did lose our hay rake just before finish the last bit of field.  One of it's rake arm bears burned out, so now we've got to work on replacing or repairing the rake before next spring.  There's always something.

Our Pork Experience - Leveling Up

Back in 2017, one of our first homesteading adventures was buying four piglets, aka bacon seeds, to raise our own pork.  We decided on pigs as they don't require a lot of space to grow out, and are ready for slaughter in six months.  So, it's a relatively quick turnaround time for meat in your freezer.  We also had an old cow pole barn we were able to easily convert a portion into a covered run, and with a few hog panels made a nice attached outdoor area for them too, giving them plenty of space.

As newbies we ordered a ton of feed, in bags from a feed store, thinking we were getting a good price and keeping our costs down.  Little did we know there were other options in the area where we could have purchased a 1-ton tote of grower feed for half the price we paid for our bagged feed.  That was one of our first mistakes, the 2nd mistake was the place we chose to process our pigs.  We asked around and got good references for a slaughter/processing business, but little did we know the great references for the place apparently created a bit more demand for their services than they could handle.  We delivered our pigs to the slaughter house and quickly learned after slaughter our pigs got set aside because one of their bigger clients had a priority order.  Poor communication with our cut orders, lots of mistakes, and bacon missing from one of our customer's orders really had us bummed.  They found the bacon in the freezer, but their smoker schedule was booked so our customer didn't get their bacon for another month.  The entire experience had us questioning our decision to raise our own pork and motivated us to look for another processor to take care of our beef.

Thankfully we discovered a mobile slaughter operation for our steer, Farmer's Helper, and they've been doing such excellent work for us that it gave us new motivation to try raising pigs again.  This time we purchased just three bacon seeds, Berkshire-Yorkshire crosses, and built a small hog hut and setup a pig run in the area we've been trying to get a garden established.  We're hoping the pig manure is going to give us the fertilizer component our garden area needs, a mutual benefit from raising pigs.  Unfortunately, COVID had an impact on the meat processing industry which had our small mobile slaughter operation booked out farther than our six month finishing period, so we had to settle on nine months before we process.  We were worried about the cost vs benefit of growing the pigs out three more months, but it all worked out.  Our pigs finished out nicely and the processing job Farmer's Helper did for us was awesome.  The pork is fantastic!

We're getting three or four more piglets this spring and our next adventure is slaughtering and processing our own pig!  We'll continue to use Farmer's Helper for our customer's processing, but we're gearing up for the big DIY pork!

  

Early Spring Honey Harvest

Last fall we had one new hive of bees we started in the Spring that produced like gangbusters!  We harvested nearly 36 lbs of honey in the fall and we left a frame partially full of honey for them to over-winter with, but unfortunately the hive didn't survive.  It's our second hive loss in two years, and as new bee keepers it's been disappointing and somewhat discouraging for sure.  

Our first hive did well its first year, and over-wintered successfully.  However, in the Spring the hive decided they needed a new queen and she apparently didn't like our setup so she swarmed with the colony.  We didn't actually realize this until after the fact because we weren't watching the hive well enough to see that they were producing a new queen.  We might have been able to prevent the swarming had we watched more closely.

Our second hive didn't survive Winter because I left too many frames on the hive and they couldn't stay warm.  We should have winterized the hive better and removed another frame or two to consolidate the hive.  Frustrating to say the least, and a costly learning experience.  We haven't given up though.

Another thing we learned from this last experience is that it's a good idea to have some honey harvest for the Spring rather than sell or use it all in the Fall.  We'll see if we can work that into our normal harvesting practice.

This past weekend, we harvested about 25 lbs of honey from the frames that were left behind.  We'll clean and prep the foundations and frames for two new packages of bees for hives we're starting back up this Spring.  Fingers crossed we improve our bee keeping skills to maintain some hives for a least a few years successfully for a change. 

Fresh Beef

We've harvested our second steer on the farm on April 1st (522 lbs hanging weight), we're working on getting into a cycle of harvesting two steers a year, one approximately every six months.  We're selling half of the steer, which helps us cover our processing costs, and utilizing the other half for ourselves and extended family.  This time our cut order included a prime rib roast and ~5 lbs of jerky slices to make ourselves.

We use Farmer's Helper out of Harrisburg, Oregon for mobile slaughter and processing.  They're simply the best to work with in our opinion; they're reliable, honest, work quickly, and do an excellent job with the cut-n-wrap.  Mobile slaughter allows the steer to be dispatched without stress of being hauled in a trailer somewhere, and we can be there when it goes down. 

How do we finish our beef?  Well, we don't grain finish since we prefer leaner beef and a healthier meat product.  In our opinion grass fed is simply better for the steer and our diet.  We get our hay locally from a nearby farmer, so the grass fields they harvest are nearby to our own pastures where our beef graze on spring grass.  We know what's in the bales and how the hay was grown.

We also harvest at 18 months regardless of steer size, it's about the quality of the meat rather than quantity.  We're not in the production beef cattle ranching business, we're simply homesteaders producing our own meat the best we can.

Our next steer harvest will be in December on the 2nd, and we'll have a half beef to sell.  It sells by hanging weight per pound, plus processing fees (kill fee and sort fee, cut-n-wrap we include in our price per lb).  As an example, a 1/4 beef from steer of 506 lbs hanging weight would cost $443.70 (126.5 lbs x $3.30/lb + $16.25 kill fee + $10 sort fee).  The actual amount of meat from the 1/4 will be around 100 lbs (less the trimmings).  Let us know if you're interested in a 1/2 or 1/4, if available.

Why Our Own Beef And Do We Make Money?

Anyone that spends any time around us gets to hear about our cows on a regular basis.  We endearingly talk about them all the time, providing almost daily reports of what they're doing and the latest pasture gossip from previous day's activities.  Sometimes it's a simple morning feed report, or sharing a story of getting mauled by an overly affectionate cow that wanted a good scratching and took it upon herself to initiate by rubbing her neck on a leg.  Sometimes it's as mundane as explaining why there's hay on our clothes.  Yes, the cows get fed before coming to work and I hope that's just a little mud on my shoe.  Most everyone we socialize with knows our cows by name, and I'm sure they're thankful we only have five rather than a herd of 100 to hear about.

I'm also certain our discussions spark some curiosity and we occasionally get asked why we raise our own beef and do we make any money from it.  The money question is fairly easy to answer, no we really don't make any money off our beef because we don't have the land resources to produce our own hay and to have a herd big enough to generate profit.  Sure, we'd like to make a little money to help support the farm but we're lucky if we break even with all of the associated expenses of buying and caring for the cows we do have.  At best it helps offset the cost of our beef we consume.

Why we raise our own beef is the bigger question, because there are a lot of reasons.  Knowing how the meat we're consuming was cared for and what it was fed are the primary factors.  We literally know the beef that hits our table, and have the utmost respect for where it came from.  In this modern day as consumers we're so removed from our grocery store food supply that we have no idea where the meat and produce is actually coming from.  It may have a label with country origin, but that tells so little of the story of that food you really have no idea what you're eating.   Also, since we've moved to our small little homestead we have enough space to raise a few cows and that experience is an opportunity that most don't have.  Raising cows has truly brought joy to our lives.

Some of the biggest challenges we have on the homestead is trying not to do too much and strategically planning all the farming activities we're undertaking.  Cattle raising can be a lot more complicated than simply beef or dairy, there are far more options than you might think of.  To name a few, there are: calving operations, registered breed operations, feeder lots, show cattle, rodeo cattle, dairy cattle, micro cattle, mini cattle of various breeds, and probably things we haven't heard of.  Our original goal was simple, to have a few standard sized cows to produce calves for beef and raise them to processing age.  We'd sell any heifers that dropped to buy feeder steer.  We didn't want more than 6 head of cattle in the pastures at any given time to keep the impacts of grazing and winter damage low, and overall pasture health to a reasonable level.  We've already made a few mistakes with our first cow selections, the Jersey-Belted cross was probably not the best idea since we're not likely to start our own milk harvesting.  We also bought a cute little Hereford calf that's promising to be on the small to mini frame size, so we're now considering focusing on mini cattle.  Plans can change on the farm, you've got to be ready to roll with the flow.

So overall the answer to "Why are we raising beef?" is simple, we're loving it!