Departing Horses & Future Farm Plans

 We made some tough decisions lately, choosing to sell a couple of our horses to get a younger more suitable trail horse capable of long rides.  One of our bucket list goals is to participate in the Chief Joseph's Trail ride, and for that we need trail horses that can do a week of near 20 mile days.  Unfortunately, Jesse has gotten past her prime and with a touch of arthritis rides like that would be too punishing.  Maze is an athletic horse with excellent endurance, but she moves out faster than the slower trail horse we'd prefer.  Both amazing horses, but they'd just become pasture ornaments if not going on rides with us. This move gives them both what they need, and we can't be happier with their new homes.

Jesse 

Maze

Now we can focus on our future horses, working with Apollo and getting him under saddle, and getting a new trail horse to handle all of our summer adventures and hopefully an epic adventure on the Chief Joseph's trail ride.

We have been daydreaming about all the improvements we want to make on the farm to allow us to work more with our horses in the winter and hot days.  Our biggest project/goal is to build a covered outdoor arena.  We've been looking at ClearSpan canvas covered pre-fabricated buildings and have seen a few in use in our area.  We've been working towards getting serious about building one, along with an outdoor arena area with good footing.  But we also need new fencing, lots of rock and sand, and all sorts of other things; so a little money is the only thing standing in our way.  

We'll keep pushing forward, dreaming, and working towards those goals!  

Beef Processing 2024

 We just finished having our beef processed and have filled our freezer.  We started with three feeder calves about 19 months ago and finished with approximately 1,600 lbs of beef.

We're taking a little break from growing out more calves for now, as we have some fence work needed, and worrying about cows getting out of the pasture isn't fun.  We're also shifting more of our attention to working with and riding our horses, and that also takes pasture space, and they're a bit easier to keep fenced in--generally.

As usual, we hired Farmers' Helper for handling the mobile slaughter and cut-n-wrap processing of our beef, they simply do the best work around. They're great to work with, but getting on their schedule is the only problem as they're always booked out so you have to get on their schedule as soon as you get your feeder calves started. 

The cost of growing out your own beef doesn't really pan out unless you can produce some of your own hay, the cost of feeder calves, processing, and care will put the cost per pound into a price range that's not affordable for most, so the real benefit of growing out your own beef is knowing how your cows were cared for and having customers that appreciate well cared for grass fed beef.

We'll likely regret not getting more feeder calves now by the end of this year as our beef supply runs out, so our focus will be fencing so we can get back to growing out more beef.