Fancy Hair and Good and Green

I'm sure Kermit the Frog would like to be described as having "fancy hair" and being "good and green."

But you might not think about those phrases also describing feeder cattle coming through the sale barn  at Pratt Livestock last week. Other descriptors included:

• "You'll love the kind, gentlemen."
• "Broke to the bunk."
• "These beauties are hot-wire broke."
• "They had everything in the world done to 'em and are ready to go." 
• "Look at these, fellas, and their big sisters are coming right behind." 

(For the uninitiated, "green" cattle are those who were brought to the sale barn after grazing on wheat or rye. They aren't Kermit's color. Ours weren't green, but they were broke to the bunk.)

A visitor to the sale barn may need an interpreter, since it seems the auctioneer is sometimes speaking in a foreign language. But, the guys in the cowboy hats and seed company caps know the code. And at the end of the day, some of those guys bought the feeder calves we'd brought from the County Line.


Cattle Sale from Kim Fritzemeier on Vimeo.

We sold yearlings about a month earlier than we normally do. Randy made that decision because we had less silage and hay to feed than we sometimes do. In addition, after a reconnaissance mission to the sale barn the week before, he thought prices seemed good.

We sold a total of 79 head. The average price per pound was $1.51. Even though we sold them 30 days earlier than last year and they weighed 50 pounds less per head, they brought about $160 more per calf.

The sale itself is a one-day event. But it represents a lifetime of work, beginning when Randy joined 4-H. In high school, he bought a cow, and it produced a calf each year. Then, when he was a junior at K-State in 1977, he bought 35 cows and began renting the Ninnescah pasture, where we still take cow-calf pairs each spring. It was the true beginning of his cow-calf herd.

Much the same, the journey with this crop of feeder calves didn't start and end on one day in February. The calves were born on the County Line more than a year ago, and we have been caring for them ever since.

First baby of 2017 - January 2017

In March, we ran the babies through the working chute, making the bull calves into steers and getting them ready to go to pasture.

 

In April, we moved the Class of 2017 and their mamas to summer pastures, including No. 700 and buddies.

They stayed at their appointed pastures all summer. (Note #773 in the middle below. His face must have caught my eye throughout the year, since I have photos at various stages of  his life, including three more below in this post!)

We brought them back closer to the farm in November.

 

Like wellness checks for we humans, the calves had a doctor's appointment, too.

 

Dr. Dick and his assistant, Liz, gave vaccinations.

Number 773 waits for its turn in the working chute. The calves do quite a bit of growing between their birth and the sell date.

That's because we feed them silage, grain and hay once they arrive home from the pasture.

 

Don't talk with your mouth full, No.  705!

 

Last week, we rounded up the feeder calves and sorted off 25 heifers to keep. They'll be first-time mothers in 2019. And the rest went through the sale barn on February 1. They were among some 3,000 head of cattle sold at Pratt Livestock that day. (The prior week, Pratt Livestock had 5,000 head sold at their Thursday sale.)

The sale ends one chapter. (And we've since paid off an operating loan with the proceeds, so the bank is happy, too.)

The next chapter has already begun with a new crop of 2018 calves.

First calf of the Class of 2018

And the journey continues.

 

Your Mission, If You Choose To Accept It

See that little orange tab on the heifer's ear? Try quickly finding that 1-inch long, 1/4-inch-wide narrow band in a calf's fluffy winter ear hair while she and gang of 700-pound-plus friends are barreling toward you. Kind of like finding a needle in a haystack, don't you think? Except this haystack could cause a bruise or two.

Nobody said this farm wife gig was easy.

Last week, we gathered feeder calves to get them ready to sell. The calves were born last winter. Last fall, after they came home with their mamas from summer pasture, they had their doctor's appointment.

We build our cow-calf crop by keeping 25 of the heifers born each winter. As the calves came through the chute, Randy identified the heifers he wanted to retain for our herd and who'll eventually be mamas for the County Line, choosing the ones in good body condition and good confirmation.  The veterinarian gave those heifers a calfhood vaccination to prevent brucellosis, also known as "bangs." This disease causes abortion or premature calving. The vaccination must be performed by an accredited veterinarian, in compliance with state and national regulations.
The vet used a device to "tattoo" the animal to show it had received the brucellosis vaccination. Then he used green ink to mark the tattoo.

The orange bands help identify the calves who've been calfhood vaccinated. At least the orange bands are easier to see than a tattoo would be as cattle run by us!

The "find-a-needle-in-a-haystack" exercise wasn't the only challenge. We ate a lot of dirt while we gathered and sorted calves.

Our part of Kansas is in a severe drought. We haven't had appreciable rain (or snow, for that matter) since early October. Today, the snow storm appears to be going north of us again. Getting the cattle up to the sorting corrals on 4-wheelers was a dirty job.

Even though Randy had Shawn water down the sorting pens, all the dirt in the air had us sneezing and coughing the rest of the day.

Last Wednesday, we loaded the remaining heifers and steers onto a semi for their trip to the Pratt Livestock sale barn.

Loading the truck is kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. The trucker tells us how many head of cattle he wants in each group. And we send them on their way, up the chute and into the truck.

 If Randy's smile is any indication, it's a good feeling to get them all loaded ...

 

 ... and on their way to the sale barn.

Randy and I went to meet the truck at the sale barn and answer any questions about the 79 calves we were selling.

Our cattle were unloaded, counted and put into a numbered pen, kept separate from other seller's cattle until they go through the sale ring and are sent to feedlots.

Next time: Results from the sale barn.

Winter Pear Salad with Cranberry Vinaigrette

Soup is one of my go-to meals during the winter months. This was a busy week as we gathered, sorted and loaded feeder calves to prepare for the cattle sale in Pratt today. (More on the cattle sale next week on Kim's County Line ... no time to write it this week!)

So on Monday,  I made Pasta e Fagioli to warm up quickly for noon meals. But no matter the temperature outside, we also love green salads.

This salad made its first appearance at our Moore Christmas gathering. It was a novel way to use the ubiquitous cranberry during the holidays. Though cranberries aren't in the produce case any longer, you can often find them in grocery or discount store freezer cases any time of the year. And, if you can't find fresh cranberries, you can top this salad with a raspberry vinaigrette, poppy seed dressing or another favorite fruit-friendly salad dressing.

I also served the salad for our immediate family's Christmas celebration. But with presents to open and fun to be had, I didn't get any photos taken.

In January, I made it again - just for the two of us at home. At that time, pears were on sale at the grocery store ... bonus! If you want additional color and nutrition, you could add other berries. Throughout the winter, my hometown grocery store has had different berries on sale. This week, it's pineapple, which would also be a flavorful addition. You could also add grapes, apples, mandarin oranges or any other colorful fruit to brighten up a winter day.

On Tuesday, we went to Wichita to attend The Illusionists, a magic show, at Century II. Attending the show was one of Randy's Christmas presents from me this year.

Beforehand, we ate at Avi Seabar and Chophouse. I had a similar salad, topped with grilled salmon. (I should have taken a photo of it, too. Too late now!) Let's just say it cost a lot more money than the salad I made at home. (The salmon, however, was better than I can make here. It probably wasn't discount salmon that came from the frozen food case. Just keeping it real, folks!)

Still, with a little effort, you can make a restaurant-quality salad at home for a fraction of the cost. Enjoy!

Winter Pear Salad

with Cranberry Vinaigrette

Recipe adapted from Favorite Family Recipes

Spring mix salad, bagged or boxed
Fresh pears
Pumpkin spiced pecans (see below)
Feta cheese crumbles
Dried cranberries
Cranberry Vinaigrette dressing (see below)

Use as much of the ingredients as you need for the servings you need. Combine all the ingredients and toss with vinaigrette to taste. (Or you can serve the dressing on the side and have people add their own dressing to taste).

Pumpkin Spiced Pecans

1 cup pecan halves
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

Mix sugar and pumpkin pie spice in small bowl until blended. Add sugar mixture and pecans to a small skillet and heat on medium heat until sugar is melted, stirring constantly as the sugar starts to melt. Be careful not to burn. As soon as the sugar is melted onto the pecans, pour pecans onto foil or parchment paper to cool. Once cool, store in airtight container or plastic bag.

Cranberry Vinaigrette Dressing

1 cup fresh cranberries
1/3 cup orange juice
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 tsp. salt

Combine cranberries, orange juice and sugar in a medium-sized saucepan. Cook on medium high heat, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries pop. Simmer for about 5 minutes.

Pour cranberry mixture into a blender. Add olive oil, vinegar and salt. Blend until smooth.

The dressing with be thick and creamy. If you prefer a thinner dressing, add small amounts of water (or orange juice), 1 tablespoon at a time, until of desired consistency. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Depending on how many people you are serving, you won't use all the pecans or dressing for one salad. Refrigerate leftover dressing and store extra sugared pecans in a sealed plastic bag.

I doubled the recipe for dressing, knowing that I could use it for other salads, too. 

What Kansas Means to Me

We've heard it all our lives:  Don't judge a book by its cover.

And yet ... I did. The cover helped "sell" this book to me. The illustration by Brad Sneed provided the "eye candy" as I perused the Kansas books at the Nora E. Larabee Library in Stafford.

I prefer reading fiction. But the first book in the Stafford library's adult reading challenge required a Kansas book checked out of the library. Both of the reading challenges I'm participating in this year are urging me out of my "same old, same old" literary comfort zone. 

So a non-fiction Kansas book it was!  And, as we celebrate Kansas' 157th birthday today - January 29 - it was a timely read. 

The book, edited by Thomas Fox Averill, had a few too many politically-themed essays for my taste. My favorite stories were the ones that focused on the Kansas landscape or culture. An unlikely bonus? One of the essays (more accurately, a poem) had a Stafford County connection. 

In Averill's introduction to the piece, he says that May Williams Ward edited The Harp, a poetry magazine, from her home in Belpre for 6 years. From Belpre? Really? She died in Wellington in 1975 at the age of 93.  She would have lived in Belpre in the 1920s. In a bio I found online, it says that her husband's job would have brought her to Edwards County (a neighboring county just to the west of my Stafford County):

She married Merle Ward in 1908 in Osawatomie’s Old Stone Church that had been built by John Brown’s brother-in-law and nephew.  And John Brown’s grand-niece played the organ at their wedding. The Wards moved wherever Merle’s grain elevator business took them, first to Lamar and  Pueblo, Colorado, then to Spearville, Montezuma and Belpre, Kansas. When the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl put an end to his grain business, the couple moved to Wellington in 1933 where they took over ownership and management of his family’s hotel. The Wards remained in Wellington for the rest of their lives.

From Washburn University

She published six volumes of poetry, often illustrated with her own woodcuts. This poem was featured in What Kansas Means to Me (photo illustrations by me):

Sky-Mountain

May Williams Ward, 1927

Prairie-land is golden,

Airy, wide;

  

The sky our only mountain;

We, inside.

Who would choose a small land

Where the hills

Steadily asserting

Granite wills,

Narrow all horizons,

Stand apart?

Ah, my Kansas prairie

In the sky-mountain's heart.

Zula Bennington Greene wrote two short essays in the book that also resonated with me. The Cottonwood and the Prairie were written by Greene, who was best known as Peggy of the Flint Hills, a name she used for her newspaper column begun in the Chase County Leader-News in 1928.

 

On the cottonwood:

The early settlers planted the cottonwood around their houses because it was quick-growing. Its frilly daintiness must have warmed the heart of the pioneer woman and its soft rustle whispered to her of courage and faith.

Through the heat of the summer it stands cool and clean and shining. The leaves shake off dust as nervously as a fluttery housewife polishes the furniture, never content to sit a moment with quiet hands. In the night it makes a rain-sound on the roof.

Zula Bennington Greene

On this Kansas Day, I am thinking about those pioneers who settled this land I now call home. On January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union and became the 34th star on the American flag.

Too often, we Kansans have an inferiority complex. We apologize and somehow buy into the outsiders' image that ours is a flyover state. We know that Oz was in technicolor while Kansas was boring black and white.

But people who believe that have never really opened their eyes ...

... to the beauty of sunrise ...

... and sunset ...

... and the color and variety in between.

 Even in the more sepia tones of wintertime in Kansas, there is beauty.

I'm thankful that both sides of my family saw beauty and opportunity here. (Click on the links to read more about how the Moores and the Neellys came to Kansas.) Randy, who is a fifth-generation farmer in his family, still owns a pasture that's been in his family more than 100 years.

A final stanza of a poem by Kenneth Wiggins Porter (also from What Kansas Means to Me) seems a fitting tribute to my ancestors and those who settled this land 157 years ago:

Many came to this land and some stayed.

As for those who did not

God grant that they found greener pastures.

As for those who dug in and survived,

their names are familiar to you,

are your own, in whole or in part, 

the names of your children.

Kenneth Wiggins Porter, 1946

Happy Kansas Day!

This Is Us: Farm Version

One of my favorite television shows is "This Is Us," a drama in its second year on NBC. For the uninitiated, it follows the life of three siblings - Kate, Kevin and Randall - through a series of flashbacks and present day life.

On last week's episode, the siblings and their mother come together in a counselor's office. While they all lived in the same house, they have very different perceptions about their shared experiences. While talking to his siblings later, Randall compares the different viewpoints to the experience of getting glasses as a youngster.

He talks about sitting in the exam chair at the eye doctor and being asked, "Is this better? Or is this better?" After the eye doctor shifts the lens, he's again asked, "Better here ... or here?" The changes are often minuscule, but they eventually lead to the proper prescription.

He reminds his siblings that we all view life through different lenses.

It really struck a chord with me. I vividly remember the trip home from Great Bend after I got my first pair of glasses in grade school. From my perch in the back seat, I suddenly saw things more clearly. Trees weren't just big green blobs: They had individual leaves. The world was sharper, more in focus. It was a revelation.

This week, I celebrate a "birthday" of sorts. It's my 8th "blogiversary." I hit the "publish" button on Kim's County Line for the first time on January 24, 2010. In eight years, I've published 1,683 posts, and there have been more than 1.78 million "page hits" on Kim's County Line.

Part of the reason I began Kim's County Line was to share our life on a Central Kansas farm. I subtitled the blog, "Camera Clicks and Commentary from a Kansas Farm Wife." In truth, I didn't have a solid plan. In fact, it was kind of one of those things your mother tells you not to do: My sister, niece and daughter were already blogging, so I decided to do it, too.

But, as it evolved, my focus became what I refer to as the 4 F's ... and a PH that sounds like an "f:" Farming, Family, Faith, Food and Photography.

Kim's County Line allows me to tell our story - through my own lens.

These days, it seems everyone is an "expert" on GMOs. Everyone has a magic bullet for improving health - and it probably does not include gluten, a protein found in the wheat that's the largest market share on our Central Kansas farm.

I'm not willing to let a Mexican restaurant chain declare that our method of farming isn't responsible. I'm not willing to have the Humane Society of the United States or Greenpeace say that I'm not a compassionate guardian for the planet or for the animals we tend.

So, I keep telling our story. I'm not blogging as much as I did at first. The first year - 2010 - I wrote six days a week and cranked out 265 blog posts. Last year - blogging only two days a week or so - I wrote 116 posts, my lowest total yet. But even though the frequency has waned, I'm still writing and photographing life on our Kansas farm - one blog post at a time

Each quarter, I publish a hard-copy version of the blog. My latest blog book arrived last week. I am running out of storage space. But I also know it's a comprehensive history of our life on a Kansas farm. While pioneer farm wives wrote in journals or diaries by the light of a lantern, I sit at my computer and type words into cyberspace. Still, just like those handwritten journals of the past, my words may some day reveal my life to my grandchildren or great-grandchildren or even strangers. They are both family history and farming history.

For now, it gives landlords a glimpse of what's going on. It gives me an outlet for my writing and photography.

And, along the way, I hope it sheds a little light on modern agriculture ... even if it's just one person's perspective. I do thank those of you who visit my little spot on the internet - whether it's every time I post or just on occasion. Thanks for joining me on the journey.

Want to know why it's called Kim's County Line? Click here for my very first post to find out.

It's my blogiversary, but to celebrate, one person will get a gift from me - a selection of my photo notecards. To qualify, either comment about this blog post in the comment section of the blog or on my Facebook page, Kim Moore Fritzemeier. Or, if you have trouble with either of those avenues, you may email me at rkjbfarms@gmail.com. The winner will be chosen at random from the commenters. Enter your comment by January 31 for a chance to win.

Class of 2018: Bovine Edition

This photo taken Sunday, soon after the first baby of 2018 was born.

Welcome to the first arrivals of the Class of 2018! Our heifers were scheduled to begin calving on January 28. But, like human babies, due dates are not dictated by the calendar, but rather Mother Nature.

We have the 24 heifers in a corral near our house to make it easier to check the expectant mamas and with easy access to the calving shed, which we built a couple of years ago to replace a falling-down barn.

By definition, the heifers are expecting their first calves. Once upon a time, they were among the County Line's Class of 2016. Each year, we keep 25 of the female calves born to serve as replacement heifers for our cattle herd. (When the veterinarian did the preg checks in November, one of the 25 was scheduled for a very late arrival date, so she got pulled from the herd.)

We always schedule the heifers to calve first, since they require more frequent checks to make sure they can deliver without problems.

We try to alleviate as many problems as possible by using a bull which is expected to produce a lower birth weight baby. 

A baby girl was the first to arrive on Sunday, January 21. She got the first eartag of the year - No. 800. Each of the babies born during 2018 will get a tag that begins with an "8." As the cattle become "upperclassmen," it's easy to tell at a glance that they were born in 2018. That's especially important for the girls who will stay in our County Line herd. In a couple of years, No. 800 could be delivering a baby herself!

Number 801 is the first boy born this year. He took advantage of the comfier accommodations - hay rolled out in the corral for bedding.

The guys also freshened up the hay in the calving shed. Last night, the guys ran four heifers into the calving shed, mamas who Randy thought looked closer to calving. I always tease Randy about his cattleman prowess. Will a mama in the shed calve, giving credence to his observation skills?

This time, he was right! One of the mamas had a baby overnight - out of the wind and in the warmth provided by body heat in a small shed.

So far, the Class of 2018 consists of four members - all of whom arrived without help from the farmer.

Like that overused phrase from the movie Sunset Boulevard, the calves were "ready for their closeups." However, it won't be long before I'll need a video to keep up with their antics.

The forecast for the rest of the week shows warmer weather, perfect for calving. Let's hope the mamas agree and keep up the good work.