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Life is too short to eat bad food! Sharing great recipes, farm life, stories and photography from our Northern California dairy farm.

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July 17, 2010

Where's the Beef? It's time to move them back down.

It's that time of year again, where we move our pairs (mamas and calves) of beef from the top of the hill behind Stafford Lake, back down to the bottom to wean the 10 month old calves from their mamas.  My father in law, George found 30 pairs a couple of days ago and moved them to a lower lying area but couldn't find the rest of them.  There's approximately 1200 acres they have to roam and graze upon during the summer.  They do a great job for fire protection.....good grass mowers!  When they're moved back down to our own 250 acres, they'll be ready to calve again sometime in September.

Chloe wanted to help, much to Dominic's chagrin.  Chloe likes to sit in the driver's lap and Dominic was driving.  But she also loves to hang out an open window so I kept mine down and she stayed in my lap.
She's a happy girl.




Great view of Stafford Lake from up here.



Up and down through the hills and valleys we looked.


Bryce also enjoyed helping.



Oooh!  We found one......but only one. See the black spot in the center of the photo near the trees?  That's her.


I love the scenery from up at the top.  For the non-locals, you can see how dry our grass becomes in the summer time.


Here we are at the very top, looking towards the south.  If you look really close, on the left, in the valley between the first two hills, you can see a fog covered San Francisco.


Since we couldn't find the cows on our drive to the top, Dominic started an alfalfa trail on the way back down in hopes that the cows will follow it down the hill to a spot where we can find them in the next day or so.

Look how lazy I am!  I snapped almost every photo from the seat in the truck!


Here's a shot of the ranch.  You can see our house up and to the left of the barns....it looks like a little brown clump in a clearing.


Only one casualty.  Before we headed up the hill, one of the beef cows at the lower level spotted the alfalfa bale in the back of the truck and tried to jump in.  Anything for food!  Poor truck :(


Hopefully all the pairs will be down the hill in the next day.

Happy Saturday!
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6 comments:

Stacey said...

That was fun. Thanks for taking your readers on that trip.

Tamara Dawn said...

Oh no! Sorry about your truck! Too bad you didn't get a shot of that bull trying to tailgate, lol!

Great pics! I forgot how dry it gets in CA, now that I am nowhere near a beach I always picture my CA friends on the ocean =)

Lindsay @ Pinch of Yum said...

Ha! I love that the cow tried to jump in. :)

Darcy @ The Chic College Cowgirl said...

OMG--I love your blog!! I stumbled upon it while reading Pioneer Woman comments, and I'm so glad that I did--looking forward to reading more!

The photos in this post are gorgeous!

Your best advice said...

Like the photo of your dog in the rear view mirror..so cute.

Elise said...

Hello and thanks for the hilarity! I love that you think you are lazy, just snapping photos from the car - meanwhile, I think these photos are brilliant! I love them all, but my heart just swooned with the shot of the wee-boy and pup in the rear-view mirror... Kinda sounds like a country song to me! Hee Hee Wahoo, you inspirational ranch gal! Yee Haw!