When we first started our family I wanted to buy raw milk.
We found a farmer nearby, asked all the vetting questions and felt it was a good fit.
It was important to us that we were getting 100% grass-fed and raw milk from a clean source.
One day we showed up to the farm to pick up milk. While we were waiting, I wandered back to the milking barn.
The cow was in the milking stand munching on a bucket of grain.
There were bags and bags of conventional store bought grain lining the walls too.
Some empty, some full, some half full, so I knew this wasn’t the first time.
What else weren’t they telling me…
I left feeling very skeptical about my farmer.
All of a sudden I couldn’t trust what he told me about how he was producing the milk.
I asked him about it and he said that yes they did feed grain and it was still grass fed milk…hummm…
What in the world?
Even if it was a little white lie that sometimes they fed their grass fed cows grain, I no longer felt like I could trust him.
This is when we decided to buy our own milk cow, and raise our own meats.
I needed to be certain I was getting the food that met our high standards.
I know how it feels to be really picky about getting the best quality food and not quite trusting the source.
I share this story because I want you to know I’ve been on both sides.
Let me share a little more of my past and what part I play on our farm.
I’m affectionately calling myself, “The Farmer’s wife” but we all know know:
“Behind every great man, there is a great woman”
A Horse Crazy Girl
As a little girl I adored horses. I grew up with dogs and cats, a big garden and plastic horses.
I was that little girl with nose and hands pressed up against the backseat window whispering, “horrrrrsssseeeessss” whenever we drove.
I begged and begged for my own horse.
When I was 8 years old my mom started taking me to horseback riding lessons.
I fell deeper in love each week I got to hang out at the barn.
I loved brushing tails, cleaning up poo, washing water troughs, and my instructor’s daughter quickly became my best friend.
We played in the rain, rode in the mud, raced up and down the vineyard rows playing cowboys and Indians.
Every spare moment of my time was spent thinking and dreaming about horses.
I was such a lucky girl to have a mom ready to support my passion.
I came home from the barn each time muddy, dusty, exhausted and elated.
My first hose was a black and white pony named Scirocco. He was stubborn and had a mind of his own.
A perfect match for a girl learning to assert herself in the world.
When I was 12 we moved from California to Idaho and I told my mom,
“I either need to take my best friend or this pony, Scirocco.” She bought the pony.
I got my second horse, Monkey, when I was in middle school. She was a special horse.
I trained and showed showed her in 4-H, winning lots of trophies.
She was my loyal and steady partner for 20 years. She passed away last summer and I miss her every day.
I started studying horticulture, because I thought I needed to go to college.
I loved it…but I loved my horses more.
So I went away to a trade school in Colorado to learn Parelli Natural Horsemanship.
I became a certified instructor and taught the Parelli method. I specialized in communication between horse and human.
It was all about building a relationship of trust with your horse.
A Farmer’s Wife
Then I met and married Blake in my mid 20’s
When our first baby came along I chose to have a natural birth with midwives.
During that first pregnancy I started to come to terms with the fact that everything I put in or on my body would get to my unborn baby.
Wow, what a wakeup call!
I cut out the skittles, snickers and sprite.
I started buying raw milk and making my own yogurt.
I learned about the benefits of bone broth.
I started buying organic foods and switching out the dryer sheets for Lavender essential oil.
I started feeding our dogs a raw diet, buying chicken necks and feet from the butcher.
I dove into the world of fermented foods like sauerkraut and sourdough.
This has been a growing and developing skill for the last decade of my health journey.
We bought our first milk cow because we couldn’t trust the farmer we were buying it from.
And it started the “grow your own food” addiction that led me to becoming your farmer too!
So when I say, ”We grow the kind of meat that you can feel confident feeding your kids” it’s true.
And it’s because for the last decade I’ve been living the natural life, it’s bubbling over into sharing our meat with you.
My role on the farm has been in the business planning. I write the emails and study our finances.
I sign us up for mindset coaching, Farmer’s Markets and Expos.
I keep an eye on the farm during the day when Blakes at work.
I create concoctions of natural medicines when a cow has pink eye or mastitis. I do a lot of animal husbandry like mixing up homemade fly spray with essential oils.
If it’s going on my animal that I’m raising for food, I want to know it’s safe enough to eat right now.
This fly spray was for the cows, made out of apple cider vinegar, essential oils and water.
Midwifery on the farm
I’m also Blake’s right hand lady when there are big events like births that need a woman’s touch.
One time when we lived in Colorado we had a pig who was giving birth for the first time.
She was struggling.
She’d been in labor for several hours and had more babies she couldn’t push out. We had bred her too young and her hips were too narrow to let the piglets out.
After lots of trying to reach in and pull, only to be squeezed to numbness, Blake asked me to try because my hands were smaller.
I tried, but also had little luck.
She was not going to make it, and her piglets were not going to make it either.
So we made a very hard decision to put her down, perform a c-section, save the piglets and utilize her meat.
We worked all through the night, delivering piglets, feeding piglets, butchering the sow and freezing the meat so that nothing went to waste.
Harper, our oldest son, was just a baby and he slept through it all.
All went according to plan. I had 10 piglets in my basement that needed bottle fed every 2 hours for a month.
It was like I had 11 children for a short time.
I never imagined that I would be doing that.
Mind you, I loved horses…
But as a mama myself, I felt such a responsibility to help those piglets survive.
And I stood by my farmer husband, at his side the whole night, doing what dirty job needed done.
sheep on the fly
Here’s a funny story Blake tells all the time when he’s bragging about me.
This is what being a “Farmer’s Wife” looks like.
I show up for all the major activities just to put my nurturing eyes on things and make sure all the animals are being handled as gentle as possible.
I throw in my feminine perspective all the time-and Blake’s a good sport about it.
We can now calmly load pigs and cows into the trailer without any foul words flying.
Which is really important because if we are stressed the animals get worked up too.
One day I was lookin for a reason to get out of the house with the kids and I mosied to the sheep barn where Blake was trimming hooves.
I was holding our baby, Calvin on my hip, and popped in for a short visit to offer my - you know- “feminine perspective”.
I was standing there watching him sort sheep in a pretty small corral and as he went to grab a lamb it jumped up to escape.
As it went flying past me, I caught it mid air with one hand, other hand holding the baby on my hip!
I was as shocked as he was. But there I stood, lamb on one side and baby on the other.
4-wheeler birth
One last story about my role on the farm as the “Farmer’s Wife”
This one happened just last week.
We were at the start of our calving season. Blake does night checks every evening before he goes to bed.
I had just brushed my teeth and slid down under my covers when he headed out.
A few minutes later I hear my phone ring…
It’s Blake calling from the pasture. He sounded out of breath and he said,
“I need help, bring a savvy string”
A savvy string is 6’ long thin rope that I used in my horse training days. They are very handy for all kinds of jobs.
I grit my teeth, put on my chore clothes overtop my PJs, grabbed a head-lamp and my savvy string and headed out.
We had a first time mama cow struggling to give birth.
Calves should come out front feet first, with the head following.
This calf was coming out with one front leg and a nose. It was stuck.
Blake tried to reach in and find the other foot, thinking it would slide out easier if both front feet presented.
To no avail.
It was a very tight hip cavity, the leg was nowhere to be found.
We tied a rope to the one front foot we could find and tried to pull.
Sometimes mama’s just need a little help at the very end of a long labor.
Calf wasn’t budging.
Mama was up and down, walking around, trying to adjust herself and slip that baby out.
We were at the very critical turning point in birth where we have to act fast.
We could loose the calf, the cow, or worse…both.
So we got the 4-wheeler and a bigger rope.
We tied the rope onto the machine and I slowly pressed the throttle to creep forward.
I first just held tension, hoping I could assist her contractions.
Then I gave it more gas, pulling even harder, then more.
Finally…the shoulders presented and the calf slipped out the rest of the way. Wshew!
Mama was so relieved and so were we!
A little bit of a traumatic birth but mama recovered beautifully and the calf lived.
WIN-WIN
Sometimes we do really hard things on the farm.
We always do our best, and pray a lot for guidance and support from God above.
We always treat our animals with love and dignity and try to assist the natural rhythm of life.
We steward our animals with care and consideration, honoring that they are living beings, blessing our lives with purpose and nourishment.
As the “Farmer’s Wife” I offer up my feminine perspective often.
I lend an extra set of hands. I do a lot of emailing, communicating and bookwork.
I’m often a great brainstorming buddy and I do lots of running back and forth to the butcher to pick up meat.
All while first being Mom to these three little boys.
Blake and I are a great team.
We believe wholeheartedly that we are raising some of the best nutrient-dense and clean food around.
The animals are cared for spiritually, physically and nutritionally.
Sometimes life on the farm is touchy, just as quickly as an animal is born one can also die.
My hope in sharing these stories was a little peek inside who I am and why I’m qualified to grow your food with integrity.
Do you have any similar stories to add?
I’d love to hear them in the comments.
