In no way can I compete with Ned jr (lovely name by the way, that was my Dad's name!), but thought I would show some pictures of our farm.
There is no way to explain the beauty of fall in Missouri. I lived in California most of my life, and they cannot hold a candle to the color that is displayed in Missouri in all the plant and wildlife! Of course, I cannot find any pictures, but thought this was a nice one (it also has a good cow/calf pair in it!)!
We have trees all around, and slightly rolling hills. Our entire farm is set up for manage intensive grazing, and I think we do pretty good at it.
We drain pretty good too, when we get extra rain! This is our back pastures, with a farm road covered in water after a flood last December:
We get a little snow, but it usually melts off in a day or so. This is a shot of part of our barn, and part of my orchard
I have a small orchard I planted, with peaches, nectarines, plums, Asian pears, and apples. We are feasting on the really good crop of Asian pears right now… yummy.
This is what we tend to do when we get a little snow!
Kids have fun being pulled behind the 4 wheeler and the dogs chasing! The blue building in the background is our shop. I am proud to say that I built it (with help from hubby and a few friends), I wired it, I framed it…. All of it. It has a bathroom inside, and we actually lived in it for 4 years before we built our home. We bought our land as raw acreage, and put the well and all structures and fences in on our own.
This is the inside of our barn. It is 40 x 100, and we set it up to work cattle, halter break, and AI on a regular basis. One wall has 100 foot of continuous fence that we affixed to the wall for halter breaking, along with a wash rack we poured for the kids to rinse cattle and me to wash my equipment if needed (on the right, you can not see it). We store small squares in it also. You are looking at the holding facility, chute, and small back pen for separating off calves. We were using the lamb table as an AI table, but have since put in a table to set up all of the AI equipment. I like my holding pens, if I need to isolate a cow or pair, it is easy to do and they are right next to the chute. The alleyway going to the back of the barn is just the right width to drive the tractor through, and we have set up numerous pens using temporary panels if I needed a bunch of pens (new babies on cold nights!). The pig is on a small concrete pad we poured by hand and finished. We only have a set of two pigs from around March to June, the kids raise them for the county fair and then they go in the freezer, so the rest of the time we use it to put squares on.
And then back to spring. We grow great grass, and the cattle have lots of trees!
And even in the middle of a drought (2012), you can see a rainbow and know that green grass is right around the corner!
