Carolina and Bessie; Or Just One More Reason We Are Not an Organic Farm

N. Carolina with her new herdmate Virgina behind her.

Those who have followed the farm for a while know that we were originally all about goats. We had no intention whatsoever to own cows. When people asked if we were sure that the milk they were tasting was, in fact, goat milk, not cow milk (because it tasted so much better than the goat milk they were accustomed to getting from the grocery store), we assured them that there were no cows on the farm at all.

Then, in 2020, I found myself tired, exhausted, and just plain drained. It might have had something to do with trying to finish my masters degree at the same time as running a small family farm and a large weekly farmers market, but the end result was the same. I posed a question to Tim--what would he think of shutting down the farm? Just quitting, going under, whatever you want to call it. Our side gigs, which at the time included both managing the market and teaching, were sufficient to pay the bills, while the farm, as always, was in a desultory circle around the proverbial drain. Our largest bill was animal feed, second was the electricity for the dairy and creamery. It was a smart financial decision to get out of farming.

Instead we got cows.

Right now I can't even recall the path the conversation took that led us from "Let's quit," to "Let's expand," but we soon found ourselves with a sweet Jersey cross named Virginia. Virginia led to Georgia, Mississippi, S. Carolina, and Virginia's heifer calf Shenandoah. (We'd decided that our cows would be named after southern states, and their babies would be names after towns or regions in those states.) Over the years since we first discussed quitting and instead dug the hole deeper, we've had to euthanize a cow due to an uncurable illness, we've sold a cow to a friend, and we've lost a cow to pregnancy complications, leading us back to where we started, with just Virginia supplying an increasing demand for Swede Farm cow milk. It was clear to our customers that we needed another cow, even if we took a while to agree. Once we decided that it was probably smart, we went cow shopping, only to find that we are definitely in a sellers market for cows, for reasons I may get to in future posts, but for now, I want to talk about N. Carolina.

When we started our search for a new cow, at first we just looked at Jerseys, or Jersey crosses, which were already in milk. Jerseys are smaller, eat less, and give super creamy milk. The proverbial black and white cow one sees on Etsy tee-shirts and cookie jars are Holsteins. They are large cows, they produce a lot of milk, and eat a lot of food. They just seemed like a bit too much cow for us. Yet as I scrolled through the for sale listings, one cow caught my eye. She was a Holstein, and she was large, very large in fact, for she was pregnant. Strike one: a Holstein. Strike two: not even in milk, the very reason we were looking for a cow. But every single Jersey in milk that I'd called about for the past two weeks had been sold within hours of being posted, so perhaps it was worth looking into.

And so we hooked up the trailer and drove to Italy, Texas.

She was clearly in good health, which subsequent blood and milk tests have confirmed. She was also huge. And skittish. And clearly close to calving, as she was already dripping milk from a very capacious udder. The couple who had listed her weren't even in dairy, they raised beef cattle, but the wife had owned a dairy for years, decades ago, and had a soft spot in her heart for dairy animals. 

"When they ran her through the auction, they said she was from an organic dairy," the woman explained, telling me that she had felt sick, thinking "She's got a big ole baby in her and they're just gonna turn her into hamburger." 

Her husband chimed in "So when she got home I went to unload the trailer and here was this Holstein among the Angus I'd sent her for!"

We are often asked at the farmers market if our dairy is organic. It is not. Often the assumption is made that the reason is the high cost of organic certification, but the truth is that once a dairy has jumped through the hoops to satisfy the requirements to be organic, the certification fees are the least of it. The requirements are many and often difficult, if not impossible for a small farm to satisfy. For us the biggest reason has to do with medication. We have a small herd of goats and a likewise very small herd of cows. With the goats we are currently milking great, great, great, great, great granddaughters of some of our very first goats. We raise our animals as holistically as we can, but sometimes we face a situation where medications are needed and there is nothing we can do about it. One of our favorite breeds of goats are LaManchas, a breed with ears that are very small and close to their heads, not unlike human ears, just smaller and hairier than any but a hobbit ear might be. Ear infections can happen--and can be very dangerous in LaManchas, calling for antibiotics. The organic code mandates that organic dairies may not withhold needed medication, which is a compassionate approach. The problem is that these animals may no longer be used for milk on an organic dairy. So what do you do when you are a small farm with animals you've needed to medicate but whose milk you can no longer use? Small farms don't always have room for non-producing dairy animals, nor the money to run a livestock retirement home. So the other options are to butcher them, or sell them to non-organic dairies. We decided long ago that we are not going to do this. When we have delivered a baby goat, bottle fed it, watched it grow, marveled at how it looks just like her grandmother Nyla, waited excitedly for a baby from this goat, we are not going to butcher it or sell it. Other farms do, and this is fine. We also do sell animals, but when we feel it is best, and when we can carefully select where they go, not with our backs against the wall. Ultimately what it comes down to is that we do not feel "organic" to be an animal-friendly designation for dairy animals. Perhaps for meat animals with a relatively short lifespan, but not for an animal you hope to work in partnership with for over a decade.

From what we can tell, this is likely what happened with N. Carolina. She was in the prime of life at five years old. She was in crazy good health. She had an uncomplicated pregnancy. She was less than a month from having a healthy baby--yet likely because she'd needed to be medicated, she was sent to auction where she was destined to be turned into hamburger.

We are so thankful that there was someone at the auction who recognized "She's got a big ole baby in her and they're just gonna turn her into hamburger." That they were able to bring her home. That they kept an eye on her, made sure she was settled and that there were no health issues brewing.

So we brought her home, she and that "big ole baby" in her. She was named N. Carolina by the customers who urged us to shop for an addition to the herd, which was a perfect fit as we had recently lost S. Carolina. And two days after we got her to the farm, she calved, giving us a sweet baby girl, named Bessie after the North Carolina town.

We think that's a better ending than being turned into hamburger.

Bessie

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse

Usually Emma makes the weekly feed run. She isn’t working during the week, she has time on her hands, and it is an excuse for her to spend time with one or two siblings. She drives to the farm, leaves her silver Camry, grabs her sister Libby, or Dixie, or brothers Seth, Noah, and Judah, and they hit the road on a mission in the farm truck, which is technically the 12 passenger van, all but one bench seat removed. Drive 48 miles, pick up a literal ton of feed and hay, return home, by way of a favorite coffee bar on the way out, lunch and perhaps a quick stop at a grocery store, and coffee again on the way back. It’s a trip that takes three hours, perhaps four, depending on whether her siblings persuade her to stop at the used book store as well.

But sometimes Emma can’t make it. Her car is misbehaving, she has errands of her own to run, or she and husband Shaye are out of town. So then it falls to me. When I go, I usually bring Noah, perhaps one or two of the others. These days it’s often Noah as he is going through a rough patch; that transition from farm kid to adult can be tough without a culturally imposed demarcation, such as leaving for college, or moving out of the house. So we drive, and talk, and sometimes listen to audio books. His favorites are Deep Creek by Pam Houston and Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull. Sometimes we listen to the music of his choice. Note to parents–listening to music with your kids is a great way to gain insight into their thoughts, and what influences them. Noah being a country kid, neck deep in rodeo and such, the songs are often love ballads to girls in tight jeans. Or tractors. Or family. Or family land. Sometimes they extoll the glories of the United States military and “God Bless the USA,” which I don’t necessarily take exception to, after all, I have close family members who’ve served in the military, our farm itself being named after one of them. My love for the United States is a bit nuanced, though, having grown up overseas and learning about our nation’s complex history of involvement in other lands, with or without the sanction of the peoples of those lands.  Still, I am blessed that he does listen, or at least does a good impression of listening when I cut him off mid stanza to say “OK, hold it, can we turn this off for a sec?” and launch into a discussion which (I hope) draws his attention to the fact that not all flag-waving is straightforward and worthy of a parade.

Sometimes, though, it is Tim who rides shotgun. 

It doesn’t happen often that Tim and I go on a feed run together these days. I’m not going that much anyway, and when he is depressed, he prefers to remain at home. Between these two factors, it’s rare. When he does go, though, I usually drive. We talk, yes, but these hours in the car are often spent with me driving while he reads to me. This is a tradition going back to when we were both attending the University of Houston and had commutes to class of over an hour each way, and he would read, or when he drove, we’d listen to books together. Those were the days when we were working our way through Brene Brown’s books. Now they may be nonfiction books we find intriguing, such as on behavioral economics, or about depression. Lately, it’s been Joan Didion, which has been fun. Two weeks ago, though, he brought along a deck of cards with questions for couples to ask each other. We’ve done this before with racy cards, but this time they were simpler, more conversation starters. 

The one that stood out was likely intended to be more lighthearted. “What is the first thing I would do in a zombie apocalypse?” His answer was something along the line of “I don’t believe in zombies, but I guess I’d freeze?” I immediately thought back to reading I am Legend in a class on genre and form and the endless routines undertaken by the protagonist in order to keep the zombies at bay. I remembered Mat Johnson saying in the class that post-apocalyptic writing was usually a means of working through the societal fears at the time of writing. Thinking of routines designed to try to control the impossible superimposed on a pervasive sense of fear combined to prompt my response, that I live the zombie apocalypse every day on the farm. 

Even before a mystery metabolic disorder wiped out twenty of our milking goats over the course of a month late in 2011, much of our farm routines are an attempt to control nature and shape the lives of our animals. The exact time of milking, the percentages of protein vs fats vs carbohydrates in the grain mixtures we feed our animals, the aligning of date of breeding with vaccinations, the medicine cabinet full of remedies we will usually need to throw away because they’ve passed their expiration dates unopened. All of this is a bulwark thrown up to protect us against that time when the footsteps pounding across the grass and through the front door are carrying the alarm that Lottie/Windy/Dawn is acting odd or is down and can’t get up, or “Got stuck in a fence and maybe has a hurt leg?” It never fails, of course, that the specific emergency is precisely the one thing for which I am unprepared, and even now, after raising goats for a few weeks shy of nineteen years, they never fail to surprise me, and teach me something new, something I’d not yet known that I needed to be afraid of.

Sitting here today, though, looking over my desk and through the window at the trees across the road, I know what this particular season of fear looks like. This lesson we learned twelve years and eight days ago when billowing black smoke rose over the trees to our east, followed within a few hours by a sheriff with a bullhorn announcing that the time to get out, to leave, to seek safety was now, now. I blogged during that time, of what it was like, running back and forth from pasture to the livestock trailer, of standing in the living room, freezing, as Tim said he’d do in response to zombies, unsure what to grab, what to bring, what we needed to be safe, to be prepared. It was our teenage daughters who thought to grab the diaper bag, the family pictures, the quilt sewn by my grandmother. I did make mental notes throughout the week we were evacuated, of the things I wish I’d thought to bring, and that I prayed would still be there when the fire was contained, was out. When we returned to a farm layered with charred bark, and dusted pink by the fire retardant dropped by the planes which had flown overhead, thankfully it was to a house and dairy which still stood, though less than half a mile away houses were lost. We hung the quilt back on the wall, we cleaned out the raised garden beds of the bark which had fallen on the tomatoes and peppers, and wondered if these beds were still safe to use, after being sprayed pink. 

Now we drive down country roads leading to the farm and note the trees. When we faced the drought of 2011, we didn’t know the difference between a tree that is stressed by drought, leaves dropped in order to conserve what it can, and a tree that is drought-killed: a tree killed by drought often has branches still full of leaves, just leaves which are brittle and brown. Back then we also didn’t know that trees stressed by drought can die years later, long after rains have returned, sometimes five years later. We lost well over a hundred trees on our acreage during that drought and the following years. Although this year hasn’t been as dry as it was in 2011, the driest year on record for the state of Texas, it has nonetheless been brutal. This month is set to be the hottest August in the past 150 years, and it shows. Although we have nowhere near the dead trees we saw in 2011, the days carry with them the brittleness of watchful waiting. The sky is scanned, hopefully for rainclouds, and for smoke. Electronic signs along the highways warn of fire conditions, and restaurants post on their signage “Pray for Rain” just above “Tuesdays Kids Eat Free!” Recently on the social network Nextdoor, someone in our area posted that they witnessed a driver toss a burning cigarette from their car window. Readers demanded that the perpetrator be arrested. 

We have discussed whether we need to make preparations in case we face another wildfire in our area. We have a much larger livestock trailer now, which is a comfort as with the last fire we were forced to leave some animals behind. Of course we also have larger animals now, and adding cows to the mix might change up the dynamics somewhat. There are less people on the farm to worry about, but more years of living on the farm to imbue every corner, tree, and fencepost with memory. I will, at least, put together a bag with the important documents I left behind last time. I will probably have a tote bag ready with needed medications, for people and animals. Or maybe I won’t. As I type this I now feel as if I am possibly being overly concerned. Perhaps it was the mention of zombies. Perhaps it’s just anxiety, driven by the clear blue cloudless sky over the brown parched grass and cracked soil. But at least, we agreed, we should make sure the trailer tires are full of air and the van is full of gas at all times. Like the baby books tell you to do when you approach your due date. Because who wants to be caught off guard?

Hmmm. Where to Start?

It has been years since I have blogged. Literally. Years. (Eighteen months, to be exact.) So what brings me here now?

Phew. Where to begin?

To be honest, I came here to cannibalize, or at least, to glean from past posts. You see, as I posted back in 2014, I returned to school at the University of Houston. My goal was to complete the BA that I walked away from in 1985 when Tim and I married. Ultimately I wanted to apply to an MFA program to take the writing that so satisfied me here in this blog, and hone it, polish it, take it to the next level. You can't get a master's degree without a bachelor's degree, so the BA had to be the first stop. Let me tell you, it has been one wild and crazy stop! As it just so happens (like anything just happens) the University of Houston has a nationally recognized graduate creative writing program. A program that includes the phenomenal faculty teaching at the undergraduate level. So while I have been finishing up that degree, I have been able to sit at the feet, if you will, of the very same caliber of instructors that I thought I would have to wait until graduate school to study under.

I have won writing contests. (You can read about it here, including the actual winning piece.)

I have been published.

I have been able to serve as editor for the undergraduate literary magazine, Glass Mountain.

I graduate in May, and have just days ago clicked "submit" on the last of those graduate school applications. Those programs that have astonishingly high acceptance rates, such as 2%, or even... .5% That is point five percent. As in half a percent. Yikes! Contrast that to one five year PhD program that I looked into that warned of accepting only 6-8 students out of 150 applicants. I cocked my head and thought "Dang, that's a great acceptance rate!" If I keep up with thinking like that, I might start investing in Powerball, or even run in a marathon...

Part of that degree that I will earn, come May, is a senior honors thesis. Guess what I am writing my thesis about? This may come as a shock, but I opted to do my thesis on...farming. More specifically, our farm memoir. After all, why waste the years spent suffering researching? As I drew up the outline for the farm memoir, it occurred to me that coming back to the old home place and poking around in the dusty closets of the blog might yield some long forgotten nightmare memory that might work well in a farm memoir/thesis/exposition.

So here I am.

Is anyone else here?

At any rate it has been fun to write just for, well, the relaxation and joy of it, instead of for a grade.

Maybe I'll see you around sometime. And fill you in on the kids who have grown up and moved out, the farmers markets started, the kids who have gotten married...

In the meanwhile, see ya at the market!