Innholdsfortegnelse for June - July 2017 i Farm and Ranch Living

All the hours of hard work and training, wishing just for once I could win the fit and show title, and here it was! To have my name among other champions was truly an honor. I was born to be a farm girl. My adventures as a kid included raising chicks, playing in mud puddles, and tagging along behind my older sister in the 4-H dairy program. Now I’m about to head to college, but raising cows with 4-H has been one of the best parts of growing up. It wasn’t until I was 10, in August 2008, that I got my own calf. Our family’s cow Daisy Mae delivered a beautiful calf with big brown eyes, and a fawn-colored coat with a little speckling of white on both flanks.…

Red Twig is a small farm, and we haven’t been in the flower business very long, but we are full of heart. We strive to bring back traditions and memories. It’s hard to believe that what is now 9 acres of gorgeous peonies, dogwoods and willows once sat dormant for two decades. In 2010, my husband, Josh, and his family decided to buy and farm the long-neglected property that was just across the street from their landscaping company. They planned to harvest dogwoods and willows for landscaping use on what is now Red Twig Farms, but realized they needed a summer crop to increase sales. So they chose to grow peonies. At the time, they could not have imagined how fruitful that decision would turn out to be. Peonies take…

My father, Jack Dunlap Mast, was accompanied by a 1928 Fageol through most of his 91 years. It was the first truck Dad ever drove, and he felt a special affinity for it ever since. This truck has not only served for decades as a necessary piece of farm equipment, but is an important piece of family legacy. It was—and still is—a playhouse and climbing structure for generations of Mast children. Plus, learning to drive the Fageol has become a right of passage in our family. My grandfather Vernon Mast and great-grandfather John Mast bought the Fageol when Dad was 7 years old. It was purchased from a freight hauler who used it to deliver loads between Sacramento and Richmond, California. Dad had the opportunity to drive the Fageol early…

A childhood spent on the farm is one to be celebrated. Over the last four decades, we’ve featured pictures of many happy kids loving the authenticity of the farm and ranch life. In honor of our upcoming 40th anniversary, we’re checking in with two readers who joined the Farm & Ranch Living family when they were only tykes. Let us know if you or your family were featured in Farm & Ranch Living in the past. You might see yourselves again in an upcoming issue! April/May 1981 NATURAL WOMAN Nancy Naugher Young grew up strolling the pastures at her grandparents’ dairy farm in Pontotoc, Mississippi. These days she’s raising her son, Andrew, to love nature. The two stopped to appreciate Utah’s rugged scenery during a recent 5,500-mile road trip. June/July…

I am a firm believer that darn near everything you need to know in life can be learned on the farm. Mixing a bottle of milk replacer at 2 a.m. teaches fractions, decimals and volume. And it teaches more than a little bit of patience. Getting up at 5 a.m. to do chores, take something out for supper, and get the hay out of your hair before heading to work is a great way to learn time management. Calculating how much money you earned from your 4-H premium check after feed and expenses is all about profit and loss ratios. Is that new tractor actually worth the money you’re about to spend on it? Time to figure out your return on investment. The list of farm-life lessons goes on. Now,…

This is a story about what happens when you combine a farmer with a baker who has a history degree. In June 2013, I opened Hewn, an artisan bakery, with my business partner, Julie Matthei. Part of our mission is to source grains from organic and local farms. Sourcing 100 percent of our grains locally is a challenge in Chicago, so we get what we can nearby and purchase the rest from Central Milling, based in Utah. Just three years after we opened, I made a tiny batch of bread using Marquis wheat from an heirloom grain that hadn’t been grown commercially in over 50 years. Those first loaves were the result of a fortuitous partnership and a lot of historical document research. I was fortunate enough to meet Andy…

I purchased this 1947 Allis-Chalmers W Speed Patrol from a man in Windsor, Vermont, in 2011, just a week before the Fourth of July. The tractor had no motor at the time, but I told the man, “This tractor will be in the Fourth of July parade.” “What year?” he asked. My friend Bill Gardner and I took a motor from one of our other Allis-Chalmers tractors and put it in the W Speed Patrol. Sure enough, it started, and we ran in the Fourth of July parade that year. We had the tractor running, but it still didn’t look so hot. During the summer of 2012, Bill and I assembled a new motor to place in the W Speed Patrol, and we planned to grind the rust off in…

I recently inherited the house I grew up in, and the thought of owning the home my father built with his own hands was a little overwhelming. This house has been a living, breathing entity for so many years and now it’s quiet, as if the building is anticipating its next role. I can’t helpbut feel the same way. Wandering through the familiar halls and rooms felt foreign. This place had never known that empty quietness when I lived here. The last room I went to was the kitchen—it was the heart of our home. For decades, we made all our major family decisions around the kitchen table. From deciding which crops to plant to mourning a loved one, most of it happened in that room. Sticking out among the…

A Father’s Greatest Gift BY BELINDA MOLINA HEBBRONVILLE, TEXAS Our son, Elian, is 9 years old and loves to help out at our south Texas ranch every chance he gets. Elian was born three months premature and weighed only 2 pounds at birth. Doctors told us he might never walk or talk, but today he is a happy, active third-grade student. His favorite things to do on the ranch are feeding the cows and spending time with the Angus bull he named Charlie. My husband, Rene, owns a water well business that services and drills wells in our area, but his biggest passion has always been the cow-calf ranch we own in Duval County. Ever since Elian beat all the odds against him early in life, Rene has…

When our oldest daughter and her fiance were looking for a wedding venue, Jeff and I offered one of our pastures. Chantal and James thought it was perfect, so we set to clearing the site of blackberries and poison oak. The only other problem was the creek. Elgarose Creek runs right through the middle of our farm, and the state protects it as an essential salmon habitat. Coho salmon and steelhead trout travel up the Umpqua River for more than 100 miles to spawn in the creek’s gravel beds. But it isn’t unusual for us to get 2 inches of rain in a single day in the winter, and the creek can rise up to 12 feet during those storms. The former owners often considered building a bridge across it…

When my folks bought our house, Dad was pleased to find a used chicken coop left behind by the previous owners. The coop was in good shape. It had lots of windows, a service door across the front side, sturdy racks built on the long back wall, and a tall fence around the perimeter to keep the chickens in. Dad felt the coop was ready for winged occupants, so he prepped the racks with straw and cleaned up the run yard. The chickens would be allowed to come and go as they pleased, and they would not be locked in at night. Dad felt confident the tall fence would prevent escape from our yard, so he went ahead and bought a few hens and a rooster. All seemed just right…

“Eli Gros and his dad, Terry, enjoy a ride into the sunset,” says Cathy Gros of Crowley, Louisiana. “Eli also got his first little lesson in how to hold the reins.” “My grandson Neal and his daughter love to watch the steers on the Landis farm in Lancaster County,” says Arlene Brenner of Conestoga, Pennsylvania. “It's a favorite pastime for Charlotte and her daddy.” “This moment with my son and husband captures the peace and serenity that surround the farming life at the end of most days,” says Jessie Scott of Ferrum, Virginia.…