Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2019 i Farm and Ranch Living

A FEW MONTHS AGO, AN UNEXPECTED TRIP POPPED UP FOR ME. As I packed, I fretted about who could help care for our dog while I was gone. I shouldn’t have worried. Our neighbors were willing to jump in and give the pooch a little TLC. He’s a cute pup for sure, but this story is more a testament to our neighbors’ kindness. You likely have similarly thoughtful folks in your neighborhood, even if they’re not close enough to chat with across the garden fence. Still, I know community spirit thrives where you live, because it’s a common thread in many of the stories in this issue. On page 42, Cynthia Pappas writes about the helpful neighbors she encountered when she moved from Los Angeles to a commercial raspberry farm…

YOUNG LOVE We’ve bottle-fed our favorite Jersey steer since he was a few days old, and he and our youngest farmer (3 years old in this picture) truly love each other. Raising children on a farm is a blessing. KASEY HENDRICK BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY 1 A CUTE CONSOLATION PRIZE During competition, our daughter’s horse spooked at the second barrel. She was feeling pretty defeated, but our mini Aussie always makes a bad day better. VENESSA PULVER ISMAY, MONTANA 2 ALL IN A DAY’S WORK Our kiddo is a hardworking cowboy who loves lending a hand. Even for the toughest of buckaroos, hay season can be exhausting! MORGAN McLEES DIAMOND, MISSOURI 3 FARMING FOR BEGINNERS My son loves feeding Great-Grandpa’s ducks, sitting in tractors and other machines, and…

PREP: 10 min. + standing BAKE: 20 min. • MAKES: 6 servings 3 cups fresh strawberries, halved 11/2 cups fresh red or black raspberries 11/2 cups fresh blueberries 2/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp. sugar, divided 3 Tbsp. quick-cooking tapioca 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 Tbsp. sugar 2 tsp. baking powder 1/4 tsp. salt 1/4 cup cold butter, cubed 1 large egg, room temperature 1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. 2% milk Coarse sugar 1. Preheat the oven to 400°. Toss the berries with 2/3 cup sugar and tapioca. Transfer mixture to a greased 10-in. cast-iron or other ovenproof skillet; let stand 20 minutes. 2. Meanwhile, whisk flour, 1 Tbsp. sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In another bowl, whisk together egg and milk; stir…

NEW ENGLAND Seal Cove Farm in Lamoine, Maine, has been making goat cheese since 1981, so pizza afternoons—every Friday through Sunday, May through October—feature fetas and chevres and “goateroni,” along with farm-raised vegetables. Visit with the 125 goats in their herd while you lunch. mainegoatcheese.com MID-ATLANTIC All the toppings and sauces on the 12-inch pizzas at Old School Farm in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, are grown on-site, and the farm’s woodlot supplies fuel for the pizza oven. That oven gets fired every Friday night from mid-May through October, and the live music begins at 6 p.m. oldschoolfarm.com MID-SOUTH Reservations are required for the May to October Thursday pizza nights at Millsap Farm in Springfield, Missouri. But for the especially devoted, a $288 season pass lets them skirt the reservation system and gets…

Many teenage boys who have spent a summer baling hay will tell you the hard work in the sweltering heat requires you to inject a bit of humor into the situation to make it bearable. And so it went for me one hot, humid July afternoon in southern Ohio. On that day, the four of us—my younger brother, Jerry, our friend Jeff, our football coach, Steve, and I—thought we had concocted the perfect system. With each fresh wagonload of baled hay brought in on a tractor, one of us was to stay on the ground and unload the hay onto the elevator while the other three set up shop in the barn’s mow, removing the bales from the elevator and storing them. Well, Steve hated the extreme heat and choking…

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Enter a Photo & You Could Win $300! Share your best photos for a chance to win $300 in the second annual Farm & Ranch Living Life on the Land photo contest. Pictures will be judged in two categories, and each category will have a $300 winner. For the People and Pals category, send us your best shots of the people and animals on your land. Pets, livestock, working animals, kids and grown-ups (at work or at play)…we welcome all of it! Or show us Where You Work. Winter, spring, summer or fall, we want to see the pastures and fields, stunning landscapes, tractors, trucks and barns that populate your farm or ranch. The contest opens at 10 a.m. Central on May 31, 2019, and ends at 3 p.m. Central…

Hello. My name is Sara Veliquette McGuire, and I’ve been married to Patrick McGuire for 22 years. When we got engaged in late 1995, we agreed that northern Michigan, where we both grew up, was where we wanted to settle. I grew up in a cherry-farming family and went to school for merchandising management. Patrick, who graduated with a degree in automotive and heavy equipment management, grew up working summers on family cherry farms. Neither of us planned to farm, but when the opportunity presented itself we couldn’t say no. Born in the spring of 1996—shortly before our wedding—Royal Farms was named for me. (At that time, I was finishing my reign as National Cherry Queen.) In the beginning, we harvested and sold fruit to processors. But a complete crop…

1. Have you identified your personal motivation for doing this work? Do you love working outside and nurturing plants and/or animals? 2. Is there a healthy market for what you plan to produce? 3. Are you prepared to commit to a 24/7 work schedule? This is especially important if you want to raise livestock. 4. Do you possess any skills that can help reduce costs? Farmers do as much as they can before resorting to outsourcing. (Shahid had prior experience with small engines and construction, for example.) 5. Have you identified multiple revenue streams to help you make it through tough seasons?…

On a Wednesday night in Elburn, Illinois, dozens of children run around Heritage Prairie Farm, checking out barnyard animals and playing on a tire swing. The adults set up shop with picnic blankets, lawn chairs and chilled beverages. The sounds of a folk band float over the summer evening air from a tent just steps away from the barn. It may look like a midweek family reunion, but the flurry of activity around an outdoor wood-fired oven offers a clue: It’s pizza night at Heritage Prairie, this farm’s version of the latest trend in agritourism. Conventionally, the term “pizza farm” has been used to describe a circular piece of farmland planted in slice-shaped segments with pizza ingredients (think of tomatoes, oregano, basil and wheat). These farms tend to have an…

Q How do you keep a farm sustainable and competitive as the number of farms in America decreases and the average size increases? KELLI BLACK HERRICK, ILLINOIS A It’s true: According to the USDA’s National Agriculture Statistics Service, the number of farms in the U.S. declined from 2,109,810 in 2012 to 2,060,000 in 2016. And while the number of farms may, unfortunately, be decreasing, many of the ones that remain are growing. What this trend means is that it’s important for farms to stay sustainably competitive. It’s not always an option for a farm to grow by increasing its acreage, but it is exciting to think about financial growth through finding niche markets. As the owners of a pick-your-own farm, my husband, Steve, and I are constantly brainstorming ways we…

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MYSTERY TOOL We wondered if you could identify this tool found by Joseph Moravek, and dozens of you wrote in. A few guessed it was a cattle ear tagger or a punch tool, but the most common response we got was a handsaw tooth setter. Have a mystery tool you’d like us to feature? Send it in to us online at farmandranchliving.com/submit and we may include it in an upcoming issue. HORSESHOE SUCCESS I have been getting Farm & Ranch Living for a couple of years, and I go through the pages three or four times and can’t find the horseshoe. For the April/May issue, I was looking closely at the photo of chickens on pages 50-51, since I love chickens and raise them. Sure enough, I found the horseshoe!…

Have you ever seen something out of the blue that brings back a quick flood of memories? It happened to me when I was living in Germany a few years ago, and I thought back to my childhood in New York State, my dad and the black raspberries he grew. On my morning walk I spotted some berries growing alongside a fence. Upon closer inspection I saw that they were plump blackberries—not the same as the black raspberries of my youth, but similar—and so I hurried home across the pasture to get a bowl and start picking before yellow jackets discovered them. As I picked that morning, I could almost hear my dad saying to my mom, “Clare, it’s 8 o’clock. Aren’t those kids up yet? We have to get…

STAFFING It takes about 15 employees to successfully run pizza night at Heritage Prairie Farm in Illinois. “You need a whole team,” Jessica Impson says, noting that the kitchen staff starts prepping for pizza night the day before. INFRASTRUCTURE The wood-fired oven is key, and building one can cost several thousand dollars. Most only hold a few pizzas at a time, limiting the number of customers who can be served on any given night. “Start small and see what you can handle,” Jessica says. CUSTOMER SERVICE Jessica’s very first job was at Burger King, and she worked her way through school as a restaurant server. “I loved service,” she says. So that aspect of the venture—different from more solitary farm tasks—came naturally to her. Emily Knudsen, of Pleasant Grove Pizza…

We hid a drawing of a horseshoe like the one above on page 51 of the April/May issue. Then we drew names at random from all the readers who found it. Each winner received a year’s subscription to Farm & Ranch Living. We hid another one in this issue. It could be hidden anywhere, so keep a sharp eye out. Enter the contest on our website at farmandranchliving.com if you find it. From those submissions, we’ll draw additional names and send those readers a year’s subscription or subscription extension to Farm & Ranch Living. No purchase necessary to enter to win. Purchase will not improve your chances of winning. The sweepstakes is open to legal residents age 18 years or older of the U.S., its territories and possessions, or of…