Windy Meadows Farm Tour
On September 15th I was
asked to join SIRCH Community Services for another one of their
wonderful farm tours. This tour was of Windy Meadows and working farm
that had Angus Beef Cows.
When we arrived to the farm is was such
a nice fall day and perfect to be walking around a farm. We were
greeted by Jean and Brian Neville. Jean was our tour leader for the
day.
We started with some facts about the farm like it's 200 years
old and they have 100 acres filled with cattle, a donkey, some
chickens and turkeys and we can't forget the pigs.
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| Walking to the barn |
There is an old milk house that is
located on the side of the barn which was once used to milk the cows
in, but has since been changed into the chicken house. The old milk
house once housed the cream separator and that was a hand operated
machine.
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| The Chicken House |
In 2009 they renovated the barn because
it was starting to sink and one wall was falling apart so they poured
concrete to save the wall
The Barn was built low for the height
of the people and back then people were a lot shorter it seems. This
barn is still held together with the wooden pegs where the joists
meet. There is even a wall in the lower part of the barn where you
can see the boards that were original and that they were held
together with straw.
There is a pulley system at the top of
the barn where there is a few ropes attached so that they could move
the loose hay that was brought into the barn by the horses on a
wagon. They had a hay fork that was also attached to the pulley
system and would pick up a quarter of the hay load and then the
person controlling it would then move it across to the other side of
the barn where they stored the hay.
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| The wooden pegs |
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| The Rope that attaches to the Pulley |
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| Pulley on the roof |
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| The Hay Fork |
She showed us the original way into the
lower half of the barn down a home built in ladder. But lucky for us
they now have built stairs to get to the lower half of the barn.
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| Walking down the stairs |
When we were down there we got to see
the stable area for both the cows and the horse. We got to see what
the cows eat from and it’s called a manger. The entrance to the
chicken coop is also down in the lower half of the barn.
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| Entrance into Chicken House |
We were shown some really interesting
Pigeons called
Trumpeter Pigeons. What makes them interesting is the
fact that they have feathers on their feet. They also mate for life
and live for about 10 years.
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| Trumpeter Pigeons |
She told us an interesting fact about
chickens and turkeys. They have to have little stones to eat so that
they can grind up all the food that they eat. You can also buy
special stones for them from feed stores.
She also said that they break up all
the chicken eggs that they get from the chickens and feed them back
to them so they get all the calcium that they need and if you don't
break them up small enough then they will start to eat the eggs they
lay, if they start doing that there is a little trick you can do to
stop them. You take a broken egg fill it with bread mixed with water
and pepper put it back in with the chicken and when they eat it the
pepper will make it too hot for them and they will stop eating their
eggs.
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| The Male Turkeys |
She told us the difference between Hay
and Straw. Hay is used for feed for the cows and Straw is only used
for their beds and it comes from wheat and barley.
She also told us that Hay can
spontaneously con-bust if it is not fully dry when bailed. So they now
have a special device to read the temperature of the middle of the
bail. So the best climate would be a very dry July/August.As for
Straw it is always dry long before the Hay is.
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| Hay |
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| Straw |
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| Showing us how the temp tool works |
One of my favorite parts of this tour
was meeting the pigs but there is only one thing that these pigs are
for. They are Spring to Fall pigs, but that doesn't change how cute
they are. We all learned a very interesting facet about pigs: they
come from the bear family. These kinds of pigs are called
Brukshire
Pigs and they always stay outside.
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| Brukshire Pigs |
Jean was nice enough to turn off the
fence so that we could all get closer to the cows and feed them the
special treat that they enjoy, bread.
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| Cows eating |
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| Feeding Cows Bread |
The cows were so friendly
and enjoyed us being there. If you gave them the time to warm up to
you they would let you touch them. I was lucky enough to get to rub
ones nose.
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| Me touching her nose |
Some interesting facts about cows....
- They have three stomachs
- If cows eat nails or
other metal things they have to have a magnet placed in them to make
sure the it doesn't move, this is called Hardware Disease.
- They gestate for nine
months just like we do.
- If there is a set of
twins that are male and female then she has a 6% chance of being
able to reproduce. The hormones from the male cause this.
- This year they had
two sets of twins and they came from mother and daughter.
- One set of twins this
year was a male and female
- After the calf's a
certain age they get separated from the rest of the cows so they can
reproduce again.
The Donkey that they have is deaf, he
is also albino. Donkeys are kept on farms because they will chase
off dogs, wolves and anything else that is there to harm the sheep
and goats and it will kill the predators.
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| Bringing the Donkey over |
We also were told that horses gestate
for 11 months and very rarely had twins.
Once we were finished with the tour we
were treated to a wonderful lunch of hamburgers and salads. The
burgers were made from the meat that they produce from the farm and I
must say it made me never want to buy beef from the store again. This
was one of the best burgers that I have ever had.
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| The Homemade Burgers cooking |
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| This was so yummy |
I want to thank them again for having
us there and providing such a wonderful lunch for everyone.
Quotes from this tour were pretty
simple and understandable.
Mmmmmmmmm
-Amanda
(Parent)
Interesting learning about small
farming
- Jennifer (parent)
If you would like to learn more about SIRCH Community Services or any of the programs they have to offer please visit their website
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