The cows and calves enjoy the grass and the sunshine, but we need more rain to keep the grass going. The cows move pretty quickly through the pastures now as the grass slows down. We’ve already filled up our two hay barns to have enough hay for the winter. We’ve Read more…
We finally had our last calf for the year on last Thursday afternoon, putting our milking herd at 73 for the summer. That is up about ten cows from last year so we may have to sell a few cows to make sure we don’t overflow the cheese vat. We Read more…
Spring started out slow for us this year, with only half as many calves born in March as last year. As slow as March seemed to be last month, April was our crazy busy month this spring. We just had our sixtieth calf born on Saturday so we only have Read more…
This was supposed to be our April 2014 newsletter, but we were too busy last spring to get this newsletter finished. If you want to find out why, read our December newsletter. We just decided, when we finally had time to sit down and catch up, that this story should be Read more…
Our goal for this year was to send out a newsletter each month of 2014. Since we sent the last one out in March, you can see how close we approached our goal. We have a good excuse though, as you will read in the rest of this newsletter. We’ve been changing walls, moving Read more…
It’s been a long cold winter at our farm and the cold weather seems to still want to stay. March is the busiest month of the year for us when we are dealing with many new baby calves, but this year it started out fairly slow. Our first calf wasn’t born Read more…
Last year, we applied for the Better Cheese for Pittsburgh education grant from Slow Food Pittsburgh, which provides winning cheesemakers with funds to develop a new cheese or, in our case, learn and refine skills in the art of making cheese. In our original application we wrote, “We have been Read more…
Snow covers the ground, temperatures are dropping, and Clover Creek has frozen over several times this past month. Of course, this also means that the milking parlor pipes and hoses are often frozen when we want to start milking. That’s one reason why we look forward to drying off all Read more…
This morning, our seventeenth cow calved. We were able to feed the babies and still have enough to fill the customer fridge. We have some in the refrigerator now and are letting people know they can stop by and get some. We delivered a limited amount to Wholesome Living in Read more…
Spring is coming: the snow is melting, the birds are singing, and the cows are calving on our farm. On our farm, we plan to have all of our cows give birth in the springtime. Farms that have all their calves in one season are known as seasonal farms. We Read more…