Monday, September 15, 2014

The Young Guns

Summer has gone by so quickly.  We hardly had any spring and so it seemed like we crammed in as much as we could in 8 weeks.  One of our main activities for the farm this summer was to be guest consigners to the Pasture Treasures Sale hosted by the Skeel's Family of Anchor D Simmentals at Rimbey. 

The sale is held in the middle of August at their farm.  The day includes viewing of the cattle, barbecue, sale and barn dance to end the evening.
We consigned 5 cows with heifer calves at side.  These were cows that had been very productive for us and still had a future.  By selling them we can now keep a few more of our replacements heifers.  Rob always says "you can't keep them all."
The sale was a great success with our 5 lots averaging $8320 or $4360 per head.  The most exciting part of the sale for us was that 6 of the 10 head were sold to junior members.  For one buyer it was his first Purebred Simmental.

Sarah Van Sickle purchased this cow calf pair. Sarah is the Vice-President of the national YCS board.
                                    
Caleb Richardson added two cows to his herd.  He attended the Alberta and National YCS shows this summer. Caleb is also a director on the AYCSA board.
 





Kale Chessor bought the first LRX Blaze55Z daughter to sell to use as his next 4H project.
                                                                                                             Will Bradford purchased his first purebred Simmental. 
 We are very excited for all of these young cattle enthusiasts.  It is fun to see them buying cattle and adding to their herds.  Thank you for making selections from our herd.  We would also like to thank BS Ranch - Shawna & Bob Harakal, Mader Ranches and Earl & Shirley Hagstrom for supporting our program.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Sping Time

It has been a while since we have been on here.  The winter has been a long one.  The snow came in early November and the last of it finally left the yard this week. Although our friends a few hours south of us woke up to more of the white stuff this morning.  We had close to 9 feet over the winter.

There are always a few things that mean Spring to me:
  • Cows ready to go to grass - hopefully this happens in the next 10 days as the feed yard is getting pretty empty.

  • The planting of crops and flowers - I finally got the flower beds cleaned this morning and bought a few flowers at the local green house.  Although it will be a week or more before I dare plant them - temperatures forecasted to be below 0C for the next 5 days.

  • Stacy's birthday - We have celebrated in the sunshine and the snow, today is in between.


  • The Kentucky Derby - One of our all time favorite sporting events.  Maybe one day we can be in KY to see it live.
I hope that Spring has arrived at your house, with lots of moisture to bring on the growing season.