One weekend last month we had a very busy and fun weekend of tours and events at the Ranch.  One of our guests was Jay Hamilton-Roth and his family.  Jay is the creator of Business With Passion, a television documentary series that features interviews with people who have successfully transformed their long-term passion into a successful business.  Jay interviewed Loren and took some beautiful footage of the Ranch, and we were featured on the Business With Passion that aired tonight on Marin County Comcast Channel 26. 

Take a look at the video:

You can also view the video on the Business With Passion website, please click here.

Part of the benefit of a great grass season like this one we enjoyed this spring is the opportunity to harvest feed and store it for the upcoming winter months.  In addition to windrowing most of our pastures, we also made 35 tons of small hay bales (100 pounds each) and 90 tons of round bales (1200 pounds each).

The round bales are something new for us this year and somewhat of an experiment. They are wrapped in plastic to seal in the grass and to promote the fermentation process.  This produces what is called silage or haylage.  It creates a high moisture, higher nutrient feed than the dry feed that we make or what is left in the fields.  Here are some photos of the baling process and the finished products.

Windrowing the grass.

Making the round bales.

Wrapping the individual bales.

Round bales stacked and ready for use later this year as feed (and now as a jungle gym for visiting friends Dan, Matt & Nick).

The time of year has come when the lush green grass is dried out by the warm summer days and our pastures begin to remind us of why they call California The Golden State.  There is still some green in some of the fields, but a huge difference from just a few weeks ago when it was green as far as the eyes could see.

We recently windrowed (mowed) the grass many of our pastures.  This process cuts the tall grass and lays it down in rows.  The cut grass will stay there until we let the the cows come along and eat it in the Fall.  This helps clean up the pasture and keeps the quality of the grass at a higher level into the Fall months.   We also get some nice regrowth in the mowed pastures. 

For grass-fed farmers, the first and the last rains of the season are the most important.  Here we are at the end of May and we are still expecting more rain next week.  This spring has been ideal grass growing conditions and our fields and animals are reaping the benefits.  As you will see here, our cows are fat and happy! 

Depending on how much wind we get these next few weeks, we are expecting to have green grass through mid-July.  In dryer years our grass turns brown as early as late May, so this is quite an exciting time for us.   Especially considering how dry 2008 and 2009 were, there are many happy ranchers in our neck of the woods right now.

Loren took our daughter Avery Jane (11 months) out to the ranch this weekend. Avery owns one of her own cows, it was a very generous gift from another Marin County rancher. We are hoping her cow (and its future offspring) will produce enough calves in the next 18 years to give Avery a jump start on her college fund! The cow had one calf last year and is about to have another calf in the next week or so. You can see in the photo below that her eartag says “AJ.”

Avery at the ranch with Loren.

We are very pleased with how the grass is looking right now. We are hoping for a few more rain showers in the next couple of months to set us up for a great summer.

While most of our cows have their calves in the Fall, a small group have their calves in the early springtime. We call them our Spring Calvers, even though it is really still the wintertime here (even in sunny California). Of this group, we have had 18 calves so far and are expecting another 10 or so in the next 10 days.

This is a Valentine’s Day calf, born yesterday. This calf is one of the few on the ranch that have any white of them. We call calves like this one a “black baldy,” which means it is a cross between a hereford bull and an angus cow. This calf is 3/4 angus and 1/4 hereford, while most of our cattle are 100% angus.

This Black Baldy calf was born on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2010.

Today we moved a group of about 120 cows and calves from the east fields to the west fields.  They had been in the east fields since the first rains of the season and had eaten just about all of the available grass.  The west fields have grass and clover about 14 inches tall, just perfect for the cattle to graze and gain healthy weight.

Moving to greener pastures. Green grass ahead.

This time of year our sheep begin to lamb.  We have had about 40 new baby lambs born in the past 2 weeks.  Seeing the little lambs run through the green grass is just amazing.  Here are some of the newest additions, they were born on Christmas Day.

These are twins when they were just 1 day old.

Another shot of the twins.

A group of sheep.

A few weeks ago we put seven of our bulls in with our cows.  They will have about sixty days to breed.  Since this is a family friendly website we’ll spare you the details and real action shots but here is a photo of one of our bulls in a field of about thirty cows.  This bull weighs about 2,000 pounds and is two and a half years old.  He can easily breed up to five cows per day.  Not too shabby considering he was a virgin two weeks ago! 

Bull #7860 taking a look at his prospects.