cattle on the loose

So the Sunday before Easter we were getting ready for church when Ben got a call that we had cows out. These calls usually come at very inconvenient times - Christmas eve night, the middle of a downpour, or just as we are sitting down to eat. It doesn't really matter when it happens we have to immediately drop what we are doing to check things out - OR we could have cows all over the east side of the county.
This particular morning 50 heifers somehow got out of their pasture. The kids and I went on to church while Ben, Darrel, and Bart tried to round everything back up.
Unfortunately we don't live in an area that I consider "range land". Our cattle ground consists of lots of herds on different pastures within a 15 mile range. So basically we have to be extra mindful because we have lots of neighbors and roads that we come in contact with. When we have cows out, they can quickly be on someone else's land, etc.
By the time Ben got there, part of the heifers were on their way to a big area of dense woods and the other group was making it's way to a major state highway - on a Sunday morning. LONG story short (or semi-short anyway) they all ended up back in the pasture together except this one -

One heifer broke her leg before making it back into the pasture, so she was taken to the meat processor. We always finish calves off in the feed lot with grain. However, in this case we had to make an exception and just turned everything into hamburger meat.

East Coast Steaks

I missed loading steers Thursday. We always try and load early before it gets too hot and the driver can get on the road. Ben left the house pretty early to meet the truck at the scales, so I didn't wake the kids. He did take a picture of the cab-over truck that loaded them up and took them on a trip up the east coast...

These steers are going up the east coast to New York. They are being marketed in Whole Foods Stores as all-natural beef, so it's a pretty good deal. ALSO - after lunch Sunday we rode around looking at different fields and made this beautiful discovery - little shoots of corn poking up out of the ground. Look close...can you see them?

We no-till plant all of our corn and wheat and 95% of our soybeans. In other words, we don't disk or plow the ground to prepare a seedbed prior to planting. All we do before we plant is spray a burndown herbicide to kill the winter weeds and plant into that undisturbed surface. This saves lots of trips over the fields, saves fuel, and greatly decreases the potential for erosion. Ben says we dont have enough topsoil anyway, we can't allow what we do have to wash away.