Sometimes I feel like calving season is never actually over around here.
Our lives seem to revolve around seasons—planting, side dressing, calving, chickens, harvest, and knowing when cattle and hogs will be ready to be processed. One season seems to run right into the next, and before we know it, we’re starting all over again.
Since my last farm update, we’ve welcomed quite a few new calves.
And one of them was quite the surprise.
We were fully convinced this particular mama wasn’t pregnant, which honestly made me a little sad. She’s a really good mama and one of the cows I absolutely love.
Then one day, we looked out into the pasture…
And there she was with a sweet new baby beside her.
I was beyond excited.
My husband, however, was a little more confused. 
I had to laugh watching him stand out in the pasture with his hat off, scratching his head and assessing this calf like, What in the world did I miss, and how did this happen?
Apparently she had other plans for us.
After the amount of loss we experienced last year, I don’t take a single healthy calf for granted. I’m just praising God that our babies have been delivered safely and successfully this year.
Every healthy mama standing beside a healthy calf feels like such a gift.
My husband and I are incredibly grateful that we get to live this life and care for these animals. We joke about how spoiled our cows are, but the truth is, we have a deep love for our cattle—especially watching these mamas raise their babies.
A New Adventure With Hogs
We’ve also recently started our adventure with hogs.
And we’re already learning.
There are things we’d like to change next time, breeds we’re learning more about, and so much we’re discovering about how breed, size, growth, and genetics can affect the quality and type of meat they produce.
That’s one thing farming will always do: keep you learning.
You can grow up around agriculture your entire life and still find something you don’t know.
We’re grateful to have the opportunity to learn how to raise another kind of animal well and, ultimately, provide quality meat for our family.
Chickens… Just Not Ours
Chickens are also part of our farming world, although we don’t raise meat birds ourselves.
My husband’s family raises pullets in their chicken barns—young hens that are raised until they’re ready to begin laying eggs.
It’s another piece of agriculture that our family gets to be around, and another reminder of just how many different hands and stages are involved in producing the food people see on a grocery store shelf.
Harvest Is Coming
And now, harvest is just around the corner.
You can almost feel the farm beginning to shift toward it.
I’m already thinking about the long hours my husband will work and, naturally, the food I’ll need to make to keep him going.
If you’re part of a farming family, you know what harvest can look like.
Early mornings turn into late nights. The days start running together. Sleep gets shorter. Meals don’t always happen at normal times, and plans can change depending on weather, equipment, or what needs done next.
From the outside, farming can sometimes look like someone simply sitting in a tractor all day.
But those long days are mentally and physically exhausting.
There is so much to pay attention to, so much responsibility riding on a short window of time, and so many things that can change in an instant.
Good food becomes especially important during those seasons—not fancy food, just hearty meals that nourish his body and give him enough fuel to keep going.
And I love being able to care for him in that way.
Harvest Means More Than Crops Around Here
Of course, there’s another kind of harvest my husband is already looking forward to…
Deer season.
To say he’s passionate about hunting would probably be an understatement.
He has some of the best friends he hunts alongside during different seasons, and I love seeing how much he enjoys it.
I’ve always admired that my husband is a harvester in so many senses of the word. He doesn’t only harvest grain from the fields. He has a tremendous respect for the animals and resources God has given us and takes seriously the responsibility of providing for our family from them.
That love started long before I came along.
His dad introduced him to hunting when he was young, just as farming was passed down to him from the generations before.
There are pictures of Carson sitting on a tractor with his grandfather when he couldn’t have been much older than two.
And now I get to watch him do the same thing with our children.
I’m pretty sure they’ve already had more tractor and combine rides than I had in my entire childhood.
He loves having them beside him.
He lets them watch. He explains what he’s doing. He lets them ask a hundred questions. And somehow, through all of it, he has more patience than just about anyone I’ve ever met.
I think that’s one of my favorite things about watching him become a dad.
He’s not simply showing our children how to farm.
He’s sharing something with them that was once shared with him.
On to the Next Season
We’ll have more calves due this fall, harvest will soon be in full swing, and before long the farm will look completely different than it does today.
That’s farm life.
Just when you settle into one season, another one comes knocking.
For now, we’re thankful for five healthy calves in the pasture, new things to learn with the hogs, crops getting closer to harvest, and another season ahead of us.
And we’re especially thankful that we get to do it together.
