Oops! I Sold a Cow that Ran Away

That title, by the way, true story. Someone told me I could make $1,000 raising a grass-fed steer through the summer. Profit, $1,000. Okay, I'm listening.

Who you got?

The breakfast posse.

Okay.

Okay. Here's what you do. Buy a 500-pound-ish steer, about 1 year old, about $1 a pound, so about $500. You buy that in the spring, and then you call friends and family and you sell that steer for about $8 freezer weight, and you get half the money up front to fund this venture, and then you plan on getting the other half at the end of the summer when you go to butcher. Good morning.

Where's your third pan?

And the other thing you need to do to run this successfully is get the book Salad Bar Beef by Joel Salatin. Check, check, check, and check plus. By the way, I love that book. So where is it? I thought I brought it down here. Devoured that thing, read it multiple times, underlined, loved it. So we found a local grass-based farmer selling steers. We went We picked one out. By the way, I didn't know anything about picking one out. And we decided to call it A1 just in case we got attached. Once the farmer arrived a few weeks later, problems began. I realized it wasn't a steer, it was a heifer. So I asked the guy who recommended this whole project, "Is that a problem?" "No, it's not going to be a problem.

It should be okay." You getting that one, Jonah? Snap!

Really? The wheel came off. It went okay except for this one weird thing that was happening about every 3 weeks. She would get antsy, she would pace the fence, she would bellow. It would last for about 3 days and then go away.

Cornish cross sea monsters, here we come. You guys ready for a weigh-in? First, new grass. Good morning, Donald.

And all was good until I woke up one morning and looked out my window, and no lie, she was out there in the field, or at least she was supposed to be, but she was gone.

These guys are due for, uh, butchering on Wednesday. They had a little bit of a slow start in weight gain. We're going to measure them today to see where they stand, when they're going to be ready. We should get this going. Did you drink it all yesterday? Okay.

Sometimes on hot days they go through 7 gallons, and we need—

especially as they get older, so we're going to need to start filling it up evening too.

Luckily, I found her just up the mountain, up through there. In the grass. But if you think Flossy was unhandled, this cow was unhandled. I went to go to try to herd her back in, into the woods. I went after her. I had Jonah on my back. He was just a little guy at that time. And soon she lost me. No worries, maybe she'll come back. She didn't. Well, maybe she's down the road, a mile down the road at the neighbor's cows. Maybe she wanted other cows. She wasn't. Okay, well, maybe she went deeper into the woods. She didn't. After a week, I was pretty resolved to just call the customers and just admit we, we lost. Our beef had ran away and is nowhere to be found.

Johnna's gonna start the milking cow process. I gotta show you guys the forest pics. It's overdue. And doesn't that look nice? We've cleared behind the pigs for a savanna, kept our primary trees. We ran out of time, ran out of energy, had to hire a crew, but they came in and did a wonderful job here. And now look, the grass that the pigs have stirred up— whoa guys, be careful— the grass that the pigs have stirred up is now thriving because it can get light even under this beautiful oak tree. I'm loving this, I'm loving this. You guys are hard at work. The next one, see, you need to be moved. We need to move you from here. Look at this job they've done, guys. Now they'll come in here and do the same. After cows, before pigs, after pigs, after humans. Looks nice.

Look at that view out through there.

Is that not amazing? That's the future of our farm, guys. Foresting our pastures, pasturing our forests. They good on water?

Just see.

Oh yeah, real good on water. This is where they were just last week, and look at the grass coming up. Sure, ruminants like cows and goats and sheep will help clear your forest. You gotta have pigs to come in and stir the ground, stir up that grass seed. To turn it into pasture. Encourage tilling. We're pouring this feed on areas that need a little bit of work. Careful not to pour it on their manure. It's not beautiful. This just inspires me every time. I never get sick of it. Do you get sick of it?

No.

This is just Oh, just something so right about that. How's it going down here, Jonah? Just got started? Oh wow, holy moly, nice. Okay, I'll take it from here, buddy.

Thank you, good job.

Thank you, Miss Fang, for that gallon and a half. We appreciate you.

And then after a few hours or a few days, I don't remember then, I just had this crazy resolve and new energy, and I just said, you know what, I'm gonna go over the mountain. I'm gonna get on the four-wheeler, drive over the mountain. I think there's a pasture way over there. What if she just went? Guys, this was like 4 or 5 miles in. Come on.

Here she comes. Go free, young lady.

We went all the way over to where we saw a fence, and you know, I just got out to pee. Well, I got out to pee and I looked down and there were some hoof prints, and I followed those hoof prints around this fence until I saw a breach in the fence. After that breach, there were no more hoof prints, so I said Could it be? Good morning, beautiful one.

Good morning.

You're a little ahead of me, but I'm gonna catch up fast.

Homegrown eggs and yogurt and, uh, broth.

Cultured cream.

Mm-hmm.

Tomatillo.

Do you ever get— yeah, go with it, go with it, babe. Be confident.

Do you, uh, ever get sick of eating homegrown food?

Do you ever be like, man, I just gotta have some food not off this land?

Sometimes I like— we had spaghetti squash mac and cheese. I was like, oh, it's good, but I was like, I kind of wish that I could have some brown rice noodles with this.

That was so good.

And noodles, every once in a while I'm like, rice would be good with this dish. Yeah, but it's really far and few between. It's not like Every day I feel that way. It's just every once in a while.

And I went through into that pasture and saw the herd. It was a Black Angus herd, just like she was. And I looked like what I thought was her. Lunch from the land: tomato soup and sea monster. Speaking of sea monster, Beck. Yeah, 12% underweight. That's it. Okay, they were almost 50% underweight just last week, week and a half ago, and then they were 60% at 4 weeks. So we got the feed mix corrected. They're jamming. Great. We can butcher like next week.

Okay.

So we go back, we get in the car, we go around the mountain because you can't drive the car through the forest. We find this farmer. Sure enough, he's had one extra cow for about a week. This evening, chores begin with getting a fishing pole off the roof. Finally.

What you doing, crazy chicken lady?

I am just picking my garden.

Okay.

Good. Oh, and by the way, yeah, buckets and buckets and buckets of green beans down there.

It's tomorrow's.

They're so ready.

I'm gonna pick some tonight.

Well, I found Mr. Brown's shoe. One of them. I can't make this up. I can't make this up.

Never thought to look on the roof. A little sunburnt, but that's a shoe.

There's a shoe. Where's this fishing pole hung up at?

There you go.

All right, good cast.

Got around that nut right there.

Okay, ready? By this time we realized this little episode she was having every 3 weeks was heat. She's coming in heat. She's wanting to be bred. She's wanting to find her a lover. Oh no, did she find a lover? There was one. There was a bull. I seen it.

Holy smokes.

I know.

And this is just from my garden, and there's a ton of cherry tomatoes that I'm gonna give the kids to pick for me tomorrow. Then I want to roast them.

What are you gonna do with all those tomatoes?

Tomato leather. Hopefully my plan. I also might make— I might, um, cook them down and make some sauce with it.

Good.

Did they mate? Who knows. But we weren't going to make the same mistake again, so we asked the farmer, can we buy some more of these when we get this cow back? And he said, sure, we're actually going to go to market, so sure, you can buy some. So we bought 3 more and sold 12 more shares. All was good. We had cows back together. Every 3 weeks she came into that. All these guys were steers, but she was content being with them. She didn't feel like she needed to run away.

Let's wash that. Let's wash this, then we'll have something to collect the veggies in.

Fortunately, we made it to harvest successfully. She was not pregnant, and we made $1,000 off of her. And then the 3 other steers we, we had total, we made about $4,000. Happy ending.

Josiah, do you want me to go in? Somebody with easy shoes. There you go. Go put a cloth and some soap.

Here's your bucket.

What are you gonna put in that?

Green beans or tomatoes.

Okay, so why am I telling you this story? Well, the other day I got an email. Uh, the email was about selling my course Permaculture Chickens, one of the first products we ever did.

Kale's coming on, getting a little bit up, but lettuce though, lettuce, lettuce is coming in.

Yippee!

It'll be good to have fresh lettuce from the farm again.

I got a response to that email and it wasn't exactly the most positive email, but I appreciate all comments and feedback, so I read it and he said would you even buy this back when you were starting to homestead? And I thought, wow, that's a really good question, because we were broke. Like, selling A1 was almost a month income for us, guys. But I thought about it, and I thought— I didn't have to think long, because then I realized, well, gosh, that's much of why I'm doing this. Because back then I was reading Joel Salatin's book Salad Bar Beef, and it was amazing, and it gave me most everything. But still, I would— I long to wish to call him. Like, could Joel be my uncle? Wouldn't that be amazing? Because then I could contact him, get more info, or get specific info to my situation. But I couldn't.

You think those buckets will hold— those tomatoes will hold up their own weight? What do you mean? Full bucket of tomatoes? I think it'll be fine.

I would have had help picking her out. I wouldn't have gotten just one cow, and it probably would have been a steer going straight into it.

This is gonna be a lot of tomatoes.

This is a jungle in here.

Yeah, you in the lamb's quarter jungle?

You want to pick some of that for the pigs? They love it. They're harvesting the good ones. I'm gonna go ahead and harvest the bad ones, ones that are on the ground and rotting, for the chickens and the pigs.

Textbooks are great, but sometimes you need more specific answers. Take Barbie B, for example, one of our premium members. She texted me a potential cow, and we were able to feedback with her on what was good, what was bad, how can you move forward, what kind of questions can you begin asking. We were able to help her tremendously.

Okay, let's say we got a good 15, 20 pounds of tomatoes and cucumbers.

Another member, Adam, kicking cow in the stanchion. He's trying to milk this cow, the cow kicking. We just gave him a few easy changes and that cow milked so much easier.

Dude, those beans are looking perfect.

I know.

And I've had numerous folks just like this inside my Do-It-Yourself Abundance member area say Oh, the community inside there has helped me so much. Oh, having direct access to you has helped me so much. The live webinars are amazing. The video library— you have saved me tons of dollars and time. Thank you. And now this fall, for the first time, I'm bringing in a bunch of other homesteading experts. Al on Cold Climate Homesteading, Casey Oswitch on Fall Gardening, Ben and Meg Holler on setting up a homestead, to A Fit Farmer staying fit on the farm, Jason Contreras building useful things for your farm. In addition to that, I'm offering this online Facebook community where you can feel a little bit less crazy. For doing what you're doing.

Oh my, Rebecca, those are perfect green beans! And you love green beans almost as much as you love tomatoes. Oh my gosh, huge!

He's gonna leap! Get that, Papa! You all watch, he's gonna leap!

Oh, and I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but there's discounts on popular tools that I use and you guys will appreciate. Uh, one of our members, Daniel R., says it's almost paid for his membership just in the discounts. Premier One, Johnny Seeds, which is where I get my silage tarps— you can get seeds there, of course— Meadow Creatures broadfork, and more.

Let's harvest this garden like soonish, like tomorrow-ish, Rebecca, and then we can put the chickens in here.

Unless you're going to be done with your tomatoes soon.

Are you going to be done with them? We might wait till they're done and move them, but if you're not, we'll stand moving and protect your tomatoes.

Let's protect the tomatoes for as long as we can.

And there's a chance to join live with us every other week, live Q&A with myself and Rebecca. And now once a month, one of these guests— each of these guests, Casey Al, Meg, Ben, Jason.

We're gonna freeze these green beans.

And many like Barb and Adam can get direct instant access to me via text.

I mean, this is not too crazy, Rebecca. It's only 50 feet. You've gone 10 feet. I guess you could fill up that whole bin.

So in the end, I'm extremely proud of this product I'm selling, and so would have bought it, so wished it was around 10 years ago, so wish Joel was offering this 10 years ago, it would have saved me so much blood, sweat, and tears. I would even be further along than I am now.

You call me Mr. Cucumber Man.

Why? Show me. Oh, these cucumbers?

Yay! I know, there's hundreds. See?

Good job, Mom. These cucumbers are— I have 2 in each pot right now too. Prime.

I'm putting them in my pockets. See?

Yeah, I think if we just come every night and harvest, we'll get to be okay, right?

Ultimately, I could not be more excited to be that uncle I wished for so long ago. Some even call me Uncle Justin. So consider joining our thriving community. The link is down below. And after all, if it's not what you thought, 100% money-back guarantee. Oh, and you can cancel at any time. So check it out. We would love to have you in there, welcome you with open arms.