Saint John's Cow Family Lineage

Family lines, Cow names, and Saint John's history
We started a herd book when we moved back to the farm in 1997, with a page/s for each year, and as each calf was born, its name and number would be written on its own line, with its date of birth, its mother's name and number, sire's name, a place for the State required Bangs number, and room for a few notes about anything out of the ordinary. I (Claire) spent many hours reading and studying and memorizing the Cow Book, I absolutely loved the lineage tracing, and looking for patterns in families...
That first year, my mum recorded 11 heifers born and named. My dad named Yuri, Gretzky, North America (because of the near perfect white patch of a North American map silhouette on her shoulder) Wilma, and his longtime favorite, Dusty. Aaron had Gnome and Lightning, I picked Seven, and I think Mum named Boo and Sunny. There was a two year old when we moved to the farm, a little jersey cross that we named Sweet Pea, who was another definite favorite and mother of a line of favorites.
In 1998, four year old me named two heifers Blackie and Brownie, and a steer that caught my eye, Whitey. There was a bull we kept, that had four or five names, because everyone wanted to name the herd bull... but baby JJ's choice of Art was the young bull's primary name.
In 1999, things started getting more exciting, because the first calves that we named were now two year olds and having calves of their own! Aaron's Lightning had Boomer, and his Gnome had a heifer, Pixie. Dad's Dusty had Marigold, another longterm queen. We had 22 heifers that year, and about 20 bull calves. There were a lot of calves named names like Winnie the Pooh, Buckaroo, Eyeore, SpunkyRoo, Bianca, Leaf, Bambi, Dragonfly, Cute, Flopsy, Tiny, Jack and Jill (twins), Faline, Duck, Rosie, Kitty (one of my pets, she had a patch of white on side that looked like an upside down cat? :) ), Hershey Bar, Dash, Molly, Tulip, and Charley.
In 2000, my Blackie's first calf, Clown, was sold to the neighbor at a month old to be a bottle baby. I was slightly heartbroken, to learn that pets didn't stay forever, and that calves could just be sold away, but it is an important lesson to learn, and a part of life, that nothing stays forever in this world, except God. (I didn't learn the God part until later... :) )
2001, our literary names got a little older.  While we still named Curious George, Piglet, Balloon, Kanga, Emmett, and Frosty Thunder, we also had Rumblebuffin (from Narnia), Matthias and Mattimeo (from Redwall),  Misty and Sea Star (the Misty of Chincoteague books), Michael (probably Peter Pan), Pippi, and John Wayne (my dad's choice, from his Gretzky)
2002 we started getting more intentional about naming a calf a name like the mother's name, making it easier to trace family lines... Ray from Sunshine, Millie and Tillie (twins) from Molly, Flash from Lightning, Sunflower from Violet, Sacajawea from Pocahontas, Bob from Babe, Christopher from Pooh and Robin from Winnie (born two days apart :) ), and Geronimo from Moon Lily. Also more Narnia names, Trumpkin, Reepacheep, and Peepiceek; Yoda, from watching StarWars, and Mrs Pollifax and Duchess from Dorothy Gilman's Mrs Pollifax series. Also, my dad's mum wanted us to name a calf after her... so when a cute Jersey cross heifer was born with a heart shaped star of white on her head, we named her Louise. However, she was not more than a few months old before she earned a T in front of her name (for Troublesome), and she kept the T for the rest of her life. T Louise had Lively, Helen, Ballor, Aladyn, Leo, Dagoba, Valentine, Fritz, and finally Mrs Whatsit and Tumnus. A calf every year, and then her ninth and final pregnancy, twins. :)
2003, had upwards of fifty calves. While all the cows are technically my parents cows, we each had families of cows that we had naming rights on, and then the family would collaborate and have to agree to name the unclaimed cows. Pretty exciting as the years went by, and "my" collection of cows to name grew!
2004, we were rolling with Svetlana from Yuri, Snowflake from Frosty, Thunder from Lightning, Sunburst from Cloud, Merlin from Gnome, Seba (Arabic for 7) from Seven, Huck Finn from Blackberry, Cornflower from Cornstalk, Roo from Kanga, General Lee from Audrey (Audrey named for a girl intern from Virginia...), Garlic from Salt, Sky Boy from Balloon and Dixie from Pixie.
2005, I took over the Cow Book, very exciting to be the one writing in the entries!
2006, Mum and Dad got to name a few, but the boys and I were definitely the main namers. Johanna Spyri names (Alida, Stefili, Russli, Marta), Chief Seattle, Fezic, Winchester, Mendanbar, Mars, Jupiter, Sixty, Poseidon, Taran, and Shaker (from Salt). I guess that year, I was more excited about the bull calf names...
2007, we started naming the boys names that correspond to their id tag. We tag the heifers 701, 702, 703, etc, in order of their birth, and the steers 7A, 7B, 7C, etc... So this year we had Archibald, Ballor, Cnowman (had to get a little creative, because it snowed that day!), Dolphin, Ent, Freddy, Giant, Hotshot, Inigo Montoya, JarJar Binks, Sir Kay, Leonard, Moose, 'Nenome, Orion, (P and Q were twins out of Songbird and I think Q got the short end of the stick because while we named P Pavarotti, Q was called Quack...), Rynelf, Samson, etc... :)
2008, we had sold quite a few cows, so we only calved out 32 this year. On the 3rd of January, Tulip, out of Violet, out of Sweet Pea, had a heifer calf that we named Blossom, and Blossom was a favorite for all of us. A super sweet gentle excellent cow, nice to work with, grand in the barn, and her daughters all quite "typy", following in her footsteps. The granddaughters and great grands and great great grands have gotten a little diluted and hit or miss, but the Blossom line has been a high priority favorite choice for cows to go into the milk barn.
2009, Gnome and Gretzky still going strong at 12 years old, and Sweet Pea at 14. Back up to 42 calves.
2010, a small year of only 19 calves! The bulls were Abercrombie, Bentworthy, Cadbury, Dagoba, Eckelstein, Fitch Finn MacCool, Gandalf, and Honorary G Major. :)
2011, JJ and I had the brilliant but ridiculous idea of complicating the naming requirements as follows. The boys started with A and ended with Z, then B and Y, C and X, etc, so we got Azaz, Bugs Bunny, Colorado X, Double Trouble W, Ev, FigureTru, Giant, Horatio Biggs, Isildur, and Jaq.  The girls were the mirror of that, starting with Z and ending with A, then Y and B, etc, etc. AND as if that wasn't enough, the girls also needed their mother's names initials inside their name... The fifth heifer, out of T Louise, is the only real success from that year, thanks to Dad. She got to be Valentine. All the rest were pretty silly...
2012, Blossom had her second heifer. She would have a total of five heifers, Willow, Daffodil, Sunshine, Rosebud, and Rose. Willow would have Cherry (one of Dorothy's favorites), Bambi,  Cedar and Magnolia. (I'm not listing the bulls, just Blossom's female descendants). Cherry would have Carrots, and Alberta. (Bambi we sold as a milk cow, her first calf Faline, and Carrots, Cedar and Magnolia were all Red Devon crosses, so they went for beef. Alberta is a coming two year old this year.) Daffodil would have Angelica and Russet. (Angelica has Chamomile and Begonia.) Sunshine had Moonbeam and Rey. (Rey would have Reina, a coming two year old.) Rosebud had Flower and Clover. (Flower would have Violet, Trillium, and Blondie. Trillium had Larkspur in 2023. Clover had Selenia and Iris.) Rose had Dahlia, Rosalia, and Primrose. (Dahlia had Morning Glory) These cows also have had 31 bull calves in the 15 years since Blossom had her first calf. 34 heifers and 31 bulls, that's 65 calves from one nice cow in 15 years!
2013, we took a break from the alphabetical naming. :) the first bull calf was enormous and I wanted to name him Sherman, for the Sherman tanks of World War 2. He was one of our last Galileo babies, and then we started having Sitting Bull babies.
2014, one of the years we didn't get a set of twins. Usually we get one to three sets. Twins are more likely to have trouble and not survive birth, but cows tend to handle having twins pretty well in general. Jack and Jill in 1999, Flip and Flap, and Salt and Pepper, in 2000, Millie and Tillie in 2002, Raspberry and Olympia, and Ivy and Burl, and Thief and a dead twin in 2003, Leah and Rachel in 2004, Chili and Jalapena in 2005, Solo and Duo, and North Dakota and South Dakota in 2006, Pavarotti and Quack in 2007, Lily and a dead twin in 2012, Mrs Whatsit and Tumnus in 2013, Babe and Ruth, and a set that didn't make it, in 2016, Dae and Thia, and a set that didn't make it in 2017, Mona Lisa and Michaelangelo in 2018, Orlando and Cornflower, and a set that didn't make it, in 2019, Asdrubal and Snowball, and a set that didn't make it in 2022, Hal and Henrietta, Mimsy and Mac, Nick Saint and Nina in 2023, and we've only had one cow calve so far in 2024 (writing in May), with a single, so we'll see what happens yet!
2015, calved out about 40. I thought it would be fun to reuse some old names from over the years, so we had all the heifers listed as "so and so the second" this year. Pennyroyal, Marionberry, Moonbeam, Faun, Victoria, Primrose, Pixie, Boudicca, Seacht (Gaelic for 7), Firefly, Frosty, Pippi, Sally, and Marigold.  The boys were Abner, Byron, Centrip, Denver, Ernest, Finn, Geronimo, Hector, Iggy, Jethro, Kassidy, Leslie, Magnus, Nuno, Ollie, Phileas, Quincy, Rafael, Sylvester, Topper, Ulysses and Victor.
2016, JJ and Dad are Seattle Mariners baseball fans, so we named a lot of calves baseball names... Babe and Ruth, Aoki, Felix, Gutierrez, Ichiro, Jamie, Kirby, Leonys, Martin, and Nelson.
2017, quite a few more baseball names, and literary names, and a few flowers and things. Clover from Rosebud, Bing from Cherry, Poppy from Pansy, Polly from Faun, Llonio from Anwara, and Danny, E-Rod, Fernando, Gaviglio, Haniger, and Iwakuma...
2018, had a dozen Black Angus cross calves at the end of the year. JJ's Lily had a jet black heifer that he promptly named Cottonball. (Later the mother of Snowball and Asdrubal... Asdrubal is the name of another baseball player...)
2019, 45 or so calves, all by Red Bull, all but one were red in color! I named 95% of them a red based name. Fun challenge, but I gave myself a little wiggle room on a few. Shirley (Anne of Green Gables), Ruby, Scarlett, Clifford, Dracaris, Carrots, Frank (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), Gimli, Ivan, Russet, Jalapeno, Strawberry, Coral, Copper, Merida, Lawry, Mick, Cedar, Shiara, Sheelagh... Eureka! didn't need a red name, because he was Holly's first VBAC (Vaginal Birth after C-Section), and I'd spent a week checking her every two to four hours around the clock... (I got really good at the somnambulent trundling through the fields in my pajamas and boots for the 11pm, 2am and 5am checks... Climbing gates, finding Holly and checking her by starlight, all while trying to be awake enough to make the check accurate, but still sleepy enought to be able to sleep again when I got back to the house... )
2020, 42, again all red except for two black ones! Fiona, Calcifer, Flanders (from Poppy), Posy, Calvin, Lightning, Rosalia, Roy, Smoit, Trumpkin, Sasha, Snapdragon, Annie...
2021, Brown Swiss babies again!!!!! Except for a few by Red Bull (The Red Peril, Red Velvet, Astrid, Titania, Tango...) So nice to have gentle, tractable, blond and white and bluegrey Swiss calves again! Valerian from Pennyroyal, Fig Newton from Snickerdoodle, Trillium from Flower, Cosmos from Rose, Sunflower from Holly...
2022, I've been in full charge of naming for several years now. The boys and my parents suggest names sometimes, but they seem to have slowed down on name ideas and desire to think about it, while I still enjoy it. Peppermint from Patsy, Periwinkle from Pennyroyal, Alberta from Cherry, Iris from Clover, Cumulus from Raindrop, Serena from Tiria, Florian from Posy, Tundra from HuckleBerry, Princess from Queen...
2023, three sets of twins! And a pretty bull heavy year. Usually its fairly even by the end of the year, but this year we had 18 bulls to 11 heifers, and several of the heifers had complications and didn't make it. Alder from Cherry, Bannock from Snickerdoodle, Coll from Tiria, Elf from Pixie, Faymarr from Rey (from the movie, Safety), Gus from Nala, Impatiens from Chamomile, Kingfisher from HuckleBerry (gorgeous big bull calf), Lupine from Sunflower, Rosie Woodsorrel from Valerian...
And so far in 2024, we've got Aciano from Clover!

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Why is Local Food Better? The Untold Costs of Big Box Organics

It’s no secret that we are all feeling the price crunch in the checkout line.

The food inflation rate is debatable, but we can safely say food prices have gone up substantially in the last four years.

It’s tempting to buy groceries at the cheapest location, but is there a greater untold cost to that decision?

Groceries used to come from backyard gardens, neighbors, and local small farms. Until recent years, it simply wasn’t possible to get substantial amounts of food imported elsewhere.

Now, we have the infrastructure to import foods from all over the world…the ability to buy broccoli at the drop of a hat or raspberries in January.

This is a terrific convenience, but it also has a cost.

Local farms are being pushed out of the market (or bought out) by their bigger competitors, and we aren’t, by and large, eating foods that are grown local to us.

So why exactly should we prioritize local food when it isn’t as convenient as going to the grocery store and is often more expensive than comparable grocery store items?

  1. Local food has a unique nutrient profile

Food grown in your area has unique nutrients and information that you need. Specific beneficial bacteria, pollen information, and information from sunlight in stored in the food.

Food grown at your latitude will have the correct information for your body. This is one reason why local raw milk and raw honey can be so beneficial for treating allergies. It has the information your body needs to heal itself.

2. Food is most nutritious right at picking time

Food is most nutritious when it’s picked at its naturally ripened time. After picking, many of the nutrients, like vitamin C, degrade. Strawberries, for example, lose most of their vitamin C within 48 hours of being picked.

Food that is being shipped in from South America or California simply can’t compete with food grown in your backyard or nearby.

3. Big box organics (Walmart, etc.) are crowding out small farms

During a recent podcast episode of the Real Organic Food Podcast [Lisa Held ROP#181], a food researcher and journalist relayed the following information about Walmart and their Organics program.

Walmart cuts costs by under paying farmers, and small farmers can’t sell at Walmart’s prices and cover their costs, much less make a profit.

Walmart cuts costs everywhere they can, and this artificially lower prices from what the true cost of food should be.

Walmart is the biggest vendor of organic food worldwide, and 1 in 3 grocery dollars in the US are spent at Walmart. This means that they have a huge power in setting the frame for what is a fair and reasonable price.

The truth is there aren’t any small farms selling to Walmart, and shopping with big box grocery stores can actively hurt the local economy.

4. Shopping locally keeps money in your local economy

It’s been shown that dollars spent locally tend to stay in the local economy for many more transactions than do dollars spent at multinational corporations.

The best way to build resilient food systems that actually serve our health is to shop locally and get to know your farmer.

Farm News August 2024

Patsy had twins! Again! Two years in a row! 

The pigs (Betsey, Bertha, and Billie Jo), enjoying a mud hole in the summer heat.

Blue heron hunting in the field as we irrigate.

The milk cows like to stand and chew their cud after milking, in no rush to leave the barn area.

Bilbo, Nymph and Duchess doing well in the field with their nurse cow!

Patsy needed to go in the barn to be milked out, but was holding her milk, so we brought Calypso in to nurse while she milking to help her let down.

Lia waiting to help take Calypso back out to the calf pens.

Smoky sunrise.

Spider web in the open window of the farm truck.

The cows don't find chicory very palatable, but it sure is pretty!

A much less smoky sunrise!

Funny farming quote from Facebook.

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Beef Breakfast Recipe: 20 Min Sausage Breakfast

Beef.

It’s what’s for…breakfast??

Yes.

I’ve tried several beef breakfast recipes and this one is closest to a traditional sausage flavor.

INGREDIENTS

  • 2 lbs Saint John’s organic grass fed beef

  • 1 tsp garlic powder

  • 2 tsp onion powder

  • 2 tsp smoked paprika

  • 1 tsp paprika

  • 1 ½ tsp dried sage

  • 1 ½ tsp dried thyme

  • 1 tsp sea salt

  • ½ tsp red pepper flakes

  • ½ tsp ground black pepper

  • Tallow or lard for frying, optional

METHOD

You can bake these for 20 minutes or pan fry.

Pan frying will yield a crispier, more authentic “breakfast sausage” vibe to the dish. But baking is more convenient if you don’t have time to watch a skillet.

  1. If baking, preheat oven to 400 degrees.

  2. Mix together beef and spices well.

  3. Form into small, about 2 oz thin and flat patties.

  4. If baking, lay patties in a glass baking pan or other baking pan lined with foil. If pan frying, preheat a pan over medium-high heat and melt tallow or lard.

  5. Place patties in the oven for 20 minutes or pan fry for about 8 minutes.

  6. Cook until patties reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

  7. Serve with hash browns, eggs, and hot sauce of choice.

The breakfast hot sauce line-up.

The Uncommon History and Beauty of the Brown Swiss Cow

Saint John’s Brown Swiss cows grazing on fresh Spring pasture.

by Claire Dill

We have Brown Swiss cows. My grandparents had Holsteins with a few Jerseys and the odd Brahma, but when we moved, my dad, (Claire writing) wanted to transition to Brown Swiss. So we bought Napoleon, a purebred Brown Swiss bull, in 2001, and began the years long journey of changing the herd from black and white Holsteins to the Brown Swiss.

Generations later, and half a dozen purebred Brown Swiss bulls, (Major, Galileo, Sitting Bull, Monarch, Banner, Icarus, and now Maximus :) ), our herd is Swiss. Not registered, but pretty well full Swiss.

In 2017, Banner was giving us some trouble with attitude, so we sent him to the butcher and borrowed a friends' Angus bull (Pumpkin) to finish out the season. Then we decided to try another beef breed, the Red Devon, for a couple of years. My brothers named him "Red Bull". :) He was a decent bull, but his kids were wild and rangeminded and not very impressive. Even though we handled the calves the same, and the moms were the same Swiss, the red calves were really different, just from their daddy's genetics!

When we went back to having a Swiss bull, it was absolutely great, and also really interesting to see the calves again exhibiting the typical Swiss gentleness and amiability. (Funny sidenote on the curiousness of genetics, of "nature versus nurture" and how much temperament the daddy can contribute; where, with animals, the daddy doesn't raise the kids. Here, the moms didn't change, and the handling of the calves didn't change, but just simply changing the daddy from Brown Swiss to the beef bulls, gave consistently rangeminded calves. !)

  
We like the Brown Swiss because of their temperaments, dual ability for milk and beef, and milk quality and taste.

Their temperament as a breed is "phlegmatic", laid back, mellow, thoughtful, gentle, curious, calm, and reasonable.

There's plenty of individuality in the herd, but as a broad brush description, this is the expectable norm.

They are good mothers, but also in general happy to have people around and are good for working with the cows and calves.

Some bovine breeds are focused on beef, and some on milk production, the Swiss are quite balanced. They give lots of milk (often 7 or 8 gallons per milking at their peak), but they also put on muscle and weight well for the beef side of things.

And they are bred to thrive on pasture, and do not have to be fed grain to reach peak condition for butchering.

Their milk is one of the best in the world for cheesemaking, with a very balanced fat/protein content, and a good amount of butterfat for cream.
The American Brown Swiss is descended from the Braunvieh from Switzerland. Documents dating from the late fourteenth century at the Benedictine Monastery of Einsiedeln in the Swiss canton of Schwyz in Central Switzerland record the export of grey-brown mountain cows from medieval bloodlines to Vorarlberg, now part of Austria.

The first known herd book for a cattle breed was the one kept at the monastery for the Braunvieh from 1775 to 1782. Most dairy historians agree that Braunvieh cattle are the oldest of all dairy breeds.

Braunvieh were imported to the United States in the 1860s and while American breeders generally focus on milk production, some of the draft and beef strengths do remain.
Also, many Brown Swiss have the A2A2 genes, producing A2 beta casein protein in their milk. This is the same beta casein as human milk, and sheep and goat milk, making A2A2 milk apparently easier for many people to digest than A1A1 milk.

Dairy breeds from Northern Europe tend to have more of the A1A1 genes, and are bred for large volumes of production. This has been popular with many modern dairy farmers, but may have contributed to the high rate of dairy allergies/reactions today. 

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Is Grass Fed Butter Healthy? 4 Reasons We Think So

by Courtney Meyerhofer

Is grass fed butter healthy?

Butter has been demonized the last few decades, but it’s coming back into vogue as more people are adopting a whole foods, ancestral approach to nutrition.

100 years ago, Americans ate 18 pounds of butter per person per year!

Today, Americans eat about 5 pounds of butter per person per year.

People then didn’t have the chronic disease epidemic we have today, and they didn’t worry about their butter consumption.

  1. Grass fed butter is high in trace minerals.

  • Iodine

  • Calcium

  • Phosphorous

  • Magnesium

  • Iron

  • Selenium

Modern diets are generally low in these minerals because of soil depletion AND we use more of these minerals due to our higher stress pace of life. This means we need all the minerals we can get.

2. Grass fed butter is high in fat soluble vitamins A D E and K.

Fat soluble vitamins are needed for every cell, every hormone and are linked to longevity. Vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant that helps our bodies handle inflammation and stress.

3. Anti-cancer conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is uniquely rich in the products of grass fed ruminants.

You can find CLA in grass fed meat, grass fed dairy and butter.

4. Grass fed butter is high in butyric acid, a powerful anti-inflammatory hard to find in most foods.

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How to Make Cheese from Raw Milk Tips for Success

by Courtney Meyerhofer

One of the best things about milk is….cheese.

As the weather warms up, it’s the perfect time to make cool, creamy cheese that you can eat with anything.

Anyone with a pot, some milk, and vinegar or cultures can make their own soft cheese.

Unlike hard cheese like cheddar and gouda, soft cheese is ready straight away without any drying or aging.

Cottage cheese. Cream cheese. Fromage blanc. Mascarpone.

All of these are soft cheeses that are delicious on eggs, on pizza, with fruit, or spread on toast.

Soft cheese is simple and decidedly un-fussy. Here are some tips for success.

Don’t Skip the Warm-Up

Warming up the milk before adding cultures sets you up for cheesemaking success because a little heat makes the good bacteria thrive.

Set a timer

Cheese has to follow a timeline, and it’s different for each culture and cheese type. Make sure to plan ahead so you can strain the cheese after the specified time.

Good cheese cannot be rushed!

Get the Cultures

Cottage cheese is easily made with just milk and vinegar, but anything else requires the assistance of helpful, friendly bacteria to culture.

Tried and true Cheese Cultures:

New England Cheesemaking Company – I like the soft cheese sample pack

Cultures for Health

If you want to try homemade cheese without the cultures, try our fool-proof 2-ingredient cottage cheese recipe.

If you’re ready for local, grass fed raw A2 milk, we’ve got you covered.

Check out the details of our Raw Milk co-op.

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