Sunday, July 24, 2011

Home Grown Feed

July is a busy time on the farm! This time of year we are busy making our own rye grass hay. The process actually starts the year before while planting our grass silage. Included with our grass silage mix is a seed called rye grass. This grass was harvested as part of our silage (also fed to the cows) and now has grown back for a second crop. Those late rains in May and June helped more than our grazing of cows: it helped our second growth rye grass flourish. Now we have gone back through the fields, cut the grass, let it sun dry, raked the grass into large rows, and are now baling the rye grass into hay bales. It's quite the process with our old equipment and coastal fog, but allows The Girls to enjoy more home grown feed!!

Monday, May 30, 2011

Welcome to our Family Farm!

Our family farm was started back in 1938 by my grandparents Robert and Lillian McClelland. They bought the farm from a Swiss Italian farmer who was milking eight brown swiss cows. They milked the cows by hand, bottled the milk, and delivered it to local households.

Fast forwarding to current times, the farm is still a family operation, consisting of myself, my mom and my dad (Dora and George). We milk 800 organic cows on a ranch west of Petaluma in the coastal Sonoma County hills. With the grass fed organic cows milk, we make some of our own dairy products, including European Style Organic Artisan Butter. Furthermore, we have started hosting farm tours for our customers. On the tour, people can learn all about the history of the farm, pet the babies in the nursery, watch the cows being milked, and even milk a cow by hand! After the tour, taste our organic artisan butter and browse through the farm store.

I look forward to sharing our family farm with you!!  

Cheers,

Jana

                                              Dora, George, and Jana McClelland