Ranchwabble’s Blog

We have been working diligently here at Wade Acres to get ready for the Fall Harvest Festival.  We have built and painted buildings.  We plowed, and planted fields of pumpkins.  We purchased, feed and raised various types of farm animals.  We designed signage, cleaned and put up decorations.  I don’t think we’ll run out of things to do, just time.  Click here on the Fall harvest Festival 2012 poster and check it out.

You and Wade Acres in Elbert County, Colorado are opening a new Agricultural Entertainment hot spot.  We’ll have a ton of events and special attractions.  We want you to be a part of it all and some attractions will need sponsors before they will be available.  From farm animals to fun rides to all kinds of pumpkin excitement, Wade Acres is going to show off the eastern plains of Colorado.  If you or someone you know has a product they would like to sell in a farm market let us know.  Check out the information below and if you are starting to think thi may work for you – Contact Bret Wade for more information.  719-541-5555 or bret@ranchwabble.com .

Here we go with another year behind us.  Did everyone get what they wanted for Christmas?  I hope everyone had a wonderful year.  Here is a month by month review of what happened in ours:

January – In Colorado, when I see snow I always think about the National Western Stock Show in Denver.  We also got some new Lowline Angus Cows and Heifers.

February –   The pipe to our septic tank broke and everything backed up in to the basement.  Simone, Justin and I dug a 7 foot deep hole by hand to repair the pipe.  That pipe was sticking out of the ground all summer long.

March – New horses come into the Ranch and friends chip in to buy more chickens for eggs on the farm.

April – Gathering supplies such as seeds and compost for spring planting.  A bull calf is born… We name him Junior.

May – Our Family volunteers for the Elizabeth Stampede Rodeo every year.  May is when we really start to get ready.  We also started to plant the garden and the pumpkin patch.

June – The first weekend in June is the Elizabeth Stampede Rodeo.  That’s the most fun we have all year.  It was very hot and someone has to run home every day from the rodeo to feed and take care of the animals.  All the plants really start to grow good.

July – There was a huge hail storm on July 4^th.  All the vegetables were turned to salad.  We replanted some and hoped the others would come back.

August – Remember that septic pipe issue?  We used the pipe and built an outhouse on top of the pipe.  This month was also the last time that we got rain this year.

September – Built a pond fir the cattle and horses in the pasture and turned our driveway into a circle around the outhouse.

October – The fall party was a blast – Pete Pino and his some took first in the blind tractor races.  We gave away the pumpkins to people who came to the party and we shot the rest.   They didn’t fully recover from the hail and were all very small.  I started buying equipment to grow lettuce inside.

November – I was still trying to perfect the indoor lettuce and we started to get the basement in our house finished.  Purchased 2 Angus cross bottle calves.

December – In the last 3 months we went from having 10 horses to having 3.  We are cutting down for the winter because we had such little moisture.  We had our first promising lettuce growth and some tomatoes.  I guess we’ll see how that turns out in 2011!

Today we got in 2 bottle babies.  They are Angus Cross.  We named them Dip ‘n Dots.  Well… Justin named them.  He bought one of the steers himself.  For now we need to feed them by bottle at least twice per day.  There is a video of Dots below and the photo is of Dip.  Dip was a little tired when I was filming the action.

We survived the fast food wars of the ‘80’s.  So where is the beef any way?  Today there is a new kind of war when it comes to food.    (The war between the ones that put out the advertising and the ones that believe it)  It all comes from the grocery store any way, right?  

 A friend of mine at my day job asked me the other day, “don’t you think higher quality food should cost more?”  I said “NO, all food should be high quality.”  I think everyone should know the problem here, even if everyone doesn’t.  We have too many people and not enough food. We’ve had this problem for 50 years.  That was about the same time we went from farming to industrial everything.  Science helped us make more out of less and we’ve been doing it ever since.  The question is: is it really good for you?  Check out Eric’s article that points out America as one of the sickest countries in the world. 

 Mom’s home cooked dinner has changed to dinner out of a box or bag for most.  Is it that we are too busy or too lazy or we just like it easy when we can get it?  The cheap food just gets cheaper?  I don’t think so.  You can buy a whole chicken for about 5 bucks.  8 ounces of pre-cooked, sliced hickory chicken breast is about 8 dollars.  I can’t afford the 8 dollar chicken so I buy the 5.  I have more work and more chicken.  That same whole chicken costs the farmer about $10 to make and process.  So the farmer makes up the difference selling ‘premium’ products like nuggets and chicken pot pie.   Call me; I have a ton of examples.  Right now I’ll just stick with the chicken example.

 Today the farmer can also sell ‘organic’ products that are more expensive because they are better for you. That’s B.S.!  The government charges farmers to certify their food ‘organic’ causing the cost of the production of the food to go up.  The food is not more expensive because it’s healthier.  If I sell more than $5000 worth in a year I can not say that it’s ‘organic’ unless I pay up.  All we do by buying organic food is support the government’s interests to regulate it.  Farmers markets are the same thing.  The farmer pays to use the space at the market and the price for the food goes up.

 Why not buy directly from a farmer?  You get produce and meat from the store.  If you buy it from a farmer that is not paying extra to sell food then the price of the food goes down.  If you’re in a hurry you can buy food from places that buy directly from the farmer.  Check out Burgerville in the north-west or Colorado Proud right here.  You can find a farmer on Local Harvest or Real Time Farms online too. 

 Now that’s a good start, but brings us back to our original problem.  We don’t have enough food.  So what we need is more farmers making more, better food instead of less farmers making more, cheaper food.  Or at least more support for the farmers that do.  Then the price would go down and the food would be better.  People would stop buying the cheaper food because the healthy stuff would be the same price.  I know, I’m a dreamer. 

If you didn’t realize it, we are in big trouble.  It’s like before you went bankrupt.  At first you thought you were living large.  Then you had some issues… and then BLAM!  You were broke.  If someone doesn’t do something fast we are going to either run out of food or have to eat nothing but corn the rest of our lives.  IT WILL TASTE LIKE CHICKEN.

Some people are making changes and I hope more follow.  Check out Randy White from Oregon or Everett and Missy Sizemore on their new farm.  I think these changes make life more simple.  Lets all get together and help everyone get the good stuff!

It seems like summer is coming to an end.  The huge hail storm over the 4th of July slowed us down about a month.  Things are finally starting to really come back and grow.  It’s like a race to get the plants to grow as much as possible until the first frost.  I counted 19 pumpkins growing right now.  Maybe we’ll get some new ones in the next month.  There’s also egg plant, squash, zucchini and gourds growing right now.  I have a huge artichoke plant but I wonder when it will have fruit.  I haven’t seen anything yet.  I am planning on growing organic lettuce over the winter indoors so we’ll see how that goes.

I am taking a week off of work starting this Thursday.  I return on Friday the 10th of September and I will probably be bringing in about 20 dozen eggs that day.  I am putting in a round-about in front of the house for the driveway with a working outhouse in the middle,  building a pond,  making 3 ponds bigger, putting a fireplace in the barn and redoing my shooting range.  You can follow Wade Acres on Face Book at the link bellow.  I may have some more squash, zucchini or maybe green onions when I return to work.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/ranchwabblecom/189241706408