Fill your freezer with 4H beef

What a beautiful weekend! I hope you all had a chance to enjoy some of it. Though we had many projects on the go, they were outside, so we still enjoyed this great weather. It must be a record to have such great weather for an entire long weekend!
One of the big projects was to remove an old shed and my tarp garage in preparation for the new garage that is starting this week. We did it! It is all moved and hauled away. The gravel has been hauled and mostly levelled off. We were excited to clean out the attic of the old shed as we knew there were some treasures up there but never took the time to dig in. We found some stuff that was near new though likely nearly 100 years old. It had been shipped here and some stuff still in the box. I learned that they called this farm; “Sandy Ridge Farm!” I never heard that before! We saved the old tags that were found, and they all joked that I had a bit of the Smith in me as I hated to see anything tossed out. I could just build a shed for some of my many saved treasures. The other big project was rebuilding our sheep fence. It is done, well there are a few little things that need to be finished but the major part of it is complete. It is looking like the shearing date is June 6th, so I am planning to keep them in their small yard until then. The grass is just growing, and it is not ready for all the busy mouths.
Two of our rabbits are now back out into their summer cages but Black Bettie is still in the house. I keep telling everyone that she doesn’t like it outside. I trimmed Alex’s hooves and let him graze freely in the house yard. He was happy. Then I got nervous as I seen him checking out things in the yard and he has been known to rip seats of things like side by sides or six wheelers. The Red Angus bull that I am using on a group of cows had a crack in one hoof. I let my friend know (the bull owner) and he and his wife came over and he trimmed up his hoof and he was 100% immediately.
A dear friend of many, Trudy is bravely fighting breast cancer right now. This is tough at any time, but it is even bigger challenge during Covid. Trudy is strong and tough and has strong ice-cream cravings right now. Trudy recently celebrated a birthday and was deeply touched by her friend Debbie going out of her way to make her birthday special with an extra special ice cream cake. Keep on being so strong and tough Trudy and keep on being so kind Debbie!
I have been lucky to work with many great students over my years at the Research Station and many of them I still stay in close touch with. I am excited and proud that my student for the last three years, Claire, has been accepted into the Northern Medical School! I have joked with her that I can’t wait for her to be my Dr!
Our 4-H Beef Clubs have decided to proceed. Each club will decide how they will choose to run their meetings – it may be online, or assignments may be picked up from leaders. The 4-H members will need to get their animal information registered by June 1 with 4-H Ontario. We still have some hope that we will host a cattle show on what would be the same weekend as the Emo Fair. We maybe will only be allowed members and leaders to attend and we would live-stream it for family and friends. It also maybe that each club will have their own show – still these things are unknown. We are certain that we will still have 4-H Market Steers for Sale! We will not be hosting an auction, but we are planning that each member will be marketing their own steer. The current plan is that we will set the market price and each member will sell their steer for that price. We realize that our businesses are going through some very tough times. Our members will need to market to more than our businesses this year. This will be a great time to taste some of this incredible meat our 4-H members are raising. Get together with a few friends and split the cost and fill your freezer! Stay tuned for more details and watch for our Facebook pages where you will be able to see our members and take a look at their heifer and steer projects!