Lowell and Donald Flynn

Edward and Anna (Spelman) Flynn bought this beautiful Irish Grove land in 1910. The original farmland they purchased encompased not only the 210 acres at our homestead, but also the land directly across the road, which is similar in size. Edward began his adulthood as a teacher, and earned $18 a month. Once married, however, he and Anna bought our farm on Best Road, built the house that I now live in, and raised 5 children: Donald, Lowell, Margaret, Mildred and Rita.

Great-Grandpa Ed died at a young age, which is unfortunately common for the men in my lineage. When he died, his sons Donald and Lowell took over the farm, cared for their mother, and put their sisters through school. Times might have been different back then, but I find that remarkable.

Our whole extended family owes a great thanks to these two, for stepping up when the times were tough, for caring for the family homestead, and for providing us with a moral compass and strong family foundation. We are lucky to have had them.

One nice summer afternoon, we decided to take an easy stroll through a nearby forest preserve. Besides the pesky flies dive-bombing our heads, hence the head slapping above, it was a fine time. Armando got to ride on his papa’s shoulders, the girls got to pick wild berries along the path, Marcel got to take a break from projects and more projects, and I got to enjoy a nice walk in a natural setting, which was a common practice of mine before I went out and multiplied.

Well, the hike didn’t last long because someone was thirsty, and another one was tired, and Marcel’s shoulders were starting to slump under Armando’s weight, so we took the quickest way back, which ended up being along the road. It wasn’t long before a neighbor farmer drove up, rolled down the window, and started chatting.

I love this about farmers. Farmers are always leaning out their window, talking to someone, usually smack dab in the middle of the road, without a second thought to any possible danger involved. This time was no exception. We were on ‘big hill’, the extremely inventive name that locals use to identify a particularly steep and curving hill on our road, and our neighbor had parked on the wrong side of the road to faciliate our little chat. It was very nice of him to accommodate us like that, and I don’t understand why we kept getting dirty looks from the others passing by.

Soon enough the conversation turned to our four new Murray Grey’s, and how we were going to breed them. Up until now, I had always wondered why some of the local farmers seemed to be uncomfortable dealing with me in my new farmer role. I mean, what’s the big deal? Women do all sorts of jobs that used to fall squarely in the “man’s work” category. But once the conversation turned to breeding, I saw the issue in a new light.

We need to artificially inseminate our Murray Grey cows, because we don’t have enough to justify the cost of a bull. And our neighbor is being extremely generous in offering to take time out of his hectic schedule to help us. So all of a sudden I’m having a full blown conversation with my neighbor, who happens to be male, with whom I went to high school, and with whom I’ve never spent much time, about semen. Semen!

The conversation quickly deteriorates from how to order the semen, to how to know if the cow is ready. He started to explain that the vulva will be so, and you can palpate her this way, and stick your fingers in here, and deposit the semen in this manner, etc. etc. By the time he started to tell us that the heifers will be especially tight, I could feel a blush slowly creeping up my face. The horror.

So, I will kindly take back my ranting comments about how silly it is for farmers to be uncomfortable dealing with a woman. I get it, I really do.

Isn’t she a beauty? She is one of our four new herd mothers, the future of Flynn’s Irish Grove Acres.

We are in our first year of transitioning the farm from a conventional grain-fed beef operation to an organic grass-fed beef operation. The reasons for the change are wide and varied, but I’ll briefly touch on a few of them here.

Today, to be a successful farmer following the rules of the game set out by Big Agriculture, you must “get big or get out”. For those of you who don’t own land and aren’t familiar with farming, 260 acres may sound big. But for conventional agriculture, it is laughably small. We are WAY too insignificant to compete in conventional agriculture, and unfortunately, that’s exactly how the big players want it. The only future I can see for a small, working family farm is to specialize in a rare, niche product, and/or go organic. There is no other viable alternative.

On a more personal level, I am a farmer, but I’m also an environmentalist. As a farmer, I see my farm as as a productive entity, as a partner, as a provider. As an environmentalist, I see my farm as an ecosystem, as a lifeline to flora and fauna, as a prairie waiting to emerge from beneath these strange and foreign plants called corn and soybean. Obviously it is pretty difficult to reconcile these two, real, live personas within me. Grass-fed beef offers me an almost perfect opportunity to work the land without damaging it, to take but to also give back.

Finally, I want to raise grass-fed beef because I am a mother, and because I want my children to love this farm. There are plenty of jobs around the farm that would make even the most seasoned farm kid want to thumb a ride to the Big Apple, but it is nothing but fun when we are working with the cattle. My kids love to help switch them from one pasture to another, and think it’s hilarious to see them kick up their heels when they are allowed into a new section of the farm. We all love to go see the cows, to watch them eat or laze around. Oh, and I almost forgot: grass-fed beef poop, yep, you guessed it, in the field. Take that, Dad!

Here are my kids–happy as flies on manure–the day we brought our new cows home. You can tell they’re real farm kids because they have no fear of those poop-smeared trailer panels.

And thanks to the cows, they are genuinely happy, even after being forced to ride 8 hours in the Big-Ass truck to go get our new mama’s. Yeah, that’s right. We drove all the way to Black River Falls, Wisconsin for these beauties.

But they are worth it. They’re Murray Grey cows, and Murray Grey’s are a specialty breed. There aren’t too many people raising them around here, but those who do love them. The best thing about them, to me, is that they’re an all-beef breed, meaning they’ve never been cross-bred with a milking breed. Their genetic make-up is focused on bulking up, not producing obnoxious quantities of milk, and, because of this, they fatten easily. This is key to a grass-fed operation, because we won’t be supplementing their diet with grains. They will have to survive on pasture and dry hay only, and these ladies are good at producing calves that achieve a nicely marbled meat without grain.

Here’s another look at our Murray’s en route to their new home in good ‘ole Irish Grove.

They were calm and collected the whole way home. Good girls. (Murray’s are also known for their calm and gentle disposition, which is another big hit with this mama.)

Even though they are an Australian breed, a cross between a Scottish Aberdeen Angus and a Shorthorn, Murray Grey is appropriately Irish-sounding, don’t you think? If not, no matter. They’re Irish now, and, if you can’t tell, we have high hopes for them.

You’ll be seeing more of these ladies, I can guarantee it.

Being the country bumpkin that I am, one of my favorite riddles is: What type of vines grow beef? It’s a riddle that’s as old as the hills, I know, but I still love it. It’s a “groaner”, the highest type of humor in the Purnell family.

Who are the Purnell’s, you may ask? Well, they’re the wonderful German-English family that produced my wonderful mom, Marcia! And they’re also the ones that add a definite touch of class and culture to my immediate family. I don’t mean to diss the Flynn’s, of course, but the difference in the two families is quite striking:

A Flynn get-together is a rowdy, loud, winner-takes-all affair, while an event at the Purnell’s is a soft-spoken, well-mannered affair. You can relax with the Purnell’s, which might very well be dangerous with the Flynn’s. The Purnell’s will nuture you, they’ll give you a sweet hug and kiss, and they’ll even tell you “there, there” when you’re feeling low. The Flynn’s will hug you too, but they’ll also squeeze and shake you, slap you on the back, and give you a kick in the ass if they feel it’s warranted. The Purnell’s are the yin to the Flynn’s yang.

But I’m trying to talk about cows, not families, and I’m way off track.

Over the years, we’ve raised lots of cattle in Irish Grove. The farm originated with milking cows when Great-Grandpa Edward first bought the land. Grandpa Lowell continued milking until his untimely death, and then the tenant farmers, the Brown’s, milked until the mid-1990’s. (The Brown’s deserve their own post…..check back!)

When my mom and dad decided to build a house by the round barn, my dad lost little time in acquiring a small herd of cattle. But this time they were beef cows. Dad loved playing farmer with those cows, and he dove into the work that animals bring with gusto. He mostly raised steers, or feeder cattle as they are called. But with those cows, he proved to everyone, and most importantly to himself, that he was a Hard Worker. And there was no higher standing in John Flynn’s world than that of a Hard Worker.

Looking back, I can see that the beef cattle were also, arguably, my dad’s most effective parenting tool, and he used them extensively while raising my siblings and me. The cows were used to teach us responsibility, because they needed daily care in the form of morning and evening chores, and they also taught us the perils of procrastination. I can remember numerous occasions when I ran as fast as I could, completely terrified, through the shadowy area between the barn and house–all because I had put off my afternoon chores until late evening in the hopes that someone else would ultimately do them for me. No such luck.

The cows were often used for discipline. Many a long day was spent pitching manure as punishment, usually because my sister Laura was lousy at misbehaving without getting caught. And every time she would get in trouble, my dad would look at me and grumble, “get out there and help your sister”, which seemed especially unfair. He would later laugh and say it was prevention.

Last but not least, the cows were effective at teaching us humility. You can only imagine how humiliating it was when we’d hear our school friends, or especially that boy we had a crush on exclaim, “Ewwww! I can’t believe you’re scrubbing a cow’s butt,” as we washed our steers before our 4-H competitions at the Winnebago County Fair.

Parenting tactics aside, I can now see that my dad mostly loved his beef cows because they allowed him to feel connected to his past, and because they kept him humbly rooted in the farm. They offered him a peek into the life of his father, Lowell, who died when he was only eleven. They allowed him to measure his success in life by a standard that his father would recognize: Hard Work.

When dad died last year, we sold his herd of cattle. It sounds sudden, I know, but it was actually following his plan for the year. We had planned to switch breeds that year, and embark on our new farm project: raising grass-fed beef. It was, at the time, a relief to have the cattle gone. We were tending to our broken hearts, and to our suddenly difficult task of simply living.

But when we bought 10 steers from Farmer Bill this spring, it felt like we were coming home from a long journey. The cows were back. The barns were occupied. The pastures were happy. And we could breath a little bit easier.

The cows have returned to Irish Grove, and have allowed me to keep alive my connection with dad. And not only him. The daily routines and occasional problems that the cattle bring us tap into a rythym deep within that connects me to my past, my Irish ancestors, my origin.

And I must admit that I have already sent Ana and Madelina, ages 8 and 5, out to the barn, pitchforks in hand, after a particularly tiring day of bickering. Armando, age 2, is safe. For now.

What type of vines grow beef? Bovines, of course.

On Monday, I spent 7 hours raking hay. (You didn’t really think I meant money, did you?)

Yep, it’s hay-makin‘ time in Irish Grove, and when the hay is ready, it’s ready. It doesn’t wait around for you to finish the laundry or run a needed errand, and it doesn’t care if you have to cancel that scheduled play date with the kids that they’ve been looking forward to for two long months. It doesn’t wait for an empty day on your calendar, or even for the weekend. Gees.

Making hay can be a complicated and unforgiving process, especially for beginners like us. The alfalfa’s gotta be at just the right maturity to ensure a high quality, highly-nutritious product for the cattle. That is when the plant is in the budding out stage, right before the flowers bloom. And that can take about 28 to 30 days from the previous cutting.

This is what the hay ground looks like about one week before it’s ready to cut.

That’s our barn in the distance. And that’s Mom’s round barn alongside the hay field. Very cool, eh?

Of equal importance to proper plant maturity is the weather. I have to italicize weather, because I can’t emphasize enough how important it really is. From the day you cut the hay to the day it gets baled, it is really important that it doesn’t rain. Rain causes the alfalfa leaves to wilt and yellow, and could even cause the the hay to rot, which is obviously undesirable. It also delays baling. The longer the hay is exposed to the elements, the more nutrient loss you will experience. So, depending upon humidity levels, and the amount of sunshine and wind present, you will need about four full days of dry sunny weather for the hay to properly dry. Finding that four-day window can be challenging and frustrating, especially during the spring and fall cuttings.

Aha, good weather on the horizon? Cancel all plans, dump the kiddos at Gramma’s, and get busy!

To mow hay, you need a tractor and a haybine:

These two machines will be connected via the PTO, which incidentally does not stand for Parent-Teacher Organization. PTO is short for Power Take-Off. The PTO is a handy-dandy device on the tractor that basically enables all of your farm implements to do their job.

When you finally get everything connected properly and you’ve said farewell to your lovely children, you get to work mowing the hay. Mowing hay may look easy, but it isn’t. You’ve gotta look ahead to watch where you’re going, and behind at the same time, to make sure you’ve got the mower positioned just right. If it’s off, you could either leave a swath of uncut hay bobbin’ in the wind, mimicking you’re novice abilities, or you could cut too narrow a swath, meaning you’ll have to make numerous extra trips around the field, wasting time and diesel fuel.

The swaths are called windrows, and look like this:

See those tufts of alfalfa on the corners? That’s proof that yes, we are rookies, but also that corners are especially tricky.

Hay must be crispy-dry before you bale it, because it is going to be stored in close proximity to other hay bales. Any moisture present will start to decompose the hay, causing heat to build up in a very tightly packed space. And if that happens, you have a pyromaniac’s dream-come-true, right there in your very own backyard or barn. Poof!

So, the next step is raking. Once the top 80% or so of the windrow feels crispy-dry, you rake the hay, which flips the alfalfa over and fluffs it all up nice and pretty. Many people hear us saying we have to rake the hay and think we mean by hand. Fortunately no, even though that is how it was done before all these fancy machines were invented.

Our hay rake looks like this:

It’s called a Gyro-rake, and we connect it to the tractor, again via the PTO, which will spin those little pitch-forks around and around. The forks throw the hay against that white gate, where it then falls to the ground in nice little fluffy rows.

After I spent 7 hours rakin‘ hay on Monday, the field looked like this:

And this:

Can you see the difference between the flat windrows above, and the nice fluffy rows? Now the air can really get circulating in there, to quickly dry the remaining damp hay.

Oh, and one more very important thing: you never, ever rake the hay if it’s going to rain. This may come as a surprise to most of you, but occasionally the weather forecasters are wrong! I know it’s hard to believe, but sometimes our four-day-dry-weather-forecast miracurously turns into thunder clouds looming in the distance. If that happens, it’s better to let the hay lie there, and turn the other cheek. Rain will cause the hay on top to yellow, but the bottom leaves can stay green and fresh if you’re lucky. (And if you do rake before rain, you may also be subject to a gruff lecture and once-over from Farmer Bill. Which is not pleasant. Which I experienced the first time I tried to make hay.)

We don’t own a baler, so we have to call ahead and make sure the local guy can come before we dare think about raking. This time around we had contracted with some local fellows who will bale it and buy it. They are large hay brokers, and deliver hay to dairy farmers in Wisconsin. It pays less, but it also saves us the hassle of storing and marketing the hay ourselves. When they bale it, they make it into large squares, which look like this:

They then load it up onto a semi-trailer, and send it off to some very lucky cows.

To quote Irish Grove’s Catholic mass, “Happy are those who are called to this supper.” Or in this case, happy the cow that gets to chaw away on this good ole’ Irish Grove green stuff.

And we get to “relax” for another 28 days. And counting.

Back in the mid 1880’s, a bunch of Irish immigrants descended upon this innocent corner of the world and altered it forever. It’s hard to imagine what the area was like before they arrived, but they settled in and established a small historical community that is now lovingly referred to as Irish Grove. My ancestors, the Flynn’s, were a part of that group. Now the Flynn’s have a fairly decent reputation in the immediate vicinity, mostly known as a fun-loving, hard working and hospitable crowd. And while that is by most accounts pretty accurate, we certainly have our faults, not the least of which are our loud, booming (deafening, really) voices, our competitiveness, and our over-sized egos.

Irish Grove can’t be found on a map, even though many people call it home. But the community is literally split between two or three local towns, which at second thought seemed strange. So the other day I googled Irish Grove, and found that it is located in Rock Run Township. Aha, Rock Run Township. Wait a second….Rock Run Township? Like my little guy Armando likes to say when he receives an unacceptable answer to a question, “Huh?”

Anyway, unlike Rock Run, Irish Grove does exist, and the proof lies in the puddin’, or in this case in the heart of the countryside: St. Patrick’s Irish Grove Catholic Church.

I was raised in this church, and, like most diligent Catholic children, hated getting up for Mass on Sunday mornings. My parents would let us sleep just late enough to 1) fool us into thinking we weren’t going that day, and 2) ensure that there was insufficient time to primp and curl and properly prepare for the eye candy, oops, I mean soul food at church. Sorry, Lord.

But attending Mass at Irish Grove had its benefits, too, one of which is mentioned above. The second was the coffee and donuts served in the basement after church. And the third was running around the cemetery after Mass, climbing onto and jumping from one headstone to another, as my parents would laugh and commune with the other parishioners, many of whom are extended family.

Because we Flynn’s like to talk a lot, we were undoubtedly always the last people to leave for home. When the last stragglers finally said their good-byes, and conversation was no longer an option, my dad would walk around the cemetery with us and point out tombstones where an ancestor, “good old so-and-so”, lies. And he would tell us what he remembered about him or her, and how we were related to them. He’d say, “He’s your Grandpa’s first cousin, on his mother’s side,” in a slow, cadenced way that made me think he was practicing for his own benefit, lest he forget his family history (the mother of all sins).

I’m still a member of Irish Grove Catholic Church, and I’m also still pretty lazy about Sunday Mass. But when I do go, I make sure my kids get an opportunity to jump on those headstones as I chat with the parishioners making their way to their cars. I then attempt to relay those familiar old family connections to them (lest I commit that unspeakable atrocity against my kin) and usually fail to remember most of the details. All the while, my husband Marcel is patiently waiting for me to finally stop talking. And with his natural-born Panamanian sense of propriety, he is properly horrified at how wrong it is to let our kids jump and stomp on someone’s final resting place. I give him my best harrumph, and tell him that not only is it right, it’s tradition, for goodness sakes. And I’d just bet those hard-working, fun-loving old Irish men and women lying beneath that sacred ground are all the happier for it.

I’ve always admired farmers, and I enjoy being in their company. Obviously no two farmers are exactly alike, but the ones I know do share quite a few common characteristics. Namely, they’re hard-working, stubborn, straight-forward, a bit crusty, and they love a good tall-tale, especially when it’s related to yield, horsepower, or cattle-rustling abilities.

Farmers have that comfortable way of laying their heavy arm across your shoulder and asking, “How ya doing, dear?” They’re not afraid to tell you you’re full of blarney, and they don’t care if it pisses you off when they do. They are who they are, take it or leave it. It’s my second year of managing the farm, and I feel like a phony when I tell someone I am a farmer.

Just this morning, I hauled the end piece of a grain auger screw to be re-flighted at a welding shop 40 miles away. (Translation: a man will weld and straighten out the rusted corkscrew that pushes grain up a long metal tube and into a semi truck or grain wagon.) The shop was located inside the machine shed on a pretty, but obviously tired old farm.

When I arrived in my mini-van, shuffled into the shop in my slip-on Minnetonka sandals with sunbursts on top (not exactly farmerwear), and sweetly asked for Mr. Klontz, the men all paused, looked slowly at one another, and said nothing. Talk about awkward. A few very painful seconds later, a hefty, white-bearded man stepped in front of me, looked at me sternly, and said, “Why? Does he owe you money?” I looked at the other men, and then back at Whitebeard, and nervously chuckled as I said, “No, of course not.” Everyone laughed and Whitebeard made some comment about just being careful.

As I took the auger screw out of my mini-van’s trunk, and asked him if he could re-flight it, he looked at me sideways and asked, I must say, a little incredulously, “Are you a farmer?” I paused and thought to myself, well, am I? And then I thought of all my farmer friends, so sure of themselves, tough, and experienced. I can’t imagine ever living up to their examples, even though I am pretty stubborn, can be crusty if necessary, and I’d like to think I’m a hard worker. “I am now,” I told Whitebeard. “I just became manager of the family farm last year, and I’m still pretty green.” It’s a simplified answer, of course, not entirely true, but not entirely false either. (Hmmn, would that be a tall tale?) “Well,” Whitebeard said, as he leaned in close, “I take my hat off to ya.”

I can think of no sweeter praise from a fellow farmer.