Cattle Women & Their Jewelry

If you go to a cow show, there is something that you can’t deny—the bling.

Depending on what show you're at depends on how long it takes before your eyes start hurting because of all the bling. What can I say… I’ve fallen for it too. I LOVE bling! But I also love the classic western rocks style. When the rock necklaces and such first started coming out, I fell in love. I loved that all the necklaces were unique and not one of them were the same, because every rock was cut different.

My dresser is full of blingy, rock necklaces. My sister, mom and I all share our necklaces, so when you walk through our house you see them everywhere. My mom and sister pretty much only wear the bling necklaces (My mom does love those bling flip-flops), but I wear rings, bracelets, and sometimes earrings too. So I am proud to call all my rings 100% MINE. I love wearing rings, but I am very careful with where I wear them to. I only wear them if I know I won’t be doing anything with my hands wherever I go. So if you ever see me with naked fingers, don’t be shocked. Here is one ring that I really want.

Like my favorite blogger, Crystal Cattle, I am in LOVE with Turquoise. What can I say, it’s my stone and color of choice. I’m pretty sure that 80% of all my bling is turquoise or has some in it.

Also, I am a huge fan of the pendants that you can hook around any necklace. I am starting to just buy those (cutting back on my necklaces…) because I can hook them on the necklace I want and then just keep switching it to different necklaces. Here is a pendant that I love...

Ahh, I want a new necklace now!

Your Marylander Bling Lover,

Taylor

Favorite Things Friday -- Vita Charge

For my first Favorite Things Friday I decided to share one of my favorite cattle supplements.

We have been feeding BioZymes "Sure Champ" pellets for 2 years now and are very happy with it. So we recently discovered another product of theirs, Vita Charge.

I decided to try Vita Charge, which is a appetite stimulant, when I was having problems getting my best show heifer to eat. She was very picky and often left at least half of her food each feeding, and she would not even eat at shows. I started using the top dress powder and I saw an immediate difference. She gets it every day at her evening feeding and she now eats like a horse and is always the first one to come in to eat.

I highly suggest this supplement to anyone who has a picky eater! Vita Charge comes in many different forms so you can choose the one that works best for you or your animal.

Click here to order!

Your Marylander,

Taylor

When You Think Of Farming

What do you think of when you think of farming?

To any of you that are ag enthusiasts and are reading this, this question is probably easy and not all that significant. But what do you think others think of?

Education, education, education. That is what’s needed! If you walked up to any city dweller in Washington D.C today, more than likely if you ask this question someone would say something about being a vegan, or animal cruelty. Our society today is so influenced by PETA promoters and more people of the type that children that are being raised in this generation are basically being fed these false views on farming.

Now, I am not disagreeing at all with Animal Cruelty as a whole. I do not agree with animal abuse whatsoever, but that being said, I am not a vegan, vegetarian (whatever they are calling themselves these days..) or PETA member. I obviously 100% support ag, farms, and animal production.

One of my favorite things is going to our State Fair and just watching how people react to all the animals. You see, our state fair is small enough that you can’t just go to the midway and stay away from the animals. I mean, you could, but, the animals are basically right beside the midway, except for cattle and pigs whose barns a little further down. But some of the people who walk through those barns seriously disgust me. Some people are so crazy as to come right up to you and basically scold you for having animals tied up to the panels. I usually just laugh and shake my head and say, “They like it, they’re used to it.” And then they storm off.

I also love teaching kids about ag. Every chance I get I love to teach a kid about an animal they may not have known about, and if I am at a show like the state fair, I always encourage them to come pet my cattle and let them talk to them. See, one more advantage of naming cows! It’s fun to teach kids about cows when they can know the name of the cow. Much better than those steer jocks who have no name for the animal and could care less about the kid wanting to pet the cow. Heaven forbid someone touches that hair. Ooops! I’m rambling…. Steer jocks can be saved for a later day ;)

Alright, so I hope I am leaving you with a good thought…

Your Marylander,

Taylor

p.s- check out the Maryland State Fair

Who Says I Can't Cook?

Today is a really lazy day here at the farm-- I had already went out and let the horses in their stalls and did the morning chores, and then I came back in just in time for lunch. Now, usually, my sister does all the cooking when we are home, but she wasn't home today so it was up to me.
I am not known to be the best cook, I usually just fix Chef Boyardee's Ravioli or something like that. But today, I saw canned tuna, and I got inspired by something. I guess because it is such a dark cloudy day and the cooking mood had struck me. Or because I had just finished watching an episode of Top Chef (not a good idea for me to watch).

So anyway, instead of my usual 5 minute tuna lunch, I decided to sear it and add a few more ingredients. I seared it up, put it in a bowl and added my usual mayo and celery seed, but then I also added a pinch of Old Bay (Yaaay for Maryland) and some accent food seasoning that I found hiding in our seasoning cabinet

And then I couldn't help but take some pics. It's not everyday that I make an awesome meal.

                                                                    

Your Marylander Future Chef,
Taylor

Routines (A short thought for today)

I don’t know about you, but I am the kind of person that has to stick to some type of routine. I use those routines when working in the barn with the cattle. Maybe ‘routine’ becomes OCD when I have to have the buckets in the same exact order every night when dipping feed and I have to set them in the same exact spot while the heifers are coming in from the field.

Aha, here is one difference between cattle ranches out west and small family cattle farms in Maryland! Ranches either feed their cattle by dumping feed into long lines of feed troughs, dumping feed on the ground or in big tubs, or most of the time they eat hay. Of course, that’s all the ones I can think of. Well here in Maryland, or at least on my farm, we hand feed personally feed them every day. I’m not insulting the ranches if that is what it sounds like… I’m just pointing out a difference. Now of course, ranches with show cattle are probably more similar to our method of feeding. But think…. How nice would it be if I could just use a tractor or whatever to dump feed to massive amounts of cattle periodically? If any of you are from a big ranch out west and are reading this, you are probably laughing at me. I laugh at myself. I try not to act amazed at big ranches but I can’t help it. I ENVY them.

Back to routines….. is it bad that I make my cattle listen to routines too? They are all ‘trained’ to go to their correct feeding spots… and if they don’t listen- watch out. I get pissed! I don’t like change. I can admit that. Some changes are okay, but if it is a change to something I like or am used to, it does not make me a happy camper. Jus’ sayin.

Your Marylander,

Taylor

Sheepdogs & Showdogs

While most ranchers have a Border Collie, Heeler, Aussie, or some kind of herding dog, this little farm in Maryland has SHOW DOGS!!!

Along with showing Angus cattle, my family (Or should I say my mom and I…) raise and show AKC Registered Boxers. While we are not a typical ‘show breeder’, because of time issues with the cattle, we do occasionally have litters. Whenever we do have a litter, its not just because we are bored. We only breed our dogs when we have a good reason to, or know that we can get a nice puppy out of the litter. Am I getting too technical with my dog terms?

I am a dog lover…through and through. I see myself staying involved in the dog world for a very long time. I show our boxers in the AKC’s Junior Showmanship competition. It is just what it says, a showmanship competition for ages 9-18. The way it works is, you are in your age divisions’ (Junior, Intermediate, Senior) novice class when you first start. For example, I would be a ‘Novice Senior’. You are considered a novice until you win 3 first places with competition. Once you do that, you are moved up to the Open division (Ex: Open Senior). From there all you need to do is keep showing… you don’t have to worry about moving up or getting so many wins because Open is the highest division. At every show, if you win 1^st place in your class, you are able to compete for Best Junior Handler at that show.

Besides Junior Showmanship, our dogs also show in the regular conformation classes. Our current showboy is “Katandy’s Show Tyme Matinee”, otherwise known as Matt.

Matt is the love of my life, and I wouldn’t trade him for any sheepdog!! ;)

Your Marylander Dog Lover,

Taylor

This Is How We Do It

So I just came inside from doing some work outside in the hazy humidity and one of my tasks was to clean out the Creep Feeder for all of this years calves.

Aaaand you wanna know how we did it? No, you really don't want to know. You see, my sister and I work together in a strange way. I have my ideas and she has hers. I eventually stopped trying and just went along with her way of doing it and laughed to myself the whole time. I snapped some pics off my phone while we were in the process -- oh, I'm so nice :)

                 

Yep-- we used our handy dandy shop-vac. We use it for basically everything... I'm not sure when it will finally break down. You are probably wondering how we got to the conclusion to use a vacuum-- we sprayed down the inside to rinse it out and after flipping the creep feeder on all its sides and almost any other way we could think of, there was still water left it in it. Hence, the vacuum!

Your Marylander Farm Maid,

Taylor

Maryland Monday -- Old Bay

Hey, it’s Monday!

Today’s Maryland Monday is on OLD BAY

The famous Maryland seasoning that is used in almost any Maryland seafood recipe! Seriously, you can’t go to Maryland’s Eastern Shore without seeing this seasoning somewhere. It adds a nice bite and tang to seafood. Crab bushels are often sprinkled with this and it just doesn’t taste the same without it. But it’s not just good on seafood…

I LOVE putting Old Bay on my French Fries. But what I really love is heating up Grandma Utz’s Kettle Cooked Chips in the microwave, and then sprinkling them with Old Bay. Delicious!

I encourage you to try this stuff – order it online!

Your Marylander,

Taylor

I'm already off to a bad start...

Looks like my blog is going great so far! Not. I completely forgot to post yesterday. I was on here all day working out all the kinks in my blog but I never actually posted something. I'm such an awesome blogger....

Tomorrow is Maryland Monday! Stay tuned.

Your Marylander,
Taylor

Welcome to Fox Meadow Farm

Welcome to Fox Meadow Farm… land of angus cows, quarter horses, and boxers. While a lot of people I know that show Angus out west live on big ranches or large farms, we here at FMF do things a little differently. Well, not differently I guess, but with less quantities. I’m a firm believer in the motto “Quality, not quantity.” Although that only pertains to us because we only raise angus cattle for show. We do not have a commercial cattle business or anything like that.

In fact, we only have a few of our cows at our farm, while the others stay at my Aunt and Uncle’s Angus farm down the road, Windy Ridge Acres. My cousin aged out of the angus association a few years ago so my sister and I took over the role of showing Windy Ridge cattle.

We have steers and bulls in the pen/pasture that is included with the barn, while show heifers stay in the paddock area and also have half of the front pasture, while the cows have the rest. The horses stay in the back pasture. Oh, and, call us weird but yes, we do name all of our animals :)

Your Marylander,
Taylor