Fall is in the Air

<p>Fall is in the air here in southwest Virginia. For us, that means the air is much cooler. The leaves are still quite green, but that will be changing soon. Fall in the Appalachian Mountains is the height of the tourist season. What will it be like this year? Who knows? But the leaves don’t care. They will do their thing and it will be beautiful.</p> <p>Let me take a brief minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. Thank you all so much for your patronage. I appreciate you all so much. This show is for you.</p> <p>So where have I been and what’s going on at the homestead?</p> <h2>Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates</h2> <p>You might have noticed I haven’t published a FarmCast episode in a couple of weeks. The first time I missed because I simply did not have the time. And last week I was in tremendous pain. I still am in fact. It’s nothing serious but it is painful. Somewhere in my spine about the level of the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th rib I have some arthritic impingement on a nerve. I’m not sure which one but I am sure that it really, really hurts. Pain can really drag you down. It’s exhausting. My ability to think clearly is diminished and so on. This morning I got up determined to go on with my life and so here I am. Let’s talk about what’s happening on the homestead.</p> <h3>Cows</h3> <p>The biggest news I think is that we have added yet another animal to our homestead. She is a beautiful bred heifer named Rosie. We needed another milk cow for the spring and so the search began for a Normande bred heifer. The bad news is that there were none to be found. The good news is we never give up and just moved on to looking for another breed that had A2A2 and good milking genetics. We found Rosie.</p> <p>Rosie is a Jersey so now we have two of them. I know, I know. We were going to sell Butter at some point so we would end up with only Normandes. So how did we come to add another one that we will also sell in the futu