Farm – Page 147 – Dan Routh Photography

Deer Skull

We were checking our back pasture Sunday before opening it up for the cows, when I ran across this skull of a young buck. He could have died of natural causes, but most likely he was wounded and died later. We have had a problem with poachers for the last couple of years, both in the daytime and at night. I’ve been awakened at 2AM by someone shooting towards my barn from in front of my house. Seems like we don’t really have a lot of hunters in my area, but rather a bunch of people that like to shoot at deer. There is a difference. What a waste.

Log Grabs

Farm, Still Life

An old pair of log grabs hang from the grainery wall on our farm in Randolph County, North Carolina.

Tractor in the Snow

Farm, Snow

Old tractor in the snow. Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

The Neighbor’s Cow

Agriculture, Farm

Photograph of Jersey cow, Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

Pig Picking

Farm, Food, Portraits

It was pretty cold this past weekend, but not cold enough to stop neighbor Tommy Routh from continuing with his annual “pig picking” for friends and neighbors at Goat Lady Dairy in Grays Chapel. A 200 pound free range hog raised by his son-in-law Bobby, split in half and cooked slow for about 15 hours until the meat falls off the bones. This is the “whole hog”, with a choice of ham, shoulder, rib and tenderloin. I’m primarily a vegetarian these days, but I freely admit I did have to try some. Excellent.

Winter Farming

Agriculture, Farm, Portraits

When cold and messy weather comes, most of us can duck inside and get away from it. On a dairy farm, it means dealing with it head on. Cows have to be milked and fed twice a day whether it’s sunny and warm or frigid and nasty. Michael Williams of Williams Dairy south of Greensboro, North Carolina handles it every day.

Milking Cows

Agriculture, Farm, Portraits

Milking cows in the dairy parlor of Williams Dairy, a family farm south of Greensboro, North Carolina.

Tractor Shed

Farm

An old Farmall tractor sits in a tractor shed on our farm in Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

Feeding the Chickens

Animals, Chicken, Farm

A bird’s eye view at feeding time in our barnyard in Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

A Wild Horse Named Rienzi

Family, Farm, Horses

My wife’s wild horse Rienzi sprints from her corral to join the cows in the morning at our farm in Grays Chapel, North Carolina. Rienzi is a 28 year old wild Mustang mare my wife and I adopted from the BLM when she was a yearling. She came from near Lake Tahoe in California and is named for a famous horse ridden by Philip Sheridan during the Civil War (Sheridan had his Rienzi stuffed and placed on display at the Smithsonian Institute). Our Rienzi spends her days grazing with our cattle herd and her nights in her 100 year old stall originally built for mules (she comes in on her own every evening). She’s in excellent shape and very docile. She was trained to ride, but we don’t ride her anymore except for the occasional bareback jaunt by my son Devin. I think she really thinks she is a cow now; she is definitely a herd animal. Rienzi is lucky, but a lot of her cousins aren’t. Right now there are thousands of Mustangs in BLM holding pens, removed from government land. Some will be adopted, but it seems that many are to be sold for meat. Most of this removal is unnecessary and pushed by big western cattle interests. Several groups are pushing the government to stop these removals. Information on supporting wild horses and their preservation is available at http://www.wildhorsepreservation.com/. Go there. Wild horses need your help.