Carwood Blog Posts

In "Part I" of this series of articles in the Carwood Farm Monthly Newsletter, I shared how we manage the "breeding phase" of our herd on the farm.  In "Part II" I described the "feeder phase" when the cattle live on a rotationally grazed diet during the growing season and are fed "high moisture" hay during the winter months.  If you missed either of these articles, they are available to read in the blog section of our website.  We are now on to the final phase, called the "finishing phase".For the finishing phase we change their diet from grazing to a corn/grain...

Carwood Farm and Harrisburg University have begun a new partnership intended to create a model that will support local farms with becoming financially sustainable while also encouraging farm practices that reduce and eventually eliminate contributions to climate change.  It's about helping farmers to make data informed decisions.  I speak from experience when considering the challenges of managing soil and plant health on the scale of a 100+ acre farm.  I don't have enough manure to cover all the fields on an annual basis, so I consider applications on fields which produced lower yields the year before or I consider crops planned...

In "Part I" of this series of feature articles in the Carwood Farm Monthly Newsletter, I shared how we manage the breeding phase of our herd on the farm.  I have to thank the many readers of that articles.  If you recall, I landed on writing about this subject based on my lovely wife, Kelly's, suggestion.  More readers opened, read and responded to the article than any article I'd ever written.  This made her very happy!So, once the breeder phase is complete, we wean calves and move them into a separate herd we call the feeder herd.   The cattle spend approximately...

You may not believe climate change is real.  You may not care.  You might simply be a Carwood customer because of the fabulous quality of our beef.  This is all fine.  I've learned that it is not my place to try to influence or change peoples' minds.  For me, I've been witnessing the impacts of climate change right here on the farm.  Obviously not dramatically through floods, fires or hurricanes as other places have experienced, but with more subtlety. Seasonal temperatures have been different.  Precipitation patterns havn't followed historically seasonal trends.  Certain animals, such as pheasants that were present in...

While considering the topic of this month's feature article, my lovely wife Kelly suggested I describe what the important factors are when raising cattle.  She thought our readers would find it interesting.  So, here it goes:The important thing to understand at the very beginning of the process is that we run our bulls with the cows, all year long!  Many breeders only keep the bulls with the cows for 2-3 months per year because they only want calves being born in the spring of the year.  There are several reasons we do it this way but an important outcome is that...