We run a small cow-calf operation that sells beef direct to consumers. We also do a little catering. My wife Michelle is a custodian at Southwest Elementary in Indianola where she gets to be a “Gramma” to lots of farm kids. She also helps with midweek school at our church. My two sons are both involved with the farm as well, but at different levels.

My oldest son, John Gaven, or “G” as we call him, is our maintenance, repair and relief feeding man. His main business is working with Bill Roger at Welding Plus in Indianola, which is a local repair, fabrication, welding and machining shop. Bill is transitioning G into taking over that business as he nears retirement.

My youngest son, Jake, develops replacement heifers and markets bred heifers and pairs. He also has a registered Angus cowherd that calves in December and January. He goes to major shows fitting for other breeders and he sells a few show calves. Jake does most of the everyday feeding while I bring feed into the yard and take care of the cows on cornstalks.

In the summer we all work together in the hay business. We market hay to mostly horse and hobby folks.

The month of February has been busy for us. We are calving most of the heifers Jake bred this year because the bred market was not what we had hoped for. Jake has also been on the road fitting at the Nebraska Classic and helping prep for some seedstock sales.

To get everything done, we run an offset schedule. My day starts with the 3 a.m. heifer check. If nothing is happening in the pens, I clean stalls, do book work, push snow or clean pens until around 6 a.m. when I go to breakfast and check cows on cornstalks. I then haul fat cattle to the processors, pick up beef, build electric fence or haul feed into the yard. I try to be done with farm work by 3 or 4 p.m. so I can make up beef orders, run errands, deliver beef or do banking.

Jake starts his day at around eight. He can usually have feeding done by 2 p.m. and then he mixes feed, works calves, and checks heifers through the afternoon and evening. He takes the last check after midnight. We don't have very many hours that we are in the place together. Consequently, we plan on doing things alone.

We really make a big deal out of disposition and ease of handling with our cows and the heifers we develop. It is common for one of us to gather a stalk field full of cows alone and sort heavies out and haul them home.

We have been blessed with plenty of moisture since late December. As I write this, our snow is nearly all melted and we have very little frost in the ground. We received most of our moisture as rain in late December ahead of some snows. I have high hopes that our drought is breaking.

The cold the last week has made for some challenges with the heifer calving but we have dealt with it before. It is easy to get lulled into complacency when the weather is mild, but the winter and spring of 2018-19 is still fresh in our minds around here so we take every precaution we can.

Next month will find us AIing the registered cows, bringing the April calving cows and heifers home from stalks, shipping heifer pairs to new owners and hopefully planting oats by the end.