"Be the Cow"

We are overjoyed to share that we had our baby, Asa James Morgan, on April 19th. His birth was a long and unexpected journey, but we are healthy and enjoying slow, sleepy days at home.

CJ continues to hold down the farm work, while also taking morning shifts with the baby. He goes to the new-to-us Shew farm every day to move the cattle on their daily rotations. And he’s hauled 58 hogs to the butcher. We are currently pig-free for a month before we get our summer piglets. Molly is recovering most days at home, but loves getting out to the new Shew farm with baby Asa as much as possible.

At the same time as we have invited our little human into the world, we are welcoming calves who will continue to show up throughout the spring and summer. So far this year, we have had 13 calves and we expect another 17 by late summer.

Now that I’m a mother, I feel more kinship with the mama cows. They are, for the most part, “no muss, no fuss” mothers who make it look easy. In fact, last winter in our childbirth class we were asked to think of birth mantras to carry with us into birth. I had been thinking about how birth is so innate and animalistic, our cows do it all the time in the pastures on their own without learning how to ahead of time.

So as I shared with the class, my birth mantra was “be the cow.”

While I ended up with a birth that required modern medicine (thank goodness for it!), I brought that intention with me to the birth — working my hardest to stay present, trust my body, and lean into intuition.

This will be our first Mother’s day as a family of three! We plan to celebrate by taking a hike to see which spring wildflowers have popped up in the woods, then enjoying a delicious meal. How do you plan to celebrate the mother figures in your life?

We’ll be at the Athens Farmers Market this Saturday if you want to pick up some high-quality meats to make into mom’s favorite meal. You can place an order online for pickup at the market, if there’s something you want to reserve ahead of time!

 MoSo in the News

• Molly was interviewed by Civil Eats about the loss of USDA conservation staff and its impact on farms. Check out Civil Eats' 1.30 minute video. They are an amazing news source covering the American food system and they were just nominated for a record 5 James Beard media awards.
• CJ was interviewed by The Post in Athens about our farm’s story. They did a wonderful job writing about our business and sustainable farming practices. Honestly, it’s one of our favorite write-ups about the farm to date!
• The Athens County Independent wrote about the Shew Farm changing hands and shared reflections from both CJ and Marjie Shew.