This section of the website will be for giving you news about "stuff" in general pertaining to whats going on here at Big Piney Studios and Big Piney Highlands Ranch.     Big Piney Highlands NEWS Highland Beef for Sale  Sorry, we do NOT have beef available for sale at present. The next scheduled processing will be:  late summer or early fall 2008 If you would like to be placed on a CALL LIST for availability -- just drop us an email to gdunk@centurytel.net or call Gary on his cell phone at 417-254-0903. That way we can advise you of when we will have animals available. Highland Steers Wanted If you have purebred Highland bull calves or steers for sale you may contact us. We periodically purchase outside of our herd. Call Gary at 417-254-0903.  We may be interested in some Highland/crosses as well. Grazing update: During 2007 we had a lot of weather variances here in the Ozarks. The Western Ozarks had more rain than they needed while the Eastern section of the Ozarks didn't get near enough when they needed it. We were kinda in between. We had a good amount of moisture in the spring up into June, then the spicket shut off. We had hot & dry weather thru July & August. We finally got some much needed rain the last of August and into early September. During August it was down right brittle out in the pastures. We had one good area that we hadn't turned into yet so that carried them thru........it was a bit weedy, so my hopes werent real high for it, but these Highlands have a "Knack" of eating and doing well on forages that most livestock won't eat. In early fall, we also had a bumper crop of some sort of white blooming Aster that they went crazy over and did well on. In June we had more grass then we could graze, so we had some of it baled up. I guess it was a good decision in retrospect. That feild did have some excellent regrowth and we were able to stock pile some grazing in that area. I have been strip grazing them thru that area from mid fall up to now. We will then move into some stockpiled fescue that I think will take us into February, depending on weather. So all in all its been a pretty good grazing year at the ranch. Wood Gathering Update: I have got some large brushpiles that I need to get to work on. These are from clearing out for new fence lines last spring. There is some really nice cherry trees that I want to get sawn up for furniture making. I have also found some trees with very unusual burls on them. They are on my to do list also. I have several other fence lines that need cleaned up that have a lot of sasafrass in them - I should get a good stock of rustic furniture wood from them.