When faced with a half-ton cow bearing horns that are two feet long, Carole Soule knows what to do: Tell it to lie down.

“The thing that I have learned about myself with the farm is that I absolutely love training cattle – to be ridden, to drive, to lie down,” said Soule, co-owner of Miles Smith Farm in Loudon and writer of the Monitor’s “From the Farm” column.

Dealing with bovines has proved helpful when dealing with the dozens of Scottish Highland cattle that have lived on the farm, which has raised its own grass-fed beef for two decades. Turns out, it’s also helpful with animals that lack horns.

“I found that skills working with oxen can transfer to working with difficult dogs,” said Soule.

She’ll be doing more of that soon because Miles Smith Farm is winding up the retail store where it has long sold grass-fed beef from its own fields and a few other farms in the area. The last retail sales will happen at the end of December.

They’re ramping down that aspect of the farm but not for business reasons.

“It’s been phenomenal,” Soule said. “We were doing OK but the turning point was COVID, the pandemic. People were stuck home, they wanted high-quality beef to eat.”

The change at Miles Smith Farm is coming for a simple reason, Soule said: Time.

“We’re old,” she said, laughing. Soule is 73 this year, her husband Bruce Dawson is 68.

They wanted to sell the 27-acre farm, which is named for its first owner who started it in 1830, to someone who would keep it going but found no takers. So they’re ramping up the training side of things even as they keep 15 or so cattle and oxen to train and compete with (they came in second at the Sandwich Fair recently).

While they may sell some beef privately, the store business is moving to Potter and Sons farm in Gilmanton, which raises cattle whose beef was sold elsewhere, including at Miles Smith Farm, and which plans to open a store selling whole and half animals. The nearby Dumont Farms in Loudon sells cuts of beef.

Soule has been on the property since 1972 when she and her first husband, the late Loring Puffer, ran Rivendell School, a residential school for troubled teens. That morphed into the Learning Networks Foundation which still operates there, owning a barn and some animals. It will continue.

“It is using animals to help teach kids how to be kind. It’s ‘compassion for critters’ – they get life experience,” Soule said. “You see an eight-year-old girl leading a 200-pound calf with confidence, knowing what she’s doing. If she can do that she can do anything.”

As for Monitor readers, rest assured.

“I will keep writing but will focus on training dogs and cattle,” she said.