Northern Farmer

My old bones are so tired tonight I figured I’d give em a rest here on the computer. Got a million jobs I could do tonight but there comes a time when a person has just gotta stop. Worked over a hundred cows today, three people, and got done around 1 this afternoon. Wearing knee high mud rubbers, trudging through mud gettin them cows into the barn and then into the chute. The chute is really a tub and chute combo, around thirty feet long. It’s portable and can be pulled down the road even. I figured when we got it in 2000 that if it saves a person from one minor injury that it would be well worth it. So far so good. Imagine catching 100 cows and not being dead tired. It’s catching up to me tonight, but that’s OK. Hope I can get a good sleep tonight!

Was working on the Farmal H late this afternoon. Haven’t had it running in three years or so and figured it would be good to get that thing going again. It’s been in the shed, but we just never seemed to need it so it was kinda forgotten. Put a carburetor kit in it but still haven’t got it running, but no problem, it’ll be going one way or another soon. I bought a two bottom plow last year and want the H to pull it for the garden patches. Nothing beats a good plow job and it’s almost time to hit the dirt. Can’t use the JD 50 because that got the saw rig on it. The JD 2520 is at the local fixer upper’s shed just getting some minor repairs done to it.

Got the grain fan down from the upper loft of the machine shed today and with a little luck I can clean oats tomorrow. In farming there just ain’t nothing like using your own seed. Our oats is something else! We’ve somehow developed our own strain and it truly is a wonder on this farm. Heavy oats with lots of straw. Now oats is like a three way crop here. You have the high quality grain, plus a crop of straw which is incredibly important to anyone raising animals in the north country in winter. But number three is it protects the new seeded hay and grass. A cover crop is the name of that job. Can almost call it a crop as it protects the very fragile young hay crop. It holds the soil together in case of a down pour of rain that would normally wipe out a newly emerging hay crop. Yup, I love oats, a wonder crop. And the livestock are incredibly healthy from it just as humans are. Our hillbilly hogs that we raise for ourselves didn’t even get any corn at all this past season, got raised up on oats as their main grain, plus all the garden scraps and everything else they get. And that pork is great! Totally different from anything store bought. For protein them hogs get surplus eggs fresh from the laying flock. And do they love that!

Tomorrow evening’s church and we’ll be heading that way. Sure the cows are calving but the weather is holding and I’m not all to worried about any cow calving in good weather. Besides they don’t want me around anyhow, I can tell by their body language. Mainly bobbing their heads, snorting snot and the language that really hits home is when they charge at a guy. So gals, you just calve away to your heart’s content. I’ll just observe from the sidelines. Yup another spring season starting here. And another year of getting more and more out of the clutches of big ag. I hear fertilizer is skyrocketing, yup that’s what I hear. Oh well, don’t really need none anyhow. Seed corn is going through the roof, oh well that’s what I hear anyway. But whatever is going on with industrial ag doesn’t matter all to much here anymore, we just do what we gotta do.

There’s work galore here but what the hay! What’s wrong with having a lot of work? It’s a gift! I realize thinking like this ain’t really considered normal nowadays but I can’t even imagine any other way! Working honestly on our own farm, the main outside activity off farm is church, a little Bible believing church out in nowhere land. Thinking back I see how far we’ve come and I’m amazed. I’d almost like to say we made it. But I think I’ll say we got into the door of the good life cause one never reaches the best here. There’s always more learning and more growing in both farm and church. But I’m getting content more and more all the time. Yup, I ain’t a big thinker, but I’m a big thanker and I’m thanking the Lord for everyday here. Oh there’s ups and downs, but what doesn’t have that? Farming this way has to be one of the only ways of life where a person is dead tired and rejoicing because of it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.