Northern Farmer

It’s been a bit since I’ve posted, tis the season you know. But besides the busy season our internet was down for over a week again. This time I have no idea what was wrong cause all of a sudden the other day it all started working again. I couldn’t investigate it during that time because we were chopping our disastrous corn silage crop. I tell you, it’s green here now, but the effects of the drought will live on till late next May. I just pray the drought cycle will break next year. It’s been three years of drought, this being the worst by far. We had our corn crop measured yesterday and it yielded three bushels to an acre. Now for those who are interested our base yield here on our land is 120 bushels to an acre. And I’ve seen it much more than that in the past. But three bushels humbles a person a bit! And Lord, it’s hard to be humble! So there’ll be some changes forced into the farm because of all of this. Not an option any more, forced.

First will be to sell down around twenty five cows. There’ll be preg checking soon and them girls had better be pregnant, second I’ll go through the calf crop with a fine tooth comb and any calf that ain’t up to snuff will have its mamma leaving the farm, that is except for some old gals that are personal pets. Too many memories to let some of those old girls go! You know, the kind of cows that I said would never have to worry about leaving the place as long as they lived. What can I say; I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for some of them critters.

Other than being way short on everything on the farm as far as the cattle are concerned things are going pretty durn good around here. Just got done with the best pork chop supper in a while, plus absolutely everything with it was from the farm including the ‘mater juice for drink. The garden had its ups and downs with the drought but all in all did good thanks to a lot of watering this summer. Our hillbilly hogs are getting fat and in a month or so it’ll be time for some fresh pork and sausage. Our Partridge Rock chickens are doing wonderful, never lost a one, and this winter we’ll build the brooding nests and try to naturally incubate a few hundred chicks. That’s a pet project of mine after reading about the old ways a year ago in Small Farmer’s Journal. All I can say is that those Partridge Rocks are some strong and healthy chickens and sometimes I take a break and just sit and watch those things.

One thing I must admit about this drought is that it showed me that farming using many of the old ways makes it easier to take a disaster such as this. I remember back in 88 when we had that big drought it was much tougher to survive it because we were farming by the big ag rules. In other words we were short on cash and had to spend just about everything just to keep going. Now we’ll cut back, don’t have to lay awake at night wondering how to pay the bills or anything like that. No, it’s much different nowadays, much different. Of coarse we don’t have the beautiful crop and all that we hoped for, but in the long run it might be the best thing because these things make a person always farm and live smarter. I wonder what around eighty percent of Americans would do if faced with the same set of circumstances? The deeply in debt culture, the me, me culture. I even wonder what a lot of folks that think farming is a bed of roses would do when faced with almost absolute disaster. No pay check coming in like on the job, just bills. It’d be similar to having probably eighty percent of your pay check and benefits taken away from you for the year.

So what does a person do? Well, I was rummaging in the pump house and old machine shed finding my old raccoon traps and fox traps. That season is coming up quick and I’m in the mood for some coon hides stretching on the walls here. Plenty of the critters around here so……. Might as well eh! Deer hunting coming up soon and that Kentucky Long Rifle I bought needs a work out plus some smoke in the woods from it. I could rant tonight but there’s to many good things to do around here. And all activities require no travel, no expense really, all within an easy walk from the yard. Yup, life is good out here compared to anything else. Come to think of it, that’s why we keep on keeping on here. Like Peter said in the Bible, (Tom’s translation), “Lord, where would we go?” Right, Lord, where would we go? You got us right here and it’s good. Sure there’s all that drought stuff, but our life is entirely here, nowhere else. We ain’t traveling all over looking for something we’ll never find, we got it here. We ain’t going to Egypt, we’re staying here in the promised land. Staying put, loving the Lord, and having us a time of it all.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 7:11 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.