Northern Farmer

Pretty good Sunday around here, cloudy out but warm, durn near twenty above! Can’t ask for much better than that! This week will be a crusher of sorts around here with beef customers coming up from the Twin Cities tomorrow, loading out and selling calves at the salesbarn Tuesday and Wednesday, plus special church services on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings this week. Boy, when this week is over it’ll be nice. Not that there’s anything bad about anything I just wrote, just has me a bit on edge is all. That happens every year when I’m selling calves, I get a little nervous, no reason to really, just tradition is all. Our calves always do well at the sales, in fact I can’t remember when they ever came in second as far as price, they’re always market toppers. Not bad when there’s between two and three thousand calves at the special feeder cattle sales, eh! I’ve got allot of pride in them calves, not a bad type of pride, just kinda proud of the years work and all that goes into it. They’re a good looking bunch, and I’m figuring that they’ll go about a hundred pounds heavier than last year’s calves. And that’s even with selling them a month early. With the devastating drought I weaned those calves very early so they wouldn’t starve down on grass less pastures. And it sure did work out good! A guy has to do what he has to do in order to survive.

So that’s a big thing on my mind as I write today. But in three days it’s all over with and I’ll be feeding two less big round bales a day, plus silage. Them calves sure can eat! Now they’ll be eating someone else’s feed. But I’ll be saving a whole bunch of the smaller summer born calves because I can winter them without using all to much feed. And when they start getting hungrier it’ll be spring and hopefully there’ll be green grass to take up the slack. Now for any non farmers out there I hope you see some of the strategies a person has to think up in order to not collapse the farm. And a farm is pretty easy to collapse if a person doesn’t do things right on rough years, and this was a rough one.

Oh, I can’t wait till this week is over because then we can start doing some of the jobs that we haven’t been able to do because of the traditional cattle plug up around here. There’s sausage making, things to build for summer, a million things to do that I never seem to get at because of the constant taking care of the cattle. Didn’t even get around to getting a Christmas tree this year. Oh well, that means I won’t have to be taking one out, spreading needles all over the house, me just ah grumbling stumbling around with the thing. I ain’t no scrooge or nothing like that, and I don’t have any religious reasons for not having a tree, just didn’t seem to get around to it this year. Maybe they’ll be on sale after Christmas

Last week I was listening to farm radio and they were yacking about France outlawing GMO seeds and plants. I tip my hat to France for this decision,
now we need some of that around here in the barren mid west wasteland. GMO corn and beans, what a way to make a living. I can’t believe anyone could be snookered into thinking that they’re a farmer when they raise such a garbage. If I was a crop farmer I’d seriously be thinking some wheat, it’s over ten dollars a bushel now in the midwest, talk about easy money, and it ain’t GMO, requires very little input and is just a durn good crop to have around a farm. Plus it feeds people! You don’t have wheat you don’t have all that much of a civilization! Of coarse unless your civilization has rice, but that’s a touchy thing to grow up here on the tundra. Besides, I like wheat better than rice anyhow, never was much of a rice eater. Nothing wrong with it, that’s just me.

But then again if we were to start raising wheat seriously I figure the rains would return, (in force), and the wheat would probably get rust and be a failure anyhow. Sure wished I’da had a couple hundred acres this last year though! I always wondered about them crop farmers that don’t have any animals on their farms, always wondered what do they do the 45 weeks in the year when they ain’t working their crops! I don’t know, I think I’d be bored to death! Nope, gotta have critters around the place, keeps me sane! Plus some darn good vittles to boot!

So this week consists of work and church. Tell you the truth I’m really excited about the services Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. This is right up my alley! Maybe I’ll post about it if I can because it should be very good.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.