Its Finally Over!
May 13th, 2008 by Northern Farmer After ten months of feeding the cow herd it has ended today! All the cows are on pasture and I’m a little bewildered, ten months of feeding ended. Now what?? Tomorrow will be different that’s for sure! And I ain’t complaining at all here. It’s just so weird to see and to know that things are starting to return to the way its supposed to be around here. Heck, we even picked up a quarter inch of rain today and that’s after this past Saturday’s inch and two tenths. Now that’s sure different than the last few years. Hope beyond hope! Fat cattle again might become a reality. The cows that were given the boot two weeks ago today are fleshing up faster than I ever imagined. Funny how a person can feed and feed them, but when they hit even a half way decent pasture that’s when the good stuff happens! Oh, here’s a few pictures of this past Saturday morning’s cattle check before the rain started.
Tomorrow if all goes well I’ll start planting corn, and we have quite a bit to plant this year compared to past years. But it nothing to what a modern corn farmer puts in nowadays. But even with half a crop we will have more than enough so you won’t see me complaining about any rains. A farmer can always slug it out on a wet year, but you get a big drought a person ends up with nothing but a nightmare. The Goliath field corn goes in tomorrow and I hope it does as well as they say. After that field is done I’ll put in a field of Reid’s Yellow Dent for silage and maybe field corn if it makes it to maturity this year. After that the Minnesota 13 and the Wapsie Vally will go in and I’m hoping to pick cribs full and fill up some snow fences with cob corn from those two varieties. I was kinda thinking it would be a spectacle in these parts to see a crib full of Wapsie Valley where about one out of twenty cobs is red. I think a corn crib full of that would be kinda pretty to look at like only a farmer can imagine pretty!
Might have to miss church tomorrow evening because of planting but that’s understandable, when its time to plant, well, its time to plant. Very seldom is Wednesday evening service missed around here, but in farming there’s an age old understanding that the crops gotta get in and we have to just do it. And maybe one of these days I will be able to till the garden, been holding off on that because of injury. Fell down the stairs a couple of Sundays ago here and I’ve never been quite the same. Landed on the cement floor pretty hard and then a couple days later I could barely walk. But even if a person has to crawl the work has to be done on the farm and more than once I fell down to the ground in pain, not pretty. But everything is on schedule and so is the healing, Praise the Lord! So these next few days will be concentrated on planting some of the corn and this coming Saturday I’ve already pretty much lined up a rock picking crew. Some good local teens that aren’t afraid of work, from a Christian family to boot. I wonder if I qualify for tractor driving now that I’m getting up there in age and can claim injury to boot? Naw, I’ll be picking too, cause I can’t stand to sit around.
It’ll feel kinda strange to actually farm again. By that I mean not just holding the place together because of the multi year disaster around here. And this coming Sunday after church there will be a whole church get together with , of all things, lots of food! It don’t get much better than that! For me anyhow. Yup, that country way of life. Work hard and then when the Lord’s Day rolls around get together with the saints and just generally enjoy life!
May 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Next time you fall down the stairs or take any fall, get yourself some Arnica gel- it does wonders for bruising and muscle aches. You can find it in any healthfood store, or online.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Hey Tom,
Are you guys up there getting swamped with a lot of rain like we are in the Ohio valley?
May 15th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Hi Christine!
But, feeling allot better these last couple of days. Hope all is well down your way!
Thanks for the info! Now to find a cement repair kit
Hey Don!
Take care over your way!
Wet down your way huh? I haven’t kept track of national weather at all these last couple of weeks so I don’t know what’s going on around the country. We ain’t getting swamped with rain, but even a drizzle seems like a flood compared to these last few years. In reality the ground is beautiful. I can work most places in the fields, except the traditional wet spots, but we are getting timely rains and not so hot weather like the last few years. I planted around 23 acres of Goliath today, first time I ever put white seed corn in the planter, and I’m ah hoping that this year we have an over abundance of corn and silage. Got about sixty acres of corn to plant yet, but it’ll get done one way or another. Plus I planted 16 rows of sweet corn today, 350 feet long and will plant more in a couple weeks. Uh, plus butchered three steers on the farm today. Hmm, busy
May 16th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Tom,
Congratulations on getting onto grass. I’m almost there. Maybe tomorrow. The neighbor that I rent pasture from decided that he wants to put some cows on pasture. He is offering a larger area to accomodate my cows plus his. Now I need to put up more fence… I guess I have influenced him for the better.
Jim
May 16th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Jim,
I tell you, things are going allot better than a couple of weeks ago! Chores sure are different! The grass is finally starting to pick up a little speed growing with the slightly warmer weather. Gotta run! Gotta be at our little church by seven to pick up the ancient piano that’s been there since the dawn of creation! This might be an adventure in itself! Talk about a heirloom! When I have that thing home I’ll get some pictures of it and post it.
May 17th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Morning Tom!
Sounds like everyone is getting nice and busy! We’ve been able to get in the fields, got 10 acres of oats in, need to get peas in and then corn and soybeans. We have enough grass to graze now but I’m trying to finish off 10 acres of brome grass (where the soybeans are to go) green chopping for the cows. The brome is over my knee now, never seen grass grow like that in the cold and rain! The high price of fuel is killing us, I’ve been scrapping out some old junk equipment for fuel money, the scrap price is high but so is the cost of diesel. We are just trying to keep the wolves from the door! A question for you and the others here, does anyone know anything about soybean hoes? We will need to do some hand hoeing in the beans to get the yields we need to survive. I’ve heard that soybean hoes are supposed to have long handles to reach across rows but I haven’t found any other info on them or sources for the hoes.
May 17th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Evening Brent!
Yup, nice and busy is the word around here. Just got in from a day of rock picking, but there was a durn good crew and I’m well satisfied. Tell me about the price of fuel, just bought another tank yesterday, unbelievable! But we’ll survive and this will only push some major changes around here whether we feel like it or not! This week the corn should be over the hump, so to speak, and then I’ll just have a few small patches to put in. Gotta get out in the garden soon before I lose it, this sore back the last couple of weeks has kept me away from the tiller and the weeds are noticing it!
Never heard of such a thing as soybean hoes, maybe some other reader has. I’ve never been much into soybeans and I don’t really know how they used to do it for them. Sorry about that.
May 17th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
What do you do to keep up the fertility in the soil? Are you rotating the crops and thats good enough? Do you have enough manure from wintering the cows inside to cover all your fields? Do you ever use nitrogen? We are trying to get away from chemical inputs and I have been doing alot of reading to see what we can do (which definately doesn’t make me an expert!!!) and it seems to me that it would be better not to use nitrogen on our hay field… am I trying too hard to be a purist or is there really a better option? We do need our hay to have more nutitional value than it has had…We put some lime on it last fall, but not near the recomended amount per acre because of the expence. You have mentioned lime also, do you add some every year? How many questions am I allowed to ask at once? Thanks again, I so more appreciate being able to glean from your wisdom and experience.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Hi Angela!
)
Well I tell you, the questions you asked would require a book as thick as the dictionary to begin covering it all. But in a nutshell, we are able to maintain “most” of the soil fertility on the place on our own. We do have enough manure when a person considers that even though some of the fields don’t get any on certain years they have plow down alfalfa and clovers and such to replace any manure. Ours is a three crop rotation. Hay, corn and oats in that order. Manure only goes on a field before corn, never before oats quite simply because the oats would grow to tall and fall over from it’s own weight. The manure is multi year in the fields, by that I mean it’ll release fertilizer for more than one crop, and plus the added benefit of adding organic matter to the soil to keep it alive and healthy. The oats is planted after the corn and the fertility is more than sufficient to get bumper crops of it. And most of the time hay is planted with the oats but doesn’t really take off until the oats is harvested and the straw is baled and off the field. I like putting lime on every year, not the whole farm every year, but I rotate that too so over the course of a few years all the farm has been limed. So when there are legumes in the field they take off all good and healthy and place nitrogen in the soil for the grass planted with them and the future corn field when the hay is plowed up. So that’s the abbreviated version of maintaining soil fertility on our place
Oh, don’t worry about too many questions, if it overwhelms me I have a habit of forgetting about the comment. (I’m serious
June 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
So, are you tilling under your hay field every third year? Do you have to reseed your hay when its turn comes again? Do you save your own seed from the alfalfa, and grass too, or are there some seeds that you have to buy? When you say “plow down” are you tilling in the crops, then reseeding?
June 7th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Hi Angela,
)
Sorry about not getting back to you right away, busy around here and I sometimes put some comments on the back burner and then durn near forget about them. But I have a few moments now and will give it a shot to answer the best I can. Many times we do plow the hayfields under the third year, not always but many times. We have an abundance of hay fields so we can pretty much play it by ear depending on their condition. In these parts they sometimes get damaged from a severe winter freeze out and that’ll get them plowed up earlier than that. But it doesn’t pay to have land that is producing very little. It still costs almost the same to harvest a poor hayfield or a great one. We always reseed our hayfields but I have several options on what kind of hay or what kind of mixture of seed to go with. We don’t harvest our own seed yet but are planning on starting next year, mostly spurred on by the huge rise in price for seed. We have a combine that will thresh out the alfalfa or clover seed without a problem and also a fanning mill to clean the seed so that’s on the future plans list. When I say plow down I mean plow down. With a plow. I haven’t ever seen anything that can beat old fashioned plowing when it comes to hay fields or sod. That’s the only time we use the plow, when we turn under the hay fields. During the rest of the rotation we use a heavy bush hog breaker disk instead of a plow. Plus the disking gets the fields much smoother for when they turn into hay fields again compared to a plowed field. Remember one thing, when I talk about plowing down hay, there’s a tremendous fertilizer value in this equation plus the organic mulch. The soils are coming back healthier and alive compared to what they once were. In the days to come this might mean the difference of making it or going belly up.
Again I’m sorry for taking a while to get back, sometimes I’m really busy, (I really farm you know