All Goes Well

Four long months since my last update, I truly am sorry, it has been too busy for me to slow down long enough to think.

My first two attempts to plant a garden failed, constance rains and no sunshine would wash out the tiny seedlings or they would just turn yellow and die. My final attempt was successful, though I had my doubts at first, I swore I was not going to plant it for a fourth time. The progress of the garden has been slow, most things are at least a month behind on harvest. I am thankful that this has been a mild and cool July so far, it has made canning an easier job.

The cattle are all fine as of so far, grasses have been plentiful with the rains that come every few days. Haying season is over, crop here at home was low on bale count, though our rental farm was not, now to get all of the hay hauled out of the fields and brought home. Have purchased the increasing hay needs for the cattle for winter, at least the price of hay has gone down this year with the drop of fuel prices.

Calving is still behind schedule, at least it has been consistant on that part, no emergeny calls to the Vet, which always helps out on the pocket book. Our first calves of the season have been weaned and are ready for market, still have 9 cows that will calf, hubby is betting they will all be bull calves. We have had a large number of bull calves this season, at least two to one, told hubby that someone must be telling us that our herd is big enough, with the heifers that were born this year that we will keep, our herd is now over 75 head.

My folks have not been in the best of health the past four months, I find myself at their home more and more to take care of some of their daily needs. Mom is still recovering from knee replacement surgery, Dad now seldom leaves the house, his recovery from surgery in the spring has not gone well, but he is trying. Next month we will be celebrating his 80th birthday with a large celebration at his church, he is so looking forward to seeing old friends once again.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

It has been a while since my last update once again. Weeks have turned to months as we try to keep our heads above water with this economy and happenings on the farm. Once again my father has been in and out of the hospital, he is now back at home, but this time his recovery is going very slowly, and it may be weeks before he is even close to his old self.

Calving season got off to a slow start, and appears to be staying slow, since all of the cows are behind at least a month. Of the 15 calves we have at the moment, we are heavy on the bull side, with only 4 heifers in the group. This is not totally desirable, since our aim is to raise heifers, but there is no controlling this part of the operation.

With weeks of illness with family, refrigerator leaking on the kitchen floor unnoticed and causing damage to the two adjoining room floors, windbreaks leaning over from high winds, and the list goes on. The words from a song "Hit me with your best shot, just fire away" comes to mind today after husband came in saying one of the heifers has died. From what we are not sure, so now awaiting word from the veterinarian.

Illness with our cattle has never been an issue for us, we have been very careful with our livestock, I just wish I could say the same about our neighbor's cattle herds, most are just forgotten in the pastures until it is time to sell off the calves. Since this calf appeared to be very healthy, this is upsetting and does have me concerned as to what the findings will be. Though husband and I are both wondering if it was lightening, since we had some heavy storms last night. I just hope this is not the beginning of another problem to add to our new year of events.

Absent For a Long Time

Looks like I have forgotten to keep up with my blog on the farm. Shame on me, I have been busy with the opening of both a new online webstore and a land store. I was over whelmed with the boxes and product that I had here in my home, and decided to turn our old retired hardware store space into an “open to the public” storage area for my online product.

It has been pretty uneventful here on the farm for the past few months, which after the long summer of gardening, canning and father’s illness and recovery, this has been a blessing.
Now Christmas and the end of the year are at hand, so I was busy with the usual writing of Christmas letters and sending out cards, testing some new recipes for Christmas on my husband, my all-critical, picky eater. If it does not pass his taste buds, then off to the grandkids for a taste, and if it fails there, then in the trash it goes.

The economy has many of the local farmers on edge, many are cutting back their herds, and this cannot be good for next year’s meat cost at the grocery store for the buyer next year. We have not cut back on the cattle, nor on their needs, and this is not in our plans, but we have cut back heavily in the household.

Until this economy eases up some, there are no purchases that will be made in this household. So there went my plans for a new bed and that badly needed flooring for the kitchen. Such is life for the farm wife and the farmer; they do without in order to continue to produce the product that they sell.

With all of the cut backs that we are making in the household, it is surprising to me that I thought I could not live without things like a microwave, ours gave out a few months ago and has not been replaced. Which is also the case for the dishwasher, mixer, garbage disposer, coffee pot and humidifier. This was just my year for all of these appliances to go bad on us.

Going back to the old ways of doing things, even making coffee with boiling water and an old-fashioned drip coffee pot has been an adjustment to say the least, though I have learned that I will not have that first cup of coffee for about 15 mins. But now it is becoming a way of life for us and now we are not so sure that we will replace those appliances that are to make our lives easier, so we are told. I believe they have just made us lazy and have cluttered up my home. I have even learned to make my own laundry soap, which is easy, a real huge savings, and only needs a bit of my time to do.

Too Much Work

With the haying season over, it was time to begin moving all of the hay home. This was quit an undertaking this year with so much hay. With husband working a full time job, this took up most of his evenings and weekends for nearly two weeks. Once hay was moved it was time to get the pastures mowed, with a second farm now to take care of this also took up most of husband's evenings and weekends for two week.

Meanwhile back at the farm kitchen, I was busy with canning this year's harvest from gardens and fruit trees. What a harvest this has been, and I have spent endless days canning our favorites. I know I am well over 400 jars of prepared foods in storage, and the freezer is also full. Yet the harvest continues, with little break in sight, other then the empty jar supply is running low. I will soon have to stop canning and freezing, or begin to up foods up in my folk's freezer if this continues. From last year's lack of harvest due to a late freeze, to an overwhelming harvest this year, I will make sure that I will not get caught off guard by another year with no harvest.

The Labor Day weekend for us was spent working on the farm, trying to get all of those nagging little things done, that needed to be done all summer, but no time to get it done it. We put a huge dent in that to do list, but it is not nearly done, there are still those things that must be done to prepare for the winter months, such as washing down the barn pens and building on to the current wind breaks. Also have to replace that chicken house door that the storm last week blow off, and another batch of calves need to be weaned soon. It seems the work just never ends.

A Troubled Month

Last month continued to be plagued with rains, the haying season was off to a late start, and constant rains, no wind, no sun and high humidity were set backs. It was not until Aug 2, that we were finally able to say that the haying was done. The hay crops for us were good, record amounts were brought in, so there will be no need this year to purchase hay, and this is a blessing with the ever increasing price of fuel, prices have reach levels I have never seen even in the drought years.

Early in the month a serious health issue for my father arose, this kept me busy standing watch next to his hospital bed, with prayers for his recovery and coming back home to us all. After a long stay in the hospital, I am happy to report that he is home and on the mend, we were able to celebrate his 79th birthday on the 3rd of Aug at home. He will have a long road to full recovery, but he has the support and love of his family to help him along.

A hot, humid, dry spell of weather has now moved in, the high temps are not good on the cattle, but they will weather through this, if it is only for a short spell. Many of the neighboring ranchers are questioning their reasons to continue on in the cattle business, with high fuel costs, ever increasing feed costs and the high prices of hay, this is a time to question. Many of these neighboring rancher are older then husband and I, so we do understand why they may think that this is the right time to call it quits, for husband and I, we have only started and are just now seeing our goals of herd size coming along, so for us, this is not a time to jump out of this game yet. If current costs continue to rise, we may have little other choice but to begin to question this ourselves and join those ranks. We have been in other livestock ventures in the past, and we weathered through the tough times, we can only hope that this will too pass and we can continue on the path we have chosen for our future.

Rain, Rain Go Away

The constant rains, below normal temps, and lack of sun, have left us unable to tend to matters before us that need doing now. Fields are too wet to plant, corn planting ended at the first of the month, now the crop farmers are struggling to get in a soy bean crop. The cool, wet weather has left the wheat crops weedy, short in height and low on bushels to harvest. This has also left little in the way of clean baleable straw, now a bale of straw is selling for $3.50 in the field.

Normal hay season should have started at the first of June, and here it is July, and the men are finding it hard to get the hay cut, raked and baled dry. The hay grasses are heavy this year, and there will be large amounts of hay in the area for feed, but the quality of the hay will be in question. Acre after acre of new cut hay has been cut, and most has been rained on, or the curing time has been longer then normal.

We have managed to get the first 60 ton of hay up dry, which is no easy feat for my husband. He works an in town job to help pay for the rising cost of health insurance and other daily requirments while we build our cattle operation. Trying to work, come home cut hay one day, rack the next and on the third day bale, and to manage not to get rained on is not easy right now. Hay that should dry and bale in one or two days, is taking three, due to the weather. He has taken a couple days off of work to try to get some haying done. But this may have been a bad choice. Storms last night dumped 2 1/2" of rain on us, over half of our normal July rainful and this month is just getting started, the morning brought a heavy fog that did not lift until late afternoon, now clouds and more chances of rain have entered the forecast. We can only hope that it passes without a drop.

The wet weather has been a good growing season for only the weeds. My gardens are tended to each day, only to pull more weeds. Many of the vegetables are now showing signs of "Verticillium Wilt", which there is little I can do for it. I bought Verticillium Wilt resistant plants, but the damp cool weather is out of my control. Cherries were a month early and small, Apricots were also in the same state. Peaches are dropping from the trees for no reason unripened, no Pears are on any local trees, and blackberries are small and canes show distress.

Only good thing I can see at the moment with this weather is that pastures are good with plenty to eat, no Pink Eye problems in the cattle from the normal dust of July, calves are fat and growing fast, and cows are looking full and healthy, no signs of distress for them, they are enjoying the cool comforts that "mother nature" is giving them at this moment.

Life is good, we are healthy and active, so onward to another month to see what it has in store for us.

What a month this has been!!

It was nearly mid-month before we were able to put the cattle to pasture, the cool weather is just beginning to move on out, now we are dealing with too much moisture. We did have one brief dry spell about mid-month, by the time the ground was dry enough to get into the fields and gardens, we were soon hit with flooding rains again. There was little in the way of corn planting that was done, and the wet fields have not allowed any planting since mid-month.

Crop farmers are now turning their attentions to planting soy beans and milo, since corn planting season has come to a close. The lack of the large acres planted in corn will undoubtedly lead to higher feed prices for our cattle, along with the increase prices for fuel, our hay supplies will also increase in price. This does make for a hardship of trying to increase the size of our small herd to stay on target for our future plans.

Once again the garden crop has failed, the almost daily moisture has left the ground unsuitable for growing. Yesterday, once again I tilled and replanted many of our garden favorites. Once again I will be waiting for those plants to pop their heads out of the ground. Once again we were hit with more flooding rains last night. This is enough to make one want to pull their hair out from frustration.

Our work on our newly acquired pasture land, is finished, and the first of the heifers have been moved into the pasture. Time now to turn our attention back to the main herd which has grown enough for the need of a second bull, which was purchased, and the up coming haying season, which is usually in full swing by the first of June, but due to the daily rains has been postponed for another week.