Down on the Farm: It's Spring-I Think

It's almost Easter and we still have snow- make that a LOT of snow. It is raining though so that is helping it melt. Unfortunately we had so much that when it got pushed up out the way for egress from the driveway, it blocked the natural drainage from the yard, so with the cold, I have a really big skating rink, and when it's above freezing. it's also covered in water. That is really fun; especially if you can't skate. At any rate, rain rather than snow and above freezing at least some of the day more than none of the day, means spring is on it's way - it's just taking its time getting here.

Spring means all sorts of things down on the farm including lots of work, but hey, we sort of live for that. (I don't know why.) I have already purchased some of the seeds for the planting, although I have more to get, and we have plotted out which fields will be planted in what and how much seed we need for each field. See, there really is a use for that algebra beyond high school. Also, we have to figure out if we can sell any left over hay and how much to someone who ran out, or whether to keep it until the grazing pasture is one, dry enough to turn cattle out on without their ruining it with their hooves, and two, if it is tall enough to give them yet. If it's too short, they'll just pull it up ruining the filed, and they will run out faster, and if it is too tall, they won't touch it because they think it is too tough. It's a balancing act! If there is a drought we might have to feed the old hay in order to have enough of the new hay to last the next winter. Ever wonder why farmers relied on the Old Farmer's Almanac? This is why. It might have been wrong, but it was somewhere to start. And it has lots of helpful charts to save time and help planning. There is a saying up here that the corn needs to be at least knee high by the Fourth of July. That's because if it isn't, it probably won't grow the rest of the way in time to harvest because our growing season is so short, so it's a good idea to know the weather charts and hope the fields are dry enough to plant, but not so much that the plants die from lack of moisture. (The balancing act thing again.)

We also are waiting for the snow to melt to stabilize the fence posts that heaved over the winter and put up new fence. We really need to get those calves out of the barn but they will go right through a weak fence. They would have been turned out last fall, but we got a late start and they weren't big enough to withstand the winter cold, although it was pretty harsh this year and we have lost full grown cows to it before, so these wouldn't have stood a chance. Once they are turned out, we plan on getting more. Spring calves can be turned out once they are weaned or if we're real lucky we can find some that are already weaned and save some time. I'm all for that.

I am still planning my garden. I'd really like to grow sweet potatoes, but every time I order them the seed company sends them almost dead, and way too late to grow. They say they send them at the optimal time for planting in my area. July is not the optimal time for planting any potatoes here. It gets cold before they have a chance to even grow a good bush on them, much less a tuber, and when they are pretty much dried up and dead when they arrive, there isn't much to be done to save them. Okra would also be on my wish list, but until I get that greenhouse I've always dreamed of to start plants early, the season is just too short. Still, I can hardly wait to get in there and plant something, because I know that even though it means more work later, I get to put up my own veggies and avoid the stuff in the store.

I might even get a couple of pigs this year.

Are you looking forward to spring too?

Winter on the Farm

Living in Northern Wisconsin is a lot of fun for a lot of people. I am not one of those people. I do not enjoy snow or the sports one would engage in when it snows. I like to fish, but there is no way I am going out on a frozen lake to do so. I'm from Florida, so the cold and I do not get along, and I absolutely do not like snow.

That being said, for farmers wintertime should be a time of semi-restfulness, right? Don't count on it. Crops have to be planned for spring planting and equipment needs to be maintained so it actually works come spring and summer. Animals have to have extra care, especially if they are kept inside a barn, after all, either way, they can't feed themselves and there isn't any grass to graze on. If a farmer has a dairy, forget about any rest. As much as snow gets in the way and adds more work, it is also a necessary evil. Economic impact on the community that depends on it aside, snow, and a lot of it, is needed for soil moisture when planting time comes around. A good layer of snow is needed to protect hay fields. It keeps some warmth in and the freeze out. Doesn't make sense, does it? Snow also helps weigh down the grasses so that the freezing cold and ice isn't able to heave the delicate plants and kill them off.

We got some snow, but not a lot and it got really cold. Then we got the January thaw, which is temperatures in the forties that got rid of what little snow we did have. Then it got cold again, as in way below zero. I'm going with the notion that all that nice alfalfa and clover we planted is not going to come up this year. Also the unseasonal warmth we had last year during January and February sent our fruit trees for a loop. They bloomed out and then the blooms of course froze when winter returned and we got no apples. It affected the entire state's crop of apples and cherries and other berries and fruits that grow up here. There is a good possibility of more of the same this year.

Now comes the 'fun' part. It got so cold last week that our entire water system froze. We've been having to take a torch to the cow watering system, as in pipes, bowls, and mechanisms so they could drink for several weeks now. We have a barn full of cows so that is a lot of water bowls and pipes. When I say the entire system went down, I mean no water to anywhere, including the house. We had to use an old drag-type spray rig to water the animals by hand (think buckets) and buy water for the house. Thank goodness we have relatives nearby so we could get water for the animals. After finally giving up getting things going on our own, we had to call a well company to get the ice out of the lines. I give up using the automatic watering cups for the cattle though. Until it warms it a bit, I'll just have to keep on using buckets. Even though there are a lot of cows, it takes longer to thaw the lines than to just give them a bucket and babysit them to make sure they don't dump it over accidentally. The barn cleaner chain also froze down so we couldn't run the chain to clean the beds out. I thought we were doomed to the old Armstrong method (two strong arms, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow). The tractor can be used, but it still has to get to the tractor, which cannot fit into the bottom of the barn where the animals are. My poor husband spent hours with a sledge hammer breaking the ice loose so we could get that cleaner going again. He's not too keen on the Armstrong method either for cleaning.

Next week, it's due to get way below freezing again and we might have to do this all over again. Thankfully we got some snow and so we pushed a nice pile around the building where the well is to keep some of that heat we keep going in there where it belongs. So, wish us luck.

Think this is unusual? Probably not. Farming is like that. On good days, the work is not too bad, the equipment works the way it's supposed to and things go smoothly. I do enjoy my cows in spite of all the work, and bucking hay and scraping stalls is some great exercise. But the bad days tend to be really bad, and most farmers know what I'm talking about. Like to gamble? Skip the casino- go into farming.

Morning on the Farm-What a Way to Start the Day

It's a great way to start the day. You go out to the barn and something just seems--wrong. It took a minute to figure it out. Someone was missing- Black Jack the steer. Suddenly there he was, on the wrong side of the barn in the feed aisle. Oh man! He had somehow managed to unhook the clip holding his neck chain. They seem to be rather talented in that area of late.

First one must catch the naughty fellow, and believe me, he is not all that small- about 300 pounds. He also has decided he just isn't ready to go back to his stall quite yet, so he ran up and down the aisle with me calling after him. The aisle isn't that big and it's not worth chasing a cow around the feed aisle, you just have to wait for him to calm down a second, although every time I walked up to him to put the rope on his head, he took off again. Hmmm. He's being extra naughty today. Usually I can get him the first time, but then, he has made quite a mess of things and he may be under the impression I'm going to get onto him somehow. It's a cow; it doesn't do any good, as I have told my husband repeatedly. Finally, I got the rope the on his head and he decided at that point to just drag me down the aisle, only I jerked the rope to one side as one would a rein on a horse and he stopped in his tracks. "Now, if you're quite ready to go back home," I told him, "I can clean up this mess and feed everyone." I also told the other cows to give him a hard time since it was his fault they wouldn't be fed for a while as I had to clean up the feed aisle. Yes, I know it doesn't do any good to say such things to them, but it made me feel better.

He still wasn't ready to go back home but I got him out of the feed aisle and into the center walkway, so I tied the rope off in his stall (which thankfully is literally across from the short walk aisle between stalls on the side where he had taken refuge.) I got behind him and gave him a little smack on the rear to get him motivated. He tried to turn and run down the walk aisle but when he reached the end of the rope, he flipped completely over. I just smiled and chuckled a bit. "So, are we ready now?" He got up and went to his stall. I had to motivate him to go on and cross the gutter and move forward enough to hook him back up, but he went.

My goodness, what a mess he made! He managed to knock down five of six bales of hay we had thrown out of the hay mow the night before and pulled the hay string off of two of them, scattering one all over the place. The hay that had not been eaten was no longer fit to eat as he had hygiene issues (that's safe wording right?) in the hay so I had to spend twenty minutes just cleaning the hay out of the aisle and making sure I could actually give the cows their grain before haying them again. At least the concrete was not in need of disinfecting since it all managed to land in hay piles. (That was good trick too.)

Since we have a doorway (minus an actual door) leading to the silo room (we aren't using them) we blocked it off with a piece of plywood and some old straw bales to insulate the barn against the cold. It is at the end of that walk aisle between stalls I mentioned earlier. The water lines and bowls tend to freeze there if it isn't blocked off in the wintertime. That rascal pushed on those bales until he broke the cords holding the plywood up and knocked it over. The bales actually stayed in place, thank goodness. After the mess was cleaned up and the rest of the chores were done, I went outside and around to the other side of the doorway and put the plywood back up, only this time I nailed it to the framework and them braced it with some long two-by-four lumber. Let's see him knock it over now!

Have you ever had days like that?

Green Acres is the Place for Me!

Okay, so this time of year, we don't necessarily have green acres, but do you remember the television show Green Acres? I do, and I can still get it when the weather cooperates. Growing up I lived on a farm pretty close to that one, sans the closet door emergency exit. We were only there for a little while, but I thought all farms were that way at the time, even though my grandparents lived on a farm with a nice house. I always liked the barn my grandparents had, even though the boards didn't quite meet and if the wind blew it went right through it. I think it was supposed to be that way since my grandparents raised tobacco and they dried it in there- this was before the fancy drying buildings with the heaters and blowers on them.

We moved into yet another farm house when I was a teenager. It was huge, but the bathroom was an add-on and it wasn't level so the bathtub didn't drain properly. It didn't have a barn, but it was a crop farm and they raised watermelons the year we moved out. I loved walking the fields to the fishing pond.That was cool. The house was oddly laid out too. If one wanted to go into the kitchen or the dining room, they had to go through a porch that had been enclosed. We found snakes in there once in a while. Come to think of it, we did at the other one too. Yuk. 

My husband and I moved onto a rented farm shortly after we married and it had a nice house- one of my favorite houses where I have ever lived. It had small outbuildings but it had a lot of acreage and we raised beef cattle and raised wheat, soybeans, and truck cropped vegetables that we sold at the State Farmers Market in Thomasville, Georgia. I enjoyed that too. We had live water on the property, which means a spring-fed creek to cool off in on really hot days. That was nice.

I have lived on several farms over the years and my husband has yet to put me in one that is Green Acres-like. We did live in his old homestead in Missouri where he grew up that was interesting. It was built on a log foundation with rocks around the edges. A groundhog had gotten in where the rocks had been removed to retrofit plumbing for the bathroom (yes, it was that old). The rascal had gnawed his way almost all the way across the floor joists. He was huge! My son and I watched him through the living room window eating flowers and acorns in the front yard. There was squirrel that used to hang out on the front porch and look in the door through the baby gate and my other son. I think he tried to talk to it, but since no one knows what babies are saying, who knows? We moved into a newer house a couple years later and it was eventually torn down. We had cows and hogs then.

In Wisconsin we lived in a huge house with six bedrooms and a hidden toilet at the top of the stairs. That was interesting! Careful going up those stairs man! It was an old house and we couldn't quite figure out what rooms were supposed to be what in the lower level. The bathroom was built into an alcove under the stairs so it was small and it had a pocket door for an entrance. I still really liked the house, even if it was too big and the bathroom too small. Now we live on another farm with a big old barn - I love big barns. The house actually needs more rooms just to accommodate grandchildren. But, oh man, do I have fun with the cows. They are a bunch of characters. My husband thinks I spend too much time with them since most have names and I can pet them like dogs. But then I have fun on my little tractor too, and wandering the nearly 120 acres with my Labrador retriever. And, I have creeks all over the place- the dog really likes those. Too bad it snows and has to ruin everything.

I have been  in cities and to tell you the truth, I can't sleep there. I can't breathe there. It is way too loud and the houses are too close for my comfort. So, yes, the line in the Green Acres theme song holds true with me, and the only time I'd wager anything is to say that it probably does with a lot of farmers too. "Green acres is the place for me," and especially, 'Take Manhattan; just give me that country side!"

On the Farm-Raising Sheep

I got talked into obtaining a few long-horned sheep about eighteen months ago by someone with sheep who was buying hay from us. I wouldn't have to have them shorn since they didn't have wool since they were hair sheep and the hair is more or less usless. They were supposed to go either for meat or the rams for their horns once they started having offspring. The entire 'herd' was a ram and five ewes. Oh my, what an undertaking that was. The ewes were raised on the bottle as their mothers had rejected them so they were very tame. Being tame, I named them and made pets out of them. That is always a bad idea, but somehow I always manage to do it regardless of the animal, be it a cow, a pig, or a sheep.

Raising sheep is an adventure, make no mistake. One weekend, since my husband was ill, my eldest son decided to come help mom get caught up on things that needed done around the farm. One such chore, was catching the sheep, which by this time had multiplied due to the ewes having had babies in February. We needed to tag the lambs. You talk about a rodeo. The adults were already tagged and I wondered why the previous owners had waited until they were loading them to do it. They seemed to handle so well when they got them for us and we had only some trouble getting them into the barn when they lambed- they follow a feed bucket pretty well. The lambs, however, run like the wild little critters they are. I had built a divider fence out of fence wire and, with my husband's help, finally lumber in order to separate the lambs from the ewes (they kept going through the wire). That's when I noticed the difference in the ewes and the rest of them.

The ram is also wild as we were told not to make friends with him or he could get where he wasn't afraid of us and charge. I took that to heart- he has some nasty looking horns and I have seen him charge my poor dog when I was trying to find his water bucket. After about an hour of trying to catch the lambs to tag them my son was swearing a blue streak and, as he is much too old for me to wash his mouth out with soap, I couldn't very well stop him. He looked at me and then I surprised the heck out of him. I was just as hot (it was nearly 100 degrees) and ticked off as he was at their speed and agility, and one even jumped straight up four feet over the fence back to mama. I told him to go ahead, just make sure he put in a few words for me since I didn't use them myself. He broke up laughing and we gave up the project least we both have a heat stroke.

That was about the time I started finding the little ones had gotten into a deadly plant I thought I had been pretty good about keeping out of their pen. My youngest son told me over the phone right where to find it and he was right. The little jumpers had gotten over a barricade and then knocked it over allowing access to all. It was around the silos.  I lost three of the little ones- all rams. Darn!

A few months after that I listed the whole lot for sale on Craig's List. At first no one wanted them, and then a couple people only wanted the female stock. I listed the two rams I had left, the dad and one of the lambs with a nice set of horns himself. .

By law, they have to be tagged before they can be sold and the tags are farm specific. Only ones born to the farm have to be tagged with that farm's tags so that they can be traced to their original farm. The people who bought the sheep were pretty good at catching them, although we did manage to get them led into a corral of sorts first and I just handed them the tags and asked if they had a tagging device. They can tag the little suckers.

I think I'll stick to cows and maybe a pig or two, but the pigs will be for me to eat, and some chickens (for eggs).