Vegetables Are In

It was a busy week. We pushed hard to get all of the vegetables in through the black plastic mulch. We spent a few days getting it done, but we're very satisfied to see them all in. We tried out the drip line to water the plants and found out that we didn't put the ends of the drip tape on correctly. It shot the ends off of the tape lines and we drained the well. We planted a second crop of sweet corn and bush beans too this week. We had one more calf. The calf is actually from a heifer that belongs to my brother that we run her with our herd. His heifer had a nice bull calf. Hay should be cut this coming week, there are chicken huts to be built, and I'll be moving the cows into the interior pasture to begin their rotational grazing, so this week should be as busy as the last.

Another Calf

We were so busy yesterday that we didn't check the cows most of the day. Sharon called up to the house in the evening to say that there was a new calf from #50 which was one of our newer heifers. She must have had the calf sometime during the day because the calf was dry. The new calf is a bull calf. I tried to band and tag the calf last night but the calf was up and running before I could get to him. I'll try to catch him sometime today when he's sleeping.

Vegetables

The tomatoes have started going into the beds. Looks like we have a few more Roma tomatoes that I expected to survive. I think we must have about 120 Roma's. I tried putting all of the tomatoes that require cages at the farthest southwest to try to protect them from the wind. We used a torch to put the holes in the plastic mulch that the plants will go into and George burned a hole in the drip tape. When we turned the water on we had a large leak. Luckily I have a few splices that I could make a repair with. Over the next couple of days we should have all of the vegetables that will go into the beds planted, then it will be on to another planting of sweet corn and beans.

Biodegradable Plastic Mulch

We put plastic mulch on our vegetable beds today. The plastic mulch we used is made of corn and is biodegradable. When we say mulch most people think of ground up plastic or something like pine mulch, however what we mean is that we put down a strip of plastic. It is like a giant roll of cellophane that is black and four feet wide. This black plastic is used to keep weeds from growing around the plants while they are small so that we don't have to use herbicides. The plastic also encourages the plants to grow because of the heat that is trapped under the plastic. We ran drip tape underneath the mulch to water the plants. The drip tape is attached to the same water line that waters our cattle and chickens out in the pasture. The drip tape has holes every 8" that let water out. Since the tape is under the plastic it has very little evaporation and uses very little water. We'll use the drip line only when the plants get very dry.

First Calf of 2009

Our first calf of 2009 arrived! We had my mother visiting from South Carolina, and my brother Tim's family from the northern part of Dickinson County down for a cookout. My brother and I decided to check on the cows after we ate and it was perfect timing. We counted the cows and were missing one. Tim spotted the heifer (now a cow) in one of the pasture valleys and sure enough, it had just dropped a calf. I called up to the house and everyone came down to see the new calf and bring the ear tags, the bander and other supplies. We ended up ear tagging but didn't need the bander - it was a heifer. So the first calf arrived unassisted. We checked on them this morning. We sat and enjoyed watching the calf and the cow. The calf is still on wobbly legs and the cow and calf hadn't moved much from last night. The calf kept wanting to go into high grass which at this point is outside of the electric fence. It was an early lesson on electric fences for the calf. We'll keep an eye on this new heifer, now know as 389 by her ear tag, to make sure she doesn't find her way outside of the fence. We have a lot of coyotes here and wouldn't want her getting on the other side of the fence where the cow couldn't defend her.

Separate the Boys from the Girls

We separated the cows (a female that has had a calf) and heifers (a female that hasn't had a calf) from the bull (a male that is "still in tact") and the steers (a male that has been fixed). We treated them all for mites and worms in the process. We lured them into a temporary corral with alfalfa and then had to lure, push, pull and manhandle them through and into the chute. It was a family effort. Lots of hard work but good to have it out of the way before the females start calving. You can't be shy about grabbing a cow by the tail and moving them where you want them to go, but its a balance between staying out of the way of a 1500lb animal and getting them to move to someplace that they would rather not go. Glad its done for the year.

Yes Its Raining Again

We got a few days of sun, but it's raining again. We pushed pretty hard to get our beds in and prepared. The alfalfa that we cut out of our field to make room for the beds was rained on so we went ahead and baled it into small squares without it really being dry. The average bale moisture is 45%. It should be under 19% but we needed to get it up and out of the field so I'm using it to entice the cows to go into the corral. They love the wet green alfalfa and they charge into the corral to get it. Each bale weighs around 100lbs or more so we were happy to get out of the field with working backs. George my 14 yr old ran the tractor while my brother and I dragged the bales off of the baler and onto the rack (wagon).

Progress

Even though the weather has been very wet and seems to keep holding us back from "our" schedule, things are looking good. The oats and alfalfa are looking pretty good and I checked the asparagus this morning and found a few sprigs sticking up here and there and the sun is out. I have been checking one of our heifers several times a day because she is getting close. Her udder is filling out and other changes are showing that the time is near. I'm not too good at determining how close so it could be a couple of weeks away, but we should have a new one soon.

Make Hay

You've heard it said that you need to make hay while the sun is shining? Well making hay takes longer than 1 day, and weathermen are only able to tell you what the weather is at that moment even though they claim otherwise. I cut hay on Saturday to clear the ground where the produce beds will be so that we can prep the beds. The weather forecast called for dry sunny weather for 5 days. Once I cut the hay the weather forecast was changed to sprinkles the next day. The next day, which is today, we had rain for about 3 hours. Letting hay get rained on is a big problem. Yield loss increases significantly when alfalfa gets rained on after it's cut. We'll see what the next few days holds for weather. Have to hope for dry windy weather to speed up the drying and get the hay up and out of the field.

Frost Warning!

We missed all of the rain that was called for over the past 3 days or so which is a huge relief since I feel like we are behind on getting our produce in the ground, but I checked the weather this morning and they have issued a frost warning! The weather services is also issuing a warning that temps could drop to the UPPER 20's! Now I'm thankful that I didn't get my vegetables in the ground earlier after all.

Sweet Corn

Finally got the sweet corn in. We are shooting for 3 separate plantings 2 weeks apart to allow us to have a longer period of sweet corn maturing. We had purchased 5 bags of sweet corn that were 2lbs or 4 lbs. This made for some serious math to figure out how much field to disk up and how much corn to use for the first planting. You would have thought we were trying to calculate how to orbit the moon. The math went something like this: our corn planter drops about 15 kernels of corn every 10 feet. We have a four row planter and need to plant 8 rows to allow for pollination. Then there was the calculation to determine how many kernels are in a 2 or 4 lb bag. Luckly Sharon loves to do that kind of math. Once we had the math done and determined how many feet needed to be worked we had to measure a standard pace length to allow us to measure the ground to be disked. In the end it looks like the calculations were correct because we had very little corn left in the hoppers when we had made our 2 passes. We got the corn in just before it started to rain! Again!

Cattle

We hooked up the water lines out to the pasture this afternoon for Mother's Day. Things went very well this year when starting the water. Some years it takes hours to fix all of the leaky fittings and couplers. This year we only had a couple of minor drips and the next thing you knew we were laying on our backs looking up at the puffy white cumulus clouds and relaxing in the sun. That is how we wish every job went! We will start calving soon. Our heifer #50 is starting to show signs of getting close. It shouldn't be long until we see calves on the ground.

Rain, Rain

Will the rain ever stop? When it's really dry in July and August I'll be complaining that we need more rain, but today I can only see the sweetcorn patch that isn't, and the hay seed that's still in the sack. When we were planting the asparagus this weekend I used our corn planter to mark the rows where the furrow's would be dug, and during that process a sprocket broke off the planter. Since the corn planter is a pre-1953 John Deere 494 planter the sprocket is obsolete and no longer available, from what I can tell, anywhere but on someone's planter somewhere. So I found another one from a friend who I got the first one from. This one is a 494-A, which is newer but still from the 50's. After a long day of logistics to get the planter home it's finally in the hoop shed on our place. Anyway the rain gives me a chance to get the planter cleaned out and setup and the pasture and alfalfa fields are getting all of the water they need to get a good jump on the year.

Asparagus

Our day of rest ended up being a long day of asparagus planting. We planted about 5000 asparagus plants. We used an old cultivator setup with new sweeps to make the furrows. We started a little before 8 this morning and finished up at 4 this afternoon. The furrows needed to be cleared on each row which made for some tiring work but it's good to have it in. The cousins from northern Dickinson county pitched in to get the asparagus planted. Now only time will tell if we get a crop. If everything comes up we'll be able to take the first harvest in about 3 years.