Its been wet weather this week and have even had a few snow showers and snow flurries today, so since no field work can be done we moved the chickens into their winter home in the barn. They will be living in their deep and I do mean deep bedding. Sharon had a truck deliver the wood shaving bedding last week and it is feet deep throughout the barn. When we moved the chickens into the barn we pulled the chicken mobile down to the barn and "guided" them in. It didn't take too long and we noticed that there were some chickens out. We thought maybe they were getting out of their outside areas that are a combination of woven-wire, cattle panel, and chicken wire, but as we were eating lunch I noticed some chickens up on the inside walls. Closer inspection revealed that they were jumping from their perches to the walls, then walking around on the walls and flying down. So we scrounged around the farm and found more chicken wire and some lattice and strategically mounted the wire and lattice so that they can't easily make it from purchase to the tops of the walls. I have to admit that we tried cutting the wing feathers on one of the chickens. We noticed 2 things. 1. You can't tell that you have clipped the wings when looking at the chicken so it would be nearly impossible to catch and clip all of the chickens without some serious sorting. 2. A clipped chicken can't flight at all and most egg laying chickens can fly really well. Once clipped they can't even make a 12" flight up. So after the first chicken we didn't do any others and instead added the wire and lattice. I guess we learned a little something anyway...

Beef Delivery

The locker called and said the beef was done on Friday so today is delivery day. We'll be leaving shortly to go pickup the beef. It's supposed to rain today, and for the next few days, so we want to take Sharon's mini-van to pickup the beef. I had to look online at the cargo capacity to make sure that the van can carry that kind of weight. It will be tight, but we'll be just under.

Yesterday was spent running a grain cart for a neighbor. The objective of running a grain cart is to catch the combine as it's making a pass to allow it to dump its corn into the cart while the combine is still moving and combining. The alternative is to stop the combine at each end of the field to dump and this takes time. Since every little bit that spills is money, and the augers that move the corn from combine to cart and cart to truck or wagon move such a large volume of grain so quickly, it's a little nerve racking making sure that no mistakes are made which would put a pile of corn on the ground real quick. But it has been enjoyable and, knock on wood, we've had no major mistakes yet. Today is the last day and the neighbor's corn should be in the bin. Tomorrow it's back to working on the barn to get the chickens moved in.

Field Work

I've been working for a neighbor for the past couple of days. I've been disking some of his fields. I've been using his tractor and disk. Pretty nice running a tractor made in the past decade. My tractor was made the same year I was born, so the technology changes are pretty dramatic not to mention the comfort. It is a lot different to be able to listen to a radio or talk on the cell phone without having to shut the tractor down or wear sound suppressors and an iPod to listen to music. Everything has been running pretty good. Today a wheel on one of the disk wings had a bearing come apart. I took the tractor back over the neighbors shop and popped the bearings and races out. If its put back together tonight I'll disk some more tomorrow.

A neighbor is letting me bale corn stalks about 4 miles up the road. This will be a huge help in keeping feed costs low for the cows this winter. I was able to bale 54 bales and had only 2 bad bales. I'm baling using sisal twine on the corn stalks with my JD round baler which is more tricky than using the net wrap that my baler can also use. The sisal twine wrap can be fed directly to the cows without having to cut the wrap off, and corn is terrible with net wrap IMO. Unlike net wrapping alfalfa, when you cut the wrap on a bale of corn stalk the corn stalk falls apart as soon as you cut it like it is under pressure. It's a total pain to use net wrap on corn stalk if you're the one that has to feed the bale to the cows and cut the wrap. The net wrap bales look great but the time it takes to cut the wrap off and get the wrap out of the bale ring isn't worth it IMO. From a baling operation standpoint, the net wrap is much faster and easier to operate which makes baling much more efficient. On the other hand if I run with too high a ground speed when using twine, the twine arms get fouled with corn stover and the twine wrapping process breaks down which creates a bad bale and downtime. This was an issue with the oat straw. After the oat straw pain caused by too much ground speed and RPS as well as a missing twine guide, I checked the baler book and have taken the suggested settings on the baler to improve the efficiency. I slowed the ground speed slightly and dropped the RPMs. This really helped yesterday when we had a 30mph wind from the south. When I would bale north with a tail wind, high ground speed and high RPM everything was pushed forward in the baler and ended up on the twine arms - hence one of the bad bales. Today I baled about a dozen bales and never missed a beat. I greased and fueled the skidloaders and took my skidloader over to pickup the bales. We got one load of bales on the trailer and it started a rain/mist. On the way out of the field one of the wheels sunk in the ground by one of the new windmills that is on the farm where I'm baling. I had to unload the 3 top bales and hook the truck to the skidloader. George drove while I pulled the truck and trailer with a chain. Once out I reloaded and took the load of bales home. We unloaded the bales and had to call it quits because of rain and darkness. We'll try to get the bales home again tomorrow.

Beeves Finished for 2009

The last two beeves were taken to the locker this week. I waited while the butcher killed and hung the beeves to get the live weights. The beeves looked great and were right at about 1200lbs. We all agreed that 1300 is ideal and 1500 is the max, so we were just shy of the sweet spot on weight. Our goal with the beeves is to have them on grass most of their lives and corn finished at the end to add the flavor and marbling that we Americans have grown to love. The butcher commented that he could see that our beeves were on grass before they were fed out and didn't spend most of their lives in a feed lot. That makes us feel great that we are meeting our goal and it's visible to someone who is an expert in beef. We continue to push toward the goals we set for our beef by selecting a bull and cows that are statistically more prone (EPD) to produce beeves that are a higher grade of beef for our customers.

Getting to Know Our Beef - Lunch

We had a really fun lunch today. We cooked steaks for lunch and used the opportunity to get better acquainted with our beef. We cooked several T-bone steaks and a sirloin steak. Each steak was cooked to different doneness. We cooked the T-bones from well to medium rare and the sirloin we cooked to medium. Each family member took a cut of each steak and judged it on tenderness, juiciness, and flavor. It wasn't scientific, and not everyone participated in the same process, but I think we were able to come to a consensus. We all agreed that medium rare was the most tender, juicy, and most flavorful. Some (the girls) couldn't look at that much "red meat" on the medium rare steak, but everyone liked it once they got it past their eyes. The toughest we all agreed was the well steak which was expected since the medium rare was picked as best. The sirloin which was cooked medium was picked in a tie with the medium rare T-bone. I had a medium rare sirloin the other night and it was even better than the medium rare T-bone, so I think that if it had been medium rare, it would have been the winner. Since we really felt that there was a significant difference between well and medium rare, we'll be posting tips on getting steaks to your desired doneness on our resources page. Hopefully you'll find a tip to help you make your next steak as tender as possible.

Crop Harvest and Pheasant Season

I spent the week pheasant hunting in our area of Iowa. As is the tradition here at Mulberry Grove Family Farm, friends and family come to Dickinson County to pheasant hunt the week of the opener. It was the most lean year for the opening week ever. Some of it was because of the hard winter, but most of it is that the crops in the area are still in. In a normal year many farmers are completing their field work (disking or other work that is done after the harvest) by the first week of November. This year the fields are still filled with crops and combines were only running when the dew was off the plant and or when the grain dryers were empty. I'd say that in the southern part of the county where I am the crops are about 60% out, but up in the northern part of the county 85% or more of the crops are still in. Some of those that are accepting corn such as the ethanol plant have increased the moisture content they are willing to accept so that they can keep up with their need for corn, while the elevator is saying that they are heavily docking farmers who are bringing wet product, to encourage them to dry it at home. I think we'll see an extremely slow harvest this year still yet to come. Then it will be who will get caught with crops in the field at the first snow.