We're continuing to go from farm project to farm project at a high rate, but often unplanned schedule.  Sharon has been working what seems like non-stop with the chickens.  It's just a matter of weeks/days until the first batch of broilers will be processed.  It is amazing how fast these chickens grow.  They have moved from the top of the pasture to the bottom and are turning the corner (no pun intended) which is a pretty good distance to cover.  Sharon has combined two sizes of pullets into one pen and they're allowed to roam the pasture.  One of the pullets had decided it was a wild bird and had move to the other side of the pasture.  It didn't go in at night and just roamed and hid at night.  It wouldn't have been long until one of our many nightly predators would have found her and made her their chicken dinner, so the boys caught her and took her back to the rest of the flock.  The chickens take an amazing amount of management.  I'm not sure how Sharon keeps everything strait.

Looks like we'll finally have a dry week.  Too bad there's no hay to cut on the farm, but if I have time I'll cut hay over at my brother's place while he's out of town.  We had a calf either Saturday night or Sunday morning.  Another bull calf.  I ear tagged it this morning but wasn't able to get the band on him.  It snapped when I tried to open the band and by that the time I got another band out of my pocket he was struggling and his mama was trying to get through the single strand of high tensile between us and her.  After a couple seconds of struggling, and with Dan having high-tailed it to the truck for safety, I decided to let the calf go to mama before I found out how protective that cow could be.  I'll try again later in the day.

Friendly Type?

You never realize how much wear your equipment gets until you have something go wrong on it.  Tractor, baler, truck, even fencing.  If it is constant use, its going to break down especially doing heavy-duty work on a farm.  Yesterday evening it was a tire on the flatbed trailer.  We were going down to pickup feed for the many chickens that Sharon has going on the farm and BANG! a tire on the trailer blows.  It threw the tread before I could get it pulled off on a side road.  Sharon convinced me to leave the trailer at a farm place rather than parked in a field entrance along the highway.  She said "you would be happy to help someone who had a problem, so why not ask these people if you can leave the trailer at their place instead of off the side of the highway, they will be happy to help."  Okay, so I do it, only the place wasn't your standard farm place.  They kind of had a little business setup selling hearing aids.  Anyway we left a note in the door, dropped the trailer and left.  Then we remembered that we forgot to get the address where we left it so we went back.  When we turned onto the road where we had left the trailer we saw a car go into the farm place.  Great, we can go talk to them and let them know.  Turns out it was the granddaughter of the people who lived there, and she wasn't too pleased about me leaving the trailer.  When I introduced myself and started telling her about blowing the tire, she already had a finger to her lips and was shaking her head no...  An inquisition regarding how long I would have it there etc. ensued.  Luckily her boyfriend or husband came over and said, "well, $h*# happens" and kind of settled the matter.  So I left the trailer and have to go back this morning when the tire shops are open in the area and get back on the road.  Not sure what to expect when I go back for the trailer.

Grass Hay

We cut our grass hay.  I wish you could smell it.  It is beautiful stuff and smells just as good.  Sharon's parents were here for the weekend so her father got the opportunity to drive the tractor while George and I stacked bales on the rack.  Getting the baler setup for the first time of the year always means some strange bales.  We have several that are about 12"x12" and a couple that are about 5' long.  I assume that they'll end up going with the kids to the fair. 
We had a father and son from Illinois come by for hay today.  They are on a great father son trip to different parks like Custer National Park to see the parks by mule, and they brought their own mules!  How cool is that?  They were on their way to a park down by Ft. Dodge in IA.  That sounds like an awesome trip.

Couldn't Finish Cutting Alfalfa

I couldn't finish cutting the alfalfa yesterday evening.  The number of new of the year animals in there was just too much for me.  There were countless red-wing blackbird chicks, flocks of pheasant chicks, and even a fawn.  So I left an acre or two standing that I'll cut with the second cutting.  It's amazing the amount of wildlife that will take advantage of early standing cover.

First Cutting New Alfalfa

The sun was finally shining this afternoon, so I ran out and started cutting the 50ac alfalfa field.  The alfalfa is up to the pockets on my jeans and super thick.  Its going to make some serious hay if the weather holds.  The number of pheasant chicks in the field was pretty amazing.  I had to keep stopping to let the chicks run ahead of the tractor.  Most were the size of quail and could fly like quail, but there were some that were as small as week old chickens and they couldn't fly at all.  I never like the first cutting of hay because of all of the babies in the fields, but the hay needs to be cut so I figure that if I pay attention I can miss most of them.

Everyday it's something new.  Today when I was moving the cows I saw a pink flower in the pasture that looked like the phlox that Sharon has had in her garden.  It didn't do well in her garden but that was the starting point for determining what the plant is.  It turns out that the plant is indeed a prairie phlox which is a native of Iowa prairies.  I just love the diversity that I get to see.  The goats beard has gone to seed in the last few days also, which is a big giant puff ball of seeds, similar to the dandelion.  Since they are both in the same family I guess they are similar, except that the goats beard is about 10 times the size of a dandelion when it goes to seed. 

Pheasant

We saw our first flock of pheasant chicks today.  I was cutting along the edge of the lane and saw a few chicks jump.  They were about the size of quail.  I called to George via tractor sound code and he came down the lane to see what I needed.  We then walked into the grass and WHOOSH they all jumped!  I counted at least 10 not including the hen.  Our family gets such a rush seeing the wildlife on the farm.

Rain

I know, farmers complain when it rains and then they complain when it's dry, but that's just because there are so many things that need to happen at one time any extreme causes a problem in our "schedule".  Right now the rain is killing me.  I've got 50 acres of alfalfa that's bursting into bloom.  Even if it is a beautiful sea of purple and white, it's not quite what I had hoped for when I decided to let it grow a little longer a couple of weeks back.  The honey bees that are on the farm I'm sure are making a bumper crop of honey, but as the bloom goes on, the protein in the hay goes down.  I'm determined to cut the hay this week, maybe even tomorrow.  The beans have started coming up thanks to the rain and since I have to go the the USDA/FSA office on Monday to report the number of bean acres, I used the "down time" to GPS the acres.  Seems like it should be more but it looks like I only have 36.5 acres of beans. 

Early Vegetables

We were out putting in our last seeds yesterday and I noticed that we have 3" squash on the yellow squash plants.   The squash were started inside around the same time as the tomatoes so they had a great head start and if all goes well, we'll remember to start them early the next time too.

Bull - Down the Road

George and I loaded the bull Sunday evening.  He went into the trailer like he was ready to go for a ride!  When we dropped him off at the sale barn he unloaded just as easily as he loaded.  To bad he wasn't as good in the pasture as he was going into and coming out of the trailer.  He'll be sold today at the sale barn at noon.

Bobwhite

We've been building a couple of predator proof pens for the broiler chickens for the past few days.  Everything has gone well with the building and we've gotten much quicker at building them.  While we were moving cows today we thought we heard a bobwhite quail.  Bobwhite quail are not really a bird found this far northwest in IA.  I didn't think much about it until we were building pens in the late morning and the bobwhite started calling from right outside of the hoop building where we were making the pens.  I had the kids run to the house and get the video camera and the still camera so that we could capture the evidence that we have a bobwhite on the farm.  We never got the quail to fly so no physical proof, but we know that we heard it calling.  Honest!

Conservation - beneficials

We monitor the health of our farm by observing "beneficials."  Beneficials are animals, plants and insects that show that we are moving in a direction toward a healthy native environment.  So it was very exciting to see this morning, while I was moving the cows into their next grazing area, a hen mallard fly out of the grass.  I searched around a little and found her nest buried in the tall cool season grasses.  She has 5 eggs in her nest.  The thing that's so great about the mallard nest is that it shows that we're giving wildlife areas to nest and thrive while still utilizing the grasses for our cow/calf pairs.  The area that the mallard is nesting in was a very rough and heavily grazed area when we first bought the farm.  By maintaining good grazing patterns around this area we've been able to allow the area to fill in with grasses and still grow big bluestem and other forbs later in the year.  We'll avoid her nest and graze around her, leaving a large amount of cover for her to hide in.   Other "beneficials" that we've seen over the past couple of years are that we've increased the number of meadow larks and other prairie bird types, and we've seen sora rail on the wetlands for the past couple of springs.

Kiwanis

Sharon and I gave a presentation to the Kiwanis of Milford, IA this morning.  We really enjoyed it.  We enjoy giving tours on the farm, so we used video and pictures to give a virtual tour.  You never know if the audience was into what you are presenting but I think it went pretty well.