High Tunnel Progress - Rafters and Purlins

We've been flying on the high tunnel.  Since this winter has been so mild, once the kids got their Christmas break we jumped on putting up the high tunnel frame.  We had the ground posts setup going into the fall, so we didn't have to deal with sinking posts and instead concentrated on building the rafters and placing them into the ground posts.  We were able to putting up two out of the four purlins.  I had a fire call which took me away from the project for several hours and when I came back the kids had nearly completed the pair of purlins.  They had figured out a process that worked for them that was actually faster than what we were doing when I was working with them.  Guess dad doesn't always know the best way to do everything.  Speaking of making changes, I spoke with one of the other growers in the county who said that there is a fifth purlin that goes along the top of the frame to combat snow load, so I'll contact the manufacturer and try to order that.  I also spoke to my neighbor to the south who's made some modifications to his high tunnel based on hard lessons learned, which I'll try to copy also.  The only problem that I can see right now is that we have a set of posts that have heaved and moved about 3 or 4 inches away from the other posts.  They are tied together by a single board and are out quit a bit beyond spec.  I'll try to strap them together to a set of other posts to see if I can pull them back in, but if worse comes to worse, I assume I'll have to dig the posts out and pull them over and this time connect the base boards together with the other posts.  We're not planning on putting the plastic on until spring, so we have time...

Winter and Change

Winter
We knew that cold and snow were coming and it came on like hitting a switch.  We finished up all of the projects that we needed to get done before the cold hit except one.  The high tunnel is still taking last priority to everything else, which is okay since the other projects needed to get completed or else we would have issues with winter temperatures and snow causing damage.  As long as the snow doesn't get too deep, we can work on the high tunnel in everything except high wind.
Change
We're in the process of reviewing the 2011 year and one of the items that I haven't discussed with many people is the change in the Little Sioux Growers Co-op (LSGC).  Mulberry Grove Family Farm has been a co-op member for a couple of seasons and the Co-op has been running for about two years with the first year pretty much as start-up process.  LSGC has been great for us in that it allows us to provide The person who led this group and did the leg work including marketing, sales, consolidation and distribution has gone to work for another farm that will be direct selling produce to local and regional customers similar to the LSGC.  With this person leaving, we are left with quite a gap within our organization as well as gaps in our external relationships.  While this is going to be a struggle, this also gives LSGC members the opportunity to assess our past and plan for the future. 

Week Off for Pheasant

2011 Pheasant Opener Mulberry Grove Family Farm

I took a week off last week for the Iowa pheasant season opener.  It was a good time to see old friends that live in different states around the country and meet some new ones.  This year's Iowa pheasant crop was expected to be very low and it was.  The pheasants were concentrated in a very specific area in the county and a very concentrated band across the state going from NW Iowa down through central IA in a very narrow band.  Pheasant are an indicator species.  While they're not native to Iowa, they, along with animals like the jackrabbit, are an indicator of not only weather, but also farming practices.  As Iowa has moved to larger tracts of monoculture cropping in much of the state, where fence lines and farmsteads are removed, the animal population that relies on cover for winter survival declines.  We have also had several consecutive years of heavy snowfall and spring rain which is not conducive to newborn survival, especially ground birds like pheasant, quail, turkeys etc.  The combination of bad weather and lack of cover combined into a one-two punch to knock pheasant and jackrabbit populations out across the state.  We're lucky in NW Iowa to have a lot of cover thanks to federal and state wildfowl production areas around the lakes and other watersheds which helps our area to maintain wild animal populations even when the weather is bad.  I'm also personally lucky that my neighbors have committed to many CRP acres as well as maintaining farming practices that utilize terraces and grass waterways which create field borders where animals can take refuge and prosper.  With our current farming practices at Mulberry Grove Family Farm, we have lots of cover from our rotational grazing, field edges through our many crops, as well as enough weed seeds (sorry neighbors) and and waste grain seeds to maintain a very good population throughout the winter.  We have a very nice pheasant population this year - much better than I thought we would.  So when you see pheasant on the roadside late this winter picking up grit from the snow covered roads, look around and chances are that the cover they live in is very close by.  And chances are, there's a farmer that should be given the credit for leaving a little bit for conservation.

Harvest

It's harvest time.  Of course this year I didn't have any corn or beans so I've been doing harvesting throughout the year.  But now I'm working for other farmers who are harvesting.  Right now I'm doing field work like disking.  While it isn't technically harvesting, it's part of the process of fall farming where fields are prepared for next year.  The other notable thing about disking is that unlike harvesting corn or beans which is usually done with several people and pieces of equipment, disking is a one man job.  Just you, the tractor and disk, and the field.  Plenty of time to think and ponder. 

Haybine 499

This summer I purchased a new to me cutter/conditioner.  A cutter/conditioner is a hay mower that has large conditioning rollers in it.  The rollers are designed to "condition" - crack - the stems of hay that have thick waxy coating on its stems like alfalfa.  If alfalfa isn't conditioned, it can take up to a week to dry depending on the humidity, temperature, and the sunlight available.  In this part of Iowa, a week without rain isn't very likely during haying season which is why I move to the cutter/conditioner.  However, the machine's rollers were not doing the job that I needed them to do so I decided to remove them and have them replaced with more aggressive rollers.  The trick was figuring out how to remove the rollers.  After finally getting in touch with someone who had done it before, I was able to remove the rollers, but not without the assistance of my friend Harvey and his cutting torch.  It was much harder than expected and the mower is sitting in my brother's shop taking up most of the room in there.  Hopefully the rollers come back soon and I can attempt to put the new ones in place.  If installation is anything like removal, it will be quite a chore. 

Chicken Day - Last Day 2011

Today is the last day of chicken processing for 2011.  It takes a whole lot of hard work, detailed management, and very detailed record keeping and coordination to raise a very high quality pasture raised chicken.  Since Sharon has the gifts to do all that is required to be successful at raising very high quality pasture raised chickens, we are able to be successful at it.  However, if Sharon weren't here, the chicken business would grind to a quick halt.  I'm not sure if I've ever described what goes into producing a pasture raised chicken, so I'll try to do a quick list of what the process is.

We open the webpage for chicken orders in early spring/late winter.  This is my small contribution and can be done from the comfort of the house.
Sharon sends out emails to let our customers know that we are open for chicken orders.
Once the orders are placed by customers, Sharon starts placing orders for chicks and schedules the chick delivery to coordinate both the spring weather and a processing date that she has scheduled.
The first batch of chicks is delivered in early spring while it's still cold, but late enough that when the chicks are feathered out they can go right out onto the pasture.
The management of the chicks is a 24 hour process.  Sharon has to maintain the brooder temperature, water and feed needs, and maintain the chicks safety for several weeks, changing the temperature toward normal ambient temperature until the chicks can do without any brooder heat.
Once the chicks are able to live without brooder heat, the chicks are moved to the pasture pens.  These pens will be the chickens homes until they are processed.
The pens are open during the day to allow the chickens to run the pasture at to do the things that chickens do.  At night the pens are closed to protect the chickens from predators.
When the chickens are in the pasture, the pens are moved everyday to clean grass.  In this way the chickens and their living area are kept clean, the manure is spread evenly across the pasture, and the birds get clean grass and new bugs continually.  But what this means is that Sharon has to move each pen by hand everyday, sometimes multiple times a day.
Sharon also has to keep the birds watered, fed, and has to keep grit available as the pens travel across the pasture.  She also has to open the pens first thing in the morning and close each pen at sunset everyday.
While the first set of chickens is living in the pasture, the process starts again with the second batch of chicks, which are delivered at a date that ensures that they will be ready to move into the pens, just after the first batch has been processed on a date that Sharon has established before the first batch was ordered.
Finally on the evening before the chickens are processed, they are gathered.  Think of the movie "Rocky" where Rocky has to catch the running chicken to increase his foot speed and you get the idea of gathering real pasture raised chickens.  Okay so there are a couple of tricks that we use so that we don't have to run the chickens wild like in Rocky, but quick reflexes, a strong back and a predator's instinct are advantages.
Each of these processes is done for each of the three batches starting in the spring and ending in the fall, with each batch finishing on "Chicken Day" which is chicken processing day. 
That brings us to today.  Last "Chicken Day" of 2011.  We gathered the birds last evening and had them gathered up by around 8:30PM.  I was up at 5AM to start the scalder.  This morning we'll do all of our other chores, eat breakfast, and then start processing chickens around 8AM with the goal to process about 24 chickens an hour.

Hard decision had to be made.  The alfalfa that I planted a few years ago is not performing up to expectation.  My theory on why is that the oats that were planted as a nurse crop with the alfalfa was too heavy, and this stunted the alfalfa.  Even letting the alfalfa go the first year, and not taking a cutting from it, it just never yielded the way it should have.  The second year was great, but after that the yield dropped like a rock.  So about 2/3 of the alfalfa will be taken out and planted to corn to give the field time to let the chemicals that the alfalfa puts into the soil to keep other alfalfa from growing, dissipate.  I'm working with a neighbor to have him do the custom work for me, but wouldn't you know, the temp is supposed to drop to 29 degrees tonight, so trying to kill the alfalfa once it goes dormant might be a problem.  I've had that in the past and don't want to deal with it again.  Weather will rule and we'll just have to wait to see how we'll proceed.

Who Who - Who Knew

Who knew that an owl would go into the egg-mobile to dine on one of the egg laying hens.  Sharon went down to lock up the hens out in the pasture and saw that chickens were still out in the pasture after dark.  She knew something was up and hurried up to catch a glimpse of the owl flying down over the hill.  She also found one of the hens without its head.  Now we know that owls will go into small openings and walk into areas that they see an easy meal.

Southern Western Drought Felt In NW Iowa

The drought in the Southwest US has reached Iowa.  Not the drought exactly, but the effects of the drought.  I've started receiving phone calls for hay from Texas and Arkansas for hay prices.  The farmers in those areas are reaching far and wide to try to pull in enough hay to keep what livestock and horses they have to feed.  Cattle prices are very high right now so I assume that the farmers are hoping to maximize their profit on their cattle.  It's hard to imagine the difficulty and hardship that a drought like this has on a farm that is very dependent on hay.  And imagine the horse owner who has to decide if they will pay $15 per bale of hay.  I think that my daughter would choose the $15 for her horses too...

Chicken Day - Batch 2 - 2011

Another chicken day is here.  I'm up early to get the scalding water started.  Scalding has been our most challenging process and generally causes us to wait until the water comes up to temp before we can start.  This morning I started the water at 5AM.  If this isn't early enough I think my only option is to load the scalder with hot tap water in the morning.  Since I'd rather not have a garden hose connected to a sink I hope 5AM is early enough.

Zucchini Pest

I went out to the zucchini yesterday and found that there were several plants that were cut in half.  The damage almost looked like vine borer, but there was no sign of the borer or the tunnels through the plants.  Some have suggested that cut worm is a problem, but usually we've seen that on the young plants but not the old.  The plants are otherwise very healthy and vigorous looking. I'm stumped. It's always something.  Just as production is hitting its stride and zucchini is going to the farmers co-op a couple times a week, bang! I get a crop issue.  Anybody know what this might be?

Haying Decisions - Weather

One of the hardest parts of growing hay is making the decision about when to cut the hay.  There are a few things that I look at when making the decision.  The first is when the alfalfa is ready to cut.  Generally I try to cut my hay just as the hay is transitioning from bud to bloom.  I start looking, and feeling, the alfalfa to try to determine when it getting buds set.  By just looking at the alfalfa plant it is sometimes difficult to determine if the tips have buds or leaf clusters on them.  But if I pinch the tip of the alfalfa plant between my fingers I can feel the bud on the tips.  Once the plant has buds it will generally open the buds to flower in just a few days.  So once I know that we are at bud stage I look at the weather.  I try to make sure that I have 5 good days of weather.  I use several weather services looking at the 10 day, 7 day, and even the 30 day.  I combine the forecasts to help make the decision.  Then I decide whether I should cut everything that is ready or only take part of it.  If I take part of it I'm hedging my decision in hopes that if the weather isn't that great, I don't take a hit on the quality across the board.  Of course the longer you wait to harvest the hay past bud stage, the hay quality goes down also, so it is kind of a sliding scale.  At some point it needs to go no matter, but one thing is for sure.  Hay that is well into bloom and past its prime but is baled when it is green and without rain on it sells better than hay that was cut in its prime but got discolored from rain, so really the weather decision is everything.

Rain

Good grief the rain has been ridiculous.  We have had so much rain that it looks like we just went through snow melt.  Unbelievable!  The fields look okay on our place other than a couple of wet spots that have been there since spring, but the Little Sioux River right down the road is out of its banks and is taking the path of least resistance overland.  Some of the farms had spots that were replanted once the rains ended in late spring, but now they're flooded again and this time it'll be too late to replant.  Not good.

LubeMinder by Suburan Mfr.

Great customer service.  I really hope that we provide our customers with great customer service because when I run across a company that provides it I know I really appreciate it.  The latest example is a company called Suburban Manufacturing.  They make a product called LubeMinder.  It's in my John Deere 567 large round hay baler.  It's a great product that automatically oils the chains that run the baler.  If you have ever popped open the doors on a round baler you would see several chains on each side that run gears that turn parts of the baler.  These chains need to be lubed before every use and even every so often during use.  What the LubeMinder does is put oil on the chains automatically every time the baler opens to kick out a bale.  The oil is routed to each of the chains via small plastic tubes.  Unfortunately during my winter maintenance I routed a chain over a tube and the chain cut the tube in half.  When I called Suburban Mfr. they said that rather than replacing the tube, they have a repair piece that can be used.  Great!  They asked for my address etc and said they'd send it right away.  I asked if they needed credit card info or something and they said no.  Just remember us when you buy another piece of equipment.  Wow!  That is great customer service and you bet I'll tell others about their great customer service and their great product.

Zucchini

We harvested our first zucchinis yesterday.  We were waiting to see what the growers co-op wanted before we took the first harvest, so we ended up tossing quite a few baseball bat size zuccs.   Even tossing quite a bit in terms of weight, we were just under the amount requested by the co-op.  Now that we've taken our first harvest we'll setup a harvest schedule which should give us more consistent sizes and a more consistent production over all.  The only factor is the weather, and the main factor right now is rain.  We've gotten more today and the fields have quite a bit of standing water in them.  Only time will tell how long the water will stand in the fields so there is no need to fret about it right now.  

Record Low Hay Harvest Projected for IA and MN

The USDA is projecting a record low hay harvest for Iowa, Minnesota and many other states for 2011.  Between the ground taken out to plant corn and beans, and the ground flooded by heavy rains this spring, Iowa is expecting very high hay prices due to a lack of supply.  For those of you who buy hay for your horses or livestock I hope that you have purchased your hay for the year because from here on out it sounds like the hay market is set to heat up.  Of course I'm behind the curve on this information as well since my first cutting of hay is almost all out of the field and was sold before it was baled so I'm pretty sure it was priced below the market.  I have about 54 acres of oat hay I hope to have baled today and I'll move the hay into hoop building to store.  It is tentatively sold already but it got rained on so I'll need to see if they still want it or if it will be held for winter sale. 

Everybody Likes Chicken

A couple of nights ago we had a couple of bats in the house.  Not sure how they get in, but we get a couple of them in the house every year.  They aren't a big deal.  The bats always end up in our bedroom and I catch them in a trout fishing net and release the bats outside.  I only mention this because Sharon happened to be awake from the bat catching activity (did I mention that Sharon has an extreme fear of bats?) and she thought she heard her new chicks in distress in the barn.  So she went outside at about 3:30AM and checked on the chicks.  Not finding anything she went back to bed.  Again the sound of distress a little later and again the same thing.  Yesterday when she went to do her morning chores she noticed that she had gone from 230 chicks to something very, very short of that number.  She came in for breakfast and said I think I've lost all but about 50 chicks!  So last night the chicks were placed into a cattle water tank for the night to keep them safe.  During the process of transferring them to the tank the count was 87 chicks.  143 chicks were taken in just a couple of nights.  From the research that we've done and from others it sounds like rats.  Rats love to eat chicks. We've had rats before.  When the kids were little they spilled a lot of feed on the floors when they were doing chores, and that created a rat problem, but we saw the rats then.  If rats are taking the chicks we haven't seen any, or any evidence of them.  Sharon just ordered more replacement chicks.  Luckily they were available.  This late in the year it isn't always easy to get chicks.  Hopefully we can solve this mystery.

Owls

We have a pair of great horned owl "chicks" growing up on our farm.  The first time I noticed them was when I was cutting hay.  As I came down past the house grove I saw an owl walking along the edge of the field.  Since I can't recall ever seeing this I stopped the tractor to get a better look at it and noticed that it had the telltale horns of a great horned owl, but the color was much lighter than a normal owl.  The next time I saw the owl was again during haying and I saw that it was actually a pair.  The pair came, first one, then the other, and crash landed into the hay field.  They came out of the grove swooping up and down pivoting on their wings and ditching like a hang-glider landing on their bellies and tilting over onto their heads with feet up in the air and wings wide open.  When they pulled themselves back up right they just sat in the field and watched me go around in the tractor.  I called up to the house and everyone came down to take a look at them.  They stayed put in the field even with everyone standing just feet away.  A couple of days ago we even had one get caught in the portable netting that Sara uses to pen her goats in with.  We attempted to free the owl from the netting but the fearsome talons and the popping of its beak kept us from getting too close.  It didn't take long though and the owl was out of the netting and flying.  Who would have thought that such amazing flying predators would be so clumsy when they are young.

Sharon just left to pickup the last batch of broiler chicks from the post office.  The chickens have been pretty much sold-out since shortly after the first batch was processed.  We're all very busy.  The hay has been going everyday but in fits and starts.  The ground moisture is still very high which keeps the bottom of the hay windrows high in moisture, and the top of the windrows are dry.  It has been a little difficult keeping the hay moisture right where we want it so I bale for a few hours and then have to stop once the humidity jumps in the evening or drops during the day.  Last night I tried to bale but only got about an hour in before the moisture monitor was telling me that the moisture was coming up.  I hope to finish the first cutting of alfalfa today but I still have about 55 acres of oat hay down that will need to get baled as soon as it decides to dry.

Making Hay

With a break in the weather we really jumped on making hay.  Every field has been cut and most have been raked.  We small squared the brome/timothy grass hay that we sell for horse hay yesterday and it looks great.  The best news is that the new square baler worked flawlessly and made some really pretty bales!  It never missed a knot or broke a string and it gobbled up some windrows that were huge without missing a beat.  The small square baler that we sold this spring was a source of much frustration, with the only positive that it had served to strengthen my vocabulary of expletives with my ability to string them together getting better every time we baled with it.  Today we'll small square bale in Spirit Lake, then run out to my brothers to large round bale there.  I expect that my alfalfa will be ready to bale tomorrow.  The hay to watch is the 50 acres of oat hay that I cut yesterday.  I've only tried to make oat hay once and the weather never cooperated so it became oats and straw.  This time we were able to cut it for yesterday and it was cut at boot stage which basically means that the oat head is still inside of the plant.  The plant is filled with moisture so drying this down will be interesting to watch. 

Pasture Raised Eggs

Well, it's official.  Sharon is giving up the pasture raised egg business.  It was a very tough decision, and not without a great deal of discussion.  We had to look at our goals and make a choice.  We loved producing a superior product and Sharon really enjoyed working with the chickens.  We were really excited by how much our egg business was expanding and by how many customers told us how they loved our eggs, but in the end a decision based on goals had to be made, so we are transitioning out of the egg business to concentrate more on other aspects of the farm and producing other local foods for our community.

Chicken Day - Batch 1 - 2011

Whew!  "Chicken days" are a real workout.  It's physically demanding work  but very satisfying.  We've made some changes to make things a little easier and more efficient this year and they really did add to the efficiency.  We added a new processing table that is stainless steel, sloped toward the middle, and has a hole in the middle to let water and "cut-away parts" drain away.  The table lets us run water continuously to keep the work areas clean, which is a lot better than having to run water down a long table and have it run onto your legs and shoes like we did in the past.  That was a great addition.  We also modified a large industrial stainless steel tank to make a large gas-fired scalder.  We had tried to use an electric scalder previously and it was not up to the job.  Since water temperature is key to cleanly plucked chickens, and this is the first step in the entire process, scalding is a make or break part of the entire process.  With the new scalder we're able to fly through the scalding and plucking process.  Not only did the scalder make the process more efficient, it reduced the stress that's caused when this part of the process slows down.  The changes that we made were well placed and helped to make the two days of processing a success.  We still have two more batches to process in 2011.

Chicken Day

Today we're processing the first batch of chickens for the 2011 season.  We started earlier this week getting everything ready and last night at sunset we started gathering chickens.  These chickens are pretty lively so we knew we couldn't catch them during daylight without having them run off and hide in the tall grass of the pasture but what a nice night it turned out to be.  It was one of the best nights that we've had catching chickens.  A full moon that rose red out of the east along with a nice breeze made for a pleasantly memorable night.  We're getting ready to start the process so I'd better get moving.

I wrapped up the hay over at East Lake and a new mental milestone in my life was hit.  The trailer that I haul my tractor and large loads of round bales on is in the shop.  That forced me to load the round bales onto a shorter trailer and to drive the tractor back rather than hauling it back.  As I drove the tractor back I watched my oldest son drive off hauling hay back to the farm.  It hit me that my son is now old enough to drive a load of round bales down highway without me, and hence I'm old enough to have a son that is old enough to drive a load of round bales down highway without me.  The weather has shifted back to a wet pattern so I'll have to wait on cutting more hay, but just about everything is ready to go as soon as we get a dry spell.

Yesterday was around 95 degrees.  We tried to work around the farm but everything was in slow motion.  I dropped off my hay rake over at the hay field by East Lake.  I cut that ground on Monday.  The cutting was tricky over there.  The hills and cutbacks made keeping the mower even with the ground pretty tough.  I'm used to running on some fairly flat fields so this was very different.  There are lots of very large trees with hanging branches and even some wet bottom ground.  If I had been graded on evenness of cut I think I would have gotten a D.  A much smaller tractor would have been a plus on this hay field.  When I dropped off the rake I took the tractor down the road to clean up a small field that the owner of the hay field owned.  We had said that we would mow it to keep the thistles and other weeds down, anyway, as I said it was 95 degrees, and wouldn't you know, the air conditioner in the tractor quit.  I'm not sure what the issue is but I'll have to look at that today when I'm over raking and baling.  My JD tractor isn't made to run with the windows open which means that not having air conditioning is not an option.

Family inspects plantings

We planted all of the produce for this year and this years produce is to be sold through the Little Sioux Growers Co-op.  My two main produce crops are zucchini and cucumbers.  The zucchini and cucumber plants had been started a few weeks ago, and every year I tell myself that I should only start them about a week or at most two before planting, but every year I get ahead of myself and I end up with very large plants that don't take well to transplanting anyway.  Tomatoes are a different story.  I started them quite a while ago and they have taken off but they can be planted with 1/3 of the plant above the ground and 2/3 under and do well.  We picked up some additional grass hay ground.  I'll be trying to get my tractor hauled to where the hay is to be cut - East of East Lake this morning and try to get it cut.  Since it's a new location, and its in a wooded and rolling area I'm a little apprehensive about running through there for the first time.  We'll see how it goes.

We put the family garden in a couple of days ago.  Sharon put around 50 tomatoes, 8 rows of sweet corn and 4 rows of green beans.  I came home yesterday evening to find Sharon and the kids spreading corn stalks between the rows.  There was an idea to roll out the corn stalk, but since they grabbed one of last fall's bales it just popped open when it was cut loose and turned into a giant pile.  Then they hand scooped the stalk and walked it down the rows.  Not an easy task but it's done.  I had quite a bit of oats left from harvesting them three years ago.  So this year my brother planted some and I planted the rest as cover/green manure/weed control.  I think I put it down a little thick which may stunt it back, but hopefully it will do its job and I can turn it under before it gets a head and goes to seed or cut it and let it lay to block weeds like laying straw.  We'll know in a month or so if it is working.

Sun and wind below 30mph.  Finally we can get the final spring planting done.  The corn based plastic for the vegetables will be laid today and the oats will be spread as a cover crop and weed control.  More rain forecast for tonight so today will be a busy day.

YouTube Farm Equipment Maintenance Videos

With the rain we've been having I decided to take care of a minor issue that didn't start until after we completed the winter maintenance items.  Our John Deere 4440 tractor was leaking hydraulic/transmission fluid around the PTO seal.  Not a big deal but it was dripping oil everywhere it sat and was wasting fluid.  I think that I came out on the wrong side of this bit of maintenance.  To do this repair you have two choices: drain the rear end fluid into clean buckets and pour it back in when the repair is complete, or park the tractor pointing down-hill to move the fluid toward the front of the tractor and away from the repair.  I chose the hill only the hill wasn't steep enough and about $120 of fluid was lost.  It would take a life time of dripping fluid to make up for that!
I tried to do as much research on a repair as I could before attempting the fix.  One thing I've come to expect is to find just about any type of maintenance instructional video online.  But unlike maintenance on cars, trucks, even guns and robots, farm equipment maintenance isn't very available on online.  With all of the yearly maintenance and do-it-yourself repairs that farmers do you'd think there would be libraries worth of online maintenance videos but there isn't.  So I've decided that any tech manual level maintenance that I do I'll put online in our YouTube channel. I did an FX-2000 hay moisture sensor install in my John Deere 567 round baler and posted that to YouTube over the winter.  This time I recorded the PTO oil seal leak repair and posted that as well.  Maybe I can start a trend...

The asparagus has been growing and selling very well.  But now the weeds are starting to get the upper hand.  It's difficult to manage the weeds in asparagus, which is why most people use herbicides now on their asparagus.  We try to avoid herbicides and pesticides so we are on the cusp of doing something to try to get the upper hand back.  We haven't decided exactly how to handle the weeds yet, but we'll do our research and do something that sounds logical to us.  As a side note it's Sharon's birthday today and we're going to Rabab's Neighborhood Bistro tonight to celebrate.  We'll get to sample our own asparagus cooked in an upscale restaurant by a chef.  I can't wait!

The asparagus was growing out of control!  We had a 92 degree day early this week and it sent the asparagus shooting out of the ground.  We caught up just as it was cooling down later in the week, and now we're ahead of it.  Sales were great and it moved as well as we had hoped.  We've been checking back with our asparagus customers to get feedback and to make sure that everyone is happy.  We saw the first corn popping up on Wed. on a neighbor's field.  With the cool weather and the late start that our area saw I was surprised to see it up so fast.  We're expecting more rain and cool weather for the next couple of days and then we can get back to work.

Whew!  We got rain and severe storms last night and were getting showers this morning, but I'm not complaining. The farm work was pushing everyone to their max and we needed a day to stop and regroup.  The asparagus was growing faster than George and Sara could cut it.  We finally had to put all hands to harvesting the asparagus just to catch up.  It looked like we were going to be overwhelmed with asparagus but we sold out of it as quickly as we were harvesting it.  With everything else like field work, preparing for another set of chicks, and Sharon still home schooling the kids, we really needed a rain day.  The sun will shine soon enough!

Last week was a busy week.  Some fields were plowed, some were disked, and some were planted.  We had the elevator come in and air seed about 38 acres to orchard grass, clover and oats into alfalfa that wasn't completely killed out when we planted beans.  With luck the plan is to use the oats as a nurse crop that will help to keep the weeds down.  The oats will be cut before it forms oat heads and bale it as hay.  Then the orchard grass, clover and alfalfa will be left as hay.  We've had so much interest in horse hay that that isn't strait alfalfa that we decided to service that market more than our small field of brome grass hay. 

Losing Ground

I just watched Losing Ground by EWG.  I have to say that I'm not really impressed.  If I were sitting in a DC beltway suburban townhouse, far removed from any modern farm ground, and watched this video I'd think that Iowa is washing into the sea.  But looking out my Iowa farmhouse window, I see that all of my neighbors must be the heroes that the video describe as the few.  It must be somewhere else that farmers are running the ends of their planters off the sides of embankments so that corn can fall into creeks, streams and rivers.  While I will grant you that many of the farms in Iowa do lose soil to wind and water erosion by the very nature of row cropping vs grasslands or hay ground, every farmer I know couldn't afford to let their soil run off of their land to the extent that this video purports.  I will also say that I think many farmers can do much more than they do without taking a financial hit, but in reality it already makes economic sense to stop erosion from your fields.  It already makes economic sense to harvest all of the crop that you plant.  But it makes economic sense (though there may be a moral argument to be made) to take the subsidies that are handed out for production, and they aren't mutually exclusive.  I agree that subsidies aren't fair and are setup to encourage production which can lead to a type of mining of the land (I don't know any farmers who want to mine their land), but the dilemma is more complex than EWG want people in the USA to think about.  America is accustom to cheap food, and food comes from the commodities of corn and beans (See King Corn).  Commodities are only cheap if they are in excess.  If the government has chosen to make food i.e. commodities cheap, then the extension of that policy is subsidies which rewards expanding even when prices are below the cost of production.  And really this is also good for those politicians who support this policy because they can collect the large Ag lobby money which further reinforces the politician's Ag policy.  Now as prices for corn and beans have risen recently, and by extension food costs are rising, if prices keep going up it's a great time to try to look at what expensive food feels like, to understand the complexity of commodity farming, and make decisions for going forward.

Local Foods Brunch

The Market Community Co-op (known locally as "The Market") held its 2nd  annual local foods brunch on Sunday.  The local foods brunch is an opportunity for local growers who sell to The Market to help serve brunch to The Market's customers and give both the customers and growers a chance meet and chat.  Sharon had such a great time last year that I decided to join her this year.  And it really was fun.  What a great opportunity.  It's a huge boost to talk with people who really enjoy what we are so passionate about growing, and we hope that The Market's customers are more educated and passionate about local foods right here in Northwest Iowa.  It's why we like to give farm tours and enjoy having customers visit us on the farm too.  We hope that the more customers know about us and how we raise their food, the more passionate they will become about their food too.

High Tunnel

We started preparing the location for the high tunnel.  Unfortunately the site that we had chosen had a three and a half foot drop from end to end.  That was hardly ideal and meant that we would either have to do a lot of dirt work to get the site level or I would have to build on the steep grade and hope for the best.  I chose neither.  We started looking for a new site that would have less grade but still within reach of our water lines so that we can use drip tape.  The only site that is available is in the pasture directly behind the house.  Since the high tunnel is part of an NRCS program I contacted NRCS and began the discussion regarding the new location.  After a few days they said that I should proceed with my new location.  That is great news!  Now we can finally get started and hopefully get the high tunnel up once the weather cooperates and dries out.

In Like a Lion

This is severe weather awareness month and we had our first severe weather event of the spring last night.  We had 41mph winds with some rain.  The strongest winds and lightning was at about 10PM.  In the dark we wouldn't know the extend of any damage until the sun came up the next morning.  It was an uneasy sleep wondering how everything was holding together and really wondering how the newest eggmobile would handle the winds.  When we woke up this morning I looked out the window and saw that both eggmobiles were still standing down at the south edge of the pasture.  I think the wind was in our favor since it was blowing from the SE and wasn't blowing directly against the tall side of the eggmobiles.  We had no real damage other than a chunk of shingles blown off the peak of the house roof, but that's more of a minor inconvenience and is easily remedied.  All in all we were unscathed by the first spring weather event of 2011.

I don't know if others are jaded but I am in awe of the ducks and geese that migrate through this time of year.  The sky and fields are filled with the sights and sounds of ducks and geese.  It is just amazing.  The wood ducks are paired up and spending time on our wetlands and in the trees in the grove up by the house.  I can't count the number of times that I say wow...

Spring is on the Move

Eggmobile Train

The second egg-mobile is complete and the layers have been moved to the pasture.  It seems early to me, but Sharon has her chickens scheduled with military precision so if she says it's time to move I'm sure it's time to move.  I let the weather tell me when to move the cows, and since the paddock was getting too muddy to get round bales to the hay ring, it was time to move cows to the back nine field.  I checked all of the fences yesterday evening for shorts or lines down and when I found no issues I let the cows move out of their winter paddock and into the pasture.  They spent the night up by the house eating the alfalfa that was on the ground from feeding the calves this winter.  This morning we coaxed the cows to follow us with a round bale of alfalfa and they followed us down to the back nine without a single straggler.  With the changes in location, the chores will take a little more time to complete but that just means that we get to watch the ducks and geese that are all over the farm this time of year.  That's an added bonus.

Driving

How much time have I spent behind the wheel of a vehicle in the last 30 days?  Before coming to Iowa I had a very long commute to work that took several hours out of every day.  In the last 30 days I'm sure I've spent a comparable amount and then some - between the "vacation" traveling from Beaufort, South Carolina where spring was well underway and planting had begun, to the Cape Charles on the Eastern Short of Virginia where the potatoes were already planted and the fields were worked, and finally on to Maryland where they were just starting to think about getting their crops in but the cows were grazing on green grass. Yesterday I spent the day driving to pickup a new-to-me square baler a couple of hours east of our farm.  The owner guaranteed the baler to work 100%, but we won't know until the first bales start coming out whether the investment was worth it or not.  Today it's driving to haul back the certified chemical free chicken feed for Sharon's first batch of Freedom Ranger chickens which are scheduled to come in on Friday.  Exciting time around the farm, if I can just get out from behind the wheel to enjoy it.

Returning from Vacation

We just got back from a very long vacation.  It was the longest vacation that I've ever had!  We had friends, neighbors and my brother lined up to do chores and we're just now finding out the "issues" that our chore help had.  We had some escapes requiring some roundups.  While we were about half way through our vacation my brother Tim texted me to tell me the calves were out in the yard.  Knowing how stressful this can be we had a sinking feeling but it wasn't long until he let us know that the calves followed him right back into the paddock without issue.  Once he put the calves back into the paddock he worked on getting the electric fence that surrounds the paddock back on.  We found out after we returned home that the calves were out several times before Tim saw them and solved the problem by fixing the electric fence!  The Boernsen's who were doing other chores had to run the calves back into the paddock several times and had some near off-farm roundups.  Our neighbor Wendel also had to do a roundup but he had to roundup chickens.  The flight pen where the chickens have access to the outdoors had a major hole that he had to find and impromptu block before getting the chickens to stay in.  While not an escape, we learned that Sara's milk goat was a "stinker" and gave some trouble going to the milking stand.  All those issues.  How many issues haven't we heard of yet?  We tried to make sure that everything was running smoothly before we left.  Good grief!  I guess I'll have another 10 years or so to get things ready for the next vacation...

Egg-mobile Next Phase

Wildlife Sightings

We really enjoy watching the wildlife on the farm, noting their comings and goings and gauging the seasons by them.  In the fall of course we watch the game animals with special interest in hunting, but we also note the migration of owls and hawk, eagles and the small birds that begin to move through the area.  Over winter and in the spring we are watching for changes in wildlife that mark changes as the season warms.  We know that we see the first geese of the year around Valentines day and we watch for other birds to make their way back to the farm beginning around the end of February and into March.  We have a family tradition of noting the first robin sighting.  The rule is that you have to announce it to the family or it doesn't count.  You can't say "well I saw one last week" when someone else announces it, because if you don't announce it first everyone knows that it doesn't count.  This year Dan saw the first robin.  It was a couple of weeks ago while he was out doing his morning chores.  He came in and triumphantly announced that he had seen the first robin of this year!  My standard remark is that he must be mistaken, and when I finally see the first one then I make the "official" announcement. This starts the same banter about earlier mistaken identification and the verbal jousting which somehow Sharon doesn't seem to enjoy as much as we do.  Last week the boys were cutting across the pasture coming back from skating on the wetlands and saw a jackrabbit.  We actually greet jackrabbit sightings with more interest and excitement than bald eagle sightings since we see bald eagles much more often than we see jackrabbits. We only have a jackrabbit sighting every few years. Sometimes we see them in the fall and sometimes in the spring, and when we see them we will see them around for a while after the first sighting and then won't see them again for a couple of years.  I know that jackrabbits used to be very prevalent in our area from talking with some of the old timers who tell of big jackrabbit hunting drives that folks in the area put on, but they are an honest to goodness rarity around here now.  According to the IA DNR, the change in farming practices from small grains and hay of the past to mono-crop today has removed the jackrabbit's preferred habitat.  I'm assuming that before the hay and grain farms that the jackrabbit wasn't as prevalent?  I don't know.  I do know that I'd like to see them more than we do now, but then maybe it wouldn't be as exciting when we spot one.  But I guess I could live with that.

Egg-mobile Runing Gear

The second egg-mobile build has started.  I carried the running gear up to my brothers shop yesterday and we spent the day repairing a broken component that holds the front hub and wheel assembly and allows the running gear to turn when the tongue is moved from side to side.  It didn't seem like we made much progress the first day, but we sure did make piles of metal shavings from all of the drilling and cutting required to get the part off and to drill out the frozen 7" x 7/8" bolt that was the cause of the broken component in the first place.

Race to Spring

The race is now on.  Winter seems to go on for ever, but the calendar says that I'm behind schedule.  Sharon has more layers this year and these new birds need an egg-mobile to call home starting March 31.  Unfortunately I found out that my big goose-neck trailer breaks aren't working properly and I'm trying to get this corrected, but according to my schedule I should be working on the egg-mobile and Sharon is starting to get nervous.  I am too.  Good thing there are 24 hours in a day!

Delmhorst FX-2000 and the 1986 Baler Sensor John Deere 567

After spending what felt like a ridiculous amount of time trying to determine why the moisture sensor that came with my recently purchased Delmhorst FX-2000 moisture monitor wouldn't work, we finally have it installed and the baler maintenance for the year is completed.  I received the extension kit but even that needed to be modified to make it work.  Since I couldn't find any information about installing the Delmhorst moisture sensor into a John Deere large round baler about how to make it actually work, we created a video of the installation to help anyone else who may try it. 

Why Put Off Until Tomorrow - Or Next Winter

I don't think it's any secret that I'm not big on spending money.  Whenever I can I try to do what is needed and what is efficient but no more than that, which is why it's a good thing that I married Sharon or I might be living in a plywood house about now.  Maintenance is one of those things that I have to force myself to do all the way.  By all the way I mean, do them when needed, even if they'll probably hold or work for most or all of the next season.  During this winter's maintenance I felt like I was nickle and diming myself into poverty.  The baler was out of spec here and there because parts were stretched, bent, or just not working.  The tractor was missing little things here and there and needed every filter and fluid changed.  No part was outrageously expensive, although many of the parts were expensive for what little material they are, but everyday seemed like I needed to run for another part.  That's tough for me.  Can't I live with the baler gate bouncing open a little from stretched latches?  Or will a bad bearing really impact the twine wrap if the front metering spool doesn't turn without a lot of pressure on it?  How about that small leak in the tractor radiator?  Can't I just keep the radiator topped off before each use?  In the end I have to say no I can't live with those small problems.  Each one of them could lead to downtime or poor quality and I have to put everything right.  A great example was the tractor radiator.  We had just finished flushing and putting fresh coolant into the radiator and after bringing the tractor up to temp my brother said hey, look there's steam coming up from under the hood.  I looked up under there and sure enough there was a wet spot on the radiator.  We agreed that a hole that small shouldn't be a problem.  I could get that fixed at the end of next year.  But that night I thought no I really need to get that fixed.  Why would I wait til I have a major issue or until next year.  Long story short, I asked the guy how repaired it if it was a big leak.  "Oh yeah, the hotter it got the worse the leak would have been" he told me.  I'll really have to keep that in mind the next time I'm tempted to let it go until the next maintenance cycle.

This years winter equipment maintenance that we do in my brother Tim's shop seems to be taking forever.  We started with our John Deere 567 round baler.  A couple seasons ago I noticed that the slip clutch was locked tight and wasn't slipping when it should have.  The slip clutch protects the baler from breaking parts when the baler encounters a jam.  I noticed that when I encountered a jam the belts would jam but the baler kept going.  Not good!  During last winter's equipment maintenance we freed the slip clutch but then again we had a performance issue during this 2010 season where the clutch slipped too much and toward the end of the hay season I was spending too much time unblocking jams in the baler.  Long story short, we ended up taking the slip clutch apart and sure enough, the slip clutch parts were bad.  Once this was fixed we continued going through the baler in serious detail and anything that we found out of spec was correct.  It seems like we are at Deere every weekday picking up some small part here and some sub part there.  Sharon is talking about running the numbers on the hay again to see how much profit is left after all of this "preventative" maintenance.  I also decided this year to replace my Farmex moisture tester with a Delmhorst moisture tester, and to integrate it into my JD 567 round baler.  Easier said than done it would seem.  I'm not sure if I'm the first one to do this, or the first one that Delmhorst tech support has encountered.  After posting lots of pictures and information onto farm chat forums and coming up with a goose-egg, I resorted to calling someone who uses the same moisture tester in a chem applicator on the JD 567.  They knew what I needed and soon after Delmhorst tech support called and let me know that they also saw what my problem was and contacted me with their solution.  So now I wait for the part that is guaranteed to solve my problem to arrive by UPS.  While waiting we moved the 567 out and pulled the JD 4440 tractor in for its winter maintenance.  That is still in process and I think I found a leak in the radiator.  I'll be going up to Tim's shop with George to pull the front hood off to take a closer look this morning.  There are a few more items on the list for the 4440 but the radiator maybe an unexpected issue that leads to other things.  Better now than in the field while I'm baling is what its all about.

Pasture Raised Chicken Orders Open for 2011

I know that we're on the back side of winter when we open up for chicken orders.  Sharon sent out the email this morning to let everyone know that orders are open, and I finished up changes to the order page last week.  This year Sharon wants to have all batches available for order from the start and she added an additional batch to this year.  She spends a tremendous amount of time calculating the resources and management for the pasture raised chickens over the winter. She can't have any batches overlap in schedule, because resources are limited, which means that she has the birds scheduled with scientific precision.  I wish I could be so precise.

Bobolink

This winter has been so much milder than last winter.  Its been white since late November, but we did see the ground for a few days this winter after a week long warming spell, and we're not moving snow everyday like last year.  Even so, I have to admit I'm thinking about spring.  Equipment maintenance has started in full swing which always has me thinking about how the equipment can be adjusted to better run during the spring and summer, but I have also been thinking about the birds of summer lately too.  One bird in particular that I really enjoy seeing is the bobolink.  We see the bobolink starting in late spring and as late summer comes in we see less and less of them.  The male bobolink is so showy with what is described as a reverse tuxedo, and so noisy with its loud bubbly call, its hard not to notice this little bird once it has arrived.  I don't really notice seeing the bobolink in large numbers outside of our farm, so I thought I'd do a little research on it.  Turns out the bobolink likes pastures and hayfields.  Since our farm is mostly hay and pasture that would partly explain why the bobolink likes our farm.  Bobolinks also like hayfields and pastures that are cut and grazed late.  Because we rotational graze and because we have both grass hay and alfalfa hay, we have fields being harvested at different times and we usually have some deep grass well into the late summer for nesting and raising their young.  So I guess that is why they congregate here.  It also turns out that the bobolink may still be on the farm into fall but I didn't notice the bird.  The bobolink actually changes its coloring after breeding season and loses its contrasting black and white color scheme for a more subdued look.  This year I'll have to watch for this little bird in both its color schemes to see if the bird moves off the farm as the year progresses or if they really do stay, but have a changed color pattern.  The next bird on my list to research is the meadowlark.