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.