Easter Asparagus

With the early spring weather our asparagus has taken off.  I was checking on the fields last weekend and was surprised to see that there was asparagus up, so we jumped on it and after picking some for the table, burned off the ferns and weeds from last year.  Then with the soil black, the asparagus took off.  We've had great production for this early and if you were one of the lucky customers to get in an order, you're probably looking forward to enjoying fresh asparagus with your Easter meal today.  Happy Easter and enjoy!

2012 Goat Kids

Sara's goats are just about all kidded.  We have two sets of twins and one set of triplets.  The Nubian, Val, has yet to kid, but she should be any day.  If you haven't seen baby goats, you've got to see them.  They are one of the cutest baby animals and are very playful within days of birth so they're fun to handle too.

$.67 = $260

During my yearly baler maintenance last week, I found a couple of broken bolts on my JD 567 pickup where they go through the pickup cam. I guess somebody rammed through some gopher mounds at high speed last fall and broke things loose. Anyway, I pulled the pickup group apart and replaced the broken hex bolts and put it back together. No problem. I ran the baler to make sure that all was well and when I got down out of the tractor to looked at the baler running at speed, I noticed that chunks of the cam were now laying on the shop floor and the pickup was jumping around! I took everything apart again and wouldn't you know, someone put a hex bolt though the wrong direction where a standard bolt should have gone, and it was in from the wrong direction. So a $0.67 bolt caused $260.00 dollars worth of damage. Okay so it wasn't the bolt that caused the damage it was the maintenance man's fault (which is me) for putting the wrong bolt in the wrong place in the wrong direction. After that mess I gave the maintenance man the rest of the day off. It's hard to find a good mechanic these days.

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.