$.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. 

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.