December 27, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Try to Take Over the World!

Gee, Julie! What do you want to do in 2015?

Bruce King beat me to the punch on this post and good for him. I don’t always make time for Bruce but I suspect I should. Bruce is a pragmatic farmer. He’s not afraid of the numbers. And he’s not afraid of work.

But I feel like his 2015 post is missing something. Can I say that without criticizing Bruce? Because I don’t mean to criticize Bruce in any way. I just like a little more heart sprinkled into my writing. I need more than just “What”. I need to know why. Why does Bruce want to go from 20 cows to 30? Is it really just a numbers issue? A cashflow problem? Does it satisfy some yearning within him…some intangible desire to own 30 cows…the innate need to farm? Does it answer some insecurity he is wrestling with? Does it solve a portion of his farm’s fertility issues or utilize a resource that is otherwise wasted? Has he increased his farm’s cow capacity by 50%? I don’t know. He just wants to go from 20 to 30. Well, good, but how can I personally apply this? What does it mean to me that Bruce wants more cows? I ask because I’m reading to learn.

I have a small herd of cows and maintain a maximum of 200 layers. We run batches of up to 6 feeder pigs through at any given time. Those numbers are dictated by a number of factors including our ability, our marketing reach, our farm fertility and our time. It would be AWESOME to have a flock of 3,000 layers (our legal limit) but what would I do with all the eggs? How could I handle the feed? Where would I put them? The money would be great but…I just can’t. I can’t. Not yet anyway.

I think it’s cool that Bruce can outline his goals in such a clear and concise manner. I’m afraid I fail at that task. Julie and I take our annual goals seriously…if we don’t know where we are going we won’t know when we get there. I’m not willing to share our personal goals on the blog but we do have farm and business goals. Now how to articulate them?

Let’s start with what I want. I’ll write this with more Bones and less Spock…more feeling and less math.

Click image for source

I want to make a bunch of money while also making as many people as possible happy and healthy. I want to live in a beautiful place, surrounded by abundance. I want to share that with others. If that means cows, then cows it is. Pigs? Chickens? Go get ’em. In fact, I feel my days are better when I have a variety of livestock around…less so right now without pigs. But on another scale entirely are my kids. I’m so happy to have children. I hope they are happy to have me. I hope I can provide them with a safe place surrounded by health and learning…the kind of place they will want to share with their own children.

So that’s what I want.

What can I do in 2015 to help me get there? I’ll try to keep this focused on farm-related goals.

Let’s skip the farm for a second. I know. I said I wouldn’t but just play along. I need to be a better farmer. That’s more than just muck and muscle. It’s a lot of muck and muscle but it’s more than just muck and muscle. I need to spend some time expanding my education. This will help me be a better husband and father, not just a better farmer. So in 2015 I intend to read a book each week. I suspect I currently read more than a book per week but I don’t journal it anywhere. So I’m going to read at least a book each week. Maybe I’ll add that as a blog feature. Dunno. If you want to play along, the youngest two got me Bob Kleberg and the King Ranch: A Worldwide Sea of Grass for Christmas. I’ll try to finish that up before the new year. After that? Could be anything. I’ll try to come up with some sort of plan and I’m open to suggestions.

Beyond that I could list a large number of specific things Julie and I want to accomplish this year but I find that by doing so I’m not setting goals for 2015. I’m writing a year-long chore list and that’s not what we want. Today I want the big picture. Once I see that clearly I’ll know what to do next.

From a big-picture level…what is it I want in 2015? Health. Family. Friends. Money. Liberty.

What am I going to do to accomplish that on the farm in 2015?

I am going to increase my farm’s stocking rate. Until my farm is stocked my business suffers at every level. So does my family, my wallet and, in some way, my health. How many cows? What about sheep? Should we start to farrow? Dunno. We’ll do our best. Stay tuned.
I am going to read like it’s going out of style because I’m afraid it is going out of style. There is just too much I don’t know. Too much I haven’t seen. Too many ideas I haven’t weighed. What one non-surgical thing can a person do to make themselves more attractive? Read. Not only books, I want to find 5 more farm blogs to patronize starting with Bruce.
The farm has a number of infrastructure needs. However much I don’t want to write a chore list, I have to include chores in my list. Without being specific here, I need to list the work that needs my attention, prioritize it and start knocking it out.
I plan to pursue better stewardship of our farm and family finances. I played terrific offense this year but our defense was a little weak. We need to step it up. You can read about budget and finance elsewhere. I just need to do better. Really, this includes manure and compost management, not just money.
To be more personal for a moment, Julie and I hit some rough spots in 2014. Nothing that endangered our marriage but certainly caused us real stress. She can’t move a chicken tractor. She can’t carry feed sacks. Milking is not her favorite activity. We need to focus this year on what she enjoys about the farm and find ways leverage those interests. Similarly, the kids. A previous bullet point discussed farm infrastructure needs. My kids are the farm’s infrastructure. I need to keep them in good repair. I need to make sure they are a part of the farm, not merely involved in the farm. I need to make sure my family has been inspired to pursue a common vision.

And that vision starts here.

We work together as a team to steward God’s resources, create a welcoming home, share with others, encourage one another, learn and explore new ideas and pursue our God given purpose.

In 2015 I will be a better husband, father, scholar and steward. I don’t have numbers for most of those metrics but that’s the direction to go.

Please comment below to offer suggestions on worthwhile reading, both books and blogs.

December 24, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Every Christmas Eve…my Sister

We finished up chores early after staying up late last night wrapping presents and watching old episodes of Dr. Who. Usually Julie and I watch Better Off Dead as we wrap presents but this year Dr. Who sounded better. Every year we get the kids wool socks, a box of cereal (we only buy cereal at Christmas) and a book. Don’t tell them until tomorrow afternoon though.

However, my sister and I have a little tradition on Christmas Eve. The aforementioned Better Off Dead made a big impact in our childhood. She has given me TV dinners (I remember how much you liked the brownie in that one). I have given her a framed picture of Ricky (so she will always remember her trip to the United States). There have been threats to make aardvark coats but the gags don’t stop there. For years we traded a can of spam back and forth. She gave me Santa boxers one year. I gave them back the next year (unused).

What’s it going to be this year? Is there a gag? I can’t tell you. That’s my most favoritist part of Christmas Eve. Not knowing what I’m in for and watching my sister open gifts from Julie and me with a measure of reluctance. Good times.

My favorite Christmas movie isn’t really a Christmas movie but it inspired something of a tradition.

December 22, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Strolling Through the Pasture Dec. 2014

Fescue. Cool season grass. Puts on massive growth in the spring and again in the fall. In the heat of summer it gets infected with fungus and is not a good thing for the cows to eat…at least not in isolation. It can make tips of tails fall off and cows can lose their hooves. Bad mojo. As part of a balanced breakfast though, it’s OK. We try to keep a good mix of clovers and warm season plants growing to dilute the worst of it. There is some thinking that cattle genetics play a part in fescue tolerance. Dunno.

But in the winter things really heat up. Fescue comes into its own. The last thing the cows would eat during the summer becomes the last thing available to eat in the winter but the first thing they graze out. And the protein goes up as the temperature goes down, though, obviously, the feed quality deteriorates over time. The cows are currently grazing orchard grass and the remaining alfalfa in the alfalfa field. We are strip grazing our way across 17 acres we started grazing in October. At that time the alfalfa was still fresh and proved to be difficult for me to manage so we took a few weeks off and grazed…you guessed it…fescue while we waited for a hard freeze to take the edge off of the alfalfa. Now we are trying to wrap up the alfalfa grazing by the end of the month…hopefully before it gets smashed to the ground by a heavy, wet snow. The orchardgrass isn’t faring poorly but it just doesn’t seem to stand up to the cold the way fescue does. (BTW, the fescue the cattle grazed in October has recovered sufficiently for another grazing. I may have gained a week or two of pasture.)

When the alfalfa field ends the fun begins. You already know the players involved, let’s take a look at the game board. Starting things off this year is the hill just east of the yellow house. This hill has been resting since summer and is ready to play. Well, maybe I let it sit a little too long.

Let’s look at it a little more closely. The green is good. The cows will eat all of the green and because fescue is waxy, it will stay green for most of the winter. A fair portion of the brown will be eaten too. In fact, if I would supplement their diet with protein (and I may) they will eat the majority of the brown too. Otherwise it will be shoved into the dirt in mass. How much mass? Here’s a bundled up, heavily layered, rubber booted Julie to show you.

Not our best fescue but not bad either. We have to get from here (at the edge of the alfalfa field where the cows are)…

all the way over to here (the clover field we grazed until October). We will do this by grazing from south to north in narrow strips from west to east. Hopefully we’ll have two months worth of grazing here supplemented by a bit of hay cut from the clover field I am standing in.

I want to pause briefly to talk about the clover field. This time last year it was corn stubble being grazed by my cousin’s cattle. I use “cousin” somewhat loosely on the blog. My cousin lives around the corner. I have other first cousins all over the place. Can’t swing a dead cat… This guy is mom’s cousin’s son. Or something. Nice guy. Anyway…clover field. Dad worked it lightly in the spring. Really, he just dragged a disc across it to knock down the high points and make a shallow seed bed. Then, with 15 mph winds blowing, he used the antique seed spreader to broadcast a mix of 60% legumes on the field. Turned out great. We got one cutting of hay from it (pretty good stuff considering how wet the season was) and grazed it once. After the grazing it looked a little like this:

Today it looks a little like this:

Good soil coverage. Good contact between litter and soil. Some amount of recovery. Some amount of residual feed.

If I get in a bind I could graze these 9 acres again but I would have to move the cattle quickly. It’s just nice to have insurance. Lots of rabbit trails in this post. Why stop now? You wouldn’t believe the deer in this field. Geez. They bent posts and knocked down fence every morning.

The hill to the east…um…this is getting confusing. See Julie standing in the shattercane several pictures up? (Look, I know I shouldn’t have shattercane, OK?) OK. She is south of me (Chris Jordan, photographer, farmer, gentleman, scholar). The cows are further to the south in the alfalfa field. On the left side of that picture, up on the flat, the cows grazed in the spring then dad and I cut some of the best hay we put up last year. Just wonderful stuff. It was hard to get there as the hills are steep and the valleys are deep but we cut the flat top. Oldest boy and I had to cut and drag brush ahead of dad when he was mowing. Not only was the hay wonderful stuff, I came back with I don’t know how many loads of manure and lime and covered the field. It recovered nicely and is now free of brush…like the thorny sapling pictured further up. You can see a line on the field where the mower ran. I think this is a practice we will continue. By taking a single cutting of hay and applying amendments from each field every few years I can mix up the level of disturbance in my fields…also it gives me a chance to manage things even more closely while also supplying me with the feed we need. Looks good on paper anyway.

OK. So. Now. How long can I keep talking about fescue and running rabbit trails in a blog post? Do you really want to know? It’s not just fescue out there. There are perennial warm season grasses growing out there too. Unless I am mistaken, that’s big bluestem growing in the center. I didn’t plant it. It just showed up here and there in this field. The cattle were probably never in this field when the bluestem was growing. How many years has it been since these grasses were allowed to grow?

We covered about 15 acres in pictures today. Some of our fescue looks a little raunchy so I’m worried I’ll have to feed more hay than we expected. There are places where the chickens manured that the fescue looks better. In coming years I need to leverage my chickens more completely but it’s hard to get them to some of the remote hills. Building a pond out there will really help with field access. (Someday…) It is encouraging to see the increasing diversity of plant material. Last spring this field was defined by bare places between plants. Almost no clover anywhere. No residue on the soil. No manure to be found. Just short grass and bare soil as it looked last April.

But that recovered to a thick carpet of fescue. Almost nothing but fescue. Yuk.

We grazed it lightly. Then again. Look how fat they are!

Then we went away for the summer and fall. Now I am relying on my savings. Will I be totally hayless? Nope. But the urine and manure will be delivered all over the farm without mechanical intervention. The cows will be harvesting the majority of their calories without mechanical intervention. They will have fresh greens to eat all through the year and the soil will remain covered. If things work out, I should have greater diversity, increased fertility and increased drought resistance in the upcoming growing season. And fat cows.

It looks good on paper anyway. We’ll talk again in April.

I had a hard time naming this post. Here were some candidates:

Fescue to the Rescue

Fescue on the Menue

Fescu on the Menu

Those are weak titles but the best Julie and I could come up with. Dive straight into the comments if you have a better idea. I think the “Strolling…” series should make a comeback in 2015.

December 21, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

So. We’re Weaning.

My plan was to wean in the spring so the calves could have a little bit of milk as they grazed stockpiled grass through the winter but I’m cornered and have to change my plan. My cows really aren’t adapted to grass and I question their condition as we head into winter. So here goes. As usual I’m trying something I have never seen anybody do in real life. Cause that’s how I roll.

Will it work? Dunno. Seems like a good idea. I have heard me say that before…

It ought to work. If you didn’t watch the videos, I want to point out there are no spikes on these. They are just flat plates that you put in the calve’s nose. One calf responded negatively to having something yellow on his face he couldn’t escape from but didn’t appear to suffer any other discomfort. On Christmas day the calves will be separated from the cows. More chores. Yeah!

Dad and I were checking things around noon yesterday and it looked like Henry was nursing in spite of his jewelry. Upon closer inspection though, he was just standing there looking frustrated.

This is not a product endorsement. It’s not a recommendation. It’s a note in a journal. “Dear diary, here goes.”

December 20, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Moving the Mob

I recently played with the logistics of an attempt to mob graze the entire state of Illinois and threw out big, meaningless numbers along the way. Let’s add a little meaning. These first two show some pretty big mobs. Watch the animals move. They just keep coming.

This one though…this one is ridiculous. I imagined grazing cattle through the state of Illinois. How about driving cattle from North Australia to South? Illinois is only 600 km long. These cattle went 1500 km.

And if you want more detail on moving 18,000 cows through Australia…well, here it is.

Someday…

December 14, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Hangin with Flora

December 12, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

OK. Once Again. Why?

Q: Why we doin’ this again?

A: Sigh.

OK. Well. OK. Let’s do it this way. Take chickens for example.

Most of the chickens of the world have been mutilated (beaks trimmed) and mistreated. They are crammed into cages or, if cage-free, crammed into houses. They don’t see the sun. They can’t run, hide or scratch for worms. They are not utilized…their design is not appreciated. They are simply fed and mined for 18 months. Mined for eggs. They are given just the right amount of feed to maintain high production, not high quality. Often this is an all-natural, vegetarian diet. What is natural about feeding a vegetarian diet to an omnivore?

Click image for source

I don’t think any of that is right. Any of it. Birds are a tremendous blessing to our farm. They eat bugs and worms and larvae, they put down manure, they spread cow patties to help limit repugnancy zones (livestock don’t want to graze up against their own poop…imagine that. The chickens spread a cow patty out so it decomposes more quickly (think surface to volume ratio)). We work hard to keep them on pasture when it is appropriate, to keep them near to and behind the cattle, to keep them safe from predators, to meet their varied dietary needs and honor their design. Boy golly, let them see the sun!

But you know what? That’s expensive. If I built a confinement facility and crammed birds in by the thousands I would have to amortize the facility over time but chores would be easy. I wouldn’t have to walk sometimes miles each day to give my birds food and water and to collect eggs. I wouldn’t have to sit up at night hoping to catch whatever has been eating my birds. If the birds were indoors I could control light and temperature for optimum egg production. As it stands, my birds go to bed early and get up late because the sun goes down early and gets up late. So egg production has fallen off.

You want to know why our eggs are more expensive than the “cage-free organic” brown eggs at the store? Because it’s a lot of work to maintain a flock of safe chickens living outdoors with access to a wide variety of feed.

But there is more to price than just cost. Customers don’t care what my costs are. Customers don’t care what it cost to raise the chick to point of lay. They don’t care how much I spend per egg box. They don’t care about the hours Julie and the kids and dad and I spend slaving away to make our chickens happy. They care that my eggs are fresh and tasty and that my birds are whole. They want to see pictures of fully-beaked birds running and flapping in the sunshine on green pastures. They know that costs a little more than eggs at the store and they are, apparently, glad to be a part of that story. In fact, I think that’s what initially attracts customers to us. They want to be a part of something. They want to know they are supporting respect. When a customer buys that first dozen eggs they usually ask me a million questions. They want to see pictures of the chickens on my phone and they want to know the story of the farm. There is no story at the grocery store. Well, there is a story at the grocery store but it’s not pretty so nobody talks about it.

But after they try that first dozen they come back again and again. At some point a customer has company for a weekend and runs out of eggs. So they go to the store and buy the most expensive, cage-free organic eggs and put them in the skillet next to mine. Then they make a strange noise…the sound of disappointment. This is usually followed by getting their phone out to take a picture of the eggs, side by side, in the skillet. They then text that picture to me saying, “I can’t believe the difference between your eggs and those from the store!” or they post the picture on instagram or Facebook.

I don't know who took this picture. No idea. I just know the orange eggs are mine.

I don’t know the people who posted this picture. A customer shared my eggs with them. I just know the orange eggs are mine and the picture was taken in July to be shared on FB. Hope they don’t mind me using it…

That difference you see? That orange yolk that makes your blueberry pancakes turn out green? That rich flavor that you comment on? Do you know what your are tasting? You are tasting what should be. You are tasting respect.

So to this point I have successfully avoided your question. You asked me why. I told you what.

Now the why.

First because Julie and I couldn’t buy the product we were looking for. We were going bananas doing handstand push-ups and pull-ups and climbing ropes and jumping on boxes but we couldn’t find the quality of food we wanted to fuel our health. So we got a handful of old hens and built a chicken tractor in our back yard. I think only one of those old hens was still laying but that sparked a fire. It was no longer enough to have a big garden. We needed eggs!

But it only takes a few birds to get all the eggs you can eat. Turns out, other people were looking for the same kind of food we were producing. In fact, we vastly underestimated demand. And price. So, economies of scale apply. We increased our production numbers without sacrificing quality. Really, with more birds to absorb our labor and infrastructure costs our quality went up…quality continues to go up each year. In fact, since eggs are only a small portion of our our overall farm revenue we can focus on quality rather than work to maximize egg production per acre. The cows, broilers and pigs help carry the financial load so the birds don’t have to shoulder the burden alone…all while making things better for all parties involved.

Julie and I wanted food of the highest quality to feed our family and yours. We wanted to see animals respected and honored for what they are. Terms like “Organic” and “Cage-Free” just didn’t seem to get the job done. We wanted more. So we just up and made it happen.

That’s why our beef cows don’t get corn. That’s why we try REALLY hard to keep pig noses in fresh greens…not just bare dirt. That’s why our eggs cost a little more than those in the store.

But that’s also why you are a part of our story.

Let’s see if I can give a more concise answer. Why do I farm the way I do? Because I like my animals.

December 9, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

Just a Dash of Prepper

Not that we are crazy. Well, we are. But not that we have school bus bunkers buried in the back 40. (Maybe that’s not so crazy…) But it seems to make sense that from time to time the power is going to go off. And there are things I could do to make that more manageable in the winter like having a wood-burning cook stove and something to eat…just in case.

And I have heard of people who go to work in the morning and come home that afternoon unemployed. Scary! So it seems to make sense to have a lump of cash laying around to help stretch us through lean times. And my resume up to date…just in case.

And sometimes, when you are minding your own business as you drive down the road, a tire on your car will express its mortality. So we maintain a spare tire in our car…just in case.

And when government falls, the dollar fails and we all stretch cow hides across our dune buggies and search the plains for petrol, I’m covered. I can make whiskey for barter in Bartertown. I just hope I have enough hair left to have a cool mohawk.

But did you see the recent pictures of Buffalo, NY? Windows pushed into houses by the weight of snow. Second story windows partially covered by snow.

What would I do? I mean, assuming I had advanced notice.

First things first. My parents would be trapped at their house for who knows how long. I would probably suggest that they come camp out here or at least bring a vehicle up here for easy access to the main road.

I would have the kids start bringing in firewood and lots of it. Not the cool fire, warm day stuff, the dense, hot oak or hedge. Just keep bringing it in. Power goes out we can still cook and we can melt snow for water. We also need to make sure all of the toilet buckets are clean and half-filled with fresh sawdust.

I need to make sure we have plenty of dog food for Reggie. We can manage without it for a few days but I would rather we didn’t have to. I’ll have to add that to a list or have an online retailer deliver it two days from now. Will the storm be here by then?

Otherwise we are ahead of the game here. There is plenty of meat in the freezer and canned goods in the cellar. Maybe a little short on wine…. The car is full of gas. We could just drive South to avoid the storm but we have livestock.

And that’s where I hit a brick wall.

Right now the chickens are in a hoop house. It would be no big deal to put a dozen bags of feed in there along with a barrel of water. Common sense, really. But the tricky part is not knowing how much snow it takes to collapse my hoop structure. What would 6 feet do? 6 feet of wet snow? 6 feet of wet snow and high winds? Will I hear it when the collapse kills my birds?

Same with the cattle. Six feet of snow is too much to graze through and it’s too much for my barn to hold up too. So now what?

Well, I guess I need to get the cows somewhere that is sheltered from the wind. Exposure will kill them faster than starvation. Do they need a roof over their heads or do they just need shelter from wind? I could line up a wall of bales on edge to protect them from wind AND give them feed at the same time And not have to worry that the collapsing barn will crush my cattle. So now I guess it’s just a matter of ensuring the cattle have plenty of bedding material and we can call it a day. Or maybe not. Let’s look at a few examples from around the world:

So now the good news. We don’t get snowfalls like that. A foot of snow is usually the upper limit in a 24 hour period. So this is just an exercise in thought. I really don’t know how we would handle it but I welcome your comments. It only gets worse after the snow gets here. Then it melts and floods the area. Tree limbs down, power outages, soupy ground, culverts washed out of roads and more cold coming. Cows washed away, pigs swimming downstream, dogs and cats living together, Mass Hysteria! Then think of all the babies born 9 months later…

It’s enough to make a guy want to be paranoid in town.

So. Anybody have any experience weathering livestock through a severe winter storm beyond what Pa did in the Little House books? Surely one of you Canadian readers…

December 1, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

’cause Ahm Too Skeered.

I have gotten a lot of things from my father. If memory serves, my first paid roofing job with dad was when I was 8. Like teaching a man to fish, roofing paid for my college education…well, the balance of the loan anyway. Look at the title of this post. Ask my dad to recite “Our Hired Girl” by James Whitcomb Riley. I have an appreciation for that poetry (in fact, any Hoosier colloquial writing I can find) because of my father. The only poem my kids are likely to learn from me is “You Can Call Me Al”. I can’t begin to list the number of ways I have benefited from knowing my father. But it didn’t get me a free tractor. Access to one maybe…

Why did dad buy the tractor? Was it because he knew I was paralyzed into inaction and needed the loader tractor just to get some stuff done around the farm including, but not limited to, moving round bales and bedding his horses? Yup. I’d say that about sums it up.

In fact, I can do better.

I wuz skeered. Bad skeered.

But dad said,

“Clear out o’ my way!

They’s time fer work, an’ time fer play!”

So I cleared out of his way. What if I screwed up? I mean, I don’t want to buy some used tractor just to have the clutch go out. But I don’t want the payments on a new $26k loader tractor and what if that one is a mistake? What if I buy that only to find out it’s too small? Before you know it we were staring down the barrel of a new 60 horse red one with a cab or a new 74 horse yellow one with a cab for around $45k. Sheesh! That happened fast!

$40k. 8 years of easy payments and a warranty. But what if I buy the wrong color tractor? What if something happens to me and Julie needs to sell the tractor? What is the resale value of the yellow tractor from Korea with a mechanical self-leveling bucket? I dunno. What if the tractor had green paint? I dunno.

I dunno.

So I went to work. I worked around the farm. I flew off to important meetings in important places. I wrote my ever-pretentious, self-aggrandizing blog. I leaked to my readers and friends that Julie and I were thinking about buying a loader tractor. The reply was universal. “Go forth and get thyself a loader tractor.” But it was like the seventh day or something. I rested.

I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

I looked. I lingered. I dithered. I made loud proclamations.

I did nothing.

So dad did.

Was it pity? Was it grief? I don’t think so. I think it was just something we needed on the farm. Right now I am accumulating cattle. I have a little equipment but not much. Dad has most of the equipment. All of the hay equipment. The big tractors. I have the machine sheds. I have the horse stalls. I would really prefer to think this is a multi-generational cooperative effort. And I hope to have another 30 years of working beside my father as I continue to puzzle him out.

But he seems to know me pretty well.

Now before we finish up today let’s consider one other possibility. One that seems so far-fetched it nearly escaped our notice. An idea brought to us by our friend Kari. Maybe…just maybe…maybe dad wanted a new tractor.

November 30, 2014 by Head Farm Steward

One Day, One Month of Work

It finally happened. After months of me sitting on the fence dad gave up on me and bought a loader tractor himself. Let’s not focus on the machine. Let’s talk about the first day of usage. We filled in a hole in my yard, hauled 8 loads of lime and manure out to the fields. Then we put a nice layer of bedding into the cattle barn so my moos would have a nice, comfy, clean bed for a few days of forecasted cold rain. All in about 5 hours.

I am telling you from experience, based on my availability, that’s about a month’s worth of work. Probably more than that as it encouraged us to do work I was simply not doing. It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that other jobs came first on the list. After you fill a manure spreader three times in one day by hand it’s nice to just sit on your tookus for a minute. It’s hard to get into the back corners of the horse barn to clean out the manure but it was easier since the machine did the heavy lifting. Plus I work off-farm and that takes more than just my daylight hours, I come home tired…so it’s just hard to get it all done.

Let’s put a few numbers to this deal. It takes me the better part of an hour to load up a manure spreader. First I use the pitchfork and pry out a bit of material about 4 feet from the spreader and toss that in. Then I work in a line toward the spreader tossing in each little scoop. Like a typewriter, I work line by line backward and toward the spreader. This leaves lots of small, loose crumbles of compost behind that I alter scoop up with a flat shovel. Then I use a round point shovel to put an even layer of lime on top of all of that. Each shovel of lime weighs maybe 10 pounds. It takes a lot of shoveling to cover the spreader with a half inch of lime.

The loader tractor filled the spreader with four scoops of composted manure and one scoop of lime. It may have taken all of 5 minutes to load up the spreader. Happy days!

So we scraped up manure here, scooped out manure there. There were places we couldn’t get the tractor so we had to dig manure out by hand but we had been so lazy all day we had the energy remaining to get the work done. It was great! Dad drove the loader, warm in the cab. I spread the material (driving into the wind!). Then we filled in groundhog holes with lime, spread fresh bedding for horses and cattle, moved material that had been sitting for multiple years and called it a day. We still went home tired but we were tired after doing much more work than we could have accomplished previously.

So two things. I don’t know if bigger is necessarily better. A smaller tractor or a Bobcat could have gone places this tractor just can’t go but this tractor never even hesitated about scooping up lime. Second, the farm simply can’t afford a loader tractor at this time. Dad bought the tractor. But now that we have it around I have to agree that we can’t afford to be without it. On that line of thinking I got a series of notes from a friend some time ago encouraging me to buy a loader.

We did it, we bought a loader. We just no longer can lift or move anything without getting hurt, and renting or borrowing a loader to clean out our deep bedding was too expensive. We figure it’s an investment for our daughter. I don’t want her broken down like we are. I got a leg up of sorts with my brothers used equipment, which we have slowly upgraded. My husband is good about taking care of things, and he’s good with equipment so the tractor should last our farming life and as long as she wants to mess with it. Too many things were left undone, now with forks and a loader we have been cleaning up like crazy. Now if we can just get rid of the things we have gathered up that we don’t need we’ll be looking like a respectable farm.

and later…

BUY YOUR LOADER!! You don’t want to end up broken down at 57 because you dug manure by hand and carried how many bags of chicken feed…