Seasonality

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April Showers Bring May Showers

After last summer, I never thought I would wish it would stop raining.  We got a foot of rain in April.  We are off to a good start toward another foot 3 days into May.  It’s unbelievable.  An inch of rain by day.  Another inch by night.  The good news is we’re grass farmers.  Our crop is already in.  In fact we have harvested a second crop from most of the farm!  Chew on that!

MinorFlooding

We had been grazing the cows across the bottom on both sides of the creek.  They would need snorkels to graze down there now.  Fortunately we had some high ground well rested.  In fact, it’s perfect.  Lots of diversity.

WetKnees

And this is where we had pigs last October!  Pig manure is great!  It also helps to have pasture in reserve just in case.  This has been resting since we last grazed through in January.  Just think of the root systems!  Think of the grass those cows will trample into the soil!  Think of the water I’m holding now and how much more I’ll hold in the future!  And those girls will get fat!

TopOfHill

The creek attempted to claim our fencing but we got it untangled, recovered our posts and moved everything up hill.  I had to cross the creek on a fallen walnut tree but we got the job done.  The creek in the picture is down two feet from where it was last night.  The current flood emphasized the need for me to keep fallen branches cleaned up down there as they tangled up our fencing and clogged up the gate that keeps the cows in where the creek hits our property line.  I say creek but it’s not a creek.  It’s the branch.  I know.  City kid.

FallenWalnut

Regular readers know that farming is only one of many things we do.  We are so busy working and playing, it’s hard to find time to write.  Bear with us.

UPDATE:

My lovely bride took this picture at the peak of the flood yesterday.  Can you see the mouse?

Mouse

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Delayed Chicken Processing

The chickens just aren’t paying attention to our butchering schedule.  If you want a fresh, never frozen, hormone- and antibiotic-free, humanely-raised, pastured chicken you’re going to have to wait another week.  If you want a frozen, hormone- and antibiotic-free, humanely-raised, pastured chicken you’re going to have to wait another week…cause we’re all out.  Either way…we’re moving our processing date to the 20th.

Broilers

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You Will Know Them by Their Hen Fruit

Over the weekend I noticed our egg yolks are looking a little pale.  A customer also mentioned it to me.  That’s not much of a shock given the time of year but it’s something I need to manage.  The picture also indicates that my whites are a little loose, though those particular eggs came from geriatric hens so it may be a hen issue.

EggYolks

The yolks should be orange.  The kind of orange that screams at you like like William Wallace calling for his favorite crayon…”ORANGE!!!”  My chickens are not getting enough greens in their diet.  Later in the spring when the dandelions are growing well, the color will return on its own.  Right now the chickens need some supplemental greens.  I’ll start tossing in a bucket or two of alfalfa chaff and some winter annuals that are growing among the carrots in the garden (chickweed and henbit) and we’ll see how things go.  Things are starting to green up already but I’m not moving the birds fast enough to keep them in the green.  Work, work, work.

If you want a little bit of homework you can read about what makes a good pastured egg and how they compare to factory eggs on a nutritional level at Mother Earth News.

PS
My lovely bride (who is looking particularly beautiful today) says my joke title is a bit of a reach.  Chime in on comments if you get it at all.

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Who does the Heavy Lifting?

Who does the heavy lifting around here in the winter?

Not me I’m afraid.

Right now, a typical day for me is to get up at 5, read my Bible, check email, shower, shave, eat breakfast, get dressed and head off to work at 6:15.  I do my job sitting at a desk in a climate-controlled environment.  I’ll read the book du jour over my lunch, work a few more hours and arrive home again at around 6:15 PM.  Then I spend the evening reading to and playing with the kids and discussing what happened on the farm that day.  Once the kids are in bed, I may have to go outside in the dark and cold to get a new toilet bucket, tomorrow’s supply of firewood or some other chore but mostly I just park my tookus on the couch with a book in hand until bedtime.  I go days without seeing any animals.  Keep in mind, this is the winter routine, not the spring, summer or fall routine.  There is no tookus on the couch ten months of the year.

Who does the heavy lifting on the farm in the winter?

Not me.

My wife wakes up with me each day.  Today we each dared the other to get out of bed first.  She was the first up.  She made two attempts to light the fire in the stove before calling me in to try.  She walked the dog.  Twice.  She grabbed two frozen chickens out of the freezer and packed my cooler with the eggs and chickens for today’s orders.  Most of the time she cooks breakfast while I’m in the shower though today she didn’t.  We pray and kiss then she sends me into the cold, cruel world.  Off I go, to be the family breadwinner.  Making money in the city, working hard for my family.

Cows

Somehow, while I’m gone the cows get milked, the pigs, chickens, ducks, goats and rabbits get fed and watered (not an easy feat when the high temperature is below freezing).  The kids are dressed, fed and educated.  Phones get answered, letters and packages get sent, dishes get washed, laundry gets folded, blog posts get written, eggs get collected and supper lands on the table just in time.

During growing season I’m normally outside for a couple of hours before work and a couple of hours after the kids go to bed.  There is just a lot of work to do.  This time of year, on weeknights I try to chill out making the most of my study time.

Who does the heavy lifting on the farm in the winter?

Not me.  Summer may be a different story but my wife shoulders the burden all winter.  This is no knock against my children who also help make things go around here but if not for my wife there would be no farm…just land and a house.

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Fence v. Winter Storm

What a mess.  What a total mess.  Cows out of their designated grazing area!  Fence isn’t shocking!  Nothing works and it’s near absolute zero after factoring the wind chill!  Thursday we had a winter storm blow through.  It began with a thunderstorm and 30 mph winds and sideways rain.  Lots of rain.  When I got in my car at 6:30 am to drive to work it was 54 degrees outside.  When I got to work at 8 it was 34 degrees outside and the wind had picked up to 50 mph.  Then it started snowing.  When I drove home in the late afternoon I followed a semi pulling a trailer.  The trailer was being blown by the wind and wagged behind the truck like a dog’s tail.

We didn’t bother bringing the cows in.  They know where the barn is.  They had been in the barn recently but they know better than I do where they are most comfortable during a storm.  They found a sheltered place down in a valley and hunkered down for the night.  We put a few obstacles out by the layers to give them some relief from the wind and noticed several chicken tractor lids had taken flight and nearly landed in the pond.  Goats were warm, pigs got a whole new bale of straw, ducks were just ducky so we told the kids to sleep downstairs by the wood stove, built up a big fire and went to bed early…praying that the power would stay on all night but ready if it did not.

The power stayed on but the cows got out just the same.  At milking time we brought the cows up to the barn to milk.  They were feeling ornery and walked the long way around.  Cows!  Once up, it was time to start looking at the fence.  The charger was ticking but not lighting up.  It was shorting out somewhere.  That’s the worst.

The place to start is to turn off half of the fence.  Part of my fence is pretty OK.  The other part is…well…servicable.  All of it is legacy fence, built by grandpa’s hired men or cousins of mine over the last 40 or 50 years.  I trust the newer part…mostly.  So I cut the switch.

FenceBlues6

As expected, this made no difference to the fencer so I knew which way to begin the long march around the combine shed, through the iron pile and back around the house.  Then I found it.

FenceBlues1

The fence was touching an iron corner brace.  This is one of the wonders of fences built by hired help.  Oh well.  New fences are in the works anyway.  I separated the wire from the pipe and continued my inspection.

FenceBlues2

Not too much fence to walk between break points.  Then I had to walk the strands of fence we use for the cows current pasture, checking at each rebar post to make sure the wire wasn’t touching a post.

Rebar Posts

There were a few problems to work out along the fence until the end.  At the end, the spools were supported by another rebar post but the wind, rain and gravity had knocked that post over.  I cheated by hanging the spools off of the perimeter fence.

FenceBlues4

Well, that’s what it looked like later.  I didn’t realize I created a new short on my own.  Nothing worse than fixing one short and creating another.  Had to walk back out to fix it.  That’s what I get for taking a shortcut early in the morning in the cold wind.

FenceBlues5

Back up to the fence charger and it was at full charge.

FenceBlues7

Now, I don’t want to pretend it was all work and I don’t want to say I was all alone out there.  I had help.  But what is the fun of having your own cemetery hill if you can’t sled on it?

Sledding2

So I made a few trips down myself.  The railed sled has carried me downhill for 30 years that I remember.  Dad would carry it up the hills because I just wasn’t strong enough when I was little.  That sucker gets heavy after a few trips.  Now I carry it up the hill for my kids.  Good times.

Sledding1

The storm made a lot of work for us today but it also gave us a chance to play before breakfast.  Hope the storm gave you something fun too.

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Chestnuts Roasting in a Closed Oven

I had never eaten a chestnut.  Until today, I wasn’t entirely sure what a chestnut was.  I even ordered 25 trees from a supplier in Florida that will arrive spring of 2013.  No idea.  Just doing what I thought sounded like a good idea.  Get some trees in the ground.  Grow lumber for future generations.  Harvest nuts.  Go.

We were picking up apples at Eileen’s  house on Sunday and I noticed what I assumed were buckeyes.  I asked the kids to leave them lay because I don’t want buckeye trees on the farm.  They are toxic to cows and horses, useless for lumber and are not welcome here.  Anyway, I did little more than glance at them and focused, instead, on apples.

But they weren’t buckeyes.  They were chestnuts.  I think they are Chinese chestnuts.  I realized my mistake today and drove back to pick them up after work.  In the cold.  In the wind.  Thankfully, not in the rain.  A cold front came through and dropped the temperature about 20 degrees in 10 minutes.  I didn’t have a jacket with me.  Remember to wear gloves next time you pick up chestnuts, OK?

We roasted a handful in the oven and, true to the description, they are like eating a slightly sweet, nutty potato.  Maybe I’m missing something.  Where is the wonder and majesty?  Maybe in the 68 years since Mel Torme wrote The Christmas Song chestnuts have changed.  Maybe we have more sweets in our diet now.  I dunno.  Though I plan to roast some at Christmas, the jury is still out on the whole chestnut experiment.  However, we’re going to plant some, we have trees coming in the mail and we’ll figure something out.

Now, I want to say a word about Eileen.  When I was younger (maybe just young) I hauled manure from Barney’s for Eileen’s asparagus (Barney deserves a blog of his own), I rebuilt her wooden swing that her cousin had made for her but the tornado threw into the ditch (Babe deserves a blog post) and I helped her pick veggies, cleaned up her fallen limbs and ate lots of her cookies.  She gave me a couple of her deceased husband’s ties.  Years later I did some really stupid stuff and hit a particularly low point in life.  Eileen made it a point to tell me in front of a large group that, to her, I was still as good as gold.  Eileen means a lot to me.

I think it’s great that, though Eileen is now in a nursing home, I am still welcome at her house.  It may not always be that way but, though she has no idea I was there to get apples and chestnuts, I know that I have her blessing even if it comes by proxy through her son.  Thanks Larry.

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Apple Picking…up

We were invited to pick apples at a friend’s house.  Well, we were invited to pick up apples at a friends house.  Their trees had a bumper crop of silver dollar sized apples this year and during a recent wind storm many of them fell to the ground.  He invited us out to clean them up because he was overwhelmed by the crop.

We had two hours between morning chores and lunch for three adults and six children (sister and nephews were visiting) to pick up the apples.  It was just enough time to clean up under one tree.

That one tree gave us five large tubs of apples and six feed sacks full of spoiled apples for the pigs and still left several bushels hanging from the tree.

Lunch was at my mother’s followed by a birthday party for our oldest son at our house.  Then we began cooking the first batch of applesauce.  Not time to loaf.  We work in this army.  We’ll be cooking apples for days.

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A Beautiful March Day in October

It’s March.  Well, it’s not but it feels like March…but different.  The weather is right.  We got an inch of rain last night.  The wind is blowing endlessly and I’m in the garden.  March.  But instead of planting potatoes, I’m harvesting the remaining tomatoes and peppers.  I’m cutting up the plants to allow them to compost in a windrow in the garden under (you guessed it!) horse manure.  I’ll haul the horse manure once the row is out.

We’re getting an incredible harvest of green tomatoes but the summer garden is at an end.

The fall garden is getting a good head of steam.  Carrots are doing well.

Spinach is finally starting to come out.  I have the hardest time with spinach.  No idea why.

Radishes are coming out.

Lots of things happening in the garden.  Out of the garden too.  Our last chicken butcher date is this weekend.  I think we’re all ready for it.  Place your order soon.

 

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Welcome to Fall

We nearly missed last Winter.  Spring was short.  Summer came early and now Fall is asserting itself before I am ready.

Fortunately the garden was untouched.  Normally we are frost-free for another three weeks.  I’m not even sure this is the first frost, just the first one I noticed.

I don’t think this is a good sign.  Could be a long, cold winter.  Not good for the bees.  The next few days are calling for warmer weather but no real sign of an indian summer.  I don’t think there was frost on the clover where the cows are grazing right now.  I’ll have to keep an eye on them.

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Misleading Averages

Averages are just average.  No real magic here.  Averages are descriptive, not predictive, and macro, not micro.  Take enough years worth of weather information and you’ll see a picture of “normal” with the understanding that in any given year there is no normal.  Graph the data, zoom out and it all looks normal.  The bumps along the way smooth out.  The trend appears.  The lie appears.  Those bumps along the way when you’re in your pasture trying to keep livestock alive when it’s 114 and hasn’t rained in weeks?  Those are part of the normal.  But the average rounds them down.

Averages lie.  I enjoyed reading Walt Davis’ book How to Not Go Broke Ranching.  In that he jokes that his part of the world gets an average of 30″ of rainfall but in reality he gets 90″ one year and nothing for another two.

On average we get 3 inches of rain in August.  We got closer to 9 last month (4.5 in 2 hours on Aug. 2nd) with more coming today.  The ponds are full, the creeks are swollen, my gutters runneth over.  Where was this rain in July?

But it will add to the new average.  On average we get 32″ of rain each year.  Sometimes we get more than we can swallow, sometimes we’re in drought.  Heck, last year we went 5 months without rain.  That’s normal.  But the average dictates we SHOULD get about 3″ each month.

I need to find ways to store more water…to sponge it up, to hold it back and to deliver it where it is needed the most.  That way I can survive the normal drought and hold back the normal flood.

There are all kinds of ways to do this.  Keep up with us as we explore our options over the next few decades.

If you don’t find this an interesting problem to solve I would invite you not to become a farmer.  Maybe you should get a nice place on the edge of town.  Maybe get a big lawn mower and a couple of fruit trees and deck/patio surrounding a pool and invite your farmer to come for a swim on a hot day.

I’m in a hurry to get started this morning before the rain returns.  I need to move chickens, pigs and goats then lay out a few more paddocks for the cows so I’ll try to update this with some interesting pictures later when it starts raining.  No promises though.