Farm Update ~spring 2016

Recently I heard a song, Fall Away,  which made an impression on me.  These are some of the words: "...when you're happy the years fall away, but when you're blue, days go by 'a draggin..."  I must be terribly happy; this year is rapidly falling away!

Our winter was not so cold this year and we both made it through with not so much as a cold.  I had dreaded my "new" job,

thinking I would have to stand out in the snow and ice when I waited at the gate while the farmer put out hay for the cows.  But I had a heated side-by-side to sit in while I waited, and we had no snow anyway.

Now we're a month into spring; the early garden seeds have been planted, irises, foxglove, daisies, and columbine are in bloom;  the third flock of chickens for the new year have been started.  We've sent calves to market and vaccinated cows and small calves.

There was a rash of cattle rustling in our county during the winter, which made all the farmers around us watchful and uneasy.   The farmer decided to use branding on the cattle as a means of identification.   (I hate having to be a part of this.)

There are a lot of new baby calves.

I try to spend an hour or two in the afternoons to work on the quilting project, until I hear the farmer's footsteps coming down the hallway, and he asks me if I'd "like" to do this or that. lol  I'm on the 9th row of twelve rows.

 

"When you're happy, the years just fall away."

Drab

seems to be the perfect descriptive word for the month of February and the beginning of March.  Can't even see the mountains (this is just a hill) and I think I've only seen the moon two times since the new moon.  We've had a little snow, enough to make the ground a sloppy mess to trek through while doing the feeding.  But, we've lived with it, knowing full well that it won't be long until we're wishing for rain and cool summer breezes.  "Que sera, sera!"

The Farmer had asked for extra time out before getting chickens again, to give his leg time to recover.  (By the way, it's o.k. now.)  I think "they" gave us two or three extra days, just long enough to make me want to retire, so yesterday we filled the houses again.  (You're saying, "Oh no! not another picture of chickens!")

There were twins this week; what a cold, cold time for babies.  I don't see how people can raise cattle in the northern states where it is so much colder.  We have them in the barn with their mother.  (Terrible picture of them :(; too dark inside the barn)

This morning the Farmer sent off a load of hay that was purchased last summer but only now being picked up; sometimes we wonder if we should have kept it since this winter more hay has been needed.  This load went up the mountain in all this fog.

So, there you have it: my life these days.  There have been some quilting projects tucked into a few hours most days that I want to tell you about; a wonderful Christmas surprise gift and a fun tradition my girls and I have going; some crochet work ~ just give me a few days to catch up.  Writing a blog post takes up so much time because I sit and wait and wait for the pictures to load. 

Until next time, be happy!

Charlotte

BOO !!!

A Halloween pepper from the garden!  Isn't he perfectly suited for this day!

A frost is supposed to happen tonight, so yesterday I gathered what I could from the garden: okra, green sweet peppers, peas and green tomatoes.  I'll pick the ripe tomatoes today.  The green tomatoes were wrapped in tissue paper and put in a cool place to ripen; hopefully they will be ready for Thanksgiving or maybe even Christmas.  The ripe tomatoes will be put in the crisper and some will be given away.  It was a wonderful year for our small garden and this momma squirrel put a lot of the crop into the freezer.

An update on the baby calf:  she died last night.  Her wounds were just too deep.  The Farmer has gone to bury her this morning.  I will miss her feeding times, and the nuzzling at my hands and shirt tail.  So, I did a final washing of the bottle and put it away and put the rest of her powdered milk replacement in the freezer, ready for the next little calf in need.

Of course that is the emotional side; there's also a financial side.  Cattle prices are at an all time high now; the Farmer estimates a calf her size would probably bring $500-$600 dollars at market.  Then there is the cost of $26.95 per ten pound bag of formula and I've lost count of the number of bags I've fed.  My time of feeding her three times a day at the beginning and then twice daily for two-three months was free.

The dogs are still free to roam.  The Farmer doesn't like to confront someone over such an issue; besides, as the old saying goes, "you can't get blood from a turnip".  I don't want to see it happen again!  Sometimes one just wants to use the words of the Lord: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay."  I don't think it's over yet...

Charlotte

A Delayed Hope Chest Addition

I'm afraid there's no finished item for the October addition to the hope chest.  But in between big chickens going out and getting baby chickens back in, freezing wonderful garden veggies, selling calves and wrapping up the last of the hay season, I do have something started:

paper pieced string blocks for a quilt.  Their finished size will be 4 1/2 inches, and I have estimated that I will need at least 300 of them to make a big quilt; I have 90 made.  When the chance to work on them happens, I try to piece 10 at a time, keeping them in numbered groups of ten so I'll know when I reach that goal of 300 (or more).

So, if they never get put together into a quilt by me, maybe the person who gets them will have the joy of finishing it or can give the blocks away.  It seems no matter how many strings I use, the pile never shrinks.

This morning came with a beautiful red sunrise.  The whole area was clothed in red.  We were up early to load the calves for market.

This afternoon I'm very, very sad, and SO angry!   Remember the baby calf I was feeding on the bottle?  She was growing, very healthy, and eating sweet feed and hay.  Right before noon, the neighbor's two big dogs attacked her; she was in a pen beside the barn eating grass.  The farmer saw them and ran them off, so there's no denying whose dogs they were.  Good thing the only weapon he had with him was a rock!  I took pictures, which I won't show here, but it's bad.  I know she must be in a lot of pain from the gashes.  Hopefully she will recover. 

I'll try to do better for the month of November; the weeks go by so quickly ----

Charlotte

Farm Life ~ August

This has been a busy week here on the farm.  We've baled hay, 100 plus big round bales on Monday,

 and then on Tuesday we hauled the bales.

Wednesday we got the chicken houses ready for baby chicks.  My job was putting together the cardboard feed trays which are about 3' x 4' in size.

Thursday morning we ran feed into the boxes, drained water lines to flush out air, and triggered the nipple drinkers.  A lot of the nipples were stuck so the chicks wouldn't be able to get water from them.  Then after lunch the chicks came, 67,200 of these little yellow balls of fluff:

So my two weeks off from chicken work is over.  I've been working on the August and September additions to the hope chest ~ and ~ there is a new chore:  

She's twelve days old now and I feed her three times a day.

Her mother was a young heifer (a teenage mother :) who had nothing to do with her from the very beginning.  The calf took the bottle the  first time it was offered to her and is doing so good on the milk replacement I feed to her.  When the milk is all gone she wants to keep sucking; she needs a pacifier! :)

My sweet kitty came to get acquainted.

Now I'll settle back into the routine of being a farmer with a little time snatched now and then to put needle and thread to fabric.

Charlotte

Farm Updates

The past week was a very busy time for us here on the farm.

First, we cleaned out a house we rent out.  You never know how renters are going to take care of a place until it's too late.  These people trashed the place so badly that the farmer finally asked them to move out; since the house is on one of our properties it made the whole place look bad.  It took about six weeks for them to move, without paying rent, and they left the house filled with stuff!  Honestly, I don't know what they took with them to wear, for it seemed most was left in garbage bags or on the floor.

The little calf, Spittin' Image, has been very sick, almost to the point of death.  One afternoon I noticed his mama bawling for him and when we found him we knew he was sick.  The farmer gave him an antibiotic shot and the next morning he was so weak he could barely stand.  When he tried to walk he wobbled.  Young calves often take what we call "scours" and will soon dehydrate.  So we're always prepared to give them an oral hydration, electrolyte solution, (which is mostly a mixture of glucose, sodium chloride, and potassium), using a bottle with a long tube which is put down their throats to insure it gets to the stomach.  This takes a little skill to do; the tube shouldn't go down the windpipe!  He was given the treatment three times and responded well; yesterday I saw him run just a little and he's taking milk from his mama again, so maybe he'll be o.k.

Two days were spent getting the plumbing work done.  The drain pipes to the kitchen and laundry room were almost totally plugged after almost 46 years of use.  In the days when this house was built, l968, drain lines were cast iron and after time the insides rust and stuff starts to build up on that rust until they become plugged.  Now I can use my dishwasher again!  I did hate to see holes cut in my wallpaper though.

The last three days of the week were spent in the hay fields, baling, hauling, and wrapping; some of these days ran as late as "dark-thirty" before we were finished.

The last picture shows the damage wild hogs can do overnight in the fields.  Of course this is only one spot out of many over the field.

 So, yesterday morning, at church, when people asked, "How are you?", I replied, "I'm very, very tired."

Charlotte

Around here we have the expressions, "like two peas in a pod", "like mother, like daughter", and "the spittin' image".  Since I haven't checked to see what gender the calf is, I'll just stick with "the spittin' image" because they have the same facial markings.

I'm claiming this calf as my own, because I think I saved its life.  I found it, soon after it was born, with its neck and head twisted backward and upside down, with a front leg lying over them.  I quickly moved the leg, turned the head over, and after seeing that it was breathing, left it for its mama to finish the bonding process of licking it off.  The calf's tongue was swollen, indicating it had been a prolonged birthing process.  In a few hours it was up, getting its first warm milk.

Now for a kitten update:

They're still with me, growing and playing with one another.

The white ones are females and the black one is a male.  Kitty love ~~~

Have a good day,

Charlotte

Finding Ways to Feed in This Drought

Some of you may be tired of reading about the drought we're having this summer, and unless you've lived it, I know it's difficult for you to understand just how serious this situation is for farmers, ranchers, and grain producers.  Our cattle have had almost no green grass to eat since early spring, and we've only had one cutting of hay, whereas we usually cut at least three times.  With no grass for them to eat, means we've had to feed hay all summer, and the supply meant for winter keeps going down.  Sometimes I go to bed in the evening, and get up in the morning, almost in a panic, wondering how we will make it through the winter.  Not just the thought that there might not be enough for them to eat, but also all the extra work and stress it will mean for us, two older people.

But we're not in this alone; our neighbors are facing the same problems.  If you see the dark red spot in the middle of the country, indicating severe dry conditions, that's us.  So, we're trying to find a way to make the hay go farther to feed now and in the winter to come, and it ain't cheap!!

We bought a grinder-mixer to make a feed for the cattle.  Then we bought eleven bags of various ground grains to mix with the hay.

The hay is put into the grinder,

the grains added and mixed,

then it's augured out into troughs.

This was all done before noon while the cows were still in the shade.  By the middle of the afternoon they had found their new feed, and some were eating while others were going back to the shade; after all, it's been up to l04* today.   Next problem: drinking water shortages.

During all this summer I kept remembering the old bumper stickers which read,

"Don't cuss the farmer with you mouth full."  We'll all be seeing higher prices on food products, but rest assured the person working the fields and the farmer and rancher aren't the ones taking in the extra profits.

Charlotte

Dry Weather Continues

Three weeks ago I wrote about the dry weather we're having this year, on the heels of a hot, dry summer last year.  We had a very mild winter, and warm weather came earlier this spring than usual.  Since March, we have had only 1/2 inch of measurable rainfall and now we're in a serious drought condition.  These two pictures show the toll it has taken on my flowers.  I'm not sure how many will survive; a lot of them are daylilies and irises so maybe their underground corms and bulbs will come again.  Even the things I have in containers on the porch are having a difficult time with the heat; Monday the temperature on the porch reached 113* in the shade!

The vegetable garden never got a start really; I did have a few little potatoes and tomatoes until grasshoppers invaded.  They thrive in dry weather!

But flowers and vegetables are not our number one worry, for they can be replaced.  The cattle are our main concern now.  They're used to having green grass in the spring and summer, and this year the grass didn't have time to come back from winter.  We have been feeding hay, put up for next winter, for several weeks and every day the row of bales grows shorter; how do we feed all of them come cold weather?  Even if there was grass enough to cut for hay, there is such a great fire danger that we don't dare take the equipment out and take a chance of the tines on the baler or rake striking a rock and making a spark to catch the grass on fire.

So we have started feeding grain to the cattle along with the hay.  They come running

and wait at the gate

while Popa puts feed in the troughs.

It's much too dangerous to be inside the corral with the hungry cattle, so he opens the gate from one side, climbs up on the fence and they rush in, stirring up a terrible dust cloud.  I can only hold my breath until the wind carries the dust away; the wind?  oh yes, it blows every day, pushing the dust up into our noses and  driving it into every crack and crevice of the house.

The calves don't have much chance to get to the feed, so Popa is bringing in more troughs.

Hope for rain is dwindling; I find myself praying less for rain and my conscience nags at me about that.  It's so sad to think about having to sell some of the cows just to have enough to feed the others.  How does one pick the cows that go?  How do you put Sulky, or number 748, or others on a trailer and send them off to market?  These have become our life.

Charlotte

This is only one herd of three that we have.  These are on a hillside pasture and the grass is eaten down to the roots.  The others still have a little bit of dry grass to eat on. The pond is so low there is a ring of dry dirt in the middle, and the creeks only have pools of water in them.

And So the Tale Continues

Spring ~ once again the little weeds bloom and fill the yard with their beauty. The grasses begin to grow in the pastures and new baby calves come often, sometimes with unexpected tales.

About three weeks ago, Popa brought home a baby calf that couldn't suck (pardon that expression if you think it's uncouth, but it's a farmer's way of saying "nurse"). We have tried all this time to no avail, and she's been kept alive by tube feeding. We moved her to the barn and didn't give her much chance of making it.

Last Saturday we had a cow who got out into the neighbor's field and after we got her inside the corral, Popa said to leave her in there, hoping she would forget where she got out in the first place. Sunday morning, rain was falling steadily, and when he went to turn her out, she was standing at the fence, bawling, and just outside the fence was a baby calf. His conclusion: she had given birth and the calf had slid under the gate. He opened the gate to let her out ~ she ran in one direction and the calf in another direction. He caught up with the calf and put a tag in its ear; then it ran to the other cattle that were eating hay on the back forty. No cow seemed interested in the calf and it took off down the fence. Popa told me we'd probably never see it again, but at the afternoon feeding we put the cow back in the corral; I hunted the woods and found the calf hiding in a brush pile. Popa held it in the back of the RTV and I drove to the barn to reunite mother and son. The calf was hungry, but the cow didn't want him near her, so we put her in the head gate and helped the calf find where to suck. For two days the cow kicked at the calf but finally gave in and accepted him. Keep in mind the problem calf was just on the other side of the gate from them.

Now here's where the tale continues: Yesterday afternoon I went to feed the cow; neither she nor the calf were outside the barn waiting for me. I looked inside and there were two calves with the cow. My first thought ~ how did "problem calf" get in with the cow? I looked on her side of the gate and she was where she belonged. Next thought ~ the cow had another calf three days after the first one. Actual fact ~ the cow had a new baby of her own; the other one wasn't hers in the first place!

So with no other cow ever claiming him, I have another baby to feed; he took to the bottle quickly. And the problem calf is learning to drink her milk from a Cool Whip bowl and she sucks just a little now...

and so the tale continues...

Charlotte

Farm Wife ~~ Monday

These are the little twins; I've named them Pete and Repeat since they look so much alike. They've been turned out into the pasture with their mother and try to eat from the big troughs with the other heifers.

It's snowing here this morning; the cows have gathered over close to the fence row that is lined with cedars, waiting for their hay. I think snow is pretty, and I like to see it falling, but I do always feel sorry for the livestock. I just had to get out in it for a while to feed the cats at the barn and look things over. So far it hasn't been cold enough for the ponds to freeze over.

Now I'm going to quilt; maybe in a few days I'll have something to show for my time. Hope you're having a good winter day.

Charlotte

Farm Wife ~~ Twins

We had another set of twin calves last week; Angus heifers. This time the cow took both, but we brought them home to the barn to make sure they kept up with her the first days of their lives and she can be fed grain to help her give more milk. The picture makes one look larger than the other, but actually they are about the same.

A few days from now I plan to start making grain available to them. It's sweet how close they stay together.

To Market, To Market

The truck rolled onto the farm this morning before daylight to pick up our calves to take to market.

We took out a few replacement heifers and left these to sell. Clouds began rolling in before we finished sorting and feeding them, and rain fell during the night. There's always a sense of pride in sending off good calves, but a little sadness too. Mead, my bottle calf, got to stay here this time; before he goes I'll have a talk with him about greener pastures, but leave out the part about the future. sniff, sniff, Charlotte