Before & After

Before last week's tree work


and after


The neighbor that farms the ground around us should be happy that our trees won't be stunting his crop growth anymore.

What's In Your Butter Dish?

Yeast
Flower bulbs
Ivomec (for the pigs)
Tetanus vaccine (also for the pigs)

Visitor

I had a visitor at the farm this afternoon! Lisa of Gracious Acres fame was in town for lunch with a friend, and then popped out to see me. Matt calls her my twin, because when we met only a couple of months ago we just instantly "clicked". I would call us kindred spirits. I wish we lived just across the section, instead of across a few counties. We share a passion for sustainable agriculture, and for old houses, and for things crafty.

As she was about to leave she asked, "Can I see your chickens?" I love that. Had to get her chicken fix. (Of course I happily obliged. Even I can use a chicken fix in the middle of the afternoon.) I love that she doesn't give a second thought to getting her shoes muddy (or worse!) traipsing around out here.

Partridge Cochins

What's Going On

I've been an absentee blogger lately, haven't I? I don't think I can say it's because there's nothing going on. There must be something going on that causes me to be just plain too tired to type in the evenings. And we've been watching Olympic ice skating late into the night this week.

Matt had President's Day off, and accomplished a couple of things. He paid a visit to both the Osage and Little Cedar elevators, and talked to them about feed requirements for Niman Ranch pork producers. Our elevator doesn't have any Niman Ranch producers yet, but they seem very willing to work with us. That was nice to hear. Sometimes I wonder if they think we're too small to be worth messing with. The other elevator he visited already has about 8 Niman Ranch producers, so they know exactly what we'd need. So one way or the other we'd be able to meet the feed requirements.

We're meeting with a Niman Ranch field agent in a couple weeks, exploring the program as another market for our pigs. We really like raising the pigs and would like to raise more. We still want to direct market as many as we can, but Niman might be a good market to have available to us.

He also separated Winston and Sara and got Sara's shed set up for her to farrow in a couple weeks. But Winston keeps taking out the fence between them, so tonight's project is to move him somewhere a little further away.

Now that the taxes are in the hands of our lawyer, we've been crunching more numbers. Profit & Loss analysis on each "product" from the farm, projected budgets and cash flows for 2006, and reviewing & updating the business plan we wrote last year.

Another week or two and I'll succumb to starting seeds in the basement.

I'm not very good about coming back and answering questions in the comments, so I'll just answer a couple here.

Pablo asked if the trees we've taken out of the yard will be firewood for us. Mostly, no. We don't have a woodburner, but it's on the "want list" now that the kids are a little older. We kept a little to burn in our outdoor fire pit next summer, and gave the rest to our neighbor who has three woodburners in his house.

Wildrose asked what kind of chicks we buy. Our meat birds are Cornish Cross Broilers from Hoovers Hatchery in Rudd. We've toyed with the idea of raising something that's slower growing, less hybridized, more of a heritage breed. We might try a few someday, but not this year. These meaty, double-breasted birds are what people are used to and they sell well. I order all cockerels because, well, I'm a computer programmer. I like an orderly, uniform product ;)

I've been waffling about starting some more pullets. I've been easily selling all the extra eggs I've had this winter, and I think I could sell more if I had them. I'm not sure if that will hold out come summer when they're (hopefully) laying twice as many eggs. But egg sales don't begin to pay for the feed. I'd need to charge $2-$3 a dozen for that, and nobody around here is going to pay that for them when you've got other people around here keeping a few chickens for themselves and selling their extras for 75 cents a dozen.

I'll leave you with a teaser...I've asked Matt to write the next installment of Our Farming Heritage about his foster parents. Their story has always fascinated me, and it will be good to have it recorded for our own kids. It's turning into a multi-part series, so stay tuned for that.

Photo Friday : Baby

Got my chick orders in to Hoovers Hatchery this week. I'll be getting a box just like this on April 13th, and again on August 10th!

Submit your Photo Friday entry!

Sculpture

Bone from a composted cow has worked its way out of the
chip pile and makes a sort of sculpture in the snow.

Timber!

What a way to spend your 38th birthday, eh?

Big Boy Toys

Our good friend Rod recently bought a Boomer, and then a grappling bucket. So this weekend he brought his tractor over to "play" with Matt's tractor, and in the process they fell a whole lotta trees and a bunch of brush. They took 5 large, old diseased trees out of our yard, and thinned our grove along the east and south sides.

This is Saturday's pile:


Today's pile was probably twice this size. I couldn't believe they got all of this done in about 10 hours.

Now that Matt's seen the grappling bucket in action, he thinks he needs one. Even I have to admit it was really cool how Rod could just pick up everything from the largest tree trunk to the small scrubby stuff.



And then he could rake things into piles, too.



My job was simply to keep the food, pie, and hot coffee coming.

A Day In the Life

As a scrapbooker I love to document the day-to-day living we do around here. Of course I also document the events of life - birthdays, first day of school, lost teeth - but it's the "everyday" that we tend to forget about. Our daily routines evolve, almost imperceptibly, but still feel like the same old thing we've always done.

I was remembering something from when the girls were little that we don't do anymore, and I can't remember when we stopped doing it. Every night after supper they would lay themselves over Matt's lap for a "spanking". He'd lay one hand palm up on their behind, and "spank" with his other hand. His two hands smacking together made an impressive spanking sound effect, and of course he added the vocal sound effects to make it sound like he was whupping the tar out of them. The girls, of course, would just giggle and giggle. [And I would pray that they never went to school and said, "My daddy spanks me every night!"]

Yesterday I was cleaning up computer files and found a journal entry from about a year ago that documented an ordinary Tuesday around here. And already there a little things that are different this year, for example Rafe finally got his own room and goes to bed much earlier. And yet it all seems pretty much the same.

So here's what I wrote about a day in our life a year ago:

When you’re raising three kids, working full-time, and farming – all at the same time – no day is typical or average. But here’s a snapshot of Tuesday, January 18, 2005:

6:15 a.m. – The alarm goes off the first time. I get out of bed, walk across the room, hit the snooze, and jump back in bed under the covers QUICKLY because it’s freezing in here. Rafe, who’s crib is still in our room, sleeps through.

6:23 a.m. – Repeat

6:31 a.m. – Repeat

6:39 a.m. – Repeat, except shut the thing off this time

6:52 a.m. – The girls’ alarm clock goes off. Madeline gets up and shuts it off, they both go downstairs to get dressed.

6:55 a.m. – I finally get up and go downstairs. Madeline asks what took me so long. I say, “I was tired and it was cold and I didn’t want to get up.” She replies (with good-natured chastisement in her voice), “Well none of us want to get up!”.

I shower. The girls eat breakfast, get ready for school, get Rafe his breakfast once he gets up, and unload the dishwasher. I get Rafe dressed and ready to go. I make the girls watch for the bus from inside the house because it is so cold out. Madeline doesn’t like that because she worries they’ll miss the bus.

8:00 a.m. – The bus comes for the girls and I drive Rafe to his babysitter's house.

8:15 a.m. – I’m back at home, and decide I ought to bring the injured hen into the house. A cow stepped on her a week ago, while Matt was loading Aggie up to take to the butcher. She doesn’t seem to be getting better, or worse. I get the pet carrier out of the basement and head out to the corncrib. The other hens are mad that I don’t feed them while I’m out there, but they’ve still got some feed in one trough. They’ll be fine until I go back out at noon. Winston and Sarah come running out as I walk by, looking for treats.

8:20 a.m. – Darn, I forgot to bring any chicken feed back to the house with me. Bundle up again and go back out to the corncrib.

8:50 a.m. – I finally get upstairs to my office with my bowl of oatmeal. I read emails, call Tracfone customer service, and do my source update.

9:30 a.m. – I hear the UPS truck pull in – yeah! My scrapbooking books are here from Creating Keepsakes. I treated myself to 3 new books with my birthday and Christmas money (and a little extra thrown in).

Then it’s back to work.

Noon – Matt comes home and we have lunch (leftovers). Then I run a pail of warm water, bundle up, and head out to do chicken chores. I unplugged their light because they’re laying plenty of eggs and I can’t get rid of what I’ve got. I think that made them lay later this morning, because out of 17 eggs only 1 was cracked from the cold. I get them washed and stored, reboot the laundry, and back to work.

3:30 p.m. – The girls get home from school and get ready for dance.

4:45 p.m. – We leave for dance. A few drops of sleet hit the car, but they quit right away. Nothing to worry about.

5:30 p.m. – We’ve not been at dance 15 minutes and Mrs. H gets a call from a friend that her car is completely iced over. Great. This is the third week in a row that we’ve had to drive home in crappy weather.

6:15 p.m. – Olivia’s class is over, and we go to Theisen’s while Madeline dances. Pick up a bag of layer feed and some bedding for the chickens, then we head to Hy-Vee for groceries.

7:15 p.m. – Pick up Madeline and head for home. Have to drive 35 mph all the way.

8:05 p.m. – Finally get home. Make girls unload the groceries by themselves, for being so loud and wild in the car on the way home. Warm up scalloped potatoes and ham for supper.

8:30 p.m. – Rafe runs into the kitchen and says, “I not tired.” I am.

9:00 p.m. – Girls head upstairs to bed.

9:30 p.m. – Rafe finally finishes putting his toys away and I take him up to bed. I should get the house picked up and the groceries put away, but I’m too exhausted. I settle into Matt’s chair to read my new scrapbooking books. He lies on the couch and watches “The Mummy”.

11:40 p.m. – Lights out, T.V. off. Finally.

In case you were wondering...

I'm sure you've been checking this blog daily, nay, hourly for a report on who guessed the hogs' hanging weight correctly.

I'm happy to say, I won!

Hanging weight averaged 68%. I had guessed 65-68%, Matt guessed 70-73%.

Who's your farmer, baby!

Barn Fire

The barn that was on this farm was old, older than the house, I think. The house was built somewhere between 1875 and 1900, depending on who you ask, but a log house stood somewhere on the farm before that. I know the log house was started in 1851, and I would think the barn came sometime between then and 1875.

It was a bank barn, meaning that one end was built into the side of a hill so the second story at that end was at ground level. At the other end the first story was at ground level.

We've been told that this farm was a stagecoach stop. I've not found any documented proof of that, although history books do mention that the farm did have travellers stop to drink from the spring (which has since disappeared). But the structure of the barn would seem to support the theory, with wide stalls big enough to store carriages in at the bottom level.

Matt told me not to go poking around in the barn, because it was downright dangerous and unstable. But one day the wind had blown a door open and I spied an old wooden ladder inside. I asked him to retrieve it for me, and he did, but not without comments like, "What do you want this old thing for?! It's covered in pigeon poop!" I cleaned it up and now it's in our living room displaying quilts made by my grandma and great-grandma, and his foster mom. I'm sure glad I have it now.

On August 22, 2000 I was working in my office upstairs when one of those summer afternoon thunderstorms rolled through. There was a deafening crack of lightning, which killed my computer, and shortly everything cleared off and the sun was out again.

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. In that understated way people in rural Iowa have, the guy at the door asked, "Did ya know your barn's on fire?"

The fire department was called, not in the hopes of saving it, but simply to control the burn. Its dry wood and old hay went quick.

12:26 p.m.


12:34 p.m.


12:41 p.m.


7:13 p.m.

Friday Funny

Not much going on around here this week. Winter has returned as we dip back down to high temps in the low to mid 30's.

At the PFI conference last month I attended a session on financials given by Mike Hansen of Good Earth Farms in Wisconsin. His business does lots and lots of mail order shipment of chicken, turkey, beef, pork and lamb. It's what inspired me to start looking into doing some of that ourselves.

So for your Friday Funny, go over to his website and check out the picture on this page.

Yes, those are real live chickens spelling out the words "Eat Beef" with a big arrow pointing to the innocent-looking herd of Belted Galloways.

Now that's putting the fun in farming!