So last night it was getting a little foggy outside before we went to bed, but when we woke up this morning we couldn’t see anything! And we live on top of a hill! I can only imagine how bad it was for everyone driving to work early this morning in our area! Luckily by the time we headed out, the visibility was getting a little better, but as I drove into town, I really couldn’t “see” the town.
I heard there is a saying that the first blizzard of the year happens 100 days after the first fog in the fall. So according to one of my Facebook friends that would mean that we should be getting a blizzard on December 28th! So we’ll have to see if that is true!
Anyways, I promised a crop/farm update last Friday, but time got away from me. So I snapped a few pictures on the way to drop HD off at daycare this morning. The fog doesn’t look near as bad in the pictures as it was in real life.
The cows are still out on pasture, but either today or tomorrow the calves will be weened from their mommas. Kevin will bring the calves up to the corrals behind our house where we will start feeding them a receiving ration. This helps ease them into a grain ration since they will no longer be getting any milk from their mommas.
Once the calves are weened and brought to our place, the mommas will (hopefully) stay about a half mile down the road at the “North Place.” Now that we have better fences, the calves and mommas should stay where they are suppose to! I remember a few years ago every time we weened the calves, we were always running around putting them back in. That’s not easy to do at night when it’s pitch black out and we have black cows and calves!
Then on Wednesday morning the vets will be coming to give the calves vaccination shots and castrate the bull calves. Kevin says that we will only be keeping a couple calves as bulls and the others will become a steer (a castrated bull). I will not be home that day, so there will be no pictures of this process. Sorry!
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| Cows on pasture grass |
The crops are really starting to turn to that golden color around here. In fact some of our neighbors were harvesting high moisture corn last week. They do that so they have feed for their cattle through the winter months. We won’t start harvesting our corn until the end of the month at least. We like to have the corn dry as much as possible in the field on it’s own. If we would pick it now, the moisture would probably be in the high 20-30% and we need it to be at 16.5% or below in order to take it to the elevator and not get docked. If it’s too high when we harvest it we have to put it in our drying bin and dry it in there which can get pricey due to the cost of propane that is used to run the dryer. But if it stays in the field and we have some nice dry days, it will dry on it’s own….for free!
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| Corn field |
Some years, we harvest soybeans before corn, but this year, some of the corn will be ready to harvest first. Stay tune for when we start harvesting! For those of you who are farmers too, have a safe and bountiful harvest!
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| Soybean field |
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