It's Friday

By the end of today I think we will be able to say that we've gotten a lot accomplished this week, but we've still got a whole lot to do.

We've got our oats and ryegrass planted on the 50 acres directly across from our farm. We'll strip graze our milking herd on these fields this coming spring, and maybe even this fall if the weather works out right. On a related note, I spent a couple of days spreading organic fertilizer onto these fields and in doing so emptied our storage tank. While the nutrient value of the fertilizer isn't quite stout enough to fully meet the crops' requirements, the moisture it provided to the soil should help with seed germination.

Speaking of moisture, there's a chance we may get "a stray thunderstorm" on Tuesday, but that's all they're predicting right now.

We're going to try to get our equipment ready today to start cutting our sorghum silage on Monday. Hopefully once we start we can get through it with minimal downtime. Things tend to get a little more intense around here when we're chopping silage, so I'm sure I'll be letting out a big "JOHN DENVER!!!" once we have the silage covered and sealed in the pit.

Long day behind, Long day ahead

I wrapped 135 bales yesterday between 1-8 pm after trying (and failing) to adjust our wrapper to work with a faster tractor all morning. I've got about 75 bales waiting on me this morning with probably another 100 yet to be baled. At best, I can do 30 an hour, but I'm afraid it will be a slow process getting the bales to the spot I'm wrapping and dumping them. With so much left to do, it makes sense that it's supposed to rain alot today. And, of course, the Ford 6600 I'll be running the wrapper with doesn't have a cab or canopy.

Rough ride

The field I started working in yesterday is very rough and full of rocks. I had to replace 8 of 14 mower blades and turn another 3 over before I stopped yesterday evening. I've also got a sore back and neck this morning, with at least another 3 hours worth of cutting to go. We're also going to have to push harder to get it raked, baled, and wrapped since the weatherman is now giving a good chance of rain for Thursday. One thing's for sure, though...there's enough forage out there to be well worth the aggravation!

Back to the Field

We wound up with 122 wrapped bales of ryegrass last week, putting us at about 350 total wrapped bales of ryegrass and lupin/wheat. As soon as I can choke down some lunch I'll be back out in the field. We've got about 30 acres of a wheat/oat mix and 3 acres of ryegrass left to do.

Cuttin' time

I spent the last half of yesterday afternoon cutting our 10 acres of lupin. We'll aim to bale it at 65-70% moisture, and the cool weather we'll have today and tomorrow may mean that it won't be ready until Wednesday. In the meantime, I'll cut a small patch of ryegrass today. The rest of our ryegrass, as well as our wheat and oats, probably won't be ready to cut for at least a couple of weeks.

Spreading Slurry

I finally pumped some stored up agri-byproduct out of the SlurryStore and field applied it to some wheat and oats. In about three hours time, I made 11 trips with the honeywagon and spread probably around 36,000 gallons. I've gotten just over half the field across from the farm covered, and hope to get it finished up this afternoon. Being able to spread the slurry has allowed me to cut back on the amount of N-sol (32-0-0) needed to adequately fertilize it.

A rainy Friday

The first thunderstorm moved through this morning a little after 4:00 am, and we've had a couple of passing showers since then. It looks like the rain will continue to be off-and-on throughout the morning, and hopefully by lunch we will have gotten around an inch. We'll probably find some "indoor" work to do this morning in the milking barn or in the shop.

The generally mild afternoons we've had this past month has really helped our wheat, oats, and ryegrass to thicken up. In fact, we could probably graze a couple of the fields in mid-January if we get a warm, dry period of about ten days.

The cows have been milking really well, and the bulk tanks have been showing about a 62 pounds per day average. We're almost out of baleage and will be replacing it with corn silage next week. Hopefully the cows will be able to transition quickly and keep their production up.

It's been awhile

Sorry for the hiatus from posting to the blog over the last couple of weeks. I've been pretty much swamped with things I needed to do, and there's really not been much of consequence to report from our farm.

We've gotten a little more rain over the last couple of days, and that'll help our our winter crop. We've still got thirty acres of wheat and oats to plant (as well as about 15-20 acres to overseed with ryegrass), but some of what we've already planted is really starting to shoot up out of the ground. The rest shouldn't be too far behind. Now that all the bermudagrass has gone dormant and turned brown, it'll be nice to look out over some green patches again.

Feed costs continue to climb higher and higher thanks in part to both commodity prices and freight. We got a good deal on some peanut hay from a farmer in a neighboring county, and we're hoping our nutritionalist will come up with a ration that will let us use less alfalfa without sacrificing too much production.

Speaking of production, we're up to 203 cows milking right now and on average they're each giving 55 pounds a day. They could be doing a little more if we fed them just a little more, but with that many cows we don't have enough trough space to increase their feed.

Well, it's time for breakfast and then back to work.

Time to plant

Last week was wonderful...it was cool and wet and I loved every minute of it. The clouds have now given way to the sunshine, and it's finally time to plant our cool season crops. I'll start drilling in ryegrass seed this afternoon, and hopefully by the end of the week we will have been able to start preparing our fields for oats and wheat.

We dried off eight cows today and had one heifer freshen, so we'll have 191 cows going through the parlor this afternoon. Right now, their daily TMR consists of a concentrated dairy feed meal, cottonseeds, cottonseed hulls, alfalfa, ryegrass/oat hay, and bermudagrass hay.

The week ahead

I don't think we'll run out of things to do this coming week. If all goes as planned (though it seldom does):

• We should finish chopping our corn this afternoon. That means spending time tomorrow covering our silage pit. If not, we'll be busy fixing another breakdown.
  
• We're due to weigh milk this week, if we can get our schedule coordinated with the tester.
• We need to rebuild a few fences, especially one around the pond in our milk cow pasture.
• A pretty fair stand of signalgrass has come up in our wheat fields, and would make good hay. We'll work towards cutting and baling it if they knock back the rain chances (we'll gladly take the rain, though).
• Speaking of wheat, Dad and I will start deciding how many acres of wheat, oats, and ryegrass we'll need to plant in a few weeks, as well as the fertilizer and tillage requirements.
  
• I need to spray some herbicide in a few places and kill weeds.
  
• Nights this week will also be busy, as we've got a service at our church tonight, our county's Farmers Federation's annual meeting Tuesday night, we'll go watch our beloved Mississippi State Bulldogs take their annual beating from LSU on Thursday, and then Friday I believe our hometown high school will open their football season at home.

Random Thoughts

Nothing too much to talk about in depth, so here's some random pieces of information for you:

• We had around three inches of rainfall Saturday. The good, slow falling, soaking kind!
• Our preacher was on vacation this weekend, so it fell to me as my church's Lay Leader to lead the Worship Service. I used The Great Commission as the Scripture text and spoke about our responsibility to witness both individually and collectively, and then introduced a study series we'll be starting in a couple of weeks that will help strengthen us to do ministry. It also marked the first time we've had a Power Point presentation during the Sunday morning service.
• We've got 218 cows right now (177 in milk, 41 dry) and 214 heifers ranging from three-days old to could-calve-any-day-now.
• Our bermudagrass hay fields are all starting to grow now. We probably won't wait for the grass to get too tall though before we cut some of them. The earlier we cut them, the more potential we have for getting two "good" cuttings afterwards (though that window will start to close before too long).
• Looks like we'll plant more acres in sudex this summer and less in wheat/oats this fall. We need the forage to carry us through the winter, and can't focus too much right now on the spring.