Not much to report

We got just a little bit of rain on Tuesday. We're very thankful for it, but it wasn't nearly enough to allow us to start planting our winter crops. That same day I was in Montgomery for a state Young Farmers Committee meeting at the Alabama Farmers Federation home office. Other than that, it's just been a "by-the-book" week on the dairy. Our weather has turned cooler, with a high today in the 70's and a low tonight in the 40's, but it's going to creep back up into the mid-80's sometime next week, so says the weather man.

What we've accomplished

Over the last few days, we were able to harvest 68 bales of sudex baleage (bringing the grand total up to 106) and 143 bales of dry bermudagrass hay. On a per acre basis, neither of these are very good, but we're happy to get anything this year considering the drought. Other than helping dad change the milk machine inflations late one afternoon, I can't think of anything I've done this week that didn't involve cutting, baling, or wrapping hay.

I'll be going in to work at 3 am tomorrow morning to milk with my father while one of our employees handles feeding the cows and heifers. Once we finish milking, I'll prepare the cows' afternoon feed and then will be loading up to go to Starkville. It's homecoming at Mississippi State, and though I'll miss the Ag Alumni breakfast at 8:00, I should be there in time for the FarmHouse Association Meeting at 10:00. Afterwards, me and some of my old friends will enjoy pregame festivities in the Junction adjacent to Davis Wade Stadium. Then we'll watch State hopefully beat UAB starting at 1:30 pm.

Hay Time

After moving heifers and dry cows from pasture to pasture, weaning calves, and receiving a truckload of alfalfa yesterday morning, we turned our attention to our hayfields. I ran our cutter/conditioner through our remaining ten acres of sudex, which we project to bale green on Wednesday. Late this morning after the dew has dried, a couple of our employees will join in with our conventional hay mowers to help me cut about 40 acres of bermudagrass. We've got a long day ahead of us!

In other news, I made a few slight updates to our farm website over the weekend, most notably adding links to old articles about us at the bottom of our "farm news" page.