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.

Dairy Star article

Dairy Star, a publication out of Minnesota, recently did a story on us in their "Dairying Across America" feature. You can read it in the "Recent Farm News" section of our farm web page.

A Dairyman in the "Heart of Dixie": Drought, dwindling resources challenge Alabama Farmer

A morning for moving cows

We spent most of this morning trying to move a fews cows to different pastures. To start with, we had to catch one group of our dry cows, separate the eight cows closest to calving, and put them in our calving pasture so we can keep a closer eye on them. We also dried off six cows this morning and took them to the same pasture we pulled the previously mentioned eight from. Then, we had to move two cows that recently freshened from our calving pasture into our milking herd pasture.

All of this was made possible due to the fact that our corn silage chopper was broken down, and the replacement part we needed didn't arrive until late morning. Hopefully it will be back up and running shortly. If all goes smoothly, my afternoon should pretty easy...putting out feed, making a feed batch for tomorrow morning, and feeding the baby calves.