Friday, April 25, 2014

The Little Corn That Could

I am jumping ahead a post or two to write about what I am doing presently. I promise to go back and show you more of what happened in March (all the field prepping). Right now, I am writing this post from my phone so it may be a little different but I wanted to share this experience with you today.

I have time to write as I am waiting for Josh to finish 7 passes of a field he is planting to corn and then we are on to another field.

I just helped him refill with seed and fertilizer, so he is set to finish the field. I get to wait in the truck on this nice sunny, but terribly windy day so I can follow him to the next field to fill with seed and fertilizer again. We only have two fields left after this one to plant to corn. Now some folks may be thinking we are getting done early as they are just now starting to plant or won't until next week or so. But really for us, we should be finished right now like in past years. This year, however, we unfortunately have not had much rain and the fields were very dry causing the planter some issues trying to get through the tough ground. Yesterday, we were lucky enough to get a quarter of an inch of rain and that softened the ground enough to hopefully finish these fields. In our fields we did manage to get planted before it got cold, froze again, snowed and then no rain, have precious little corn plants starting to come up and see the world. Here are some pictures of Josh putting the fertilizer and seed into the planter and then the cute little corn plants coming up.

Happy Planting,


The Milkmaid

Monday, April 21, 2014

Bulls, Bulls and the Ladies

The past month a lot has changed in the farm. This first little update is about our new additions to the farm. Right now we are not able to A.I. or Artificially Inseminate all of our cows. While my dad and I are both certified to do so, we don't have enough time and some physical conditions preventing it right now. So we go the old fashion way about it. We use Bulls. 
Meet Red Bull
Clyde
And Wildcat

Our first new addition was Wildcat. He is a registered Black Angus bull, we bought him from Kansas State University during their Annual Legacy Sale. He is in with some heifers right now until we move the cattle to pasture, where he will be placed with a new set of cows. 

Next came along Clyde, he is a purebred registered Jersey bull. Hubs and I left early one morning and traveled to Garnett, Kansas and picked him up. He is a friendly little guy. He is for our heifers and just the right size but has some growing to do still. While we do not have any Jersey cows, we do cross bred for butterfat and smaller calves.

Lastly and off of a whim came Red bull. Red bull has many names but I will only call him that. We had been looking for a Red Holstein bull for some time but everyone that was close had already sold them or did not raise Red Holsteins. Luckily, we got a call from another dairy farmer who was looking to sell him and we took the chance and said we would. He has been a little feisty at times but he is a joy to be around. You can tell from the picture that ladies were quite interested in his funny smells the first day and not sure he would fit in but he has done a good job winning them over.

That is just a little of what all has gone on the farm last month, I will post more soon! 

 Until next time,


The Milkmaid