A Monday Morning Surprise!

This morning, I headed to the farm thinking about the mud, water and unhappy cows. Since it rained last night, I was a little late showing up for work in the first place and dreading the mess I would be after milking. The cows have a love-hate relationship with rain. While it cools them off, they also get messy and bring their little dirty hooves into my milking parlor and like to get me just as messy.

Little did I know my dad would find a nice little surprise when he went out to bring the cows up for milking.


Twins, again!

We usually do not have twins, even though there is a one in seven chance of twins, we haven't had a set in a couple of years. This year we have been blessed so far with two sets. You may remember reading, The Scandalous Cow and Tale of Two Calves, where we had a rare set of twins born from two different sires but from the same dam. Well this may look like the same situation but it is not!

The dam (or mother cow) is a Jersey/Holstein cross and Miss Brownie looks like her. The sire (bull/father) is a pure bred Holstein and Miss Penelope looks like him. They just happen not to be identical twins but sure are cute and fun to play with.

Brownie was born smaller than Penelope, not by much but she is the smaller of the two.After we milked No. 61 (their mother) this morning, I took out a bottle to feed them. They both did a really good job drinking for the first time and then they had their navals sprayed to help not get an infection.

Miss Brownie

Miss Penelope

Both little heifers are doing well and happy in their new little shed and each other.


Happy Monday!



The Milkmaid

Wheat Harvest is coming fast!

Wheat harvest is right around the corner. Therefore, it is really about to get busy around the farm.

Thankfully it has rained in the last week and we got some needed moisture for our corn and soybeans.

Yet, with the moisture we are still not done spraying and planting soybeans but we will not complain as rain is a tick more important!

AJ and Josh washed combines to get them clean again for this years harvest. Then, they cleaned out the cab and greased the circuits. Afterwards, they went through and check all the chains, belts and bolts. Needless to say they will be checking over every little part of each combine multiple times before harvest to make sure they got everything checked thoroughly.

Last week they worked on the headers to get ready to hopefully try to harvest some barley and wheat. They did get the barley harvested and attempted to do a wheat field but it was still too wet. Today, they are going out to try another field and see if it is ready to go. 

This week's plan... harvest wheat, plant soybeans, spray the rest of the fields, harvest some more, plant some more, spray some more, oh and milk! You get the idea, it will be a very busy week needless to say. 

Here are a few pictures of the combines being looked over and getting ready to go. Unfortunately, I still am in a bad habit of not having my camera with me so I take pictures on my phone and well my phone decided to see what water was like the other day. Therefore, I got a shiny new phone and I have not be able to recover my photos from my old phone, so I tried to take a few more of them. 

Working on a header

This is what it looks like under one of the covers 

This is the back end where the stalks come out

Inside one the cab of one of our combines

This is through the back glass of the cab, this is where the grain comes through an auger
and is held until it is unloaded onto the grain cart 

The auger which the grain falls from after being harvested from the plant or cob

Josh working on tightening some bolts on a header

Until next time,

The Milkmaid