Sunday Chores

Sunday was my day for chores and it was enjoyable, as it often is, with no other work pushing in and demanding attention. There is something pretty nice about having the time to watch the sows and calves eat their rations. Temperatures were a little warmer, so there was no problem with frozen drinkers and I could make the rounds of the hog feeding groups checking for bedding, pig comfort and health. I ran the tarp up on the north end of the hoop where the biggest group is to help the little breeze clear the steam rising from the bedding out before it encourages pneumonia.

A slow walk through the pasture where the close up and breeding heifers are getting their winter hay showed that the warmer weather pushed their appetite down a little, good news for the hay inventory. We are just done with farrowing this group of sows so the barns are full of pigs suckling and sows eating a lot. Nothing that had to be dealt with. Later, in the evening, I found two calves with their heads stuck in the sheep hay feeder that I use for the youngest calves. I helped them out, closed them and the others into the barn so they didn't panic at some sound during the night, and made a mental note that it is time to move them up to the next hay feeder and put the sheep feeders away until the next batch of little ones arrive. I rolled the tarp back down on the feeding hoop and called it a day. Sometimes a Sunday chores is just as good as a Sunday off.

Jim

After this toughest Fall in memory, winter has settled in for real. We have by now torn up all the hay and straw moving equipment we fixed last summer from the previous winter's damage and must start emergency repairs. The main problem is that it rained most of the Fall and then when the temperature dropped in Winter, everything froze solid to the ground. Farming is, as most people know, not easy.

It is not easy either, to cope with some of the machinations that go with our food system. You should know that we have been notified by the company which makes the non-chemical premix we have just started using for our new sausages that they will cease production as they have been notified by another premix company of its intention to patent the process and the bacteria used. While we are hopeful that the US Patent Office will not participate in such foolishness, we are nevertheless on notice to watch the process unfold as we go back to the drawing board for our sausage recipes. We will keep you posted.

But here's an upper: Our bacon got notice in the Metro magazine! "The winner: Pastures A Plenty's thick cut bacon for its precise balance. It's a textbook example of what bacon is supposed to be." Hooray for our side! Thanks for your support. Stay warm.

Jim Van Der Pol, for
Pastures A Plenty

The southern one third of the state of Minnesota is under a pollution warning this last week before Christmas, which is an unwelcome reminder that we here in western Minnesota are connected with the entire world when it comes to suffering from the bad effects of our careless living. It matters not whether this is home grown pollution or that it drifted in from China. Burning eyes and restricted breathing don't make those distinctions. Neither, anymore, can we.

Early winter

After all the rainy days in October, November was a blessing with moderate temperatures, little rain and a few chances to see the sun. It let us get the soybeans harvested, and many of the endless list of to-do's that go with a livestock farm done so that we are about as ready for winter as we ever have been.

The prairie skies have been beautiful this month with fiery reds and vivid pinks blending into indigo and then azure blue as the sun moves. Television and DVD's can't compare with this display. Sitting on the porch or even by an east window with the morning's coffee is the best way to begin a winter's day! Winter, with its list of things that can't be done, must be nature's way of telling us to slow down and notice. It is harder to work a long day this time of year. In July it is relatively easy for even an oldtimer like me to work a ten or twelve hour day on six hours of sleep. But as winter solstice approaches, I find myself needing a full eight hours sleep again.

By the way, this message and other observations and thoughts both farm related and not appear on the blog on our website. Go to "News" from the home page or just straight to PasturesAPlenty.blogspot to have a look. Comments encouraged. Take care of yourself and whomever else you can this Christmas!

Jim

Now the weather has dried up a little in November and we are able to get some of our work done before freeze up, we hope. We took the small field of soybeans last week and found about ten percent dark and discolored which the buyers won't like very well but we are happy to get as far as we did. The corn still stands on the stalk and is showing blue green mold on many of the ears. We will try to get it harvested before Christmas and hope the mold doesn't interfere with the feeding value.

All of which goes to show, I guess, that farming is not industry. Farmers have far less control than the owners of factories and are often needing to change plans part way through. Our farm is diverse, and we have options. If we cannot harvest the corn with combine harvestors, we will figure out a way to send out the hogs! They know how.

After the heavy rains in late September, October has developed into a trying month. We have not had more that two rain free days the entire month even though the amounts of rain have generally been moderate. Like other farmers, we cannot harvest our fall crops, but in addition to that, we must cope with mud everywhere in trying to keep animals comfortable and productive. We have also much work around the yard and facilties to finish before freezeup and that proceeds slowly. Much of it involves digging; we must dig up a cattle drinker to fix the underground valve, we have two shorts in the underground electric cables that must be found so that we can keep the water frost free this winter. We have a gas line to trench in so that we can keep the pigs warm.

And any animal that lives mostly outdoors in putting up with the weather right now. We are nearly half through our inventory of bedding and the ground hasn't even frozen yet. It will be an expensive month. I don't usually look forward to winter, but when the ground freezes I will be able to walk outside again and that won't be all bad! We are hanging in there. It keeps us out of the saloons, as they say. At least we have work. Boy do we have work. But some don't and that's worse.

We have received six inches of rain here at Pastures A Plenty in the two weeks starting on the 24th of September. The amazing thing is that we don't have any water standing anywhere except for wheel ruts around the livestock lots and barns. Now we have run a bit short of rainfall for the last several years, but to have no ponding is remarkable. I remember large rainfalls in the eighties that resulted in ponding that froze over in December, the ice lasting til the next spring. This is due to the difference in our farming, I am convinced. Pastures hold and store water better than any other agricultural use, and the soil, even in the cropping areas, is much higher in organic matter and waterholding capacity due to our long rotations including grass and hay.

Flood control starts not with levees, but with farming done right. The condition of the acres in the watershed is both the most important flood control and the hardest to accomplish, depending as it does upon the resolve of ordinary people to farm responsibly.