grass

 Once again the days lengthen toward my birthday in mid February.  That point marks two months into the new season, and the time when it becomes obvious to me that the sun is once again winning the annual battle with dark.

The other thing I watch for is grass.  Often as early as February I can see little spears of grass showing a hopeful green in the pastures where we feed the market cattle.  Often these will be poking up through the snow, a real symbol of bravery in a hostile world!

These pastures have been in perennial grasses and legumes now for twenty five years.  But what passes for a house lawn here has grown pretty much undisturbed for nearly seventy years, in my knowledge, maybe longer.  In the lawn I do not see this early poking up of new life.  The lawn is mowed, while the pasture is grazed.  Is it the cattle?

I need to explore the hay fields, which are two or three year rotations, to find out if early grass shows there.  But whatever, it is evident that no corn or soybeans or other annuals are currently greening up anywhere in Minnesota.  The early greening of perennials has to do with the carbon cycle and thus is critical to our efforts to get some of the carbon back out of the air and into the soil where it belongs.  We have much to learn.  

snow

 A new layer of snow covers the earth this morning and the gentle breeze from the southeast is not disturbing it.  Temps are to climb several degrees by noon and then fall toward zero in the evening and overnight hours.  I can see cattle in the pasture around their hay rings from where I sit and they aren't yet greatly disturbed. 

When the wind switches to the northwest later today the pigs will show discomfort, particularly the sows.  We do not have adequate shelter for them from winter winds and to achieve that will require extensive renovations to the two hoops that house them.  30-60 head of sows in a standard hoop is not enough animal body heat under any circumstances and the lower the temp and higher the wind, the worse it is.

In addition, we need perhaps fifty percent more space for our market hogs.  And our bedding pile shrinks rapidly and we wonder how much of it we will have to buy to get through til spring when we can bale more from the stalks the cow herd now forages.  We use an incredible amount of bedding, perhaps 400 big cornstalk bales per year.  It is difficult to get them made and that amount of soiled bedding to haul out and apply to the cropping acres is a major materials moving task.

This is simply too much work for a small hog operation.  The view among our customers is favorable toward the idea of bedding the hogs, and we prefer to produce that way as well, but we will need to get better at it. 

post

 Today the replacement for the broken post at the feeding stalls needs to be finished and a call should be placed to the hoops company to make sure they have indeed sent the rollup door that blew off the west end of the sow hoop in the first strong winter blast.  This constant need for attention to repair, added to the list of "tools" needing to be built is typical of small livestock farms.  Big operations tend to use turnkey systems that call for complete regular replacement upon breakdown; smaller farms such as ours cannot afford that approach. 

The need is always for someone on the farm who knows the history of the buildings and the land, who can somewhat feel what will go haywire next and has a good practical understanding of how to make a good repair.  The broken post needing replacement is critical, it holds three gates which are used to control the traffic of five hundred lb sows to and from the feeding area.  It was rusted completely off at the base, thus the decision to build it new.  Getting it right involves lining the base bolt holes up properly with the existing stainless steel studs, getting the post absolutely straight on its base and getting all the gate mounts the right size and in the right place.  A real challenge, in other words!