Winter

 Winter-I assume it is finally over now with tonight's temps to be down to 25 degrees-pushed on for most of April this year.  A warmup is projected from here. As the pile of hay shrinks the manure stacks up and composts in the hog houses.  Since we handle manure as a solid, and always mixed with bedding, it is much easier to store safely and minimize the nitrogen losses to the environment even in the case of a long spring.  But there gets to be a lot of it this time of year.  

There is always this aspect of a tightly wound clock in spring, where the manure stacks up, the buildings fill with feeding animals, the cattle get sick of hay and start lining up at the fence to watch the grass grow.  It will be a relief when we can open the gates, hook up the manure spreader and do our part to start the crop year.  This year we have cornstalks leftover from last fall that will need to be chopped and baled for bedding and moved off before we can plant as well. 

It has been hard on the wild things.  Pheasants lined both sides of the roads searching for the least bit to eat as the snow cover lasted for a full five months.  We traveled to the west border of the state for a celebration of music several weeks ago and must have seen close to a hundred deer, some of which were pretty skinny stripping the bark from whatever trees they could find. 

For our kind of diversified farm, it seems there is too much work when the snow finally retreats and the frost comes out of the soil.  Besides the livestock work there is the manure to haul and spread ahead of corn planting.  The planters and grain drills must be ready to use, though we are beginning to consider that spring small grains may not be the best choice for our low and somewhat wet farm.  We generally plant those crops too late-in May-because the soil is not ready to bear the weight of equipment in April.  

We are thinking a better choice may be winter grain crops such as rye, wheat or triticale which are planted in late summer or early fall.  This would necessitate a change in rotation but would open up a wonderful slot in mid to late summer for applying manure when the soils are best able to stand up under the heavy equipment.  Manure is not like fertilizer.  Soils can be fortified with manure and the good effects will carry on for several years.  There is no inherent need to spread manure right ahead of the planting.  

The cattle are necessary for this kind of farm operation because they can use a short season complex cover seeding done in May for grazing in July or hay in August, thus opening the field for manure and/or seed at a time of year where it seems that time is available to do it.

These are critical matters in trying to run a successful small farm.  A clay soil, when worked or even just driven over before it is sufficiently dry will form lumps pretty nearly rock hard when it dries.  Such an area is essentially out of service for the year until the freeze and thaw of winter can rescue the damage.  It is an expensive and discouraging loss.  If you are going to have a different kind of farm, be it organic or biodynamic or diversified, it seems to me necessary to farm differently.  This business of nothing but two full season crops just will not do.

There is very much to do and to decide this season.  For the next month or so we are going to be busier than we really want to be.  Yet it is exciting.  Even for an old guy, farming never fails to perk up the spirit.  Working hard to be in synch with the season just seems right!

Jim