Heat update

Today is the third day of challenging heat.  Tomorrow promises somewhat cooler temps and we will need to see what the humidity will be.  Yesterday was butcher day and Andrew needed to get the hogs to the butcher in Belgrade.  There are risks in moving hogs in this weather. Most livestock trailers do not cool as well as they should, and even if they do, any air moving is very hot, mid nineties yesterday.  Andy generally has a good supply of ice frozen for these kinds of situations.  The hogs will play with the ice chunks, which helps them to cool down around the head and neck.  We also wet them down as regularly as needed, both in their hoop living quarters and in the livestock trailer.  Hogs do not sweat and wet skin is helpful for them to survive extreme temps.  Andy moved the delivery into the morning.

The cattle were grazed out in the sun on Tuesday in the regular pastures.  On Wednesday, I held them on the yard in their lot and fed them hay.  I put a bale in late last night and spent two hours early this morning finishing the fence around the grazing in the hay field that Andy had topped the day before to reduce the risk of alfalfa bloat.  By eight o'clock I had the charge in the fence up to 2000 around the thirty acres.  Not really enough, I thought but it will have to do.  Due to the rain on Tuesday and the high humidity, the grass stays really wet, pulling the charge down in the fence.  

I let them out into the new grazing at about 8:30 this morning and they grazed out there, staying close to the shade available north of the farmstead grove.  When I checked them after the noon, they had found their way back to their customary trees to pass the heat of the day.  Things are going to be easier after that first trip out and back in!

We are due for some R and R now tomorrow.  We better not let the pile of work here bully us out of a bit of easy time after the three day emergency we have just farmed through!

Heat

 The heat predicted for some time lands on us starting today.  Temps of 95 plus are expected plus a rising humidity.  We have been busy with preparations.  Today we move the bales off the nearby hayfield and set up fence along the adjacent corn field.  The cattle will be able to shade up on the yard in the north pen under the shade of trees planted just twenty years ago, and then spend the evening, overnight and early morning grazing the stubble plus ten acres of poor stand we have left them.  This should last a week or a bit more, and we hope for a weather change by then. 

For the hogs, Andrew has been spreading fresh bedding in all the hoops.  When manure is stored under foot it composts, creating heat.  This is an attribute of hoop hog production.  To counter this, we must spread fresh bedding regularly so that the pigs are not lying in manure and soiled bedding, which is hot.  

Additionally, we are able several times a day to wet the concrete area where the feeders stand so that the animals can stay wet.  

Heat causes work here as surely as cold does in winter. 

Hay

 The leafhoppers were blowing in the west wind and hitting me in the shirt, neck and face as I walked back to the tractor and mower in the west hay field after the noon dinnertime.  I had started work this morning on cutting the nurse crop of oats, mustard and various other weeds off the new hay seeding.  We seed hay every year and also take a like amount out of the older hay stands to plant corn in the following year.  

Lately we have had trouble getting a good stand because of the dry conditions.  This spring I rigged the old grain drill to route the legume and grass seeds down into the openers rather than just scattering the seeds on the surface ahead of the drill and hoping for the best.  I was gratified to see, as the mower cleared a bit of each swath, that the new hay sprouts seemed satisfactorily thick.  We seem to have beaten the dry conditions, at least for this job this year. 

I like mowing.  I like it for the smells of new cut hay and then toward the end of the day, the smell of wet plants beginning to cure.  But most of all, I like it for the abundance of bird and insect life on display.  Soon after the first trip around the field, the swallows-barn swallows and tree swallows and purple martins-show up to work at harvesting the insects kicked up by the activity in the grass.  Swooping in graceful arcs, they no sooner swallow one insect and they are aiming for the next.  They will work at this all day. 

They are soon followed by the hawks and eagles, patrolling the cut over parts of the field, ever alert for the exposed mouse, mole or gopher.  This day I saw no mature bald eagles, but several juveniles, which lack the white head showed up.  The red tail hawks, formerly known as chicken hawks when farmers kept chickens on the yard, dominated the show.  Most of them were well fed by evening.

Butterflies were everywhere, sometimes the target of the swallows.  There were Monarchs and Viceroys and several dark and also white ones I do not have names for. 

 When I was taking a break from driving and walked a short distance from the idling tractor I heard and saw meadowlarks.  It was a pair, but these were Eastern Meadowlarks, not the Western version so common here when I grew up.  The Eastern is a beautiful bird and welcome, but its song cannot compare with the nine or ten note multi fluted call of the Western. Maps show the Eastern territory as far west as Wisconsin while the Western shows up throughout southern Minnesota and points west.

The call of the Western Meadowlark was the sound track of my youth here on the western Minnesota prairie.  I last heard it two years ago in our pastures, and if it is gone from us for good, I will miss it and mourn its passing.  And I hope my farming operations do not have anything to do with its leaving.

As I lifted the bar for the last time in the evening, and headed for home, I saw a turkey buzzard feasting on something in the middle of the field.  An unlovely but necessary bird.

The next day, walking out to inspect my work, I spotted the first dragonfly of the year.  We have arrived at midsummer.