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. 

June

    June is crunch month.  Most farmers would say this. But it is particularly accurate about farms that are diverse.  And it is even more so when the diverse farm has gone to organic production. We have three livestock species on our farm, and use corn plus a hay seeding consisting of two or three grass species and four or five legumes.  Plus a new seeding of Kernza which management we are trying to learn as we go.  And then of course there are the weeds, too plentiful to count.  All of this diversity, we now know, is just what the soil needs to be healthy.

    Hay and corn conflict with each other. The corn, if planted in April which we hope for, may make it from six or eight inches on June 1st to four plus feet on June 30th, thus putting whatever weeds are in the crop out of reach of the cultivator because the corn is too tall to cultivate.  The hay, meanwhile, generally needs cutting in the first week of June and then raking and baling.  All of these operations on the corn and hay are best done in afternoons when the dew is gone.

    And yet, hay and corn are tightly linked with each other.  And especially is this so on an organic farm.  It is the hay with its legume component that builds nitrogen fertility into the soil.  Hay is going to be necessary to get the cattle through the winter.  Corn is pig and chicken feed.  The very best seed bed in which to plant the corn is tilled hay ground.  The generous root structure that has developed under that grass/alfalfa/clover combination not only offers the best chance at fixing atmospheric nitrogen into the soil, but the root decomposition the next spring at corn planting time offers a seed bed par excellence.  Nothing else comes close.  This hay ground tends to be a bit drier than other acres, thus allowing some of the corn planting to happen earlier.   

The fact that the hay crop has for several years prior been cut and baled several times each year means that annual weeds have mostly sprouted and been killed. The perennials, such as thistles, have had their root strength considerably diminished due to the frequent cutting. 

    Hay and corn go together.  The smart farmer is going to figure out how to get all that work done in one month.  Perhaps the best approach is to custom hire some of it.  Or maybe livestock work can be scheduled away from June as much as possible. For the diverse farmer, getting out of hay and corn production is not optional.  It is the very core of what makes a diverse and organic farm work.

mRNA vaccines

 I am seeing stories  that seem to identify mRNA vaccines as "gene therapy".  Does anyone know what this is about? To my mind there seems to be some distance between vaccination, which builds an immune response to a threat, and therapy, which would seem to apply some version of treatment toward the gene itself.  What is the story here?  Is this an attempt to sort the mRNA approach to vaccine development from the methods used formerly to cast doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine involved, or even ascribe nefarious motives to any who use messenger RNA in vaccine development? 

This is becoming an issue in our meats business.

Adjusting a pasture attitude

 I have always leaned toward a grazing practice based upon the idea of using animals to harvest what nature wants to grow on soil I pretty much take for granted.  Lately I am seeing some holes in the usefulness of  that attitude.

For one thing, the soil can never be taken for granted.  It must be cared for in use and that truth is as real for a farmer who harvests by grazing as it is for one who is reliant on tractors and tillage.  Cows in wet times can compact the soil.  Careless grazing opens too much of it to the wind and water.  Care with haying must be taken not to transport too many nutrients away.

Attitudes must exhibit some flexibility.

So now we have about 25 or 30 acres needing attention due either to our drainage installation in the wettest area of the pasture a year ago or our practice of winter feeding of hay on pasture.  There is too much bare soil out there and a certain amount of leftover hay mixed with manure in about six paddocks.  Plans are to reseed two of these pads to a hay and grazing mix of perennial forage plants and use the other four to grow a single season grazing crop which will finish early enough for us to reseed pastures then, hopefully without much in the way of tillage.  

Plans are to use Japanese Millet for hay or grazing in three of the four pads that will grow an annual crop with the other one planted to an oats/rape mixture which should be ready for grazing a bit sooner than the millet.

There is another damaged paddock of about four acres adjacent to these which we will leave to its own devices, to see if there really has been any benefit to all this running about with tractors and tools causing extra use of fuel.  I am cheering for the left alone paddock to prove to me that a pasture managed correctly can fix itself!    

old dog

 My dog Lily, or as I call her along with every other dog I have ever had, "dog", is getting old.  When I am tied up working in the shop, which is usually not my first choice, she comes with and chooses a comfortable place-not too far from the heater, and out of range of the sparks thrown by the acetylene torch, angle grinder and arc welder, and lies there watching me work.  Tomorrow she may bounce along with me as I walk the pastures and fields looking for first signs of spring life and figuring out how long until the soil will bear the weight of the cattle.  Today she     rests.  She chose a soft pile of floor sweepings to rest on today.

Sometimes she hurts and takes the day off.  So do I.  We understand each other.

She is master of appreciating the explosive flight of the started pheasant.  She cocks her head, better to listen to the increasingly rare sound of the meadowlark.  She pretends, on our walks, to dig up the pocket gophers which have been busy making tunnels.  Sometimes, when she thinks she knows where I am headed, she will lie down in the field and wait for my return.

She is not much of a stock dog, even though she is a shepherd by breeding (Aussie).   She tends to hold her ground as cattle approach to examine her until they are close and then she turns to run, through a gate if I have been dumb enough to leave it down, the whole herd following her.

I love shepherds for their perceptiveness-they know who they belong to-focus and loyalty.  It sobers me to realize that some shepherd dog someday is going to mope and mourn my disappearance from her life.

Lily is in the world and of the world in a way that I like other humans, have trouble  being.  She simply lives out the time allotted to her, fully present at all times.  She does not do art.

Humans do art. It is how we are comfortable in the world that confronts us. Farmers do art, especially diversified small ones.  In this idea I have no great group of fellow travelers for the art I do will never hang in a museum.  But I insist on it.  If no one else, I can count on my dog to agree, if not understand.

Today I mend two posts that the hogs have bent and rusted off.  Though years of experience, I have figured out how to do this spending a minimum of money and in a manner that will not cause someone soon to need to do it over again.  No course of study teaches this very necessary art.

This morning I studied seed catalogs choosing seeds to plant in the bare drowned out places in the pasture and also where the sward was torn up to install drainage a year ago.  I need to consider longevity. palatability, winter hardiness and cost.  In addition, I decided to plant permanent pasture in half of it only, seeding annual grazing in the other half.  This spreads the cost-perennial seeds are expensive-and may  make it possible to get around a difficult season if that is what we get.

When the season opens I will start grazing the herd and the decisions come daily:  How hard to graze, when to move, when to stock more heavily or destock, what the weather will do, can I get more acres to graze for late summer, how far into the fall can I graze and how do I make that happen.  These are decisions that are made daily and cannot be found in a book or from a consultant.  They are based on experience gained by observation, by hearing and smelling and then trying to put the big, impossible to fully understand picture together.  They must be based on judgement-what I know about this farm, and what I can  make happen. 

There are a multitude of similar choices that cropping entails too, but I have pretty much passed that part of the farming on to the next generation.  I hope they will learn too, and that farms are art forms.  They will not get any support in that idea.  I have not.

Part of this is due to the extreme prejudice in our country against anything small or made by work. 

 I wish them well.  They will need to learn from their dogs.