Moving

We decided we couldn't take it anymore.

The hassles.....

the trials, the tribulations of maintaining two homes. 

I was tired of cleaning two places,

Marcel was tired of supporting both households......

it was just too much.

So we did it.

We moved.

 

We actually moved.

The chickens.

Tremors

We are all colored by our personal experiences.  So when your house starts to tremor, what immediately comes to mind? 

If you're a Californian, you may think:  earthquake!!

If you live near a highway, you may think:  semi-truck!!

If you're from an oil-rich nation, you may think:  gas explosion!!

If you're from New York, you may think:  another terrorist attack!!  (God forbid.)

If you live next to a gravel pit, you may think:  ho hum.

But if you live on a farm, you think:  animal escape!!

'Cause we didn't miss a beat last night, at 9:30 PM, as we were watching a heart-wrenching story on Frontline (PBS) about the Iranian elections, when our house started to shake and tremble. 

Instead of grabbing the kids and getting into the doorway, or running to the basement, or grabbing the gas masks, or saying "ho hum", we ran to our windows to witness:

Two horses and two goats running circles around the house, kicking up their heels and having a fine old time.

Once in awhile, I'd just like a dull moment.  Is that so wrong?

A Teacher For Once

It's not often that I get to write a post about teaching a farmer skill to someone else.  Most of the time I'm learning.  And screwing up.  And learning from my screw-ups.

But looky here.  I'm teaching my friend Andy how to kill, pluck (or skin, as in this photo--she wanted to keep the feathers) and gut a chicken. 

Processing chickens is a skill that is being lost as we slowly lose our grandparents.  It's also a skill that in suprising-high demand.  Who knew? 

I like passing on a bit of knowledge once in awhile.  It makes me feel like a real farmer for once. 

Finally! A Small Farm Advantage

"Rain, rain go away. Come again another day."

It's been THE rainiest growing season I can ever recall. A wet spring made it difficult to plant the crops. A wet summer meant it was difficult to make hay. And a wet fall has the harvest at a complete standstill.

If you recall, I was a fall-weather-whiner last year as well, with rain delaying harvest, corn moisture levels extremely high, etc. etc. I should have saved my breath, because last year was a walk in the park compared to this year. With the weather forecasted to continue in this wet and cold pattern, I don't foresee getting the corn out of the field until December. Which means we might be fighting snowy field conditions.

I have to admit that being a farmer has made me a little cranky. (My family may argue I've always been cranky--don't listen to them.) But my crankiness really comes out when in company with a person that starts to wax rhapsodic about "farmers (said with a negative tone) who are making money! hand over fist! as they farm fencerow to fencerow! with no consideration of the environment! in pursuit of the almighty dollar!" People eat this line up, man. They are all over it. If you want your own popularity to soar sky-high, try that line out. I guarantee you'll have people murmuring in agreement, possibly a small applause, and definitely an increase in groupies. (Hey, everyone needs a few groupies.)

What these people don't realize is that our livelihoods are mostly out of our control. Grain prices soared last year to record levels. So did trucking fees, basis levels (what elevators charge for handling our grain), fertilizer and input costs, diesel prices, drying charges, etc. Don't blame a farmer for trying to squeeze a few hundred extra bushels out of his or her land, is what I'm trying to say here. The survival of their farm depends upon it.

This year is even tougher. Grain prices have come down a bit, but we were forced to pay for much of the aforementioned input fees during last year's highs. Add to that our wet year, and we're talking near disaster.

Wet grain means thousands, yes thousands, of dollars in drying charges. Wet grain also means that even if you're able to harvest your crops, the grain elevators won't take them because the moisture counts are too high. What does one do with thousands of bushels of grain and nowhere to go? Wet fields increase the likelihood of soil compaction at harvest, which causes a myriad of problems in future years. And wet weather means low quality hay and fewer cuttings (read lost income).

While we're on the subject of hay, I have to point out one distinct advantage Irish Grove has over other farms: we have livestock. Most people, including us, have given up on their 4th cutting of hay. The alfalfa and grass hay fields sit there, unharvested, taunting us with the lost opportunity and lost income. Except, wait! We have cows. And hay fields with fences.

Cattle prices are too low to make sense for most smaller farms, so cows are usually relegated to large feedlots that can take advantage of bulk pricing discounts, etc. etc. Ignoring the drawbacks that come with large feedlots, the results are that farm fences have been torn down. I don't blame anyone for this: fencing is extremely expensive to maintain, not to mention a royal pain in the arse--they easily become overgrown with weeds and brush. (Anyways, one may be able to fit a few more corn rows where that fence used to sit. Don't hate.)

But we graze our cows and fences have gone back up. So while we may not be able to take that 4th cutting of hay, we can run the cattle through the field and they will eat it green instead! After some heavy frosts, the plants don't have the same nutrient availability as they did during the summer months, but it's nutritionally equivalent to dry hay.

So, the cows harvest the hay on their own and save us time and money spent on harvesting a hay crop. They keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere (no tractor driving), fertilize the land by pooping and peeing, which in turns keeps greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere (no need to mine for and truck fertilizer in). Oh, and we won't have to feed them as much dry hay this winter, leaving more to sell to our neighbors. Brilliant!

Small farms like ours have few advantages over large farms, so it's nice to finally find one. Maybe it'll help a bit with my crankiness! If so, my family will be thanking the cows on a daily basis.

Found and Lost

We found the cows: four white Charolais steers bedded down in a waterway in the middle of a farmer's beanfield.

The same four white steers that farmer Tom's fieldhand has seen while mowing a waterway. The ones he had called Tom about, the ones Tom had called Stewart about, the ones that Stewart had called Mr. Palmer about, and yes, the ones that had caused the hired hand to be the butt of some good-natured jokes. Those cows.

Turns out the family at that pretty Campbell Road farmstead we had visited 5 hours earlier had known that there were white cattle sightings on their land, but had forgotten about it when they determined Tom's hired hand was a dope.

A lesson for us all: hired hands aren't dopes.

Well, news of finding the lost cattle traveled quickly and by this time we had a small posse of locals rounded up to help us....maybe 10 people or so. We decided to move the cattle back up that long farm lane and divert them into a 5 acre pasture. From there we could get them into a corral, load them up into our trailer, and have them outta there.

The first part of the plan went rather smoothly. It took only 45 minutes or so to get the cattle moving up the lane and into the pasture. Marcel quickly went home to get our trailer, which he backed into position at the end of their corral. We shifted our positions around and had a nice three-point-corral system laid out. Marcel and the other guys would herd the cattle into the corral and Laura would shut the first gate behind them. Then Mary (a neighbor) would push them into a second area of the corral and shut another gate. Monica (Stewart's wife) and I would keep them moving straight up and into the trailer, finishing the show of pure herding talent with a slam of the trailer door.

What a plan! We were so confident of success, even, that we ordered a few pizza's.

The cows, however, had a different plan. They weren't returning to the captive life without a fight and wouldn't go into the corral. After a long and painful hour, we had another stroke of bad luck. One steer broke away from the group and leapt right up and over the pasture fence as if he were an albino deer. *ahem* He ran back down that long lane and returned to the beautiful beanfield with the stream and cottonwood tree. NOoooo!!!

Well, we chased him for a bit but decided to call it a night. We collapsed upon Stewart and Monica's chairs, ate some pizza, drank some beer, and made friends with our neighbors on Campbell Road.

To be continued........

And I promise the next time will be the last. This suffering must end soon.

Lost and Found

We were at the intersection of Campbell and Pecatonica roads, in the corner of our neighbors' beanfield, and had lost the trail. The cattle had run into the road, that much we knew, but to where?

We drove down Campbell Road to a beautiful farmstead where some cattle of ours had "visited" before, in the late 1980's. (I remember helping my Dad round them up and watching him mutter and curse under his breath. I also remember that while he seemed mad, he also seemed like he was thoroughly enjoying himself.) We pulled in and asked an older gentleman and what looked to be his daughter if they'd seen 4 white steers come by. The daughter told us that no, they hadn't seen anything but that they'd keep their eyes out for them. We drove away disappointed and returned to our neighbor's beanfield. Again.

At this point, Marcel was very diligently trying to find more cow tracks (oh, how I wish I were talking about ice-cream) while I was quickly losing patience with the slow pace of the cattle-sleuthing. You see, I can sometimes be an impatient person. I can also sometimes downplay my personality faults. But honestly, while Marcel was going all Sherlock Holmes on me, I was in the pick-up truck worrying about cow-car accidents while trying to keep the 3 kids from strangling each other in the back seat.

We decided to split up. That way he could continue dusting for hoof-prints and rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and I could drive around like a madwoman in the pickup truck and trespass on other people's farms. All in all, another win-win situation.

It was at this point that I called my sister Laura. She's always first on my list of who to call when there's trouble on the farm. Ahem.

Could she be oh-so-helpful and get Madelina to her birthday party? 'Cause we're, like, a little busy trying to find our cows that escaped. Laura was the first of many to exclaim "The whole herd?", referring to our herd of 42 grassfed cattle of varying ages, sizes and maturity levels. Thankfully, no. They were still happy as clams (what does that mean?) in their pasture.

As usual, Laura came through for me. Not only did she get Madelina to her party so I only had 2 kids wrestling in the backseat, but she joined the search party afterwards. Marcel was CSI-ing it in the beans, I was trespassing on area farms, and Laura was driving her van around the local roads, stopping in and asking anyone who was outside if they'd seen some cows. We had all inadvertently fallen back on our personal strengths: Marcel was being diligent; I was multi-tasking behind the wheel; Laura was talking.

And the talking saved the day. Saved the day, I tell you. Laura stopped in at a Buffalo farm (yes, you read that right) and the owners told her that no, they hadn't seen the cows, but their neighbors down the road had! Laura called me just as I had pulled into my driveway in defeat. She told me she had a lead: there had been a sighting and I should meet her at such and such farm on Campbell Road. According to the buffalo farmers, these people had seen the cows.

Wait a minute! That is the same farm where I had stopped 4 hours ago and they said they hadn't seen them. What is going on? I drove over anyways, met Laura there, and once again the nice lady told us they hadn't seen anything. At which point our hearts sank. We had been so hopeful, so excited to at least have a small lead. But then, this time, the nice lady said, "Feel free to drive down the lane and check around if you'd like."

By this time Marcel had arrived (cow-sighting-news travels fast), everyone hopped into the pick-up and off we drove down the nice lady's farm lane. The lane was long, and it divided a large pasture with trees and some dairy cattle on the left from a very large cornfield on the right. AS we drove on, we got to the bottom of a long hill and into the middle of another soybean field where the lane basically joined up with a long waterway running through the middle. There was a pretty cottonwood tree in the waterway and a gentle creek flowing through.

One forgets how pretty it is here in Irish Grove until you drive down a lane into the center of a farm. You're away from the road and houses and there's a quiet peacefulness that fills your soul. The gentle rolling hills, the contrast between soybeans, corn and pasture, a small herd of cattle dotting the landscape: the pastoral beauty leaves you absolutely speechless.

Laura and I were admiring how pretty it was back there while Marcel jumped out and started poking around. Soon he found an area of long grass that had been flattened by something. And wait, a cow pie! Hail Holy Mary, he found a cow pie! Poop had never been so well received as in that moment.

By this time, we had all jumped out and were poking around. "Yep, looks like they've been here awhile. They bedded down here, and there's a trail leading this way...and over there. And look, there it goes that way..." And then, all of a sudden, there they were. It was 5:00 PM and we had been searching for 8 hours. But we found them: four stupid white Charolais steers bedded down in a waterway in the middle of a farmer's beanfield.

To be continued.....

Rewind

It was Thurday, and Farmer Stewart received a phone call from Farmer Tom. Tom told Stewart that his hired hand was doing some mowing on the Palmer farm--a dairy farm that butts up to the back of Stewart's land--when he saw four white cows bedded down in Stewart's waterway.

This didn't seem too hard to believe, especially since Stewart rented one of his own pastures to Mr. Palmer for some dry Holstein cows and a bull. But Stewart was busy tending to his other farm in another town, and so was unable to run down and see for himself. Instead he called Mr. Palmer up, told him his cattle had gotten out, and to go gather 'em up again.

Now being a farmer--a mighty poor farmer as is now painfully obvious--I know that these calls are the ones you dread the most. "Ah, sh*t!" is usually my own personal response, but I'm sure Mr. Palmer (whom I don't know) is much more civilized than I; he probably just shook his head a little.

I'm also pretty sure it didn't take Mr. Palmer long to get down to the pasture to check out the situation--a cattle escape is something you attend to NOW. But funny thing is, Mr. Palmer's cattle were lazing around nice and happy under a few trees in a pasture corner. He counted them: one, two.......yep, they're all here. And then, get this! Then, as the responsible, non-sucky farmer that he is, he also walked the perimeter of the pasture and checked his fence.

He checked his fence? My, what a novel idea!

And by golly, his fence was fine! Sure it was a little bogged down by weeds in a few places, but that trusty electric fenceline he had put around the inside was working like a charm. Mr. Palmer cows won't be trampling another farmer's crops anytime soon.

So then something happened that was bound to happen. You see, there's this well-kept secret that only those of us foolish enough to call ourselves farmers know about. It's the bread and butter of a farmer's day to day existence. It's better than coming home to a home-cooked meal, better than growing a record-setting corn crop, yes, even better than toodling around in your brand new souped-up gazillion-horsepower tractor.

Farmers just absolutely love to humiliate other farmers when they make a mistake.
And seeing four white "ghost cattle" in a waterway is one of those mistakes that no one makes.

And so the jokes began. Farmer Tom's poor hired hand was teased to no end about seeing "ghost cattle", about not knowing the difference between a deer and a cow, about how there might be one albino deer in the area, but four?? Etc. Etc. Etc.

Yes, I'm sure that poor hired hand was the laughingstalk of the coffeeshop. And I'm also sure he'll quite possibly never report a rogue cow ever, ever again.