Sheep

Its been a busy month here on the farm and as we close out summer we look forward to the bit of rest that fall always promises.

Fire Fighting school continues through 14 Dec and though it can be a pain to drive the 80 miles round trip to school a couple times a week I am finding that its rewarding in many ways. I am certainly learning a lot and I also like the camaraderie from the Fire Fighters from various departments. We have had some drop out but we all just finished the Hazardous Materials Operations level course which is a prerequisite to getting certified as a Level II Fire Fighter and I think the rest of us are hard core enough to stick it out to the end.

We have the fall garden going well, we are getting ready to do our second cutting of hay and as the title of this post alludes to..we have a couple of sheep now. We are also getting ready for number 1 daughter Jenny's wedding next month....and I for one am ready for things to slow down (what happened to the Simple Life?).

We have been getting rain on and off so things are still green here which pleases me as a farmer but its not making the bow hunters too happy...yes its deer season already though I don't hunt until the rifle season in November.

I enjoy these little vignettes around the farm and particularly in fall and spring. The haying equipment is staged waiting for a 4 or 5 day dry period so we can cut, dry, windrow, and bale. 

The Black Walnut trees are some of the first trees to start shedding leaves and though they aren't colorful, their scattering on the ground means fall is soon to come even though its still hot during the day. The weather people are saying that we will have a rough winter and a colorful fall...its time (actually passed time) to start thinking of cutting wood for the wood boiler.

We stated at the beginning of the year in a blog post that we were going to start fixing up the old barn this year and get electric to the pole barn shop and we have now started both projects. Maybe a little late in the year but we have been busy and sometimes things just get pushed to one side for awhile.

The previous owner had built barn doors out of interior grade tongue and groove paneling with no cross bracing and he attached everything with paneling nails. I guess it was an attempt but as you can imagine it didn't last long and we have been putting off fixing this issue ever since we bought this place. Holly and I have now replaced a couple of the doors with heavy 2x6 planks with Z bracing and the doors now open to the inside instead of the reverse like they were. Its satisfying work, very satisfying.

And this is why we finally got around to fixing up the barn and doing a bunch of fencing around the place. This is Tulip, a pregnant Dorper Ewe that we traded the old golf cart for (along with a little mixed Ram).

Tulip and Nike have adjusted well to their new surroundings and they have the run of the stall inside the barn, the barnyard in front and the two paddocks behind the barn.

Nike was bottle fed and is very affectionate and likes to be petted and have his ears scratched while Tulip is more reserved.

They make a bit of noise once in a while, Bandit and Rose have already made friends with them, and the cattle are curious as all get out and spend hours next to the paddock fence bellowing to them or just staring at them and watching everything they do. They add a lot to the farm and we hope to grow the herd.

 

 

Haying Time

Last year we got 65 bales of sad hardly worth baling hay on our first cutting and we didn't even bother with a second or third cutting. This year, with the drought solidly behind us we got 369 bales of quality hay.

We couldn't have picked a patch of better weather to do our haying. This spring and summer has seen mild temps and rain about every three days which is great for growing but not so great for haying because we didn't have a tedder. We cut, let it dry, rake and then bale and it usually takes 3 or 4 days where we need no rain.

You cant imagine the relief we felt with this years harvest after the terrible drought of last year. We were spending $300 a month on hay for the cattle last year from about mid Nov - March of this year.

We would have preferred to harvest the hay a little sooner as it was getting past its prime but its still very good hay and you cant rush mother nature.

This was a virtual dust and weed patch last year at this time.

Maybelle has to check everything out. Some people say cattle are dumb but I find them to be fairly intelligent and they have a curiosity that disputes the dumb tag.

 

Holly and I and later with the help of our neighbor Roger got all the hay bucked and into the barn before the rains came which happened a few hours after we were done...whew!

The southern pasture had more hay production because we aren't running cattle on it this year.

Holly is a trooper and real partner. We are both somewhat crippled up so it takes us a bit longer than it would other wise but we get great satisfaction from doing for ourselves. In this picture you can see the difference between this years hay which has a green tint and the junk hay we had left from last year. Also, those are Alaskan King Crab pots on the left that we brought from Alaska....I wonder how many Ozark farmers have King crab pots in their hay mow?

So this is what we ended up with. Enough to carry us through the winter without buying hay and we should be able to sell a good bit...and we also expect to get at least one more cutting in a month or so.

Happiness is a full hay mow. We have traded the golf cart with our friends Susan and Blena from Bowen Creek Farm for a couple sheep...so soon we will be expanding to sheep. 

And finally, the orchard is coming along nicely. We have plans to greatly increase the size of the orchard but like most things, time and money are in short supply so its taking longer than we would like.

 

Wood Lots and Pasture

This year has been the opposite of the drought we had last year, its been mild temperature wise, we have had a fair bit of rain, and things are green like they should be.

I don't know if I can describe it adequately but we have several small wood lots that we get great enjoyment out of. We like to walk through them and just listen to the sounds of the forest if you will and are usually treated to the sounds of birds, the squirrels jumping around, we scare up rabbits, wild turkeys and the occasional  white tail deer and its just very satisfying on a deeply hard to describe levels.

Our main pond is surrounded by Cedars, Oaks, Maples, and what we think of as "weed" trees but it has a very vibrant and distinct ecosystem all to its own. Fish, frogs, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, snakes, lizards, Herons, Ducks, and the always popular Deer and Wild Turkeys can all be found here.

The back woodlot is mostly deciduous hardwoods and it changes from what seems like a small piece of open woodland in the winter to a jungle of immense proportions in the summer. Last year we found several Peach trees in this wood lot we didn't know we had and this year we have found some wild Cherry trees.

We are still exploring this and find things all the time, including animal burrows, old fencing, and a couple of rock cairns we are trying to identify.

In winter we can look through here and almost always find our cattle but as it grows up it gets almost impossible as you can see.

Down in this little draw we found a bunch of peach trees..why were they there? Were they planted long ago as part of the farm stead that was here in the late 1800s or was it accidental?

I know, its just woods...but its our woods...and its very pleasing. If your going to buy a farm or a homestead...get some woods along with it.

This pasture looked like desert last year..its much improved though weedy.

Our Cows may not be California Cows by they are happy Cows none the less.

Just seeing our pastures come back from the disaster of last year is satisfying. We were really worried but this year has proven to be a blessing. 

We will be haying our non grazing pastures in about a week and we hope to get something over 300 square bales. Then we will spray to cut back on the weeds, then hopefully we will get two more cuttings this year.

Looks better than dust and weeds eh?

Two Days of Frenetic Activity (and Sore Muscles) - Part 2

So the fall haying continues. We have had weeks of mild sunny weather with zero rain but now that we decided to hay, the weatherman decides to change the forecast to rain in the next two days. We had to get the hay that was just cut raked, baled, then the bales needed to be put into the hay mow in the barn before the expected rain that afternoon.

We started off the day coming across this garden spider weaving a peculiar web. If you live in the Ozarks, you either embrace the wildlife (including insects and arachnids) or you will go crazy. We have found that the insects and spiders here are actually fascinating and when you become educated your fear goes away.

While waiting for the hay equipment, we limbed up some trees in the pasture so the cows can hang out under the canopy; at this point we had solid cloud cover and some of them were very dark.

This will also make it easier to hay around these trees and we think it will look a lot better. We have a lot of cedars and we like them but the tend to grow right down to the ground and then get scraggly on the bottom.

Chris had the day off from work and was helping take the brush to the burn pile when he was called into work on his day off so he wont be available to buck hay bales..ruh roh...

This hay rake is also an antique but it works good and this is yet another piece of equipment we would like to eventually obtain.

I just cant get enough of the old tractors and equipment around here and I swear its addictive.

You can tell the hay we cut dried out nicely and once it started getting raked into windrows we started to think maybe we would have a bit more yield than we expected.

Holly wanted this picture of the changing colors, its just starting but fall is our favorite time of year and with the warm mild days and crisp nights we are certainly enjoying it. Even the smells of fall get to you, lots of fallen leaves about, the smell of wood smoke, the sound of the geese and ducks beginning their southern migration....you cant beat it.

I wish you could hear the sound of the tractor as it chugs along, its music to me.

To the right of this picture is our couple acre woodlot and this is the back pasture we try to keep for the deer and turkeys. We had great intentions of planting turnips and corn back here for the deer but the back surgery put the kaibosh on that until next year. Behind those trees in the background is the field with the round haybales from the last posting and its just a quiet peaceful place we like to walk around in.

We like square bales for ease of handling and this old New Holland baler still works great. It makes all kinds of interesting noises.

We realized that our initial estimates of the yield was too low and we were pleased to get 83 bales from this fall cutting.

Two loads like this went into the barn and we had to press Judy into service with Chris being at work.

The satisfaction of harvesting your own hay from your own land is hard to describe. Its routine for most folks I guess but 2 years ago we had 1/5th of an acre and only harvested some small vegetables we managed to eake out of the cold rocky Alaskan soil. Check out the sky in this picture....after a morning of cloud cover the sky broke into a beautiful blue with scattered cumulus clouds.

All three of us got the hay into the hay mow (note the sweat) and about 10 minutes later it started to rain.

We also gathered up the cork sheaves and got them into the barn before the rain.

We now have 135 bales put up into the barn which will go a long way for winter feed. Our pasture stays viable for the cattle most of the way through the winter but if we get a lot of snow cover we will have to use the hay.

The newly limbed Cedars in the lower pasture look a lot better.

And what is fall without Mums? They seem to have liked the long hot summer because they are much more prolific this year.

As we have said before, we like flowers and color in the gardens and we have planted so that we pretty much have color year round.

The Geraniums are still blooming and this Honeysuckle we planted from a twig has taken off and is starting to cover the back of the well house.

Our persimmons also have a bumper crop this year and we are giving away a lot of them to friends and neighbors. Persimmons are bitter until they are ripe and then they are good for a few days before they go bad again. And by the way, lore says that if you cut a Persimmon seed in half it will show either a spoon shape meaning winter will be snowy, a fork which means it will be mild and you will have plenty to eay, or a knife which means it will be cold and the wind will cut you like a knife.....we got a knife.....

And finally, Boo Boo has taken to laying about in "his" box all day long, he is also getting on in years and enjoys a semi-retirement. We are all very sore from bucking hay and I think we will take today off from hard labor before we begin to cut wood again later this week. We are tired but content.