My Life as a Beginning Iowa Farmer at Wild Rose Pastures

A Quiet January, Just Kidding

2012-01-29T21:13:00.000-08:00

Much of late December was focused on the development of our buisness plan over the next three years. This plan was focused on growing our beef enterprise, maintaining our poultry production at comparable levels to what we are producing and reducing the number of sheep we raise to a bare minimum, while continuing to bring infrastructure on line to make it easier to chore. Janice and I shared this plan at the Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual conference in early January.

Practical Farmers of Iowa Presentation

We picked up a grass-fed bull to breed our cattle, he is an Angus/Jersey cross. We also have had 5 lambs so far with three more ewes due in the near term. I think we will be selling off four more ewe lambs, bringing our herd down to 12 ewes. We have to sit down and finalize our poultry schedule for next year so we can get chick orders in early next month.

Our new bull, Carl (he is the all black one)

Two lambs just after birth, from one of our best ewes

The weather has been unusually warm and will continue to be unusually warm into the foreseeable future. Our usual daily high for this time of year is right around 30 degrees. The forecast below is for the last week of January and the first week of February, it is unheard of. I am not complaining, it is great when you live in the country not to have to fight snow all winter, especially considering that we have had some very rough winter over the past few years. I said I was not going to complain, but here it comes. The one problem with this nice weather is you can keep wanting to work outside. Normally winter is a lot of time not working (doing non-farming things, like hobbies), but not this year.

Mild weather continues

Around the farm, we have built some fence, been working on the chicken building, and burning off some of our many brush piles from last winter. The chicken building still needs some interior sheeting work, exterior metal sheeting around the tractor, ventilation system, eave work, roosting racks for the laying hens, and some finishing touches here and there, but it is getting much closer.

Hazel outside on the snow

The weather has given me a few days here and there, where it is warm enough to take Hazel outside. I like having her outside and not cooped up in the house so much. She has proven to be very afraid of snow (she was afraid of grass too) and won't touch it and does not like to walk on it. I took the opportunity recently to try to get Hazel familiar with the snow (a word she loves to say). She has having a good time stepping on it and mashing it up with her boots, I suspect that is because it was making it go away. It is late and I too must go away (sleep), but stay tuned.

Looking Back and Moving Forward

2011-12-31T23:21:00.000-08:00

Well 2011 is now behind us. It has been a rough year for us both balancing family and working off farm for me, but also trying to keep the farm running despite considerable difficulties. The business had nearly 100% mortality on 3 chicken batches (of 5) this year brought about by illness, predator pressure, and a hatchery mistake. Our position was furthered weakened by having higher than desired mortality in turkeys and very low weights at processing time. On the up side, we processed our first beef and found to be the best grass-fed beef we have had yet, and we have almost finished constructing a massive new asset, the poultry building. Needless to say these challenges and the expense of building a structure have left us in a very tight financial position.

Started putting on trim this weekend with the help of Mark from Madison

Interior Sheeting is going up with the help of Jim and Mark

In 2012, things will get better. Our new brooder set-up should help us get past chick mortality problems, the new layer house will be much harder for predators to access the birds or their eggs, and we are going back to building fence so we can get much better at keeping our cattle on our farm. I have also just been told that my job with the Natural Resource Conservation Service will be coming to a close because the money for part-time federal employees is still not forthcoming from the United States Department of Agriculture. Next week will be my last week. I was looking at leaving in April of 2012, this just accelerates the timeline quite a bit. The time off will let me stay a home with Hazel more and will allow me to focus on my 2012 goals.

Janice reading to Hazel from one of her Christmas Presents

The 2012 master task list by month

I think we look forward to the possibilities in 2012, despite being concerned about our financial position and short on operating capital. Most of the 2012 task list is smaller items or projects that have been started but not completed. Happy 2012 people and wish us luck.

Rough landing

2011-12-07T18:52:00.000-08:00

I could not live with the bright blue chicken building. Mostly because it was so far from what I was aiming for. So I painted it with the last reasonably warm day we have had. Whenever I get to the trim, it will be white.

Green Chicken Building

Two weeks ago, we had a mini skid steer with a trencher attachment on the farm and I trenched out the buried wires that go under our farm gates along with the main power supply line to the new building. Janice and I put the underground line in conduit. It was a tight fit and threading over 125 feet of fairly tight conduit was not fun, but we got through it together. Last weekend, Michael Carter, my stepfather-in law came out and we finished wiring the building, then we crossed our fingers and threw the switch. Everything works as intended.

Power supply line cut for high tensile fence

Our average turkey size was only 8.2 pounds this year. Where our typical average is between 11 and 13 pounds. With the number of turkeys we raised this year, every pound off average represents about $1000 in sales. So we did between three and five grand less in sales than we were projecting, so things are extremely tight right now. We are selling animals that have given us the slightest reason to sell. Our goal is to avoid selling our cattle breeding stock in the process of righting the ship.

Two of our original ewes that we sold

We have still been trying to put weight on some of our small turkeys. We still have 24 birds out there. This is an older photo of them when they were smaller. I am not sure where the birds will end up, but I hope to have them either sold off live or butchered within the next week.

Small turkeys that did not make the Thanksgiving cut

Well this is where we are at this point in December. I hope that we pull up and flatten out by the end of the month. Stay tuned and wish us luck.

Foamed Blue Chicken House

2011-11-19T21:30:00.000-08:00

Well it certainly has been a long time since I have scraped together enough time to create a blog post. Our effort has been focused on getting the chicken building sealed up before winter so we can focus on the inside as it gets colder.

Since the last post, we have put in the windows and doors, framed and roofed the tractor shed, and wired most of the building. Today we took major striders forward by having the side of the building spray foamed and then I began to paint it.

11/12/11 Framed Tractor Shed with Jim's help

11/12/11 The Whole Building

11/12/11 Wired Bank of Switches

Michael Carter really took to wiring the building and spent part of three successive weekends working on the building until it was ready to be spray foamed.

11/19/11 Building Interior Prior to Foam Insulation

11/19/11 Let the Foam Spraying Begin

River Bluffs Spray Foam Insulators is run by Larry Smith out of New Sharon, IA. They are very professional, reasonably priced, and great to work with. I was really impressed with how clean they left the building when it was done. I would gladly work with them again.

11/19/11 Short Video of Larry Spraying Foam

11/19/11 The Foam is Done

11/19/11 Chicken House now in Technicolor

I might have picked out paint in a hurry, with a child, under the glare of indoor home improvement warehouse lighting. I swear it was not that blue on the swatch. These is some debate as to whether or not we will repaint it. I think it will look better when the trim is up and painted white. It might not be quite so blue then. We will see what it ends up looking like, but for the time being it is bright blue. It might even help folks find us, "if you pass a bright blue chicken house, you have gone too far." We will see and share with you here, until next time.

Heating Up as the World Cools Down

2011-10-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

We are approaching the final turn in our production system. The last large group of the chickens are going to the locker this Thursday. Then turkeys will go in two groups over the following two weeks. I may shift the turkeys back a week if I think their weights are not going to hit the mark as they represent such a massive share of our business.

Turkey encampment just north of the house

Video of turkeys on pasture & Hazel talking

Work on the building is moving along. I am now back at work a few days a week so it will likely slow up a bit here. We have put almost al of the siding on the main building and still have a lot of framing on the tractor side to go. Since the picture below was taken, I have stared putting in the windows. The building is certainly not square. That becomes very apparent when putting in the windows. I am glad I am learning on a farm building and I am not working on a house.

Chicken Coop Coming Together

Since the last post, I have moved all of the hay we had still out in a rented pasture up the road. I also had a small Vermeer tracked skid loader on the farm. I do love those things. I did some earth shaping where our new circe drive will be, removed the old compost bin and square foot gardens that are in the wet area of the yard that needs work, and removed all of the poultry bedding from the garage as it was serving as our brooder. I did start a major task for next year with the skid loader.

I stated removing the ancient perimeter fence on the west side of the property. It was three stands of barbed wire over a short woven wire fence with alternating home grown cedar posts and old steel t-posts. It is largely broken down and buried in the dirt. I might have gotten about a 10th of the fence removed, but it will be much easier to put in new fence next year with a blank slate. I had to chase cattle out of the neighbors bean field twice this year. That means that next year it will be corn and they will be much harder to find and return to this property if that happens next year.

The calves are frolicking on top of the big hill north of the house

With all of the work that needs to get done each day, Hazel has been outside a lot. She has been on my back a bit, but is starting to do more outside on her own. She likes to watch the animals while I work with them and she likes to play in the chicken building while I do light work on it. I do the loud and dangerous things during nap time. The video baby monitor is an amazing thing.

Hazel riding in her Chicco carrier

Stay tuned as we hopefully start to slow down a bit moving forward. I know I can not keep this pace up for much longer.

September Grind

2011-09-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

This September has been the busiest I have ever had, period. I am still working around three days a week, taking care of Hazel on many of my days off, and trying to push the farm forward. The only way I able to sustain this effort is to know that by the end of October farm work will slow down a bit or at least change.

In the past month, we have finished framing the chicken building, put a roof on it, decided to make it bigger by adding a tractor lean to to the side of it, butchered chickens, moved all of our turkeys outside and all the rest of our chickens outside, we have been selling sheep, butchering lamb, having calves, all while trying to ride out the last two months of our production season where we go through around $150 a week in poultry feed.

The chicken building has moved forward because we have had weekends off in September and because we have called on a number of friends for help, sometimes repeatedly (Jim and Adam especially). This weekend we are going to try to side much of the building. I am trying to get the poultry building sealed up before winter so we can work on the inside when it gets cold outside.

9/18/11 after a word day where the purlins went on and the framing got almost finished

9/25/11 after a work day where the steel roof went on and the house wrap stated to go up

Looking up at the new steel roof

We did butcher chickens at the locker two weeks ago, but they came out very very small. A week before that we had a weasel hit kill 44 in the pasture pens in one night. Needless to say the chickens have not been treating me very well. The turkeys are doing much better. They are almost to the point where we will day range them, or give them a large area to run outside of their pens during the day.

Turkeys on 9/20/11, they are much larger now in just a week

The cattle have been grazing the native grass & legume planting we put in 3 years ago on the 12.5 acres that used to be crop ground. That stand is still developing in the sandiest parts of the field, but looks pretty good in others. The cattle have had very large paddocks designed to last them about a week. Since the stand is pretty dormant they are not doing much damage to it, besides we are trying to get them to knock down as much vegetation as possible so that it can decompose with contact to the soil and add to the soil carbon.

Cattle down on the prairie planting

All four calves in one place

The sheep have been clearing out the forest floor

While the cattle have been on the prairie the sheep have been clearing brush and weeds in the timber. Where they go it is like scorched earth behind them

Hazel has been doing very well. She has started to make turkey gobbling noises and has shown a surprising amount of muscle coordination for a child of 17 months. As always she is a joy to be around and is just a lot of fun. I do wish I could spend more time with her, but I appreciate all the more what time I do get.

Hazel, the little engineer, lining up a screwdriver to the screws on the bottom on my chair

Hazel, Janice, and my pants on the clothesline

Calving Time

2011-08-26T05:26:00.000-07:00

Last week we had our first calf and early this week we had our second. The two are both little bulls. They are very hard to find in the over grown pastures and since the mothers are held in by a single poly line, they can roam a bit. I have not seen the two calves together yet. In fact I can go days without seeing any of them. I would feel better if I could see them more easily.

One of two little bull calves

With the dry weather (we have not had a good rain for around 7-8 weeks and the forecast does not have much chance in it), the grass has stopped growing and now all that is growing are the weeds. We have a lot of bull thistle, horseweed, western ragweed, and heath aster out in the pasture. Some of it can get up to 8 feet tall (I am a bit over 6 feet tall). I have been hammering the pasture with sheep to try and bring things under control. The sheep are doing a pretty good job, but the remaining skeletons of the weeds will likely have to be mowed off as I am finding it hard to move my chicken pens over them. Times like this, makes me regret selling my pasture mower, but I did sell it to buy more sheep.

South Pasture Before Sheep

South Pasture After Sheep

I am still trying to get the turkeys outside. They are just over 4 weeks old and ready to start outside living. They are bottled up in the brooder with some young chickens. Hazel loves the birds (not as much as the cows and the sheep) so now that she can motor across the yard, she wants to go up to the garage and see the brooder.

Hazel and the baby chickens

Other then that, not too much to report. Janice has had me putting on a new screen door on the house as the old one was starting to fall apart. I rather like the new door. That is it for now. Here is hopping I can get my turkeys outside today.

Removing the old door

New storm door

Getting Our Groove On

2011-08-18T05:47:00.000-07:00

Well we have made some progress around here in the last two weeks. Our chickens and turkeys continue to develop well. I moved 175 Chickens moved out to pasture this last weekend and they are doing good. I lost one to a predator and then caught it the next night. It was an opossum. We are trapping every night because of the heavy predator pressure we have had all year. We have even had coon hunters walk our timber and clear out two of the four they came across.

The first batch of 2011 to make it this far, now this is more like it

The turkeys still rule the brooder with 165 of them still in the garage/brooder. They are very large for turkeys of there age and I am really liking the new brooder set-up. I just can't wait for it operating next year in the new building.

Turkeys hanging out in the garage at three weeks of age

Today, we get our last batch of chickens for the year. They will have to share some space with the turkeys so we will see how that goes. On the rest of the farm, Jim was out last weekend and we put the remaining rafters in place and began to frame the internal wall. We need to get the windows and doors framed and then get the boards in place that the roof steel will sit on. My hope is that for our annual customer work day on September 17th, that we will be putting up steel roofing that day.

All the rafters for the chicken building are now in place

The mower is in the garage and if you can imagine what opening the garage door might be like with 160 turkeys in there, you can understand why I have nor mowed my yard for a month. That is why the sheep are doing it for me right now. I just need to follow them around with the weed wacker/eater and tidy things up a bit. It works ok, but you can't get every spot.

Sheep grazing the yard, mower takes the month off

Other then that, we have been just hanging in there as things accelerate around here. If you are big fans of my daughter Hazel, you should check out my wife's blog as she has some footage of Hazel making sheep noises around the sheep. When the sheep were right up by the house, Hazel could just stand there and watch them and make realistic noises back at them for twenty to thirty minutes easy. Other then that, I did manage to get one thing off my farm to-do list. I put the martin house back up. It has been lying round for over a year since it's pole rotted off in its old location and it fell to the earth. It is now towering over the young orchard and taller then ever. I did get some help from Michael in Ames to raise the thing up into position, so thank you for that. That martin house is just one of those things that I wanted to get done and Janice views as completely not important. She is probably right, but it is now done so I am happy.

The martin house goes back up after a year in the shed

Well that is all for now. I need to go get ready for little chickens that should be here in about an hour. Until next time.

End of July Update

2011-07-31T21:52:00.000-07:00

We are leaving a steamy July behind and beginning an steamy August. We have 175 broiler chickens and 165 turkeys in our brooder. Since the chicken building is not functional yet, we converted the garage into a brooder. The garage has been working well as a brooder. I wish the building had a window so I could vent it easier. The meat chickens should be ready to move outside tomorrow or Tuesday. The birds are a little young, but with evening temperatures around 70 degrees, I think things will be fine. The pens got moved today into positions and necessary maintenance needs to be performed to keep the old pens moving. The outside pens are on the list of things that should be replaced next year.

New Chicken Brooder Set-up in the Garage

With the heat I have not been too active outside. One lamb died, but other than that we have been doing alright. I usually come in from choring saturated with sweat. I am going through one shirt in the morning and one to two shirts at night. When I come inside, Hazel tells me she wants to go outside by bringing me her shoes and then bringing me my shoes. It is cute, but the last thing I want to do is go back outside after doing chores. Hazel usually gets her way, at least for a few minutes. Hazel is also working on climbing up and down the stairs. She is very good at going up stairs and is alright at going down them. She has been climbing on top of the coolers and playing on top of them recently. It is quite cute until she starts to fuss to seek help getting down. That is our short July update. Things will be busy here in the coming weeks with birds back on pasture. We will have our chicken available in early September so stay in touch.

Hazel Playing on a Cooler Lid

Building a Farm

2011-07-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

You know there are some things I would caution new farmers when considering buying a farm. Looking at the potential is the desire of any would be land owner, but a full assessment of your farm deficiencies and/or the amount of time and work to realize that farm's potential is needed. We were admittedly naive in approaching our farm, but we are slowly working through the deficiencies in terms of buildings, fencing, and water systems. We should have addressed more of our infrastructure needs up front before we had animals, but then you don't have any revenue. Instead we muck through life trying to have animals and build infrastructure all at the same time.

One of our unaddressed needs has been our subpar brooder set-up. I have lost over 400 small chickens this year to a combination of disease, smothering and predators. The major problem with our current building is that we can not separate our brooders from our mature laying hens. So there are instances when young birds are exposed to the droppings of mature birds. Access to dropping of mature birds is a terrible disease and parasite source for the new chicks. Our new chicken building will have an internal wall to separate brooding from laying. The new building will also be tighter and easier to make sure predators can not enter it. The building is coming along. The rafters are about half up, the windows need to be framed, and the internal wall needs to be constructed, then the wrap and sheeting can go up. Many thanks to Jim form Pella for his ongoing help in constructing the building.

Current status of the poultry building

The poultry building will not be ready in time for the arrival of our replacement broiler chicks or our turkeys so plan B is being implemented. Our garage is being converted into a larger brooder with two brooder cells and Janice's car is being moved outside. My step-father-in-law, Michael, helped assemble the first brooder hood yesterday. It is a 4'x4' brooder hood almost exact to its original on a 1942 design. It should work well for 180 broiler chicks. We will build a 6'x4' brooder for our turkeys in the next week.

Top view of the new brooder hood

Bottom view of the new brooder

Our sheep and cattle are working though the rental property to the north of us. We did get out neighbor to the south to cut hay for us off another piece of rented ground to the north.

Nine bales stacked up for winter

I am still balancing work three days a week with the farm, Hazel and Janice. It can be very taxing at times. I am deeply concerned with how this juggling act will continue going into the fall when I will have two batches of chickens and turkeys to wrangle with at the same time as everything else I am doing now.

Hazel is doing well. She has really left the baby stage and is working up to the toddler stage. He talks a lot, but only a few words are discernible. Mostly daddy, kitty, and ball. She is as fun as ever and is working on some new teeth. I can't image doing this with out Janice and Hazel. These past two years have been very challenging, but those two lady keep me moving forward day after day.

Reading to Hazel

Up Goes the Walls

2011-06-13T05:29:00.000-07:00

We have made substantial progress on a couple of fronts and taken a few steps back as well.

We had a chicken coop raising party this weekend and got two of the walls (the long ones) up and framed. We will go back and do some cutting work to slip the windows in. I need to thank Super Jim from Pella, our regular helper who did much to guide the endeavor, and Janice's co workers Greg and Drew, and Greg's fiance Melanie. I learned a lot and I think a good time was had by all. Thanks you guys & gal for your help.

Attaching wall studs for the south wall (before raising the wall)

The finished product, two walls up in one afternoon

One of our goals for this year was to remove the Barbados ewes from our herd and process or sell all but one of the rams. As of yesterday, that has been done. We butchered 4 rams two weeks ago, sold off 5 ewes last week, and I sold and delivered 6 ewes and a ram yesterday. I did also sell my good young Katahdin Dorper cross ram that we were considering keeping. Other then that I butchered our steer this week. Needless to say, we have have moved a lot of animals this last week. The Sheep herd was at 48 animals and is now down to 31 counting our one ram. We are not getting out of sheep, we are getting rid of the bottom 30% of our herd and our extra rams. We also brought down our grazing pressure from around 15 AU to around 11 AU, so we should have more grass as we move into the leaner times this summer.

Nice Katahdin Dorper Cross Ram I sold (I will kinda miss him)

Our Steer on the trailer (I will miss miss him)

Where we have been struggling is with our chickens. We have had very heavy predator pressure. From foxes to raccoons. We have been trapping, but it is very hard to get a handle on those issues, especially foxes. To make matters worse, we have had an illness or developmental problems with our second batch of broilers. The building we are using and have been using is not very sanitary. It has adult birds and chicks in too close a proximity to each other. The new building will have a divided wall. The brooder side of the new building needs to be operational by mid-July so we can put our turkeys in it. The very slow development and high mortality has me deeply concerned about our July delivery dates and our cash flow moving into the late summer and early fall. Our beef and lamb is going to have to cover the spread, but our poultry building is also eating up our available funds. To make matters worse, the clutch is stuck on the tractor and I am going to need that thing soon to move new hay out of the field. As always, there are significant challenges that continue to dog us. I am hopeful though seeing some progress of the chicken building. We shall see what the back half of June has in store for us.

Caught between Mortar and Pestle

2011-06-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

Farming has not been easy or generous recently. Our primary energizer (8 Joule output) is broken. It stopped working a month ago and it is out being repaired. The back-up energizer (2 Joule output) is not doing the best job of containing our animals and they have been out a lot recently. Other then that, we are still hurting from our chicken debacle (hatchery sending us the wrong type of birds). We have also had heavy predator pressure form the raccoons on our layers so our egg production is limping along again.

The sheep are out, again

On the upside, we did get rid of one of the raccoons, we did butch four sheep (however their carcasses were diminutive), and we might be selling some sheep off. I am trying to butcher and sell my sheep numbers down. The goal is to purge most of the Barbados blood in the herd and bring us back to where we should be. This will reduce our total herd down by 40%.

There just has not been much upside to farming this year yet. Nothing seems to be going well and we seem to find struggles in what should be simple for us. We are looking at ways (like getting rid of the lower quality sheep) to help the situation. Customer deliveries start up again in two weeks so I am looking forward to catching up with our customers.

May Progress & Challenges

2011-05-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

We are moving forward through the month of May. We are making great progress on farm building despite me working. We have had several folks out helping so I want thank: Mark Bancroft, Jeremy Bennett, Michael Carter, Adam Faeth, and super helper Jim Stumo for coming out to work on our sheep handling system. We started off a couple of weeks ago by having the pad for the chicken building pored by a local firm. I am still waiting on the bill for that.

Concrete pad for the future chicken house and divided brooder

Next we started to define the sheep wintering area just behind (north) of the chicken house. The perimeter fence is made of hog panels secured to two wooden posts and supported along the way by two steel posts.

Sheep Winter Facilities Perimeter Fence

We later stared to frame a "Bud Box" handling system that can deal with both cattle and sheep. The "Bud Box" uses natural animal behavior to create an easy way to move livestock into lanes to be worked.

Handling Lanes: Sheep on the Left & Cattle on the Right

There still is a few more posts and some earth work to go in the crude form. Then pieces of treated plywood and gates need to be screwed/hung and then we are in business. I hope to get it functional in the next few weeks.

The grazing side of the business has been going OK. The weather has been difficult and full of fluctuations. In the last two weeks, we have gone from heavy freezes at night to 90 degree days and back to near freezing again. In general spring started off well and then things got cold for several weeks before getting hot and dry with lots of wind. From the stand point of a farmer dependent on grass growth, things have been pretty poor. The cold held back growth and the dry warmth did not help. Things are starting to improve now that it finally rained. We have grazed much of the north end of the farm and one of the rental properties up there as well. Now I am working my way though the south end of the farm.

Water tank, hoses, and tank leaving the North end of the farm following the herd

Sheep Herd Grazing on the Base of the South Hill

On the poultry side of things of things we have been struggling. Our death loss from smothering is unusually high from all of this cold weather. I am looking forward to having the new chicken house built so I have more control over the birds environment. Even with the high high death loss, something far more worrying has me concerned about broilers. I am concerned that they might no be broilers. Typically a broiler at two weeks become an eating pooping fat machine.

Our Current Broilers, Almost Four Weeks Old

May 12th, 2009 Broilers at about three weeks of age

The pictures are not of the same perspective, but the tiny birds of 2011 have nothing on the stocky broilers of the past. I think the hatchery sent me laying hens and i have 50 broiler orders to place in four weeks. I have to do some scrambling or pushing of orders back to figure out how to deal with this.

The laying hens have also had to deal with heavy predator pressures. I have a couple of large aggressive raccoons. They have killed a few hens and I have been stalking them at night with the semi-automatic 22 because they are very bold pest. I hope to find an answer to my raccoon problems and my lack of broilers soon.

Layers out for a Dirt Bath

One Day at a Time

2011-04-18T21:24:00.000-07:00

It has been so long since my last post that I almost do not know how to to start. A lot has happened since the middle of February. I will just hit a few of the highlights.

Back in mid-March, Janice made arrangements so I could use a mini excavator to put drainage tile in part of our farm yard. Things went well and I got around 350 feet of tile put in during that weekend.

Using the mini-excavator to put in drainage tile

I turned the livestock onto the pasture last Tuesday. It has been tough to get all the items that compose our portable grazing system up and running, but we are close now. It is nice to stop feeding expensive hay, but it is a lot of work to move electric net twice a day. The fast rotation is necessary this time of year because there is not a lot of forage and I need to limit pasture wear.

Cattle and sheep grazing on some rented ground

Two and a half weeks ago, 102 White Rock laying hens arrived. They are brooding well in the top portion of a hog feeder. This Thursday should mark the arrival of 165 broiler chickens. That will be batch one of three for 2011. We also have the website up to date and sent our 2011 customer newsletter out tonight.

White rock laying hen chicks

Hazel is doing well. Within the last week, she has learned to stand up with no support and she has begun to take her first steps. We have also been choring outside more.

Hazel standing unassisted

Hazel and I choring

Working, running a farm, being a husband and a father is very taxing, but I am doing it. It leaves me bone tired and struggling to keep up with things. That being said, we are moving forward with our production season one day at a time.

Working Man

2011-02-26T21:50:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the great length of time it has been since posting. There was not a lot of things going on to report about for a time then everything started moving all at once. Since the end of January, I have been elected to the Township Trustees (we most oversee several thousand dollars in tax revenue and use it in the maintenance of the public cemeteries (there is basically one) and the community park in the Elk Creek Township), I am now church council president (I did not seek this office, especially since we have to deal with issues with our pastors call), and lastly I started work with the federal government on a part-time temporary basis. I am working three days a week for the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) as a Soil Conservationist. Admittedly, I have not done much more then push paper as things have been so busy in the office that it has been hard to get trained. As I get trained, I will be dealing with an alphabet soup of programs that deal with farm conservation.

Back at the farm, we have had a few more lambs and lost one so we are at 18 lambs out in the building. The vast majority of the lambs are male so that bodes well for sales in the fall. We had about a week here where all the snow melted off and I let the chickens run outside during the day. One of those days cracked 50 degrees and Hazel and I sat on the front step outside and watched the birds in the front yard.

Several chickens are out for a late winter run

I made a decision to get rid of our three turkeys (the big Tom and his two ladies). They were not producing fertile eggs and we not performing guard duty to younger birds like they did in 2009, so I decided it was past time to see them re-homed. They have gone to a quail farm outside of Grinnell.

Turkeys just before we loaded them to leave

Other then this, a little more tree work has been done in the timber behind the house. I think about three to four more days of cutting and that project will be done for the winter. At the rate we are going at it, this will take about 4 weeks to finish. At that point, the ground should be workable again and I can start building sheep and cattle handling facilities. I got the tractor running yesterday and moved six bales from the neighbors place over to mine. That should feed the cattle and sheep for the next two weeks. Up the road from us, there are some old hog buildings being dozed and I talked with the landowner and he is letting me take the metal roof off a building. Jim and I got half the roof off in a day before the snow returned and made that task much harder to do.

Hazel drawn to the colorful night light

Needless to say, we have been keeping pretty busy. Hazel is doing well and adapting to being at the babysitter more. Based on her measurements at her most recent doctors check-up, she is still a tall and skinny child compared to her peers. She is a blast to be around and she is making new sounds every week in her efforts to communicate with us. Stay tuned her for updates as we approach the production season.

Winter Sheep Lessons

2011-01-31T19:37:00.000-08:00

Well we are winding up lambing around here (14 lambs in the building and 2 in the house) and what can I say, I learned a few lessons. Lesson one: the ram does not get left with the herd for an extended period of time. Hence a long and intermittent lambing season. Lesson two: most of the Barbados ewes we purchased in the spring do not hold their body condition on hay alone, so they will be leaving. I will liquidate them in mid-June, when those that lost their lambs have had a chance to be rebred and they all have had pasture to raise up their body condition. Lesson three: lambing is likely best done (if done in winter) in March, not December and January. Lesson four: I have a better handle on how to take care of bottle lambs (feeding in the house for a week) and how to attach an orphan lamb to a ewe (headlock the ewe).

Lesson three, Janice and Hazel look after bottle lambs

This winter has highlighted several deficiencies around here. One being the lack of handling facilities and winter sheep lots. We had lots of trouble keeping sheep on our farm before we took electric net and layered it up against our high tensile exterior fence. The other problem we have been having is that the calves are not intimidated by the net in the winter. Frozen ground is not as good an electrical ground, so cattle on frozen ground do not receive much of a shock from the electric net. Hence the calves have been stepping over it and getting into the hay storage and the sheep area.

I spy with my little eye: calves in the sheep shelter... darn you calves

In other news, we have continued to clear trees (you can catch a glimpse of it in the upper left corner of the above picture). We were selected to be part of the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) Savings Incentive Program (SIP) and so I have opened the special savings account to begin saving for this program. These funds will likely get put toward a larger sheep hoop building that can house the sheep in the winter and finish out feeder pigs while the sheep are out at pasture. Janice, Hazel, and I went to the Practical Farmers of Iowa Beginning Farmer Workshop this past weekend to work on our farm business plan, which is a requirement for SIP. We will be going to the Premier One Winter Sheep Day next weekend to look at their handling facilities and to examine their building layouts. To conclude this month on a somewhat humorous note:

Do you see something wrong in this picture?

No? How about now?

Our young ram Aegis had his head stuck again in the hay feeder. This morning was the third day in a row he got stuck. The first time I just cut out a tine (I was running late to a meeting), the second time I cut out as many tines as I could before the cutting wheel died, and the third time I cut out the last of the times. Now, every other tine has been removed from the old hog crate to make it easier for the the sheep to get to the hay and harder for the ram to get his head stuck.

Just Cold

2011-01-21T09:25:00.000-08:00

Today is the coldest day of this winter so far. It was -8 F or -22 C when I went out to chore this morning. When temperatures are that low, we take certain precautions. I wear a heavy face mask. I forgot to remove my glasses before going out. With the face mask, you build up some condensation from your breath on them and then it freezes. When I am not using my fingers, they are balled up into fists in my heavy gloves. You actually try not to wear too many layers because when you do move, you sweat and then when you stop moving, it gets cold.

Thermometer reads -8 F

Managing the livestock when it is that cold takes a few extra bits of attentions. First, the cattle take their hay down in the cover of the timber. I drag it down there on tarps and dump it for them to eat. I was impressed that our Cobett cattle water had less then a half an inch of ice buildup on top. That is thin enough that the cattle can break through it, but I usually open it up for them. I also collect eggs twice per day to limit the number of eggs that will freeze and crack in the building.

Cattle eating hay in the cover of the timber

Cattle Cobett water

We have been lambing for several weeks now. I am down to two ewes left to lamb. As the ewes have been lambing, I have been moving them inside. The last two ewes to lamb are inside right now. We currently have 11 lambs with their mothers inside. We have some lambing trouble with with our Barbados ewes. They have not maintained their body condition on winter hay like our Katahdin sheep and we have lost a few more lambing.

Ewes with lambs at feeding time

One nice thing about winter is it is time to think about the next year and do some planning. Janice and I have a beginning farmer planning workshop coming up, we have been reassessing our production levels, and trying to plan farm expansion and look for some efficiencies. We recently did some visioning exercises and my wife has placed mine in a place of "honor." She blogged about it. It is nice to think about the future and try to work out the many kinks in our little farm. Other then this planning, I have done some tree work with Jim, but for the most part, I have been inside with Hazel taking care of her and enjoying her company.

Hazel playing in her room

I will start working for the federal government at the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) office in Newton part time. My skill sets are perfect for this work and are just not going to fit better anywhere that close to home. We used student loans to come up with the down payment on our land and this job represents a way out of that debt with in in two to two-and-a-half years. It will mean less time to farm so we are paying considerable attention to efficiencies on the farm and we will be thinning down our sheep herd to our best animals this year. I do not know if other changes will emerge, but for the time, these are the only changes we have currently planned. I will keep you posted on any changes that come up.

A Warm End to 2010

2010-12-31T18:27:00.000-08:00

We have had three days of December thaw to close 2010. Along with 2010 has gone our 8 inches of snow with just a trace left in the shadows and where it drifted a bit.

A view of the south pasture (looking west) from atop the hay bales

Janice and Hazel have spent some time off the farm around the holidays. This has left me to my own devices for 11 days to do things about the farm. Admittedly, I was not all that productive, but I did mange to clean out my chicken building and brooders, just in time to start lambing. Two ewes lambed, but one ewe did not survive. I brought her lamb into the house for the first night and then drafted the lamb onto the first ewe that lambed. I had never done this before, but I had read about it a few times. I built a headlock in the building and put the ewe into it. The headlock has boards extending out from it to make sure the ewe cannot look back at the lambs suckling. It took a little time, but she accepted the lamb.

Surviving Ewe and the lambs, the white ram is the adopted lamb

Unfortunately, we have lost a total of three ewes in a short span. The one died in labor and the others were older and less compensative and could not keep-up with the heard despite my efforts to slip them some extra assistance. The remaining sheep look pretty good and will likely come through winter fine. We still have a number of ewes left to lamb likely within the next six weeks.

The flock at dinner time, the little shelter now has a steel roof on it

While Janice and Hazel were away, I did work on the tractor some. I got new tires put on the front end, it was miracle that the old ones did not go out on me, and put a new battery in it. Of course, after doing those things it does not want to run now, so I have to find some time to play with the wiring a bit. Something is likely loose somewhere. Jim from Pella came out twice and we started to clear out the less desirable trees from behind the house.

More tree clearing behind the house

When Janice and Hazel got back we did get to open some presents, although Hazel mostly wanted to eat wrapping paper and play with the cat. It is amazing how much hair Hazel grew in 11 days. She also get about a pound heavier, moves around much better, and has learned to awkwardly wave at people.

Janice, Hazel, & Nermal open presents

The last big piece of news is that I got a job two days ago with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) in Newton as a part-time temporary Program Specialist. I will start as soon as the paperwork can all get approved. Since it is a federal job, it might take two weeks. I am not entirely sure what that will mean for the farm next year. There is considerable flexibility in scheduling with this job, but some things will have to go.

I am committed to cutting few things right now. I will be getting rid of my three large greeter turkeys and I am going to cull down my sheep herd. We purchased a number of lower quality ewes to breed to our high quality ram. Those ewes that perform well will stay, those that struggle will go. I will also be culling for size, condition, and ability to twin. I expect the ewe herd might shrink by as much as 1/3 to 1/2. It might be painful, but it will mean less work and higher quality in the long run. Other then these changes, I cannot say what outside employment will mean. I know that personally, I feel that we carry too much debt (buying a farm is rather expensive) and this is a way to pay off some of of those debts and create more breathing room in our finances. We shall see what 2011 has to hold for us, but I am hopeful and look forward to the possibilities.

The herd at hay feeding time

Product Review: High Tensile Fence Wire Strainers

2010-12-15T08:15:00.000-08:00

For sometime, I have wanted to share what I have learned from my experiences with products that I use or have used on the farm and how they have worked for me. Jim (a local helper) and I have ran just over five miles of wire this year for an EQIP project to fence out our spring fed creeks. We have used a wide variety of products that I have picked up along the way. One of the earliest things I learned is what I like and dislike in a high tensile wire fence strainers.

In line strainers seem easier to use, but it is a myth

When we started building fence, we used the two different types of inline strainers. The advantage these strainers have is that you do not have to cut the fence wire and insert the strainer. Despite this advantage, I would highly recommend avoiding these strainers. They are much harder to actually get onto to the fence and tightened then you might think. They do not tighten as easily as my recommended strainer style because they do not have a stop on them. You have to keep holding the stainer tight wile you inset the pin they come with or a piece of wire to prevent them from loosening, making them much harder to adjust. I have often found that these strainers are even expensive then the ones I prefer as well. The clunky nature of tightening these strainers means that you can not get them as tight as our preferred strainers and I have had considerable trouble keeping sheep in where these strainers have been used so come spring they will all be replaced (luckily there are only around a dozen of them).

I would highly recommend framed or box strainers

Since I started using these strainers, I have not looked back. I put in about 250 of these strainers this year.
To install them, you have to cut the wire and insert it through the loop end (left side of pictured strainer) and either put on a crimp-sleeve on it or learn to bend high tensile and tie it off (it will save you a crimp sleeve which are $13 cents each). Then you thread the wire through the spindle (right side of pictured strainer) bend it off and cut it so it does not catch. Lastly tighten the stainer to desired rigidity. The strainer tool (blue hand tool) is essential and inexpensive at less then $5. The best price I have found is from Premier One Supplies over in Washington, Iowa.

We also use the box strainer for holding our corner posts together

So when the weather breaks this spring and you find yourself out fencing, stick to the framed or box strainers and you will be much happier in the long run. I hope you enjoyed this review and stay tuned for more thoughts on products we use.

Hunkering Down & Catching Up

2010-12-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

Our first winter storm is rolling over us. We are fortunate that much of it will likely drop north of us. I don't really care for snow. Don't get me wrong it can be lovely, but having it on the ground depresses temperatures a great deal. When you accumulate more then 8 to 10" inches of snow early in winter it usually takes a very long time to melt off and it can hold on all winter (like last winter). I have been racing to get ready for winter. I have cleaned-up the random farming items that littered the yard, dug up the annual bulbs, built most of a sheep shelter (no permanent roof yet), and hauled in a manure spreader that I purchased a few month back, but never had time to pick-up.

Sheep shelter with temporary roof

Sheep shelter two days ago was just four posts in the ground

I am most happy about getting the sheep shelter functional in time for freezing rain and snow. Jim, from Pella, came out yesterday and we took four posts and got the thing walled up and framed to receive a steel roof. The steel being about the only random farm thing left lying around the yard. If we get a nice day here, we will try to get that steel up on the roof. I would like to build another one of these small loafing sheds yet this year, but with the one, we now have enough space under roof to get all of our sheep some shelter during the worst winter weather.

We dodged a bullet this time, but winter is long and we are bound to have significant snow fall before too long. Thanks for reading. I am going to put up a several farm product reviews for items that we use around the farm, especially fencing items, so look for them in the coming weeks. If you have any farming equipment that you have heard us mention and would like to know how it has worked for us, drop me an email.

You Might Be A Beginning Farmer If...

2010-12-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

You might be a beginning farmer if you haul hay to the farm in your livestock trailer. A 16 foot livestock trailer can haul three medium sized bales. Net wrapped bales can fit in there a bit better, but if the fit is tight they tend to be tightly packed and give much if any. To unload the trailer, you just back up to a stout post or tree and wrap a chain around it and the bale. Then drive forward and unload.
As a word of advise, it is helpful to wrap a chain around each bale as it goes in. It makes unloading much easier.

Livestock trailers double as hay haulers

You can fit one in the truck bed as well

I have made two of these trips now, hauling 4 bales of hay each time. I have four to five of these trips left to complete to have enough hay to get through the winter. I would like to make it to April 15th before I start grazing. I wish I was not feeding the rented bull for half the winter, but I can't change my current situation. Next year, we have about 27 more grazable acres either coming on line or rented so we should be able to tray to stockpile more grass and avoid feeding so much hay next year.

You might be a beginning farmer if you go with a local Christmas Tree. We have not put up a tree in years, but with Hazel here, I felt it was time. I went out to the pasture and cut down an Eastern Red Cedar that was still pretty green. They tend to turn a reddish brown as winter sets in. I also looked for a female tree. Cedars are pretty much a weed around here, but they do provide decent cover to wildlife. I try to remove female trees (the ones with the blue berries) to keep down on the seed source.

Red Cedar Christmas Tree

I know It is a bit sparse, but it has character

If any friends or customers decide they want a tree like our, let us know and I will take you at pasture and send you home with one free. We have a wide variety to choose from.

You might be a beginning farmer if your livestock get out regularly. It does seem that use beginning farmers are still building much of our farms and that out fences are not always what we want them to be. I have had the pleasure of putting various quantities of sheep back in the pasture about a dozen times in the past 5 to 6 days. I think we have tightened things up to the point that we can keep most our sheep in. On Friday, the sheep sprung the cattle as well so I had to call Janice for help in reining the herd in off my neighbors land. I had to put temporary fence up all around them before I could funnel them back on to our land.

Putting up temporary fence to break-up the party my cattle & Sheep were having

It was a stressful week, but we are now focused on winter feeding and I think we have things to the point that there should not have any more incidents like this one until Spring.

If you have other thoughts on what makes you a beginning farmer, feel free to leave them under the comments.

Where Did November Go?

2010-11-29T09:41:00.000-08:00

Well it has been some month. I really never intended to go so long between blog posts, but life gets very busy in Novemebr and we can end up doing about 1/2 of our annual business in the space of about 5 weeks. We are past all of that frenzy now and are working on final preparations for winter and are beginning to look a head at the 2011 production season.

During the blur of deliveries before Thanksgiving, we sold over 150 turkeys, about two lambs, and most of our remaining chicken supply. We had eight freezers running full to the brim of product before deliveries started. You can never have too many freezers, but we are beginning to run out of space for them. Needless to say, we are down to one freezer running these days. We will continue to have product available at the Iowa Food Cooperative and on farm until we run out of supply.

Sheep & Cattle Grazing Stockpiled Forage

On the livestock front, we are still grazing cattle and sheep, but our grass supply is running out. I have just been moving the fences further and further out each day. Unless a blizzard stops us sooner, I will be grazing until the middle of December before we will be completely reliant on hay until mid April. I wish we could stockpile more forage, but our grass grows slowly and rarely exceeds 6 to 8 inches at its maximum height. Someday, we might be able to improve the soil so this is not such a limiting factor.

I am renting a bull to breed our cows right now

We do have an extra mouth to feed for a few months. I have rented a bull from farmer in the area to see to it that we have calves next summer. He is unfortunately, not a belted galloway, but is a BueLingo. BueLingo is a more modern breed created in North Dakota. The BueLingo and Belted Galloway look similar, and share the Dutch Belted Cattle ancestry, but BueLingo also contain Shorthorn and Angus genetics. When it came down to it, I could not get the bull I wanted and I do not have the facilities to artificially inseminate my cattle. Besides the straws of semen alone we going to cost more then just renting this bull close to home. Needless to say, I compromised.

The Last of the Waterway Fence Wire is Strung

The fencing is now in and pretty much done. We ran the last wires over a week ago. I am still working on connecting all the wires at the posts so they can care power with short jumper lines. A few shut off switches are also going to be part of the end design. Other then that, I have some gates to craft to cover a few access points we hardwired into the system.

Hazel pushing the cash box across the floor of the living room

With fewer chores and the reversion to normal time, I am inside a lot more at night and am able to spend more time with Janice and Hazel. I rather enjoy singing Hazel's Lullaby in duet with Janice, even if I have terrible pitch. Hazel is now on solid foods at least once a day, can craw, pull her self up to a standing position, and has cut her first two teeth. She is still a very happy baby and is a great deal of fun to be around. She will likely be walking in the next month or so. I do wonder how I will farm next year with a little helper. I really don't know how it will go, all I do know is that I will find a way.

Well that was most of November. I am looking forward to a quieter December and hopefully some mild weather to allow me to push a few projects that have yet to receive the attention they deserve.

Tumbling into Turkey Time

2010-10-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

The farm is marching on into its busy season very rapidly. Fencing is going up, slower then I would like, but there is progress every week. All of the remaining posts are in the ground and braces are built. It is basically a matter of running the remaining wire. That being said, it will likely take me and my super helper Jim a couple of weeks at the rate that we are able to work on the fence, but we are making good progress.

Last Batch of Turkeys Ranging

The weather here has been dry for over two weeks now and it has been great for our poultry. The last batch of chickens and the first batch of turkeys went to the locker a week ago. The chicken weights are about a pound larger than they have been for some time. I moved the last/second batch of turkeys this year a week ago to range on the orchard. These turkeys are doing very well and get moved about once a week to a new paddock.

We have also teamed up with an Amish family from the Drakesville area to provide additional turkeys for our customers. Their turkeys are from the same source as mine, are raised in pasture pens, and have a similar ration to my ration with the addition of oats (but the same mineral base). We will try to get customers our birds first, but our supply of turkeys raised on this farm is very limited because of the bad weather back in August.

We did our October deliveries last week to Ames, Des Moines, and Pella; and so now by the end of the week I'm so tired Janice is typing this while I dictate. I also made a trip to Drakesville to pick up some of the Amish birds on Tuesday; now I'm in the market for more freezers. They are very full right now and the new freezer will have to contend for space with some of the windows stored in the corner of the shop.

Planted Nine Fruit Trees

We've added nine trees to the orchard, they were a gift from my mother-in-law. I've been watering them frequently in this dry weather. There are 5 pears, 2 cherries, and 2 apples.

Burning off Brush Piles from Spring

I finally, finally burned off the brush piles from cuttings back in February and March. I burned 7 off today because it's supposed to rain tomorrow and this is the first time it's actually been dry enough to burn these piles. Some of them still have wet ground underneath them even though it's been about 3 weeks since our last rain. I left a couple piles behind for wildlife cover.

Over the next couple of weeks Janice will be on a business trip for a few days so I'll be watching Hazel more, keeping up with fencing, and trying to market turkeys. I'll be trying to stay ahead of the curve going into fall, stay tuned to find out how well I do with that.

Going the Distance

2010-10-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

It has been about a month since we blogged about farm progress. I have been building fence with every free moment and have been getting a lot of help from Jim in Pella. We have finished fencing out the south waterway, and are now focusing on finishing the south side of the large north draw. The video is a quick pan of the south waterway. Jim and I should have the last of the posts sunk and all the remaining braces built by the end of this week. The goal is to start laying out wire this weekend and to be all done with fencing by the end of October. That is a very high hurdle.

Completed South Waterway Fencing

The chickens and turkeys are all coming along well. This weather has been fantastic. It has been dry for over two weeks now. The local weather station said back when we had 12 strait dry days that it had been over three years since such an event had occurred. Our locker date is next Friday, and I can honestly say that our chickens have not been this large in some time. They are doing great. The turkeys love to attack the cat litter scoop that I use to clean dropping out of the feeder. I took a video of them going after the scoop after one of them picked it up and carried it off.

Turkeys at Play

The sheep and cattle are now working their way onto the neighbor's land. I am renting the 10 acres of pasture to north of us from now until the end of April. It is a pretty rough piece of ground, but after two passes with the sheep and cattle, it should be looking much better.

Recently Rented Ground On the Horizon

I have been moving hay made on the pasture just north of our rented land. It was made by our neighbor to the south of us. That will give us 19 bales to try to get through the winter with. I think that will carry us from February into mid-April. We will try to graze up until the end of January. That might be possible as long as we do not get a winter like last year.

Moving Hay with our Massey Ferguson 135

On top of all of this, I have an INCA Planning workshop, I will be planting 9 fruit trees, and I will be helping to do some flowering perennial transplant work at our church. Things are never quiet on the farm when we are going the distance.

A Concern For Beginning Livestock Farmers, A Commodity Grain Bubble

2010-09-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

Maybe you have noticed that the price of food at many grocery stores have gone up. These prices increases are linked to an increase in commodity grain prices. Commodity grain prices (Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, rice, etc.) are increasing for several reasons.

The first is climate change. A massive drought in Russia and wet conditions elsewhere are sending wheat prices soaring. As weather has become more volatile (more persistent droughts and more torrential rainfall), grain supplies have become less consistent and prices have become more volatile. Since grains can often be substituted for other grains, they all become volatile when one becomes volatile.

Demand for commodity grains has also increased as populations in developing counties have become more affluent and can spend more money on foods, like meats.

Another alarming force driving up commodity prices is speculation. Since the crash in the markets in 2008 and the subsequent fall in oil prices, there has been a considerable amount of investment money sitting out the sidelines. This money has been looking for a place to go make money after sitting in "safe" places like treasury notes. With the upward trends in commodity prices speculative forces have been moving considerable funds in those directions applying further upward pressure on prices and generating a likely bubble in commodity grains.

Inflated grain prices hurt livestock producers by increasing what they pay for feed and eliminating thin margins. The same is true for us beginning livestock farmers. As an example, I was paying $0.13 per pound of poultry feed a month ago and now it is up to $0.22 per pound, about a 40% increase in a month.

I am worried about what the future might hold for us beginning livestock farmers. Many of us rely on quick turn around animals like poultry and hogs to cash flow our business. To lessen our reliance on purchased feed, we have been and will continue to expand our lamb business. Our lamb rely on no purchased grains and as such have a much more stable pricing and margin for us to rely on in the future.

Cattle & Sheep out on Pasture, Low Input Agriculture at its Finest

Now it is time for our shameless plug. We have 4 lambs going to the locker in the middle of October and they will be ready for our November delivery runs.

Whole Lamb: $235 (approx. 40-50 lbs of meat)

1/2 Lamb: $125 (approx. 20-25 lbs of meat)

Lamb Chops: $10 per pound

Leg Roast: $8.50 per pound (likely 4-5 pounds each)

Rack of Lamb: $12 per pound

Ground Lamb: $5.50 per pound

Stew/Kabob Meat: $6 per pound

Another One Bites the Dust

2010-09-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

I have made some progress recently, getting the last batch of chickens outside, and getting the surviving older turkeys set-up for ranging, despite not having any free weekends in August to stay caught up with.

The Last Batch of Chickens for 2010

Older Turkeys Ranging and Resting in Portable Roost

Unfortunately, this morning I had to bury one of my best ewes. I just found her dead in the middle of the herd this morning with no visible cause of death. The number of dead animals on the farm this year has been disheartening. We have to my tally lost 4 ewes, 6 lambs, 26 layers to predators, a handful of broiler chickens, and over 200 turkeys. Losing the lambs hurts, but the loss of so many turkeys is really hard on morale and our bottom line. Normally, I have always enjoyed turkeys, but this year I just want to wash my hands of that side of the business. Turkeys usually have a high mortality rate of 10 to 20 percent, but this year it is close to 80 percent. I have been on some list serves and have found that many others have struggled with turkeys this year. The wet weather is the direct culprit of about 25% of the turkey deaths, with smothering making up most of the remaining 75% of losses. Since we are on pace to finish only 60 turkeys this year (we finished 125 last year), I have made arrangements for an additional batch of birds yet this year. I have 50 birds purchased and are currently being brooded on another farm before they come to me. This last batch will be ready in mid-December. Too late for Thanksgiving, but in time for Christmas. I am not looking forward to this batch of birds because they will represent numerous challenges to raise during the colder months. I am hoping that we do not get heavy snow on December 6th like in 2009 or I will be in real trouble.

Digging a Sheep Grave

Fencing has been making little progress, but I got back to it today for the first time in weeks. This weekend, I hope to make much more progress. I picked Hazel up from the babysitters this afternoon and we spent some time out on the pasture; she slept while I ran some fence wire. The fact that it is cool enough to take Hazel out to the pasture during the day is one of the things that I have been looking forward to this fall.

Hazel Accompanying Me Out To Pasture

Every Farmer Has the Pasture They Deserve

2010-08-31T14:56:00.000-07:00

Well the Practical Farmers of Iowa Field Day or Pasture Walk is behind us. Terry Gompert was great and offered excellent feed back. This is a compilation of what Terry talked about and showed us as well as a few of my own thoughts. First off, one of the fundamental things that I and many others struggle with is asking the right questions. It is not a matter of, I wish I did not have this weed in my pasture, but a matter of why is it there? Is it really all that bad?

One of the fundamentals we discussed was about soil life. The plants above the earth, really are an expression of the soil life below ground, and the management applied to it. In Iowa and much of the Midwest, most of our soil is denuded of soil minerals (at least in the top 6 to 18 inches) and of soil life.

Many deep rooted plants (like many of our native prairie plants and many of our noxious pasture weeds) are deep rooted plants. They are able to cycle nutrients from the lower soil profiles to the surface where they can be put back into the soil. How are they put back into the soil? Either by having the animal eat them and pass them or by having them be knocked down by livestock and added to the littler layer above the soil. This litter layer has two zones that we observed. A primary surface layer, where litter looks like light colored dead vegetation and a second layer where it was not soil and not the light colored surface layer. It was interesting to see the definition between the second litter layer and the soil. Terry took the spade to the ground and cut out a chunk several times so we could see these layers.

The second litter layer was about an inch on much of our unburned and unplowed land. Terry said that is good, considering that much of Iowa has none or has a very thin second litter layer. Part of the reason Iowa has little litter layer is that tillage destroys litter and many of our traditional grazers like their pastures to look like a golf corse (the litter layer is not added to because the grass is never really allowed to grow to any real height). Terry said, that we should aim for this layer to be much larger, say 12 to 18 inches. This litter benefits the pasture by holding moisture, eliminating all most all runoff, by helping to keep the soil cool (soil life starts to dies around 80 degrees), and by serving as great material for many of our predominant cool-season pasture grasses to root into.

Leadplant a Deep Rooted Native Legume in Our Pasture

Soil life ranges from soil microbes, to the various dung beetles, up to badgers. Farmers in this state spend so much of their time killing this life and replacing it with expensive inputs. Anhydrous ammonia is a common nitrogen input that is applied in the fall or the spring by injecting it into the soil. It is used to boost corn (a very nitrogen demanding crop) yields. Anhydrous ammonia kills soil microbial life, the natural nitrogen fixers. You ever wonder why organic research that compares cropping systems on land that has had it soil life killed, makes organics looks do bad? Anhydrous ammonia was originally used to harden the ground so we could make quick landing strips, vegetation also happened to grow back very quickly and the soldiers noted it and took that back to their farms.

On our farm, the one thing we need to be careful of is wormers. All chemical wormers are toxic to dung beetles and we need everyone of those we can get. We did see a few dung beetles in some of our week to two week old cow patties. Dung beetles take dung and roll it into holes in the ground where they lay their eggs in them. Dung beetles are one of the best things you can have for spreading a manure patty around and getting it into the soil, short of another cow's foot.

I learned a few things about the plants on above the soil. I learned that a close graze encourages legume regrowth and that leaving more standing residue encourages grass regrowth. A diverse pasture is a healthy one. This is in contrast with my forages education that says 3 to 4 species is optimal and more then that is not really adding much (I am now unlearning what I leaned in school), but Terry says some of the best pastures he has been in have over a hundred species in them. We are replicating a native ecosystem so we should have as much diversity as we can, especially amongst deep rooted plants. That will promote nutrient cycling, create more efficient layered forage canopies, and promote soil life and wildlife diversity.

I learned how to read a cow patties. The perfect shape is round with a divot in the center. You want it to be able to see the fiber in it and have a deep brownish-yellow color in the center. A greener center is a sign that the animals are getting to much protein and not enough roughage so graze them where they are at longer.

When looking at our farm specially, Terry said, "keep doing what you are doing and be observant." Terry liked that we move our livestock daily, that our chicken pens are like the ultimate pasture rejuvenators, and that we have very diverse pastures. He encouraged me to run my chickens in a mobile coop behind the cattle in rotations, something we would like to do, but are not yet there. I need to be careful that we are giving enough rest time between grazings to some of our less persistent pastures, because regrowth was coming back very very slowly on parts of the north side of the farm. Terry also told me not to worry about the annual weeds I was getting in some of my pastures and were all over in my 12.5 acre planting. We walked the field and many of my seedlings had gone to seed this ear. Terry said, "graze it next June or July so this years seed can get worked into the soil and the stand will be better established." Terry also though the cattle looked good and fleshy on our pastures. It is good to get some good feedback and to know that all the work is paying off. I love the expression Terry used so I wanted to repeat it here, "every farmer has the pasture they deserve."

Getting Ready & A Surprise

2010-08-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

We are getting ready to co-host a Practical Farmers of Iowa grazing pasture walk with Terry Gompert. Terry is part of Nebraska Extension and is a holistic management expert. We are expecting around 30 to 40 fellow farmers to came and look over the farm tomorrow afternoon. Needless to say, we have been trying to spruce the place a bit. The yard is looking decent, despite the large swamps that exist in it, and some of things that have been lying around the yard have gotten picked up and put away. It is nice too, that the flood water has gone down and the roads are all open again. All that remains is a brown landscape around the river valley and a plethora of mosquitos.

The conditions within our chicken building are improving. The wet ground has receded a bit. I put tile in the north half of the building, but could not get the standing water to flow through the muck and into the tile so I dug some drainage channels that have allowed me to get much of the water out of the building. Since the tractor is living outside, because it is to wet to get the tractor into the building without getting it stuck, I have moved much of the chicken stuff into the area the tractor would normally be parked and out of the murky north end of the building.

There is no Tractor only Chickens

I have resolved to never have have this problem again with this building as I am making plans to tear it down next spring. From one of my old poultry production books from the 1940's, I have adapted plans for a 30x20 dedicated poultry building. The new building will have a concrete floor, and will have a 20x20 space for laying hens and a 10x20 space for sperate brooders. I want to insulate the building, have washable walls, and large doors so I can take a small skid loader into the building to clean it out. Janice won't let me have a skid loader to begin on the foundation until my fencing project is done; she is a smart woman. She is also working on a materials list for the building so we can use Craiglist to buy needed parts and try to keep the overall cost down to around $2500. I hope to have the foundation pored before winter so we can work on framing over the winter. The building will allow us to have clean brooders to keep illness down, and raise the laying flock to 150 birds. The bump in laying hens translates into between six and seven thousand dollars in egg sales a year.

New Chicken Building Floor Plan

Turkeys are doing alright. I pushed the last batch outside, because an illness had set in amongst the inside birds and I wanted to get them away from it. We lost several birds due to smothering outside. I think we are currently looking at finishing around 75 birds, down from last years 120 birds. I am seriously considering moving away from the giant white turkeys and using only bronze turkeys. If we do that, we will raise our turkey price from $3.50 per pound to around $3.90 per pound. This will be something that we will survey our customers about at the end of the production year.

Second Turkey Batch out on Pasture

Our last batch of chickens have been the complete opposite of the turkeys. They came, they took off well and all 175 of them are still here. They are still inside, but will likely be moving outside next weekend, weather permitting.

Lastly, our surprise. Last night, I went out to the pasture and I came upon a new heifer calf. We had a cow that was purchased exposed, but just never calved. I presumed that she had not been bred, because I expected the calf back in July and had given up on it. I am still trying to figure out how I am going to breed the other two cows that are still nursing. I have a sire selected and can purchase straws of his semen, but I have little experience with artificial insemination so am not fully sure how to precede. Well that is it for now, but let me know if you have any questions, comments, or thoughts.

New Heifer Calf, With No Stripe

New Calf close up

Islands in the Stream

2010-08-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

Since the last post, the generally crappy summer weather has finally caught up with us. Since the spike our rain gauge sits on washed out from under it, we don't have an accurate reading of our recent rainfall. According to the local television station, we have had around 10 inches (25.4 cm) of rain in less then a week. That just wreaks havoc on things. My home town, Ames has had large parts of the town under water and the drinking water knocked out. The old skunk river that I grew up in Ames near, is the same river that I can see from my pasture, except we are down stream. The water in Ames has subsided, but it is still rising here.

Looking Southwest From The Highest Point On the Farm

Looking Northwest From The Highest Point On the Farm

In these pictures from our land, the river is usually back in the very distant tree line on the horizon. If the river crests higher then 2008, it is possible that some will reach our land, but it will nor do any damage. For use the flooding means a much longer drive into Pella as five area bridges across the skunk river are under water or unaccessible.

The real damage was done on Sunday night and into Monday morning when the first batch of turkeys, which was already struggling a bit this year got hammered by wind and rain. The winds opened up their pen and the rains doused them. When I got to them, I swore they were all dead, but they were in a deep hypothermic shock. Janice and I moved them into the bed of the pick-up and drove them into the garage and suspended heat lamps from the ceiling. When the Sun came out, I drove them out to the pasture where they could heat up before putting them into a new pen. Long story short, 49 turkeys did not survive, but we were able to salvage 27 birds. We still have our second batch of turkeys inside, so we will not go without turkey. We had tried to expand turkey production this year, but we will now be hovering around last years numbers of 120 to 130 turkeys. Turkeys also represent our largest profit margin so the loss stings our bottom line a bit.

Trying to Save Turkeys

The water has not spared our chicken building either. Unlike 2008, our water table is so much higher and we have just lost the whole eastern half of the building to nasty mud and water. I have moved feeders and the nesting boxes to keep the birds on dry land. Our building is not a great poultry building and this recent endeavor is the last straw. I am working on plans to build a new building next year. We will be planning the build later this fall and into the winter. In a perfect world, we could pour the building pad this fall, but I am not going to hold my breath.

It is not been all bad, Hazel has been a gem to be with during the day. When ever I have felt beat-up by the weather, her smile has brought be back to task.

Hazel's First PFI Field Day

We have also brought the yard back from the jungle that it was. The fencing on the south draw has all of its corners built so now it is just a matter of hanging the wire. We still have more work to do on the larger central draw. The biggest boon was the visit to our farm by Temple Grandin. She is great expert in livestock handling. We had dinner with her and several friends. Temple thought our livestock looked good and she gave me some advise on our future livestock handling facility project. There have been more downs then ups recently, but we will make it though.

A Visit From Temple Grandin

Surviving July

2010-07-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

Spring has faded into summer heat. The livestock are still being run in a single group, and are cycling through the north hill for the second time this growing season. I still have my ram in with the herd. I am not sure how to get him out and what I would do with him if I did get him out, but one thing is for certain I don't want to be lambing in December. If any one wants to rent him out until October, I don't charge much, just $5 per ewe serviced. He is a large black registered Katahdin Ram with RR traits. He is 6 years old and relatively mild for his age.

Water Supply and Power Source to North Field Paddock

The Cattle in the North Field

I am going to have to breed my cattle very soon in order to hit the right spring window. I would like to find a nice belted bull from a grass finishing herd, but if that does not happen, then I have a bead on a Red Devan Bull from a grass finishing herd that I will consider falling back on. What ever I decide, it needs to happen soon.

Five of the Nine New Lambs from the Black Belied Barbados Ewes

The Second Batch of Turkeys Arrived Last Week

The second batch of turkeys are already doing much better then the first batch. At one week they have lost fewer birds then the first batch lost in its first night. I am not sure we will start turkey pullets in June in the future.

Floating Corner Brace on the South Draw Fencing Project

Fencing continues on the smaller south draw. All of the posts are in and only six more corners, like the one pictured, need to be built before the stands can be strung. One the larger north draw, the path along the south side has been cut and some of the posts are now in. Once the south draw fencing is done, attention will return to the north system.

Just Outside the Chicken Building, a Spring has Formed

A problem that continues to get worse as the rains continue are the springs that have sprung into being in our yard. The worst one in just outside out chicken building and has begun to work its way into the building. About a third of the building is a muddy mucky mess. I have dumped over 500 pounds o lime in the building, but that is just not enough to stop the mess. Last night I started laying time outside the building by hand. Let us just say that it is an unpleasant project and leave it at that. I hope I get it all in this week.

Hazel, not Liking Tummy Time

Hazel and I have seemingly come to an understanding in the past week. She is 12 weeks now, is taking her bottle well, naps fairly predictably, and is getting cutter and more expressive by the day. I look forward to the days that I am with her, even if little else happens on the farm.

Bumps in the Road

2010-07-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Since the last post, we have had 3 more new lambs for a total of 5 so far in July. We have taken our second batch of chickens to a new locker, Valley View Poultry Processing outside of Bloomfield. I am very satisfied with this new locker. The day went well, but it ended poorly when the truck died outside of Oskaloosa so it had to be hauled back to Pella. From Pella, the chickens were moved onto my second truck and brought home to freeze down. I am very glad that I pack birds with dry ice so I have that much more cooling power. Two years ago, I had a truck break down in western Iowa on the way back from the locker, so I have a little experience in this department.

New Packaging Appearance

The day before I went to the locker, our big electric fence energizer died. The energizer is the heart of our rotational grazing system and it is missed. I am glad that I have my old energizer, but it is only 1/4 the power. I hope to have the dead one sent away for repair since it is only 9 months old. These have been two bumps in the road that we have to ride out.

Next week we will be back to delivery runs resume again. Ames is Monday, Des Moines is Wednesday, and Pella is Thursday. On Wednesday morning, I also have to get my first lamb to the locker in Milo. I eagerly look forward to tasting how our lamb turns out.

Jim, from Pella, came out on Saturday and we made great progress on fencing. Jim cut a path along the south side of our large central draw and I worked on setting posts in our south draw. I have set a few more today and I plan on a few more after this post. We are 5 posts away from having all of our posts in the ground on the south system. Then it is on to turning those posts into braced posts.

Hazel is doing well. She has been developing better motor controls and is talking more. We are still working on feeding from the bottle. She enjoys bouncing while standing and smiling at familiar faces.

Hazel Working Her Arms

One Door Closes & Another Two Open

2010-07-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

On Thursday morning, our 12 year old barbados ewe passed away. She was very intelligent and very pleasant around children. She unfortunately lost her lamb this spring and her body condition never really recovered.

We will miss you

The next morning I went out to the pasture and we had two lambs out of one of the 20 Barbados ewes we bought back in May. One male and one female lamb requiring little assistance. Those ewes were under constant exposure so it is possible to have lambs at virtually any point.

Two little newborn lambs

Progress on the farm continues. Jim from Pella came out today and we put in a gate on the south end of the farm and ran some electric line. This morning my neighbor to the south, Jesse, and I moved bales from the neighbor to the north's field, Corny. We speed up the process by putting one in the bed of my truck and hauling the other behind a tractor Jesse borrowed. The bales we too much for my tractor.

Turkeys continue to grow. We have struggled to keep them from smothering each other. All I can say about young turkeys, they are good at being cute and fluffy and at dying. Losses have now crept up over 20%. We strive for 10% and build in a sizable cushion. I still enjoy them immensely. I picked them some clover yesterday and the birds just went wild. They grab the clover leaves and try to run off with them. Next thing you know the whole pen is moving.

Turkeys love their clover

Squeaking One Out

2010-06-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

It is the end of June and we have a long way to go on the larger farm projects for the year, but slow progress is being made. We have a big deadline looming in late August, where we will likely be hosting a Practical Farmers of Iowa grazing gathering. I would like to have the creek fencing done, our handling facilities well under way, if not done, and our main building cleaned out and reorganized. As well as having the yard mowed and trimmed, the sticks picked up, and the flower beds and garden weeded. I know it is a pipe dream, but it is something to shoot for.

Jim from Pella came out and we finished a long stretch of fence on the north side of the big center draw. There was much chain sawing, poison ivy, sweat, and damp grounder underfoot, but that section is done. One step closer to completion. On the south end of the farm, I continue to sink posts for fencing the smaller draw. I picked up a few used wood posts off Craigslist the other day to hopefully get me closer to finishing that project.

Section of Fence Completed Two weeks Ago with Andy Larson

Fencing completed today with Jim from Pella, it is a long section going well past the tree

On another note, we went through inspection on Tuesday and we now have our egg handlers license. This will allow us to sell eggs through the Iowa Food Cooperative soon. Speaking the Iowa Food Cooperative, the cart open tomorrow, so check out the great products available. We also got 20 older hens from Fox Hollow Poultry Farm; Thank you Tai. Fox Hollow is a great farm outside of Elkhart that sells to several Des Moines restaurants, the Des Moines Farmer's Market, and the Iowa Food Cooperative.

A few of the hens retired from Fox Hollow Poultry Farm

That is it for now. I was well below my goal on the number of posts I wanted for June, but I squeaked one more in there.

Doggie Paddling

2010-06-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

I have been a farmer dad for two weeks now, and it is still not settled out yet. Everyday is a constant struggle to get chores done in the morning and at night. The struggle is less so at night, but that is when I get caught-up on things that I can't really do during the morning. The weekends have become exceedingly valuable for pushing projects. We have also go to using a babysitter during the day once a week to free up some time for farm work.

Since my last post, we had Andy Larson from Ames out here and we built some fence when it was horribly hot out. We both looked liked like we took a dip in a lake by the time the day was done, but several corners were completed and we ran some line. About 1/3 of the large central draw is fenced. I have also started sinking posts on the much smaller south draw. The cattle are on the south end of the farm grazing the two steep drift hills and working their way down onto the crop land. I am now well beyond the range of my water system and the recently completed water tank trailer is allowing me to graze down there. The seeding on the crop land is very sparse and we have a lot of weeds to try and graze off. I am also going to broadcast Orchard grass seed ahead of the grazing so our livestock can work some of it into the ground with their hooves and hopefully improve the stand that way.

Water Trailer

Looking down toward the crop land (the corn field in the background is not mine)

Chickens continue to come along and we have a locker date set for July 9th. We will be trying a new locker outside of Bloomfield. It is 45 minutes closer and they will weigh the birds for me.

Chickens on pasture in a Hansen style pen

130 Turkeys arrived this week. They came a day early and the post office did not let me know they were hear until 11:00 AM, usually they call me at 8:00 AM. They got started on a bad foot when one of their heat lamp bulbs burnt out during their first night. I lost seven that night from smothering. Turkeys are incredibly fragile for the first two weeks. We try to keep losses down to 10% during that time. Other then the first night, the birds are looking good.

Turkeys are now here

In other news, the farm continues to be very wet in the low places (large parts of the house yard especially). We have had over 14 inches of rain since our last blog post. I just wear my rubber boots everywhere anymore. I might have cursed us. I bought the boots on sale and ever since then it has been raining. I am glad I bought them, but I don't think the curse is worth it. I picked up a bale spear for my tractor and put category one mounts on it so I can use it with my tractor, but the little tractor has not been able to lift the bales. It is possible that they hydraulics might not be strong enough to move the bales, but I also did not get perfect angles on the bales I tried to move, so I will try again here and cross my fingers. The tractor is living outside under a tarp right now because it is so wet by the building and we barley got out of there with it. That is the month so far in a nut shell. The first round of deliveries is behind me and my mulberry orders are all filled. Until next time, cross your fingers for mild dry weather for fence building.

One of two marshes in our farm yard

Tractor with bale spear (so far not looking good)

Thick of Spring Production

2010-06-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry it has been so long between posts. In the past few weeks we have been building some fence. Not nearly as much as is needed or I would like, but some fence has gone in and we have a nearly complete water hauling trailer.

Jim from Pella has been helping with the fencing, building the water trailer, and has helped repair one of my pasture pens. We have had trouble getting chickens outside as promptly as I would like this year. My two original steel and wood pens need to be gone through and worked on to replace several rotting boards and to change the height that the waters hang so they have a bit more ground clearance. Half of the second batch of 180 chickens made it out to their Hansen-style pen, but the second Hansen-style pen disintegrated when moved. The Hansen-stle pen is best in hot weather because it is much more open. Jim and I have the pen that disintegrated closer to functional, but it is not quite there yet. The second half of the second batch ended up in the smaller 8 by 8 foot brown steel pen that Janice designed. That pen will shortly be too small for them, but it will buy us a few days to finish repairing the damaged pen. The little brown pen is where the young laying hens usually get moved to. Needless to say, our batch of laying hens is still in the brooder waiting for a vacancy. Being one pen down, we have had some flow issues to work out early this week.

Half of the second batch of chickens in a Hansen style chicken tractor

Friday was one of my 5 scheduled processing days of the year. The first batch of chickens went into the locker. Janice and I load the evening before, then I hit the road a bit before 3:00 AM and try to make it home by the late afternoon to early evening. From there chores get caught up on and then all the birds (177 of them) get unloaded about 25 at a time and wiped down, weighed, and double bagged before going into the freezers.

Trailer in position and ready to begin loading birds

Ryan loading chickens

Janice goes back to work on Monday and HAzel and I begin our first solo day. I also begin to do deliveries next week. Ames is Monday, Des Moines is Wednesday, and Pella is Thursday. It will be a busy week ahead, but they all are when you are in the thick of the spring production season.

Ryan holding Hazel and a Nermal trying to get in on the action

80 More Hooves

2010-05-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

We made a large acquisition last week. We added twenty mature Barbados blackbelly ewes. This will bring us to over 35 ewes of various varieties of hair sheep. The Barbados ewes have a strong flock instinct and stay together very well. We combined all of our cattle and sheep herds into one herd last week and are continuing to rotate them about every 36 hours. One of the new ewes won itself a Darwin award so we are down to 19, but the rest are doing well and learning electric fences and how to actually graze (they were in a dry lot before).

Barbados blackbelly ewes in a tight flock

Existing sheep flock resting in the shade while the new gals graze

In the combined herd, the calves think they are sheep

Also in the pasture is our first batch of 175 broiler chickens. They are doing very well and appear to be gaining weight nicely. They certainly are eating quite a bit. The second batch is ready to move outside this weekend as well.

Broilers on pasture

175 birds in chicken tractors

In other news, the water wagon is about ready to roll out to the pasture, the feed wagon lid was ripped off in a storm and needs repair, and fence building has commenced again on the south side of the central waterway. Hazel is doing well as well. She has gone from looking like a newborn to looking more like a baby in the past two to three days. I have also been at an INCA training workshop and have some work to sort through in that arena during the next week. I think the weather is going to be pretty calm in the foreseeable future and might even cool off a bit after the holiday weekend. That would be nice considering how hot the weather has been recently. Until later, thanks for reading.

Moving Ahead Again

2010-05-20T06:44:00.000-07:00

We are slowly moving forward again. After the tough weather at the beginning of the month, we have all of our first batch of chickens outside. We got half out before the bad weather and the other half a week and a half later. They are doing pretty good and are eating a lot of feed.

Broilers on Pasture

Yesterday, I drove the truck and borrowed auger wagon up north of Marshalltown and came back 3400 pounds of feed. I hope that lasts me four weeks, because it is not cheap to have that much feed around. It is around a 4 hour trip. Plus you have about half an hour prep and another hour to get the tractor on the wagon and get the auger wagon dumped into the barge with a lid out in the field.

Sheep Emerging from The Timber

Ram Lamb

I have come to really enjoy sheep. Sure, lambing season sucked and I will be culling several ewes that were a disappointment, but I have the bug. I am going out to Illinois soon to pick up numerous well priced ewes to bolster our numbers. In the timber, the sheep have been opening up the place and beating back the poison ivy. Permanent fencing is now starting to go in after the sheep graze starting with the corner posts.

Where the Sheep have been & Where They are Going

Where the Sheep have been

The cattle are doing well and soon the existing cattle and sheep will be combined with the new cows. I want to thank a customer, Todd Lippker for the great livestock photos shown here in this blog post. Bye for now.

Adapting

2010-05-11T16:47:00.000-07:00

We have been adapting to live with a baby. Janice has been doing a great job of taking care of Hazel. I am still clunky with normal diapers and am a but intimidated by cloth diapers. With time I will get there. The timer on Janice's maternity leave is ticking away and I have one massive project to knock out by mid June when she goes back to work and that is fencing out our waterways.

Janice & Hazel Take a Nap

One the farm lambing has been progressing and we are down to one ewe left to lamb. We hit a rough patch lambing with the weather, several problem ewes, and my inexperience. We lost a handful of lambs, but today we had two sets of healthy twins and now have nine young lambs bouncing around in the pasture. There is just one more ewe expecting.

First Set of Twins (the brown lamb is female & the black lamb is a ram)

Second Set of Twins (both appear to be rams)

Despite the rough weather, the 85 chickens we put outside last Thursday are doing pretty good. We have not lost any of them. We left the other half of the first batch inside to hedge our bets against the weather. The ones inside will be moving out tomorrow.

The new cows and calfs are doing pretty good. It took them a couple of days to start eating the pasture heavily. I suspect that that delay was caused by a change over in rumen bacteria from farms and pasture types. The effects of mob grazing are much more visible when you have 1000+ pound cows as opposed to 600 pound yearlings and sheep. The two herd (new cattle and the sheep with the yearlings have not yet been combined, but it will happen within the next week or so as the herds rotate closer to each other on the farm. On another note, all of the north hill has now been grazed over once this year by the sheep and yearling cattle. It looks better, but those heavy cows on that hill will do a lot to break up the old grass thatch and bring the hill back to life. Something to look forward to. Stay tuned as we continue to adapt to farming with a child, cows, calves, and numerous lambs.

Beginnings

2010-05-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity. Janice went into labor on May 1st and Hazel Lillian Marquardt was born at 3:41 AM on the 2nd.

Ryan & Hazel

At the same time that Janice was wanting to go to the hospital, I was outside with a lamb being born. I ended up leaving the ewe with feet poking out of her and called my neighbor for help. Good neighbors are awesome to have. He came out and pulled the lamb and built a small fortress out of gates and pallets from the stack I keep. The structure let him separate ewes and lambs from the rest of the herd of cattle and sheep. It was also need to prevent the ram from killing my neighbor.

Jesse's Fortress

Not only did Jesse get those items all the way out into my rugged pasture, but he also nursed a bottle lamb three times while I was away. We were unfortunately unsuccessful with the lamb and lost it that night. Oboe the mother lost all of her triplets and will be going to the locker this week. I am trying to think of some way to properly thank my neighbor for all the work he did.

The rest of the lambs are looking good. We have the twins that I assisted with in an earlier blog post from one of my best looking purchased ewes. We also have the little black ram lamb that Jesse saved.

Twins & Mother

Newest Ram Lamb & Mother

Very Pregnant Ewes

Yesterday, I went and picked up cattle in Earlham. I also got to visit my great aunt over there. I brought home 5 to 6 year old cows with heifer calves on their side and a 3 to 4 year old cow due anytime June or July. I have them in a separate pen and will work over the next week or two to introduce them to the rest of the cattle and eventually the sheep. After I got them unloaded, I raced to town to have dinner with Janice and see Hazel.

Five New Ladies to Add to the Herd (one calf is hiding)

We have a busy week ahead of us. Janice and Hazel come home today. Chickens have to move outside tomorrow, 180 more chickens come Thursday morning, we need to tidy the place up because family is coming for mother's day on Sunday, and some where in there we will likely be lambing. Wis me luck, I hope I don't need it.

May Day Update

2010-05-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

I am trying to handle feed more efficiently this year. I picked up an old barge wagon for $300 a few weeks ago an started to rework it so it can hold feed on pasture and follow the chicken tractors around the farm. It is an all Parker gravity wagon and I pulled the extension off of it, scraped, primed and painted the inside tray, and built a lid for it with a door in the top for filling. It is not pretty, but here it is.

Movable Feed Holder (Side View)

Feed Wagon (Rear View)

The biggest limitation is that the gravity wagon's current top speed is only around 30 miles per hour (48 km/hr), unloaded. I have to travel 55 miles (89 km) one way to get my feed. It is possible to do this, but it is a very unpleasant trip. Instead, I have been borrowing a feed auger wagon. I must admit that I find this borrowed wagon a bit scary. It has bald tires for one thing and a lot of duct tape on the auger where it likely rusted through. When I get the feed wagon home, I attach the tractor to the wagon and use the pto to run the augers and dump it into my gravity wagon. I hope to work though my feed wagon a bit more because if I could get it to pull a bit faster, I could skip the feed wagon step.

I have planted a number of trees this week. I moved two peach threes I planted last fall and planted two new small windbreaks. I planted a dozen Canadian hemlocks make these new windbreaks and fill in some dead spots in my Norwegian Spruce Windbreak that I planted last Spring. I am trying to get all of the remaining gardens planted and 100 asparagus plants. I got a start on the asparagus before the rain storms yesterday stopped me.

I have had some trouble with latest batch of lambs. We had triplets born yesterday. When I found them, one of them did not make it and the other two looked good. This morning, one was looking weak so I drove into town to get some milk replacer and when I got back home, it had passed away. That sucks. I have been on the fence about that particular ewe and if I was going to keep her for a long breeding career. She helped me make up my mind. I have two other ewes close to lambing and five others that should lamb within the next month. I did take some time to admire Eve, my Christmas Eve surprise lamb. She is an impressive looking specimen, especially when you see her next to her mom and consider that she is only 4 months old.

Eve, My Favorite Ewe

In other news, still no baby and I will be going to get more cattle very soon.

Ewes Two Farmers Zero

2010-04-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

So today is the due date, and no baby yet, but we did start having lambs. When I went out to the pasture late this morning, my favorite yew had blown her mucus plug and was in labor. I cam back an hour later and nothing. Janice came home early today so I encouraged here to come out to the pasture and look for mushroom and take a look at the sheep. We did not find any mushrooms today, but we have already found more this year then all of last year. For information on our favorite way to prepare morel mushrooms, take a look at Janice's blog: http://wildrosepastures.blogspot.com/

By the time we got out to the past, Janice does not move very quickly, the lamb had just dropped her lamb and was cleaning it off.

First Lamb is a Ram

We sat down and watched for a while and a second lamb was born. I entered the pen when the cattle started become very curious by the happenings in the pen. I helped the second lambs find the nipple so they could get that first drink of colostrum moving through their system.

Getting the first lamb to nurse while the second one gets cleaned

Still making sure the first lamb is nursing

Mother ewe and her little lambs

Because there is a significant storm moving over the area tomorrow, I am going to try to move a portable hut outside for the lambs and most pregnant ewes to utilize in case they decide to lamb tomorrow. I am planning on picking up cattle Saturday unless our baby decides to be born. I will let you know what happens.

Add Cattle or Not to Add Cattle

2010-04-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to learn that the farm that was supplying me Belted Galloway Cattle is closing up shop and the owners are moving out of state so the herd is being liquidated. I want to add cattle to the farm, but the timing could be better (baby coming any day, expensive truck repairs, and far from completing fencing project). That being said, the price is fair and I like this herd. I have decided to purchase at least two cow-calf pairs and I am debating a third pair. They would be all cows with heifer (female) calves. This is a long investment, but could be the foundation for a solid herd. I still will not see any revenue from these animals for some time. The new cows will have to be rebred in July this year. I will likely be using artificial insemination. So that is adding something to my already busy schedule.

Belted Galloway Cattle on Larry Gram's Farm in Earlham

I understand that with cattle I am looking at around a 5 year investment before I see full returns from these animals. I worry most about two things in this business: one that I will be too cautious and miss many opportunities, and two that I am too aggressive and am driving myself into the ground. I am an impatient person so I would rather be moving forward at a painfully fast rate than be overly cautious. I can see where our pastures are improving, but are they improving fast enough to add that many animals? I wish the results of our 12 acre planting last fall were more promising than they appeared last fall and this spring.

I worry about sinking money into cattle and waiting for the full return on investment. I can easily see where chickens, turkeys, sheep, hogs, and goats are more attractive to invest in as they can yield a return on investment within a year at most. If you are going to get into cattle, then when is really the best time?

On another note, today is my one year blogging anniversary, we are still waiting on the baby to leave the womb, and we are still waiting to have out first lambs of 2010. Given my luck the baby and the lambs are destined to arrive on the same day. I will just keep my fingers crossed as I wade into this next week.

Not Yet, but Any Day Now

2010-04-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

Two days from now will be April 24th, the one year anniversary of starting this blog. It has been fun to take a look back and see the progress being made around here. The road ahead can be overwhelming at times, but I think momentum is in our favor and progress is gradually being made. The next month will be critical for getting several projects done (internal creek fencing, feed wagon, water wagon, building improvements, and tree work) before Janice's maternity leave is over. If you're asking, nope, no baby yet.

We got our female layers two days ago. They are barred rock chicks from Hoover Hatchery in Rudd, IA. They came a day earlier than expected and I was not quite ready so it made for a hectic day. The broiler chicks are now a week old and are doing fine, but the layer chicks have struggled a bit. They got a heat lamp with a red bulb and it makes a lot of heat, but it does not make a much light, so I don't think the chicks have really been eating or drinking like they should. That has been corrected and they look much better, but a few little chicks were just too weak and did not make it. That is the rub with animal agriculture: if you make a mistake, stuff can die. All you can do is learn from it not let it happen again. I hope to offer about a dozen 6 month old laying hens ready to lay for our customers in late October.

Barred Rock Chicks

I have had quite a few trials and trepidation with the sheep and cattle. They had a nice run of three days in a row with full blown escapes. Those internal fences would sure be nice to help limit how far the cattle especially can run. I ordered another piece of netting the other day from Premier One in Washington, IA and that should help out in the rotation process. If you are asking, nope no lambs yet. No kid and no lambs, both any day now.

I am still working on the feed wagon. I have scraped the interior, primed it, and painted it. I have also started to build the lid and have one half done. I hope to have it ready to go tomorrow and get my feed transfered into it.

The Farm in Spring

That is it on the farm for the time being. Spring is here and the flowers are in full bloom. It is worth it to stop and smell the flowers. I have and you should too.

See Where The Chips Land

2010-04-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

I have not been able to blog on the schedule I would like. When we get into production season I want to be blogging 8 times a month, so twice a week. That is obviously not currently happening and with our first child, Hazel, due in a little over a week, April seems doomed to be a little thin on the posts.

On the upside, things have been very busy around here. So I will give a run down on what has happened since the last post. I sold the John Deere 2010, purchased an old 5 ton Parker barge wagon, treated the boards to go into the lid I will build for the wagon (I treat with linseed oil), framed a building entrance overhang for the retail building and shop, picked-up a load of feed from our new feed supplier, Devan Green of Green Organics (he is in the organic transition process), purchased and hauled a year supply (35 bags) of compressed wood chips from Hawkeye Wood Shavings in Pleasant Hill, set up the first brooder and receive 181 baby broiler chicks (still have all 181), planted some Rhubarb, and used a nice little Vermeer skid loader to do several tasks including: cleaning out half of the all-purpose lean-to and making a massive pile of compost that needs to go to the field someday, fixing the Cobett waterer that I put in crooked last fall, removing an old fence row, and moving some earth piles left over from the well installation. I might have missed a few things, but that is most of it. All while moving the sheep and cattle daily. Needless to say, it has been a rare day that I have made it into the house before 9:00 PM.

Filling the feeders in the brooder

Filling chick waterers

Framed Shop Entrance (Jim Helped A Lot) and Treating Boards

Cleaned up the Rhubarb Patch & Added 6 more Plants

Continuing to Rotate Sheep on Pasture (they will lamb any day now)

I still have a long list of things that do need to be worked on. For one, we have still not released a customer newsletter and updated our website with order information. We have selected all our processing dates, chick order dates, and delivery dates, but we need to communicate that with our customers. We are sorry, it will be out soon. I have a list of things to try to get to this week including the newsletter, planting 100 asparagus plants, planting our gardens and seed starts (one of the house cats destroyed my earlier seed starts), building a lid to the Parker wagon, set-up more brooders (50 Barred Rock laying hen chicks come Wednesday morning), get ready for an INCA board meeting, finish converting the old chicken hauling wagon into a water wagon so I don't have to haul water buckets up the north hill to the livestock (my shoulders look good, but it is exhausting), and sow some grass seed in the torn-up places in the yard. I forgot to mention that we could start having lambs any day now. I am just going to cross my fingers this week and see where the chips land. Wish me luck.

Count Downs

2010-04-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

9 days before first broiler chickens arrive. 23 days before baby due date. That pretty much sums everything up. I am racing to complete projects, get others started, and prep the building for chicks in just a matter of days. To complicate things, I got some food poisoning from some sketchy shrimp and lost the better part of two days over Easter weekend.

Never the less, progress continues. Before I got ill, Jim from Pella helped me chip several large piles of brush that were in the way. The result is some more open views of the farm where piles once sat. The Monday February, 8th post from 2010 has several pictures of the piles before chipping.

Once the site of our largest pile of tree limbs. The future sight of livestock corral system, hopefully this year, and in the not too distant future small building.

Several smaller piles dotted this hillside, but are now gone.

There are still numerous piles of tree limbs behind the house on rough and often soggy ground. Some will be left of wildlife shelter, but most will be burned off. After I got sick, we did some tractor swapping. Although I like Grandpa's John Deere 2010, it needs a lot of work to be useful and does not fit into my little building.

Grandpa's Old 2010

Accepting that my business does not use a tractor much, that it will cost a lot to get the 2010 running well, and it will cost even more to put a loader on it, I decided to part with it. It is currently for sale.

I picked-up a Massey Ferguson 135 with loader and blade over the weekend. Janice and my neighbor to the north, did all of the moving work. I spent my time, trying not to barf in the tiny truck back seat.

The new to me Massy, tucked into the building (it is cosy folks 6" to spare)

Janice was a trooper while I was ill. We were a sorry set of farmers. Me sick as can be and Janice 8 month pregnant trying to run a farm for a couple of days. Needless to say, I am glad that is behind me, now back to the race.

Back to Grass

2010-03-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

Weather made to order, that is all I have to say about this week. Yesterday, the sheep and cattle went back out on the pasture. Sheep are so much easier to move then cattle. I put a scoop of corn in my bucket (long moves are the only time I feed corn to my sheep) and give it a shake then start moving. The ram is the one you have to careful of. He will tear that bucket out of your hands and go after you if you are not careful. Anyway, the sheep are pretty easy, they follow the bucket, but the cattle have to be pushed from behind (they don't know what corn is) so there is much less control. Couple that with the fact that if and when cattle do run, they run much further then sheep. It took a bit to get all the livestock from the corral and into the pen I set-up in the orchard. From here on out, I will take the portable paddock and just build the next days paddock adjacent to the current paddock, so no corn and much less drama. There is not much grass yet so the moves will be everyday until the pasture catches up.

On another note, my neighbor Cornie got the tractor started. We had to drag it up the the road and pull start it. The starter is likely bad and the wiring is questionable. I don't really have the money to dump into the tractor right now so we parked it on a hill (no shortage of those) and blocked it there so I could use gravity to start the tractor as I rolling rolling down the hill. Not a great solution, but it is an improvement too six months of siting in the way of everything.

South Fence Line

Fiberglass Wood Composite Post

Sunday was very productive. I finished a section of fence along the south property line. That fence line is five strands of high tensile wire with wood corners and fiberglass and wood composite posts in between.

On Sunday, I also installed a yard/dinner bell I found on craigslist. When Janice and I were first married we got a gift jokingly labeled marital communication devise, it was a meat tenderizer. I think the dinner bell is a much better tool for that task.

Marital Communication Device

All of our chicks have been ordered. The first round of broilers arrives on April 15th, so the clock is ticking on getting the building ready for them. We still have to finalize our delivery dates, update the order form on our website, and finish the customer newsletter. We hope to have all of that done here by Monday and be ready for business.

Chipping on Other Tasks

2010-03-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

My chainsaw blade just came back today from sharpening. Couple that with some cool, wet, and windy weather and I have been taking a break from cutting trees and putting up fence. I have a lot of projects that have been languishing. The skid loader mentioned in the last post did not materialize so those projects are on hold for a few weeks until our next chance to bring the skid loader home.

I have been working on our shop and retail space. On the retail side, I have begun painting and cleaning. The last vestiges of the previous owners have come off the wall. Spots in the drywall that are damaged are getting patched and a wall of plywood is getting painted. I have been repairing the lids on two coolers that will be able to hold 32 dozen eggs each and I hope tp have them in service soon.

Wall O Tools

On the shop side of the building, I have removed several truck accessory items and actually put them on the truck. I have a lot of hand tools. I started farming with some, I picked-up more at auctions, and I I inherited many tools from Grandpa. All of the tools needed to be organized, with the hand tools pulled together in one spot so I can find them when I need them. I now have a wall of hand tools and fencing items.

Cleaning the building up is a big project and it includes constructing a new overhang to cover the doorway. It is going to take some time. I am going to move back to fence building next week with the warmer weather so the building is not likely to receive much attention.

The sheep are on the last of their hay. They will run out Sunday and will be back on pasture. I have some stockpiled forage on the north hill so the sheep will be there soon. My morning chores will get more complicated with having to move fences again, but it had to happen some time.

Snow Makes way for Progress

2010-03-19T06:20:00.000-07:00

The snow is off the ground and progress is surging forward. This is one of the best times of year to get stuff done on the farm. There a few livestock (no broiler chickens and no turkeys) and the grazing livestock are not being rotated on the pasture yet. The snow melted very rapidly so the rivers are out of the banks. This will only affect us if we loose our primary road into town. We lost the road back in 2008. What would be a 15 minute drive into Pella will become a 50 minute drive if that road gets topped.

I have been getting a lot of help from Jim (a friend in Pella) and that has allowed for a water hydrant to get replaced, and has allowed a section of internal fence to go in. In addition, we built most of a long stretch of boundary fence. The trees have been cleared, the posts have gone in, and the first strand of five is hung. The hard work is done and the rest of it should take a few hours. It is nice to finally get some fence in. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Expect a lot more fence to go in in the coming weeks. Until the baby comes in late April, I will be clearing trees and building fence.

Stretch of new internal fencing just put in

Replaced a broken hydrant with a brand new one

In other news, I am the board chair of the Iowa Network for Community Agriculture (INCA) and we hosted a gathering on March 13th in Perry. It went well and was well managed, but attendance was a bit lighter then I had hoped. We have new board members and are working through that transition. I have been elected for one last, one year term as board chair. I have a lot I want to get done with the organization so I can pass it on in better shape then I inherited it.

INCA Gathering in Perry, 2010

Today, I am headed into town to pick-up a skid loader from my wife's work to use for the weekend. It is supposed to snow tomorrow and get cold for several days. I actually wanted a few cold nights. I frost seeded clover into much of my pasture when the snow melted and it just has not gotten below freezing at night. You need those cold night temperatures for the ground to freeze up during the night and thaw during the day. That allows the small round clover seed to slip into the soil enough to germinate. I hope things go well this weekend. Whatever happens, I will let you know.

Just Me & the Chainsaw

2010-03-06T13:41:00.000-08:00

Historically, our farm was largely open grassland with a few trees here and there. There are numerous remnant prairie species all over the farm. About 12 to 15 years ago, cattle were removed from the farm and since then, there has been little brush and tree control. At least that is until I moved in.

I have had my eye on opening up more pasture close to our buildings. The area I am working in is part of the lane that connects the north and south part of the property and is inside of the new windbreak plantings put in last spring. I have grazed part of this paddock for the last two years, but the lower part was thick with elms, brambles, and poison ivy. I will be fencing out our spring feed creek this year so many of the trees will be coming out for that project anyway. Most of what I have been removing is Chinese elms. I want to encourage the smaller black walnuts to come on. I have been piling limbs for eventual burning and stacking the trunks for possible fuel wood in the future. This time of year is just the best for tree work. I feel as close to my chain saw as Bruce Campbell must have in Army of Darkness.

Looking northwest at the cleared area from near the barn

Looking west at the cleared area from just south of the house

Chickens out enjoying the weather

In other news, I have been working on getting ready for the Iowa Network of Community Agriculture gathering in Perry. I will be co-presenting with Tai of Fox Hollow Poultry Farm about making money with poultry. I am also focused on strengthening our board and working out a plan moving forward for the organization. On the farm, Super Tom is getting better, but he is still limping a bit. A raccoon got in my shop and found a bag of acorns I was saving to plant this spring. Dispute the earlier content of this post, I love trees, just not junky trees. I especially like oak trees. I have three words for Mr. Raccoon, "IT IS ON."

A Tough Day, and Looking Past It

2010-02-28T09:43:00.000-08:00

On Friday, when I went out to chore in the morning, I found a dead lamb and my smallest ewe with its neck broken, but still alive. I am not sure what happened, but I suspect that the ram killed them. He likely hit the ewe while she was at the feeder and caught her head in it. This is all speculation, but I know there was no predation involved. I removed the ram from the ewes and removed the dead lamb and dying ewe. I also blocked up the ewes and their lambs so they could not congregate with the rest of the ewes and risk injuring their lambs.

This incident with the sheep, was likely brought on by the sheep being bottled up inside for the last two months. The sheep are now going outside during the day. The ewes and lambs have a large separate outdoor pen adjacent to the ram and cattle pen. The weather has been a bit warmer, and that is allowing the sheep to move around outside and get some fresh air. My only problem with the sheep outside is the ram has been chasing the cattle around and guarding the hay so they can't get any. It is very hard to work in the cattle and ram pen as well. The ram has too much room to move around, so he is prone to charging. I have been hit before in a confined space so I am not interested in what he could do with some room to build up some speed. I had to bring the ram inside last night, into his own pen, just so I could get some hay moving done outside with the cows.

Some of the ewes outside eating hay with the ram on the other side of the fence

The loss of the little ram lamb was very disappointing. The ewe was not an impressive animal and was likely destined to leave the herd this spring anyway. I tried to treat the loss of the ewe as a learning experience. She did pass away a few hours after I found here. That night, my neighbor came over and we (pretty much all him) dressed her out. I am not a hunter, but I have an interest in learning about deere hunting and dressing, but I have never been involved in the process before. I audited a meats course in college, primarily to build some vocabulary and become conformable with some of the processes, but we never actually disassembled an animal. The ewe had hardly any meat on her. My neighbor and I were both surprised how little she had. Fattening up on several months of spring grass would have helped, but it would have made her into something I would feel comfortable selling. Both of my remaining lambs look more substantial then the ewe that we dressed out ever did.

I am pleased to report that Super Tom turkey is doing better. He has been in a quarantine pen since my last blog post. I was afraid I was going to lose him, but I forced him to drink and then eat and treated him with some Penicillin. His is doing better now, but is not ready to leave his pen yet. Since Super Tom was treated with Penicillin, he will never be a food animal. I doubted that I would ever eat him anyway, but this seals that deal.

On other news, I have been chainsawing in the timber making a path for the fence and clearing out junky elms to make way for some more pasture. There are numerous stacks of logs and separate piles of limbs all over the place. I look forward to getting the stump grinder out there, the limbs burned, and the logs removed and stacked for drying. There will likely be some seeding work to do after that, but we will start to have more functional pasture at our disposal near our buildings.

The Farm Has Been Coming Second

2010-02-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

I must apologize for not posting much recently. I have been spending considerable time working on items for the Iowa Network of Community Agriculture (INCA), cleaning-up a number of loose ends, working to hire several consultants, doing some board recruitment, and trying to organize a gathering next month. It has left me very exhausted with the whole thing. INCA has been going through a transition for the past year or so and I would like to finish that work up in the next six months so INCA can stop focusing on its internal structure and back on programing. There are many things on this farm that have been neglected because my attention has been away from it.

That being said, somethings keep moving forward. I am still doing tree clearing whenever I can find the time for it. There is an area behind the shop that has been getting a considerable amount of my attention I figured I would show pictures of the progress so far.

I also got the cattle back out side on Saturday. The cattle are picking though the bales and are now using the outside waterer.

Saturday was also Janice's baby shower. We have been keeping the sex of the child secret until the shower. According to the ultrasound it is likely a girl. Consider slipping this in here at the end of the post as a test to see how closely folks actually read the blog.

On another note, Tom the super turkey is not in good shape. When I found him today he was have trouble with what looks like an aggressive cold. I have isolated him and put him under a heat lamp. I have my fingers crossed, but I am highly concerned for him.

A Little Bit of Everything

2010-02-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

Well the weather has continued with snow and periodic ice. Every time we make considerable progress forward on getting this snow melted off, we get some more. We had a rough spell with the ice a few weeks ago and lost power for 30 hours. We made do with oil lamps and bundling up for most of it. At least it was not so cold out that I was worried about our pipes freezing up.

About the time we lost power, I started working on finishing up our books from 2009 and getting ready to go in and get our taxes squared away. I have been chipping on taxes ever since and as the time has progressed, I have consumed more and more of the kitchen island. With 8 inches of new snow expected today and tomorrow, I expect to make good progress this week.

When the weather has not been too bad I have been out-side. I have finished cleaning-up the tree work that was started south of our barn building. I had to take an afternoon to clean up several large limbs in our front yard that broke from the weight of the ice. Yesterday, I stated working again in the timber, trying to remove some junky trees just behind our retail shop. That is part of the project to put-up fencing around the stream in our property so livestock can't get down there and tear it up. I don't let livestock down in that area right now anyway, but the government wanted to have me fence the area to limit livestock access (I have some cost share dollars) and I wanted some subdivision fencing, so it seemed like a win-win situation.

South of the Barn (the old falling apart wood fence line is coming out soon)

More South of the Barn

Front Yard Mess Gone

The livestock continue indoors. I really want to move the cows outside again and moved their huts near the barn, but have not quite yet turned them out. I am running out of hay pretty fast now. I have two junk bails of hay full of stems down on our crop land. I have been trying to get the tractor running so I can go down there and snag them, but that has not worked out. Despite a new solenoid, the tractor makes more noise when you turn the key, but it still is not running. I may bribe a neighbor who has a running tractor to go down there and get those two bails. I want to put them in the cattle area before I set-up temporary fence around the pen and turn the cattle out into it

Progress continues slowly, but winter also continues with little sign of it braking. We shall see where things take us over the next few weeks.

Learning From This Winter & Last

2010-01-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

As we grow as a business, winter becomes more and more challenging. Our first winter here, we had no functional exterior water source, so it all came from the kitchen sink (I am serious, it sucked). At least this year, we have a functional water system with several hydrants (one right next to the barn) and we have a frost-free water source for livestock. That being said, we have a long way to go in order to really do some larger scaling-up and other items that will just make Janice and my life function with less stress.

Hay Supply & Handling
First, I need to increase my hay supply. I have been buying small square bales because they are convenient, but you pay for that convenience. Small square bales really have little place in production agriculture unless you make them yourself. There are also some hay auctions that I could be tamping into at my wife's work if I could handle large round bales. To increase out hay supply, I seeded down all of our crop land (13 aces) in June 2009, but the results does not look promising (it could be a failed seeding). I plan on getting a 3pt bale spear so the tractor can move large round bales and handle purchasing hay more efficiently.

New Livestock Facilities
I must finish my fencing. I simply can not continue as I have been with temporary fencing. Temporary fencing on reels and netting will be a large part of my rotations, but I must have more internal fencing and finish my exterior fencing. As my herds grow, I will need more small (relatively cheap) portable structures. I have plans for building two simple animal bedding sheds on skids so I can move them with the tractor.

Existing Livestock Facilities
I got frustrated the other day and cut the only entry to out barn off its hinges. I could only open it a few inches. The door now just sits in its frame with a block against it. I have to replace that door, add eaves to the parts of the building that do not have it, insulate the point where the soil makes contact with the soul on the north side, and modify one of the doors on the south side of the building so it can be opened from the outside (that would give me two doors into the building).

Snow Moving
I need to move snow with more then just a shovel. I am looking at a 3pt blade and a pair of tire chains for the tractor. I should be able to bust drifts and get Janice to the pavement (otherwise I have to wait a long time for the county to break us out) in the winter and clear the south drive.

Farm Vehicle Access
The house and buildings on this farm are located in a small dip between to hills. This protects us from much of the north and west wind, but we struggle with water flow through the farm and just getting up out our two steep driveways (one is paved & one is rock). The paved drive way is the shallower of the two and goes into our one car garage and our rock one goes down to our retail building and is really quite steep. I want to build a good size carport north of the garage so we can park two more vehicles up there and allow our customers to park up there if they like. I am working on shifting the farm south to a field access point. In order to push this process along, I am planning on rocking that access in 2010.

This is a pretty large post, but much of what I want to work on in 2010 are these items here. A lot of this hinges on a functional tractor. I have inherited a tractor that could use a little TLC and I am not much of a mechanic. I have been working on the tractor and if the repairs I have made are good enough I should have it running shortly. Sorry for the long post, but this post has been on my mind for some time.

Would you like Ice with that?

2010-01-20T14:25:00.000-08:00

Winter thought we were getting off to easy, with several weeks of decent weather, so it rolled out an ice storm. I actually would rather have ice 1/4 to 1/2 an inch of ice over snow, simply because it goes away sooner when sun strikes it. I am sure the ice is more dangerous to be out in and drive in. As long as I have power on the farm and Yak Tracks on my shoes, I don't worry. I figured I would share some images from the storm. The rain came from the east with strong wind pushing it, so many things are only coated on just one side.

Normally, this blue spruce is very proportionally balanced.

Ice off the doorknob to our retail shop.

The left side of the bale faces west and the right side faces east.

The ice made loading hay onto the feed sled, a bit more interesting this morning.

View of the timber line on the edge of the farm clearing.

Several days this week have been spent clearing out a bit of timber just south of our barn. I want to build our livestock corral there and another building in the future. I also trimmed numerous black walnut trees up that have market lumber potential in 30 to 40 years (I know way out there). They will be worth much more if they are pruned to grow very strait. Even tough I trimmed many of the walnuts, I left several with more of a outward reaching growth pattern, typical of a savannah, in their original form. I like the aesthetic that they can create when they do grow with very wide reaching limbs. but there timber is worth less. The chainsaw will be out of commission for a few days, as the chain is quite dull. There are a lot of sticks on the ground, but I have not seen whole trees and limbs that the storm had claimed. I will let you know how things come out of this. It is supposed to get much better on Friday and Saturday. I look forward to getting more things done outside.

January Thaw

2010-01-17T19:26:00.000-08:00

Maybe those warm thoughts payed payed out, but it has been pretty nice for the last week and it looks pretty nice into the foreseeable future. By pretty nice, I mean highs in the mid to upper 30's (1.5 to 4.5 C). That has allowed me to go back outside and get some work done.

Friday saw the chainsaw come out. Jim (my super helper) and I started cleaning up a number of trees south of our barn. I want to remove some less desirable trees and help out the trees I want to keep (mostly walnuts and very productive mulberry trees) by pruning them and reducing the competition. On Saturday, I finished some wood fencing just west of the barn. Jim is coming back out on Monday and we are going to move the cattle portable shelters and finish working on the timber south of the barn.

The cattle have been inside the barn since they decided to break out of their pen on the evening of January 8th. I got home from the Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference and I found that the cattle waterer had frozen solid and my cattle were gone. To make matters worse, Janice and I had after dinner plans with our neighbors and it was the coldest evening we had this year. I tracked the cattle through the snow and found them eating on one of the large bales of hay not far from the barn. I got an area set-up inside the bard and then re-tracked down the cattle (they moved) and got them inside. Needless to say, we were late to our evening gathering (only an hour late).

I want to get some temporary fencing set-up this week so the cows can go back outside, but I am planning on keeping them much closer to the building this time and using the frost-fee waterer that I installed back in September. The lambs are getting much larger and I want to be able to put the sheep outside on the days with decent weather. It has been a busy week and I hope to have many other things to report on here soon.

Thinking Warm Thoughts

2010-01-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

On the farm we have about 8 inches of snow on the ground. There is a storm rolling in today with another 6 inches expected on top of what we already have and high wind tonight (40 mph 64 kmph) to blow it around and add drifting to our current weather challenges. This is not unusual, the real problem has been the frigid weather that won't let up. It has been about 20 degrees below normal. Our nightly lows have been around -2 to -10 F (-18 to -23 C) or more for the last week. Our highs have rarely broken 10 F (-12 C). Friday will have a high of -2 F and a low of -12F (-18 to -24 C). We have had to fire-up the space heater that is stowed in our craw space, and open the wall behind the bath tub to keep pipes from freezing. I kid that our heater takes little 5 minute cat naps through out the day. We are having our walls injected with foam insulation in the spring (can't do it sooner as the foam is water soluble) so I hope we do not have to live through another winter with a very cold house.

This weather is especially hard on our livestock. My primary concern is the cattle since they live outside. I re-bedded their potable huts with straw so they can try to warm up out of the snow. I also unloaded a large stack of small square bales next to the cattle pen to make my life easier in the coming days.

The sheep are still inside adding heat to a frigid building that the poultry live in. The lambs are doing fine and looking great. We loose a few eggs every day to having them freeze solid and split in half, but not so many eggs that we are hurting.

Yesterday, I bought and unloaded 48 small-square bales of hay in the building and formed the aforementioned stack next to the cattle pen. I just barely made it to Janice's ultrasound in the afternoon. I got the truck stuck and had to break out the tire chains my mother got me for Christmas to liberate my self. I know the likely sex of our child, but we are holding that information close to our breast until the baby shower in mid-February when Janice will have a big reveal.

Out the window, I see the the snow has just started. The Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference is at the end of the week and I am looking forward to catching up with a few frinds and colleges.

One Last Surprise for 2009

2009-12-31T21:24:00.000-08:00

It has been a busy day. I woke up and hit the wii fit first thing before chores. When I went out to the out building I had two lambs. They were not more then an hour or two old. They are two little ram lambs. They are all black with a white spot on the top of their heads. One has a white spot on one of his legs.

The ewe lamb born on Christmas Eve is getting along well and enjoys slipping away from its mother and romping around the larger pen with the rest of the sheep.

Janice and I also made a trip up to Paul's Grains for our local organic flour, organic rice, and local organic oatmeal. We make a trip up to their farm about once every three to four months to stock-up. We have been customers for three years now and we highly recommend them.

We also caught a movie and came home to a quiet evening at home With home-made ice cream. To the folks that read this blog and are curious about us and the progression of Wild Rose Pastures. Happy New Year, eat fresh and eat local in 2010.

Christmas Eve Surprise, top that Santa

2009-12-24T12:17:00.000-08:00

I just got back from California last night. I trade chores with my neighbor to the south so he has been watching the farm for the past five days. I got up late this morning (jet lagged), cooked oatmeal, and ran into Pella to get my cats from the boarder and to run a few errands before the town shuts down at noon. On the way home, I did my neighbors chores before I started mine.

Needless to say, it was around 11:00 Am before I made it to my livestock. I fed the cows as usual and then I feed the chickens and sheep. When I fed the sheep, I noticed one was acting unusual. She was not eating, she was keeping her distance and bleating. I went to take a closer look and I noticed that she looked suprisingly thin in the flank. I walked behind her and noticed that her vaginal area was leaking a fluid and her teats were full. I called my wife (still out in California) and asked her to google lambing behavior. After I got off the phone with Janice, (I was 90% sure that the ewe was lambing) my neighbor to the north came over to swap some deer jerky for some eggs. He makes some of the best jerky I have ever had. Anyway, he

grew-up with sheep and told me I was going to have a lamb today. We partitioned the ewe off from the rest of the flock and set-up a heat lamp. When we went into the house the hooves were poking out from the ewe. We came back about 20 minutes later (me with a handful of lambing supplies that I picked-up for emergency situations), the lamb was on the ground was on the ground and looking good (no need for the supplies). We waited around to make sure the lamb found the teat and got that first vital stomach full of colostrum.

I have not sexed the lamb, but here are a few pictures of the little one. On the farm it seems that this time of year has something special about it. Our first Christmas (2008) on the farm was when we got our first eggs and this Christmas Eve, our first lamb.

A Little Work & a Little R&R

2009-12-16T12:43:00.000-08:00

I have been relaxing a bit since we got some snowfall, but I have not been completely idle. I had a very productive Iowa Network for Community Agriculture (INCA) board meeting. We are a very small non-profit that is focuses on growing market, producer, and consumer opportunities and capacities on a local community and county level. If you want to know more you can check our website www.growinca.org.

I will be taking an order in tomorrow to the Iowa Food Cooperative (IFC). I cannot say enough good words to describe what a great set-up the IFC is for producers. The Iowa Food Cooperative represents about 20% of our yearly business. It has the potential to be much more, but that will depend on how lamb and beef sell though our existing customer base and if the membership for the IFC continues to grow. Right now, the IFC is a pretty busy or competitive environment for meat sellers. For consumers, the IFC has some of the best meat selection and variety of local meats that you will find in central Iowa.

On another note, I will be traveling a bit at the end of the week and into next. My neighbor will be helping me out with chores so I have been getting some things ready for him. I have a desire to play around with the tractor before I go. It has not been functional since late July. I have cleared the space for it inside (I hope it fits, because it will be tight) and I would like to protect it better form the elements.

That is all for now. Happy holidays.

Snow, Snow, & More Snow (Three Day Recap)

2009-12-09T16:50:00.000-08:00

The last three days have been hurried and full of coping with the weather. Sunday night was round one of the storm. We only got around 2 to 3 inches of snow, just enough to warm us up. One Monday, I cleaner out the building. I still had brooders that had to be cleaned out and stuff to bring to move inside. I ended the day by buying, transporting, and unloading 60 small square bales into the building.

On Tuesday, I moved the sheep and cattle down from the hill into glen sheltered by cedar trees behind our house. I removed all the temporary electric fence on the hill (6 sections of 164 feet each) and reset-up 4 sections of fencing . I drug our two port-o-huts (somewhat portable livestock shelter) out into the new pen set-up. I pulled down the waterer, removed the extension cords, adjusted the reel that feeds the electricity to the fencing, and made dinner. As I was headed to bed, Nermal (our tabby house cat) was staring out the window and when I joined him, I saw the sheep in the front yard working through the now trying to eat grass. All you can really say at that point is "crap". I suited back-up, grabbed some corn as bait and brought the sheep down to the coral. I then threw then a bale of hay and headed up to see where the cows were at and find out what happened to the fence. Luckily, the cows had bedded down in the port-o-huts and the sheep wiped out 15 feet of the fence. I set it all back-up and went to bed. In the picture, the cows are in the sheltered grove with waterer (left), hay (center), portable fencing (in front), and port-o-huts (just to the right of the heifer).

On Wednesday, I had to deal with the sheep being way out of position in an area that does not have the best shelter. I decided to move the sheep indoors. In essence, I reworked the insides of the building to accommodate the sheep and dug paths to the garage, cattle paddock, and between the buildings.

Racing The Snow

2009-12-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

It is coming, round one is here. We got 2 inches on the ground and 4 to 6 more on the way tonight and over the next few days. I took a few pictures yesterday of the situation before snow fall. I spent much of my time finishing the installation (tamping dirt around the base) of 5 remaining posts along a stretch of boundary fence and picking things up that are tying around (there is way too much stuff lying around).

I have sheep and cattle way to the north of the property. I have around an 1/8th of a mile of extension cord running from the side of our house to a water tank defroster that allows me to keep the livestock up there.

Today, I will be buying hay and cleaning out our farm building. If I have time, I will run some wire on the section that I finished with the posts yesterday. There is so much to do, and much of it will not beat the snow fall. Despite the complication that snow creates for me, it is lovely outside I hope to share a few pictures of the outdoors soon.

Ram is Back & Busy

2009-12-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

It has been a busy couple of days building fencing and traveling. Monday went largely to beginning the process of reorganizing the house for the baby, on Tuesday I was at a fund raising workshop representing the Iowa Network for Community Agriculture (www.growinca.org) where I serve as the board chair, Wednesday Jim from Pella came out to help and a lot of fencing got worked on.

The sheep continue to graze the north part of the farm along with the cattle. It is getting more difficult to keep the livestock up on the north part of the farm as the water sources are freezing up and need to be broken-open several times a day right now. The ram came home today. Wow, he is big and he wasted no time getting to know the ewes. He has been rented out for a month and now home to earn his keep. Here are a few pictures of our ram.

Ramping Up Egg Production

2009-11-30T19:43:00.000-08:00

We have been getting around one-and-a-half dozen to three dozen eggs a day. Assuming an average of two dozen per day, we get 28 dozen per week, so around 112 dozen eggs each month. Local demand is around 9 dozen per week. That means we have have more supply then demand by about 76 dozen per month. We need another outlet to unload supply. We sell through the Iowa Food Cooperative, but in order to sell eggs through them, I need to have an egg handlers license from the State of Iowa.

This process requires me to submit an application, and pass inspection. In order to have inspection I have to have certain supplies and go through some laid out procedures. I just dropped $250 on more supplies, license applications, to be able to pass inspection and handle our current egg output. We have had to get an egg candler and we will have to inspect every egg to make sure it is not developing (it should not if harvested promptly), a special wash solution must be used that is 5 percent chlorine, and an egg scale has been purchased to prove that I can grade eggs. I also ordered 500 cartons. They are sitting in the middle of my living in a huge box waiting to be unloaded.

Priming the North Pasture

2009-11-24T05:38:00.000-08:00

In the spring there will be a lot of things going on. For one thing I will be a father in late April, broiler chickens will arrive about that time as well, we will have our first lambs by mid-May, but one thing I am really looking forward to is improving the north pasture area.

We have been farming here for almost two years now and I have yet to do much of anything with our north pasture area. It is the largest piece of the farm (probably 17 to 18 acres of our 40 acres). It is a rugged place and the highest and part of the farm. We have really worked over the south end of the farm this year as it was adjacent to all of our buildings and some of our most level ground. The north is still a wild area, but for the last month I have started to work it and prime it for next year. My 12 ewes are up there being rotated every other day to a new section ground. The area is so large that they have only scratched the surface, but they are breaking down the rank thatch, opening up the soil to more light, and removing the bark from some of the smaller Chinese Elm trees (hopefully killing some of them) encroaching on the pasture. I have a few pictures of the area. The top picture is looking down one side of the hill at the sheep. The sheep are the line of little bumps underneath the large cotton wood tree. They have just been moved into a new paddock and have to their faces to the ground like good sheep eating whatever they can find. That is good sheep behavior, a bad sheep will pace the paddock expecting to receive some food from you, my sheep have figured it out this year and I am glad for that.

In the top picture, you can also see our poor crop land seeding from June. It is the long line of yellowed grass located down where the ground starts to level out. It was a mess of annual grasses and weeds. I will burn it off this spring to remove the vegetation so light can get to the soil and hopefully give the little seedlings a chance before they have to start competing with weeds. This area was mowed around by my neighbor, but the tractor he was using could not make it trough more then the edges of the pasture. This mowed area will help serve as a fire break. If no seedlings show themselves, we will consider replanting the area.

The second shot is looking back up the large hill at an area where the sheep have been. You can see the white spots on the bark of the trees where the sheep have done there handy work and the grass in the foreground is much thinner then that in the background (an area I have not grazed yet).

I will be frost seeding in Ladino Clover in late February and early March. It has worked well for us in other places on the farm (turkey, cows, and sheep loved it), so I will be doing it on the north pasture and expanding the area I seeded on the south pasture. Clover is a legume and it seed is very small and round. Frost seeding is broadcasting the seed on the ground in late winter when the ground will still freeze and thaw several times before spring. The freezing and thawing lets the little legume seed work into the soil. It is best to do this when you can hit a period with no snow on the ground in late winter. Since I do not own much for equipment, I will be using my little lawn spreader to apply the seed. It is a good workout coving that much area, but it worked last year so why mess with success.

Turkeys "fly" off the farm, cattle walk off, before returning

2009-11-21T22:09:00.000-08:00

Turkey sales have been very brisk. A little too brisk. We are sold out of frozen turkeys. We still have very few smoked turkey halves (pictured). We had our first cured smoked turkey last night and it was good. It is very similar to a mild ham and you will once again be surprised by how many you can serve off one bird. Sunday is our Picket Fence Creamery (Woodward, IA) Sample Sunday delivery. It will be a big one.

On Thursday, I distributed turkeys to the Iowa Food Cooperative in Des Moines, and filled Ames customers' order. I got home pretty late and was very tired so I just sealed-up the turkeys and collected and washed eggs before bed. Friday, I went out to move the cattle and they were gone. Usually when the cattle get out, they come into the house yard and graze the yard until I put them away. This time they must have selected a very different course, because they had vanished like smoke. The cattle showed-up this evening and are now contained within our small barn. They will move back out to pasture tomorrow. The cattle could have been on our farm most of the 50 hours they were missing, as there some thickets and steep places that I have trouble getting to. After talking with a neighbor, I think they may have gone as far as 1/2 away from the property, before returning home. This belief is based on some very large deere tracks that a neighbor saw. Anyway, the cattle are home and I am glad that is behind me. I am racing to get fence in before winter and time spent looking for missing cattle, is time not spent building the fence to keep them in.

Last Processing Day this Year, and Thinking About Next Year

2009-11-13T06:34:00.000-08:00

The last processing day is now behind me. Twenty-hours awake is tough, but not as bad as the last one. All 84 turkeys (we sold two) are freezing down right now. I got a call this morning, saying that our smoked turkeys are ready to go, and we are careening toward next week, where we will have three deliveries to make and all of our orders to sort.

It is good to be this close to payday, because I am pretty broke. Processing charges went up again this year and it is now running $7 to $8 per turkey. I left the locker over $600 lighter (plus I had to drop $75 on gas to get out there). This all has me thinking, home processing equipment would set me back about $3,500 and it is looking more tempting with the passage of time. It would bring new challenges like hiring some assistance, compost handling, and dealing with some regulations, but it would save the rough 2o hour marathons, those crippling butchering bills, transit stress on the birds, and I could keep the carbon that I am currently loosing in the poultry parts that stay at the locker (if composted on-farm, they can be used to build the soil). One limiting factor, would be that I could not sell 0n-farm processed poultry through the Iowa Food Cooperative. The cooperative represents about 10% of our business, so we might consider still processing a limited number of chickens and turkeys through our existing channels and the rest through on-farm processing. I have spent over $1,500 on processing this year with gas and if I raise the 180 turkeys and 440 chickens that I am looking at next year, then I will spend $2,150 on processing next year and at least and additional $375 on gas doing it. There will be some labor expenses, but it does not take too long to begin to rationalize the whole set-up. I will have to continue to examine this during the off season. I already help Galen Bontrager from time to time with his processing, but there are some things that I will need to improve my proficiency with before going down that road.

The Final Push & Looking Forward to Next Year

2009-11-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

Things have been moving right along. As I write this, 86 turkeys are loaded in the trailer ready to to go at 2:00 AM in the morning to the locker. This is the last trip of the season to the locker and I am so happy to be done.

Fencing made some huge leaps and bonds forward. I got assistance from Jim Stumo for several hours and we strung several stands of wire and set some posts. I have an evening picture of a section of fence we finished today. I can say one thing, Jim is much better with a hammer then I am. I hope that come with time. I must apologize for the dark picture, the sun sets so early now.

I have also cleaned the retail space and added a freezer and repaired a second. It looks much better in there. I had wanted to get get the walls painted before winter, but I am not sure that is going to happen. I am at least glad the place is tidied up for right now.

I order lambing supplies for next year and the tags came. they will be numbered 1001 to 1020 s0 the 10 in the first two digits will be the year and the second two digits will be the order the lambs are born. One the back they say Wild Rose Pastures. I think the tags are cute and I can just see the little lambs running around with those tags next spring. My ram is still being rented out and I am glad to hear that he is doing his job. He really is a gentle giant and I consider myself fortunate that I got my hands on him. I will post pictures of him when he comes home after Thanksgiving.

Cast of Characters: Super Dog

2009-11-08T05:47:00.000-08:00

I figured I should introduce you everyone to our crew. Maya (our 3 year old mild mannered beagle) is almost always by my side or watching me from the shade of a tree.

The main reason, I wanted to mention Maya was that she averted a disaster the other day. Two days ago, She was going ballistic in the house (this is quite unusual) and so I final let her outside. To my surprise, 15 turkeys were parading down the road. I rushed out there and they came strait to me and followed me down the drive way and back into their pen. Janice was trying to find the camera the whole time. She described me as the Pied Piper of turkeys.

Maya is also our official greeter. She has never shown aggression to other animals, just curiosity. The first time she met the sheep, she rolled over on her back in front of them expecting tummy rubs. She tried to do the same with cattle, but through better of it (scared the crap out of me though).

Maya loves children to. I have had her jump in customers cars following several children and have to be extracted by me. The other thing Maya does is go all over the farm yard area. She leaves her sent where ever she goes. This giver raccoons and opossums the impression that a nasty predator liver here and they tend to keep their distance. The only time I worry about predators is when Maya is largely out of action because she has bad pollen allergies. August and September are her bad months. In the winter we do get a few predators because of food shortages, but we set some traps up in winter that take care of our problems.

So here is to Maya, super dog.

Turkeys' Sunset

2009-11-03T20:20:00.000-08:00

It is rapidly approaching that time for the turkeys. We will keep our three Bronze Turkeys, but the white ones will grace the tables of our customers. I will admit that I grow a little attached to them, but they are expensive to keep around (they eat a lot right now), and turkeys represent around 2/3 of our business. I am at least glad to see that the weather will be warm, dry, and pleasant for their final weekend. I am still scrambling to get some additional freezers up and running to hold the turkeys before they go out to customers.

I wanted to share a picture of the turkeys getting at a nice new piece of pasture. I have been very pleased with kura clover (a large leafed white clover) as pasture planting. I frost seeded it in March and you can just see the turkeys attack it in the video.

I moved the cattle into a paddock the other day and they came to a kura clover spot between their new fencing and their old fencing set-up. I could not get the two to budge off that spot, they we so intent on eating every little piece. I ended-up just extending the new grazing system temporary fence around them. They were not leaving that spot.

The Rush Before Thanksgiving, Winter, and More

2009-10-30T04:55:00.000-07:00

With the crispness of the air and the littering of the ground of a collage of leaves, comes the haste of autumn. The squirrels are hoarding the fallen walnuts that have ripened to the point that their husk is easily removed. All of this haste continues through me.

Our turkeys are in their closing two weeks on the farm and are eating more and more every day. With the turkeys going into the locker, I will need to bring additional freezers in to make sure that we can handle the additional load. We have to shore-up our orders as they are now coming at a rate of a couple per day. The floodgates will open this weekend and so we are now ready.

Winter is closing in on the farm. The Cobett waterer in the field is an improvement, but it needs rock around it to make sure the livestock do not tear it up. Our retail space is also a bit torn-up because we intend to paint it before winter, and the landscaping and awning over the entry way need to be completed. When the turkeys move out of the barn, where they have been spending nights and rainy days, the whole thing will need to be cleaned out and some organization reinstated along with bringing the tractor inside, and making room to put some small square bales inside. The garage/old shop and new shop need to be reconciled and organized because they are both a bit messy and quite unorganized.

Their is additional urgency this fall. For those who do not know, Janice is pregnant and due in late April. Given that I will be at home taking care of a child and running a farm, I am eager to attack several of the farm projects that will make my life easier. The water system is functional and needs a few finishing touches, the fencing system is still a long way from complete. Much of my winter will be devoted to fence building and felling trees to put fences and posts in when the ground is workable. The last thing the eagerly eats at me is a need for functional livestock handing system and corral so it is possible to work sheep and cattle.

In side our 900 square foot home, major reorganization has been planned. Three of four living spaces are getting changed up to make room for a child. The place will be quite different when it is all done.

That is how things are shaping-up around here as turkeys season is escalating, winter is coming, and a child is one the way.

More & New Products Coming

2009-10-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

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I am always trying to push the envelope a little bit so I can be ahead of other producers. I want to have unique products that help differentiate our business and keep people coming back. On Tuesday this week I went over to the Milo locker and brought them 10 of our turkeys that I had processed two weeks ago. They will be smoked and sliced in half and will be ready for Thanksgiving. They will be $6.25 per pound and will likely run 6 to 9 pounds per half. Milo locker has won several state wide awards for their smoked turkey so soon you will be able to get our pasture raised turkeys with Milo's great smoking experience. Once major advantage is these birds will not have to be cooked for serving, just heated as they will be a precooked product.

As an accidental quark of the bad weather (cold wet weather=slow/no weight gain), we have some very small chickens for sale. If you have been wanting small chickens around 2.1 to 2.9 pounds we have them. As usual, I was very impressed with how they dressed out, despite there petite size. If you want very meaty tiny birds, drop us an email.

One major stumbling has been that we have struggled to keep our eggs in stock for just our most local customers. Now, we finally have enough layers up and running that we can offer them our wider customer base. $2.50 a dozen large, and $2.00 a dozen medium. The picture above is one of our recent days collections of eggs recently.

Lamb will be a major new product next year. I have purchased a ram this past Saturday when I was out there helping Galen Bontrager (www.galenbontragerfarm.com) process some of his pasture raised turkeys. I would have some pictures for you, but the but the big boy is being rented out right now by another farm in our area. He is a big ram, weighing around 350 pounds and is 100% registered Katahdin with RR traits. The RR traits breed Scrapies resistance into a flock of sheep. Scrapies is a neurological wasting disease, not too unlike "mad-cow disease". I am not worried about Scapies in my flock, but it is a way to add value to ewe lambs that might be sold as breeding stock in the future.

Anyway, this ram is 4 years old and has some beautiful lambs on the ground at his earlier home. I will get him back around Thanksgiving time or just a little after that and we will begin breeding with a target lambing date of mid-May. We should have lamb for sale for customers as whole and half animals, as well as retail cuts by late 2010.

I also picked-up a steer calf two weeks ago and so we will be experimenting with grass-finished cattle this year. There will be a very limited amount of beef available late next fall either as half or quarter animal.

Water System Step 3-Pump install, & well hook-up

2009-10-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

This project is just about done. I still have to put rock around the cobett waterer, because the livestock will tear that area apart. On Monday Sully Plumbing showed-up to start the last few steps in the process and they finished on Tuesday. The last steps included running pipe and electricity up to the well from the cellar, which will serve as the well house for the pressure tank and the home of all the shut-off valves, installing one last water hydrant, and reworking some issues we have had with our rural water line to the house leaking. There is a lot of exposed earth in a few spots now, because the last bit of pipe installation was open-cut with a backhoe. Next spring, there will be some major smoothing out of earth and some seeding to get cover back on those areas. I am glad this is done and am getting used to actually having water where I use it, or at least very close to where I use it. There are only a few things I regret and that is the loss of several bushes that the guys dug-up in this last stage and that the pressure tank got put in front of the builders signature in the root cellar. It says the builders name and that it was built in September of 1910. Our home dates back to 1868 and the farm has been involved in some level of farming for almost this entire time. When you dig, you turn-up a bid of history's junk quite easily.

Fantastic Weather Dampened by Swarm

2009-10-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

It is fantastic outside. It is in the 60's for the first time in weeks, and yet I am spending much of my day inside. Why you ask? Well the swarms of Asian Lady Beetles (Harmonia axyridis) are awakened from several weeks of slumber. I would like to put extra emphasis on two word in that last sentence; swarms & awakened. That is right folks I walk out the door on they will be one me in seconds. In fact the shear act of opening any door to the house is bound to let in at least a dozen into the house I just cleaned this morning. Then you go to flick them off you face or glasses and they spray there nasty smelling gook on you. Even the chickens won't eat them.

This species was introduced to help reduce aphid populations in soybean field, and that job they do well. They do it so well that they multiply into a swarm and when the bean field dries up the swarm looks for a new place to go (aka the small farmsteads that still have green yards in the otherwise brown or barren late fall row-crop agricultural landscape. Needless to say, I don't plant row crops so my fields still have green grass in them and have very large population of swarming, gunk spewing, inedible little monster bugs in them. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go check the masking tape I put around my front door seal, I see some bugs have found a way past it.

Poultry Processing Day & Getting Cattle

2009-10-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

I am never a fan of processing day. They are always a huge burden on me and they have spill-over effects into all the days around them. Processing day was Friday, but it begins Thursday. I figured I would walk you through the process.

Thursday:

Go to town to get cash and dry ice. Once I get home, I load a special old dead chest freezer (without a compressor) into the back of the truck along with towels, several coolers, dry ice, cleaner spray bottle, and straps to keep the freezer closed. The I hook-up the trailer and begin loading birds. We loaded 19 of the biggest turkeys but had one major hick-up and that was that the truck (my Grandpa's old, but very low miles, 6 cylinder, 2wd, 20mpg) could not make it up the wet sloppy drive way. I can't really blame it because of how steep our driveway is and how

wet it had been. If the tractor was running, I could have just pulled it up the drive with it, so I had to borrow a neighbors truck to get the trailer up the drive. On the plus side, I picked-up some chicken crates at auction this summer and they made loading 103 chickens so much easier then using the old rubbermaid containers I had used in the past. Next, try to get to bed and be ready for the early starts on Friday.

Friday:

Wake-up shortly after 2:00 AM and try to get out of the house as soon as possible. By 2:50 AM I was finally on the road. I arrived at the locker by 5:45 AM (that is late though). Turkeys go in first as they take the longest to chill. By 7:00 Am, all the birds were dead and chilling. I drive back into town and try to take a nap and later get some work done at the local cafe. As usually, neither of these went too well. The truck cab was cold, and another truck pulled up behind me a dropped of a steel trailer which woke me up (it does not matter where I park, this stuff always happens). I also got chatting with the locals a bit at the cafe, which limited how much work I got done. By 10:30 AM, I headed back to the locker and check in. Then I got the truck ready by

cleaning and wiping out all the coolers and the freezer and place the dry ice in them, put a towel on top of the dry ice, and load the birds. By 11:45 AM I was headed home.

To add some complexity to my day I saw an add on craigslist for several calves in Earlham (right off I-80 on the return trip) and I responded and bought two Belted Galloway Calves (one a steer and one a heifer). I arrived in Earlham around 1:00 PM and had had the calves loaded and ready to go by 1:45 PM. I got home by 3:30 PM and got the calves unloaded and trailer unhooked by 4:30 PM. I came inside for food, water, and to see Janice who just got home. I was back outside by 6:30 PM and check on the remaining 75 turkeys before I started getting the current freezers ready to receive birds and reorganize the space. By 7:30 PM I started unloading birds. I like to weight them, label them with their weight, and double bad them, right away as opposed to putting that off, because it will never get done that way. Anyway, I bagged and tagged birds until 1:15 AM. Then I checked and watered the remaining turkeys and was in be shortly before 2:oo AM Saturday.

All and I it was a very rough ordeal on me, but the one nice thing is that I have fewer birds to take care of here. One more processing day is done, with only one more to go this year. The turkeys were larger then I was expecting, but many of the chickens were tiny. We have a large shelf with around 24 chickens that weigh less then 2.5 pounds, If you want small chickens we have then, lots of them. Birds that small will barely, if at all, cover their cost of production. I am planning on going down to the Milo to take 10 processed turkeys down to their locker to get them smoked and split in half as an experiment. They will be on the Iowa Food Cooperative as soon as they are ready. Another processing day is now done with one more this year to go.

Water System Step 2-Dun & Dusted

2009-10-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

This has been a crazy week and I have several things I want to share about this week, but they will be spread out a bit so I don't have a single massive blog posting. We will start with the water system.

Boring the water lines finished-up on Wednesday afternoon of this soon to be past week. I then had one night with the backhoe to finishing digging the holes that needed to be made bigger and backfilling all of the holes. Wednesday night was a late one. I remember questioning my occupation, but being a little excited about advancing such a large project, that night when I was working at the bottom of a five-foot pit by the light on the back hoe. It had started to lightly rain and I was struggling to light a butane torch that kept going out so I could heat the water pipe and slide it onto the fittings that the pipe connects to.

Despite the challenges and the many times I hurt my hand while working on it, the water system is on huge step closer to being a reality. We have over 800 feet of waterline in the earth and it is all hooked-up except for two places that are waiting for step three (installing the well pump and pressure tank, and doing final hook-ups). Attached to all of this water line, we have four hydrants (water facets in the field that do not freeze-up) spaced out along the waterline . We will also have a frost free livestock water access from Cobett (a small central-Iowa company). It uses ground heating to keep the waterer access from freezing up. There should be a picture looking down the inside of the tube, as I have not yet installed the basin that goes on top. I owe a special thanks to Vermeer for helping to put this waterline in despite numerous challenges with sandy soil that makes almost any project a pain.

Water System Step 2-Boring the Water Lines

2009-10-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

We started about a month-and-a-half ago with the drilling of the well and now it continues with the boring of the waterlines. Vermeer (my wife's employer and all around awesome company) will be boring the lines. So it will take 4 bores and 6 big holes in the ground to put in the water lines and get everything ready for step three (pluming the well and final hook-up). The challenging part is making sure I have everything here and ready to go because when the drill starts tomorrow we will be moving very quickly.

On other news, we had to pull the turkeys up to the building and bring them in at night. This fall has been cold and wet since mid-September. It is very hard on the birds and hurts the rate of gain. We are dealing with the weather as well as we can. Unless the weather dries-up and the night temperature comes back into the mid-forties, then we will continue to bring the turkeys inside. There are 100 broilers out on pasture right now with their pens providing enough shelter to get them through. A trip to the locker is scheduled next Friday, with the 100 broiler chickens and 20 turkeys going in. It is going to be a busy couple of weeks and I am just planning on rolling with it and making it through.

First Customer Workday

2009-10-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

I am going to admit that I was a bit skeptical about how this would go, but it went great. The weather on Saturday was pretty dismal, with a few glints of sun and a a few spells of rain, after two days of drizzle and light rain.

Anyway, with our fist plan large scale fence building out the window because of the weather, we turned to two projects that had languished for a very long time. So I one group of three Me, Dee, and Mark attacked a pile of boards, tin , wheels, and took an idea (mobile turkey rooster) and made it a reality (picture included). It is a roost with a roof on wheels. Janice is skeptical that turkeys will use it, but I have more faith in it. I plan to move it out to pasture today and I will report back how the turkeys take to it.

I also had Andy, Katie, and myself working on laying some concrete. I had started to lay concrete in front of the retail building to help with drainage and to help with to create a much better looking building. None of us had done that much or any concrete work so we all learned a lot and after a few trips to town to get additional concrete, we were good to go.

Leah helped Janice pull out a casual lunch and a fantastic dinner along with a few town runs to buy supplies. It was a great feed and was the best meal I had had in several weeks.

All and all, the day was a big success. We got two projects that had languished for a a long time done and a good deal of good food and stories were shared. The only thing that would have made it a better days is if the Cyclones had pulled it out (we listened on the radio). Thank you to all the folks that came and helped out. I hope they enjoy the chickens, learned a few things and had a good time.

Thank you,

Ryan

Farm Auction and a Piece of My Past

2009-09-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to Corning, IA to go to a farm auction. This farm was called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Farm or the Adam's County Research and Demonstration Farm. It was managed by a non-profit, the Southern Iowa Forage & Livestock Committee (SIFLC). I know, that was my last really long name followed by an acronym.

This farm was a series of three demonstration rotational grazing systems and the location where I conducted my master's research for two-and-a-half summers. I had some issues with how the farm was laid out and how it was run, but it was a good example of what is possible and I believe it will be missed. The land is going up for sale and will in all likelihood be converted into row-crop production. I dropped a bit of coin and came back with a truck load of useful supplies including one of the unique white mineral feeders that they used to have out there.

There is something about Autumn

2009-09-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that Autumn is the time when stuff gets done. Turkeys are great for that as they require less work to grow as they get older. All of our turkeys are out ranging on pasture, all of our chickens are currently outside (picture included) in the movable shelters, and the sheep (picture included) are starting to learn to drill. Things are humming along. I started to wade into fencing and build my first brace. It is not a thing of beauty, but for a city kid's first try, it works. I have been mowing the yard, cutting out a line of crappy brush that is just north of the house, and trenching electricity out to our root seller, which will be the future home of the well pressure tank. Tomorrow, I will be giving a tour to several folks from Nigeria that our church is helping to host and give them a tour of local agriculture production. I will try to have most of the yard mowed before they come, but if Sully Pluming comes to do the well pump, mowing is not going to happen.