Praise God! No explanation needed.

Snow Day!

I got the call around 6:30 this morning that school had been canceled. I thought it was funny at the time because it looked normal as can be, but as I look at the conditions outside now, I'm glad they called it off.

Here is some of what a snow day consists of for me.

#1: Get the fireplace going. We aren't ever quite sure when we will lose electricity out here in the country, so it's a good idea to already have the fireplace going. It can keep my house warm and I can cook with it if I need to (my house has no gas appliances, so if the electricity goes out I have no way to cook).

Notice the black 5 gallon bucket to the right of the fireplace.

Any good farm kid should have one of those to store the kindling for the fireplace ;-)

#2: Help with chores. We have to make sure the cattle are safe and as warm as can be. This is especially true now that it is calving season. Thankfully we already have all of our cattle in the pastures close to the houses.

This is where we keep the ground up corn we mix into the feed for the cattle. It is loaded into buckets and then dumped into the scoop of the tractor. Next it is dumped into the feed truck. The feed truck has an auger inside that tumbles the corn, silage and roughage around to mix them together.

 

The darker pile in front off the tractor is silage. It is ground up corn that was cut while it was still wet. It has to be cut at a certain time to make sure there is enough moisture and also to make sure the nitrate levels are safe for consumption by the cattle. It is packed tightly together which causes it is start the process of fermentation. This creates heat and when it is scooped up, you can usually see steam coming off of it. Dad has always referred to this as the "hot cereal." Sometimes we load the truck the day before, but we have to remember to not put silage in it if the temperatures will be below freezing during the night. It isn't much fun or much good on the truck to try to mix a big mass of frozen silage.

The lighter pile behind the tractor is what we call roughage. It is simply ground up bales. It is ground up beforehand so it can be mixed in the truck. 

While my dad and uncle were doing all of that, I was given the task of using the pick-up and bale bed to pick up two bales to feed the cattle.

The are the controls for the bale bed. Seems easy enough. But dad has done it hundreds, if not thousands of times. I have done it enough to know what I am doing, but I still have to stop and read the instructions for each movement I want the arms to perform...and I still usually do the wrong one.

You are supposed to grab the bale in the middle...I missed.

My second try was a little better.

After you have the first bale loaded, you can no longer cheat and just look behind you to back up. I'm really bad about cheating.

I've never been a huge fan of trying to use the mirrors. Dad always gives me grief about that. It has something to do with the fact that everything is backwards and I never know which way I need to go...it confuses me greatly.

After we had all of the feed loaded up, we headed out to feed the cattle. Dad had to catch a couple of new calves to give them their new jewelry while we were out there as well. Have to get them ear tagged so we know which mom they are supposed to go with.

By this point it was really starting to snow.

The little calf is trying to figure this food thing out. But since it is so young, it didn't really know what to do with the bale other than stand in the middle of it.

Since chores are done, we are gonna take some tips from the cattle. We are going to hunker down for a while and try to stay warm. I'm sure there will be multiple checks throughout the day to make sure there are no new arrivals. And if there are, I'm sure we'll have to make some decisions about where they should be housed for the remainder of the day. A new, wet calf is no match for winter weather.

Have a great snow day, rejoice in the moisture and stay warm!

Realities of Raising Cattle

In terms of cattle, dad had a rough past 24 hours. Remember that little calf in the previous post? The one that the mama left behind when she went to go get some food? Well, apparently something wasn't quite right with the little guy and it passed away yesterday.

This happens far more often than we would like. I know we have to look at our ranch as a business. But if there is a single person that looks at a newborn calf and doesn't have it pull on their heartstrings, then there is something wrong. I still take it hard when a calf I have had a personal connection with later dies. I might not take it as hard as I did as a kid, but it still is a little heartbreaking.

The heifer, as far as we can tell, was a good mother. Something just wasn't right with the calf and it wouldn't eat like it was supposed to. So, as we do at least once or twice every calving season, we "grafted" a calf onto the mother. We have older cows each year that have gotten bred but we will no longer be keeping them after they calve. They are cows that might be losing their teeth so it is hard for them to eat or they have some other sort of health issue partially due to their age. Those cows have served us well over the years, but they won't be ones we keep for another year. So, if one of our younger heifers loses a calf, we often take a calf off of the older cow and put it on the younger heifer.

This is the calf as it is introduced to its new mother.

Also, in the early morning hours, my dad was EXTREMELY nice and did not call me when he needed to pull a calf at 3 in the morning. We try to breed the first-calf heifers with a bull that will produce a smaller calf so it is easier for them to calve. Sometimes it doesn't quite work out that way though and they need help to get the calf out because it is so big. The little guy below was the one that was pulled. When I say "pulled" I literally mean "pulled." We have to connect a chain to their front legs and pull while the cow pushes. We try to let it occur as naturally as possible and just keep pressure applied so the cow's pushing is a little more effective.

Might be walking on my tippy-toes for a while ;-)

This calf is walking a little funny today. The cable has made his poor front feet pretty sore since he was so big and really hard to pull, but dad said it should clear up and the swelling will go down in the next few days.

So, even as we sadly said goodbye to one little calf, my dad helped another calf make its arrival into the world. It doesn't mean we don't get sad, it just means we have to put aside the sadness to help protect the lives of those calves still living.

New Arrivals Daily

Calving season is here!

It is the season that might be one of the most anticipated events on our farm/ranch. Although it also comes without a lot of sleep for my dad.

First things first, we joined together to load up the heifers (the cows having calves for the first year) and transfer them from a pasture further away to one right next to my parents' house.

Dad doesn't get much sleep because day and night his job is to watch over the cattle to take care of them and their newborns. Since these cows have not had calves before, everything is new to them. Sometimes they don't claim their own calf, sometimes they have difficult calving, or sometimes they just up and forget they have a calf for a little bit.

Saturday a heifer had calved earlier that day while we were pulling posts from fence we had set up around CRP this summer. 

Ok...so maybe he was pulling posts and I was driving and taking pictures ;-)

Well, apparently later that day when the heifers were fed, the mom forgot that she had a new calf to take along with her. She ran to the food and left her calf alone to fend for itself in the dirt and wind. So dad called us for some help and we loaded up the adorable little guy and took her baby to her (and the food).

Hey, mom, you left me behind...where are you?

This last picture is one of the many reasons prairie dogs are horrible for us to have in our pastures. I actually hadn't ever seen this before, but had to take a picture when I saw a one-day old calf about to lose its front legs down in a prairie dog hole. If its legs did fall all of the way down in there it would be very hard for it to get out.

I'll keep ya posted on the calving progress and hope that all of you are hanging in there with all of the crazy weather around these days...be it snow, or rain, or hail, or tornadoes, or blizzards, or wind....hopefully it covers it all ;-)



God Made a Farmer

Sorry the embedding of the video isn't working...or at least it isn't for me. Here's the link to the commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE

I'll be the first to admit that I often watch the Super Bowl mostly for the commercials. In past years I have become disenchanted with those commercials. Many times I was watching with teenage students or young children and I was extremely uncomfortable, sometimes even disgusted, with how companies felt they needed to use more and more sexual content to "lure" the viewers. So much for teaching values all day long...hard to fight against what they were being bombarded with during those 4 hours.

Finally, finally, I had that feeling completely changed this year. While sitting and watching with my fiance and his dad, a commercial came on that immediately had all of us spellbound. We watched in silence as the voice of Paul Harvey came over the air. Just his voice alone has a huge impact on me and my connection with farming. As a child, I would hear his voice nearly every morning or afternoon during the school year. I can't remember if it was before or after school, possibly both, but it was one of the most vivid memories I have from riding the bus for nearly an hour. I usually listened with great interest at the story he was telling, and many times was more than a little irritated when my stop arrived and I didn't get to hear "the rest of the story."

This time I got to hear the whole story. And I soon realized it was one I already knew. It was MY story. As he talked about the dedication and heartache (along with triumphs) of a farmer, I sat there and KNEW what he was talking about. I can't say every single one of them applied to me personally, but it applied to my dad and so many other farmers I know. I almost cried as I listened to Paul Harvey tell what is required of a farmer.

He emphasized things I already knew. However, as I thought about the ad the next day and read and heard many people discussing how wonderful the ad was, I started thinking about why it left such a huge impact. Unfortunately I was disappointed with my conclusion.

I concluded two things. #1: It left such a huge impact because it talked openly about God and used His name many times in the very short ad during one of, if not THE largest television event of the year. In our day and age, we are shunned for talking about our God openly. We are told to keep our opinions to ourselves while being force fed someone else's religion, politics, etc. I'm ashamed to say that I have many times withheld talking about God in a very natural conversation because I didn't want someone to think that I was "forcing" Him on them.

#2: It left an impact because no one ever defends farmers these days...actually, people are usually attacking them. Whether it is because they "abuse" an animal by keeping it in a pen that is actually serving to protect it from some sort of danger, or because they are using technology to their advantage to make farming more efficient. We are being told to feed more and more people but use less and less ground.

Both of these topics are so near and dear to me that I can't even begin to seperate myself from them. As a farmer, I depend on God to get me through the times like we are in now. Trying to grow crops or feed livestock in a drought like the one we are in defies all logic. Yet, I know that I love and believe in providing food for others who can't provide their own. My faith in God allows me to know that no matter what happens with my income or crop, I will still be serving Him in some way and He will get me through those times.

Some people were nitpicking that Paul Harvey exaggerated on God's words. I don't think what he did really exaggerated on much of anything. I think instead it actually put them into a context that made some people understand them better and perhaps made them a little uncomfortable. God created man to watch over and care for the earth and the animals. Yet people even today are complaining about the fact that cats kill too many birds. Humans are the worst at disrupting the natural food chain that is intended to happen. We are the only animals that go against what is supposed to be natural and then we wonder why things get all out of whack? In Minnesota where my sister lives, they hardly ever see deer. They don't see deer because wolves have not been hunted and the population is starting to get out of control again. So, they opened wolf hunting back up this year. I know some people are irresponsible, but when you mess with the natural order then things get messed up.

If anyone was offended by the ad, then they truly don't understand the nature of farming. Yes, we have some bad seeds among us. But I dare you to look at any profession and only find people in it that are fault-free.

I'm tired of defending my profession. I'm tired of defending my faith. Looking back, maybe I'll start to "defend" myself by saying one simple phrase.

Those four words will hopefully continue to leave an impact long after the Super Bowl commercial is forgotten. After all, "God made a farmer."