2023, animals, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Top Of The Hill

48 Comments

Today’s Farm Report comes from Ben.

Finished baling straw this week. Terrible yields there too. Got 320 small square bales total, and it should have been 1000 bales off 20 acres.

It is what it is. Everything worked well and it’s nice straw. Kelly and I unloaded one load, I’ve go the last 100 bales stacked in a wagon for the strawberry farm that buys it, and there’s one load in the shed yet that we’ll get unloaded next week.

I am going to plant a cover crop this year on the oat ground. With the hail we had, there should be plenty of oats there to germinate and re-seed, but rye actually produces deeper roots and is a good cool season crop, so there should be a good winter cover. the same program that was paying for oats this year (separate from the ‘food grade’ oats program) is paying for cover crops. It’s funded by the USDA.

Every time i take my boots off this year, I’m leaving a trail of oats or straw chaff in my wake. Occupational hazard, i guess. I’ve got a cordless Dewalt vacuum in the mudroom specifically for this reason.

Walking on stacked bales is a bit of a challenge. It’s better when they’re stacked proper and tight, but that doesn’t always happen and I was curious how it would go for me and my new knee. And it went pretty well!

I was probably 16 or 17 when Dad announced his sore feet wouldn’t allow him to walk on the bales anymore and I was given the important job of stacking hay bales in the barn. Anyone can unload the bales and put them on the elevator, but stacking, that’s special and takes some skill. Right Clyde? (Or did you only handle loose hay?)

Basically, when stacking, you alternate the direction of the row, and you get the bale in place, then give it a good shove with your knees. Repeat several hundred times. Course, maybe you’re working 3 or 4 rows high in a corner and depending how much room there is as the bales come off the elevator into the hay loft, depends how fast you need to keep moving. All this to say, it was a big deal when Dad had me take over stacking. Just as big of deal it was last year when I wasn’t able to stack myself and my brother did it. The bales got in there, but walking over them the rest of the fall, winter, and this summer reminded me of the skills he missed out on over the years.

The one day last week, just as they finished combining oats, and it rained pretty hard and I had run up the road with the gator to open the truck tarp so the combine could dump the last of the oats. The dogs came running up with me and neither one of them likes the rain. They scrambled into the gator, and they sat in there for 20 minutes after we got home while I was out doing other stuff.

The young guineas are out and learning their ways. Festus, the guinea with the bad leg seems to have disappeared. We knew he’d have a tough time of it and we don’t know what became of him.

Here was a big ragweed plant growing out of the side of the silo, about 8’ in the air. ‘Was’ because I plucked it right after taking this photo.

The first few days at the college have been rough this year. Something about a ‘licensing issue’ means I don’t have access to Outlook, Word, Excel, or any of those Microsoft programs. Plus it seems like my computer – heck, none of the computers, want much to do with me. It’s been a rough few days.

MOTIVATIONAL POSTERS. DO THEY WORK FOR YOU? SEEN ANY GOOD ONES?

48 thoughts on “Top Of The Hill”

  1. Between 1986 and 2013 I used to fly a lot for work. I remember the two-or-three page ad spreads in airline magazines for motivational posters. None of them did much for me. When, from time to time, I saw one or more posted in a business that I visited, I thought of how hokey theyt looked, and patted myself on the back for having not bought a set. I guess, in that way, the entire thing worked for me, but maybe I’m wrong.

    We retired from life in Taiwan in 2018. Over there, motivational slogans are all over classroom walls, but they have about the same effect as wallpaper (none at all). Visiting in homes in Wisconsin and Michigan, I noticed that some families had bible verses or “faith motivating” single words on walls here and there. That didn’t appeal to me, but I was a guest, so behaved appropriately.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

    2. I would’ve put up the Collaborate poster in my cube at work in a heartbeat. I’m wondering how long before someone would’ve made me take it down. These are hysterical.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      1. Because my office is back in the shop, not many people even know where it is, let alone be in public view, so I have a few things on my door that would probably be frowned upon by administration.

        Like

        Reply

    2. I’m curious—
      Is it common in adult households for someone to still be making three discrete meals? Except for dinner, our meals are entirely informal and make do.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      5. Husband is a three square meals a day kind of guy. I am a grazer. He is content with meals that are leftovers, though. That is why we cook so much on the weekends, to have leftovers for the week. I think he struggles due to his diabetes. He is extremely sensitive to his blood sugar levels. I can go until noon just having coffee for breakfast and no food until lunch. He almost panics if he feels “hungry “, which reflects his fluctuating glucose levels.

        Like

        Reply

    1. Not yet, and I’m not holding my breath.
      The biggest issue is I can’t get my college email off campus. Which, I guess is OK. I just have to get used to that… and hope nothing comes up. 🙂

      The next worst thing will be when they ‘reimage’ my computer, meaning I lose all the desktop stuff and bookmarks, and they’ll probably bump me to Windows 11. So then I’m learning new stuff as well as trying to get all the old stuff back.
      Ha! We’ll see!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  6. Motivational posters and quotes: whatever helps people get through life and be decent is fine by me. Only poster I had in my classroom was “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” I am still looking for the unified theory of posters. That comes as close as anything I found.
    Me and bales: Yes we used only loose hay with two exceptiond. My dad’s friend Noble on whose farm I spend a lot of time working ised bales, which he stacked in a large shed. I was put up on top as the lightest one. So walked on bales fora few hours and wore out my knees. Never was sure if bales or loose was easier.
    And last summer I was home my dad was in Michigan pipelining. My mother was working at a hospital in Duluth. I was working 40 hours a week at the school as a janitor. It was a very dry summer, so dry the bears were desperate, so dry the bears tried to break a window into our house in the middle of the night. I stood inside with a loaded 30-30. But I never had to shoot one. They were often in our yard even as we were there. Somehow our hay crop was not too bad. I could cut and rake it alone, but not get it up into thehaymow. With the dry weather I could drop a lot of hay without fear of rain. Noble came over with his baler three times. We elevatored many bales up into the mow and just threw them around on top of the hay. No hope of stacking them. We pulled the machinery out of the machine shed and then stacked in there, not very high because it was not a tall building. All this with my father’s approval. So the last hay crop I did was in bales. What were they, 80 lbs. or so I think.
    Many a tale to tell from that summer. Most funny or fun. A few sad or a bit traumatic.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

    1. I was writing a post, don’t know if I got distracted and lost it or posted and it’s spammed.

      Clyde, I love hearing your stories! I just love hearing how your men – and the women- managed back in those days. Noble was working you hard if you had 80 pound bales. Yikes. That’s why I like straw; they’re about 30 lbs. My had bales were probably 50 – 60 lbs.
      Our barn had 3 sections. 1 and 2 were the main sections that we filled. Section 3 was harder to get the elevator into, and we often didn’t have enough hay to need to do that. We always wanted 1 and 2 full to be sure we had enough hay for the winter. I think that was about 600 bales. And most of the time we got to spring with at least a few rows left in each section.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  8. My motivational dish which I share with my Birds.
    “Keys. Phone. Wallet.”
    Tap. Tap. Touch Touch.
    That is where they get treat and introduced to new veggies.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  10. Well, this might be too much information.

    I’m doing the colonoscopy prep today for my long-awaited procedure tomorrow. My motivational poster might be: “This too shall pass.”

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  12. i start reading answers and never get to a response
    i am a motivational junkie and know the same old stuff gets rechewed and spit out again but that’s because it’s all pretty simple and straightforward stuff
    i’m surprised there isn’t a motivational on radio and tv
    it would be accepted i believe

    ben loved the bit about the the bale stacking and how your brother missed out on the skill building

    hope next year is better for production

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

Leave a reply to ValleyViewClyde Cancel reply