A weekend of planting

Kris planted corn all weekend long. He's still - at 10:00pm - doing it right now!

We strolled down to see him yesterday evening.

On the way, we stopped to meet the new calf. Two heifers, now! The newest one looks huge next to the preemie.

This field is 100 acres. My grandpa always said (I know this through my dad) that this was the best field on the farm. So I've always liked it, too.

Since we had the field worked up, it unearthed a lot of rocks. This is what an old-fashioned rock picker looks like. No, not machinery. A guy with a truck, picking up rocks:

Kris came over to see us. He said these were a fraction of what he picked up, since he also throws and rolls them off to the sides of the field. Rocky, eh?! You'd never guess it by looking at it ... until you're trying to plant in it, I guess.

One of the best things about farming is that we can visit Kris whenever we want. He took the boys for a ride with him to finish up the planting. (It's okay. Common sense prevailed on the child labor laws against working on farms ... it's been dropped.)

Kris was hoping to get the planting done before the influx of calves. It looks like he'll be done either tonight or tomorrow. Then, soon ... this barn will be full!

As full as Kris' and the guys' summer schedule.

Planting corn

Kris is planting corn! 

Timing when to plant is always stressful - why?  Because it depends on the weather.  I was out on the roads driving a lot yesterday and every farmer was out in his fields, planting.  We even saw them at 11:00pm at night, lights ablaze, working away.  It's really nice conditions for planting THIS INSTANT, so everyone wants to take advantage.

We hire a company to do some field work.  It works out for a lot of farmers that you can pay someone to do something (like field finishing), rather than own the equipment yourself.  Plus, these companies have huge equipment so they can do it super fast.

So this was our entertainment yesterday morning.  After it went by, my son said, "That was loud!"

As soon as he drove away, it was once again so quiet you could almost hear the grass growing.  And soon, corn.

Moms

First set of twins born today! Two heifers. Plus five heifers and one bull. Happy Mother's Day!

Kris fed, calved, spent three hours celebrating with our families and me, then was back out for more calving ... and started planting corn!

Our wonderful, fantastic, hard-working employees were great this weekend. Kris asked some of them if they'd be willing to work, and they were! It really made a difference in the planting time. (And stress level.)

He's now doing payroll, and is about ready to fall into bed and start all-day planting tomorrow, along with the regular work. I should mention that my dad also is a great help during this season, since he helps Kris every day. (Unfortunately, this means he's not available to drive my kids to school. I GUESS Kris needs the help more than I do, but my kids are learning far fewer new songs than they did riding with my dad.)

I went with my (fantastic) mom today to see some new mothers ... our neighbors' lambs! Again, my experience is with dairy. I don't know a ton about other kinds of farms, but I'm learning. And what did I learn today? Lambs are adorable.



Also ... my parents made steak for lunch today. While eating it, my son said, "Is this one of our cows, or someone else's?"

Kris said, "It's someone else's cow." (My dad bought a steer from a 4-H member.)

My son looked closely at his meat and said with confidence, "I thought so. It looks brown. Ours would look black and white."

Timing

When you think about farmers planting crops, what do you picture?

It's a studied process. There's the technology of the seeds, the equipment, the fertilizer. But what hasn't changed? Dependence on the weather.

Last year was perfect, weather-wise, since we had all of our corn planted before calving started.

This year was a lot wetter, which seems more normal to me, and a lot more stressful for Kris. It just got dry enough to get into the fields. What does that mean? Before you plant you often have to work up the ground. (There are a variety of tools you pull behind a tractor that do different things to it. The basic goal is to turn the dirt over to get it best-prepared to grow seeds.)

So now that it's dry enough Kris and the employees have to prepare the ground (once or twice over) and plant. All while doing the regular feeding, plus calving and taking care of calves.

It always seems like a race. The weather is only dry enough for a certain amount of days. You have a specific amount of acres to plant. You have limited time. Every farmer in the community is in the fields as much as the moisture and the daylight allows (longer for the ones that have lights on their planters.)

So far 17 heifers and 17 bulls have been born, including nine yesterday. So it's action-packed around here! I'd say it's fun, but I'll wait until every field is planted until Kris breathes a sigh of relief. After that, it's the race to cut, rake, and chop the alfalfa ...

Farming has depended on the weather since the beginning of time! There aren't any more hours in the day, no matter the technology. But it is nice to have tractors with air conditioning.