Proud new owners

We are the proud new owners of a ... get ready for it ... manure pump.  I know - fancy cars, dream vacations, you can have 'em.  Manure pumps are where it's at!

Isn't it beautiful?

No?

Well, even if it's not impressive-looking, it is necessary.  When you have a giant lagoon filled with cow manure, the manure eventually settles and turns chunky.  It gets a crust on the top.  Some of it is even frozen.  (Not unlike the super-popular movie.  But with more of an odor.)

So lagoon owners use a pump to churn it up and make it liquid again.  It's like putting a giant KitchenAid mixer into it ... that effect. 

But what it really does is - it pumps the manure through the pump and shoots it back into the lagoon.  It eventually will make the entire vat move in a circular direction, like it's being stirred.  Imagine washing out a pail with a hose.  Like that.

When it's liquid enough, you switch a valve on it and pump it into the manure spreader.  Then we spread it on our fields for fertilizer.

Amazing, right?  So much goes into managing manure.  Scraping, pumping, hauling.  And the fun never stops - the lagoon holds 2.5 million gallons. That's 2.5 million reasons I'm truly excited about this pump.  Get it out of here ... they're making more!

Pay up

When I became an adult, my dad taught me how to do my taxes.  In the beginning, it didn't take long, and I kind of enjoyed it.

Then, one year I moved to a different state and was working for myself.  It required more paperwork, but it was fine.

Then I got married and worked in three states in one year.  It took me about three days to do our taxes that time.

I well remember my dad doing taxes when I was growing up.  He enjoyed doing them, and he was good at it.  Even while I was an adult, I called him for tax advice.

So when we came home to the farm, we ... hired an accountant!

Sometimes people ask me if I "do the books" for the farm, since a lot of spouses on farms do.  (Sort of a division of labor.)  I try not to laugh, because that is probably the last job I would ever volunteer to do.  Not that I'm horrible at math, (I do have a calculator), but I'm bad at making spreadsheets that anyone else understands.  They're clear to me, but probably the IRS would not see them the same way.

As a result, today Kris had a five-hour meeting with our accountant to do end-of-the-year tax things.  They meet once a year.  Kris keeps meticulous records and gives him both paper and online information.  They discuss it and we pay him to do the work. 

Kris scheduled this meeting a really long time ago, but today was a fantastic day for it!  Today was the wind chill of -26 with a thermometer reading of -9.  It got up to 4 degrees at one point.

This morning when Kris went to feed the cows at 6:00 a.m., the tractor wouldn't work.  It would run for five seconds, then stop when the fuel gelled.  He did that about ten times and gave up.  He got the space heater and put it against the fuel filters.  After he warmed it up for 20 minutes, it started and stayed going. 

The little amount of feeding he could do before he had to leave for his meeting, he had to do at low idle.  The tractor wouldn't rev up.  As a result, feeding took a lot longer than normal.

Also, something I never thought about.  We can't push manure into the lagoon anymore.  Manure is usually mostly liquid and it just slides down the angle into the bottom.  But!  When it's all frozen, it doesn't slide down the wall.  It just builds up on the wall, so you can't push any more in.  The guys were making piles on the cement and planned on putting it in the manure spreader.  However, since the manure spreader was frozen, the chain broke.  The guys spent the rest of the day fixing that.

In comparison, it almost makes paying taxes look better.

On the site

 

 

There's a lot of activity at the site - it's hard to show, but it's about two acres of dug up dirt.  The boys and I go and check it out a lot, because it's interesting and they like the excavators and dump trucks.  (Well, I do too.)

 

The lagoon will be lined with a 2-foot layer of compacted clay.  So walking around in there can get pretty messy.  The falling down doesn't help, but they do that on normal ground anyway.

 

 

In other farm news, we have a cow that is going to have a calf.  She wasn't pregnant at the end of the season, and then she was too newly pregnant to detect when the vet checked her.  But!  She's going to calve, so we have her in the barn, bedded down by herself.  I went over to check on her today to see if she'd calved yet.  No calf yet ... unless it's the weirdest calf I've ever seen. 

Blimey

Is that snow leftover in the field?  It sort of looks like piled up snow.

But no!  Look closer ... it's lime.

We're spreading lime on all our fields that need it, based on soil tests.  When you add lime to the soil, it raises its pH.  (There are lots of sites that explain why this is good chemically, but the basic point is that it helps maintain peak fertility.)

Kris bought the lime from a company, then he had another company truck it here, then he had another company spread it on our fields.  It took a little figuring but - here it is!

Excavators at sunset

 

Is that a man inside that giant hole with excavators poised above him?

Yes.  No need to look closer on this one.  They're digging the lagoon!  The man was holding a rod, which is a big measurement stick.  The lagoon is going to be 14 feet deep, 150 x 265.

Tonight my brother was on the phone and asked a lot of questions about the lagoon.  In case any of you out there have the same questions - We'll use skid steers to push the manure in it from the barns.  There will be high berms on the sides.  It'll have a clay bottom.  And after it's built, it'll never have a guy standing in the middle of it again.