Curtains for you

Our barn has curtains. They're made of plastic, and they roll manually with a crank. They're two separate curtains, so you can open them from the bottom up or the top down.

This way, it can be wide open in the summer for optimum ventilation, and closed up tight in the winter to make it warmer. The semi-transparent plastic allows the sun to shine through so it's still bright year-round.

These are common in lots of new barns, but if you didn't know what they were, you might think the barn was unfinished - since plastic on a house indicates it's still under construction.

But these curtains are here to stay! And since it's Fourth of July weekend coming up, hopefully they'll be wide open ... I love a holiday weekend of good weather. Also, that way, the calves might be able to glimpse a little of the fireworks.

Weaning calves

The calves that were first born are about eight weeks old now. This is when we wean them, meaning we feed them less and less milk, until we stop feeding them milk at all.

After they don't drink milk, you can put them into a group pen. Here, they eat grain from a feeder and drink from automatic waterers. They're ready to eat and drink with the herd.

They look big in the pens, but then you put them together and they look so little - and they're very skittish. It's all new to them. When I went to take these pictures they were kicking in the air and running around and were all excited about their new environment. And they haven't even seen the new barn yet! When we move them over there, maybe they'll be doing back flips.

Difference between hay and straw

There's a difference between hay and straw.

Hay is alfalfa or grass that's been harvested. Cows eat it.

Straw is wheat stalks. People use it for bedding - meaning they put it down so cattle can lay down on it and be more comfortable. It also kind of soaks up the manure. It's consistently changed and added to in the pens.

It's easy to understand why people confuse them. They look similar, since they're both stringy and usually in bales. Hay is green and straw is yellow, but unless you're comparing them, you wouldn't really think about the differences.

Children's books often get it wrong, because 'hay' makes for a much better rhyming word. But we have a book that talks about the cow lying down in the 'soft, sweet hay, in the cozy barn, at the end of the day.' I have to substitute 'straw' when I read it, even though it doesn't flow nearly as well. Why? Because hay is much too valuable to have cattle sleeping on it! It'd be like me going to sleep in my bed made of caviar. You know, if I liked caviar.

&&&&

Farm news - just awaiting calves, building a barn, and waiting for the next cutting of alfalfa. Translation - everyone is busy all the time.

New era

Five of my college friends and their husbands got together at my house today. (Plus our 16 children. We're more than replacing ourselves!)

We went on the farm tour, like we have in the past, but the difference is - we didn't go to the old calf barn! We only went to the new calf barn. Never before have I given a farm tour that didn't include a stop at the old calf barn.

Taking kids to visit the new calf barn has a lot of advantages - it's cleaner, it's easier to see where the kids are, and it's not five feet from a really busy road. I didn't even have to point out to a pure city girl that the brightness and ventilation must make the new barn nice for the calves.

One disadvantage ... with all those kids, it's not within walking distance. This was another tour first, probably never to be repeated. Load up!

23rd

2 inches of rain in two days. (A lot.)

68 degrees today. (It felt even colder, due to the rain.)

140 round bales of pasture grass. (Yay!)

96 heifer calves in the barns. (Keep 'em coming.)

Summer just started, but it feels like it's already half over! The numbers just don't add up.

Water

Kris just said he loves listening to the rain. It's raining and thundering and lighting outside right now, on this nice first day of summer. Not only is it good for our crops and pasture, but ... we also turned on the irrigation for the first time yesterday, so now we can turn it off.



My dad put up the first irrigation system on our farm, which is this one above that covers 75 acres. (When we moved here we put up another one to cover an additional 100 acres.) He said he always wanted to put one up, because there are creeks on both sides of the farmland, but the middle pasture was dry - especially during the 70s and 80s. Grass is a shallow-rooted plant so it needs regular watering.

In 1995 dad had been pasturing for eight years. He said that most of those years, there was a drought. So that year he put up the irrigation system.

My mom said that year it rained and rained and rained. The other farmers in the community kept joking, telling him, "We're so happy you put up that irrigation system!"

But there have been many years since then we've really depended on it. And more to come, I'm sure!

New barn

The calves are in the barn! The calves are in the barn!

It's not done, but it's complete enough on one side to start moving over the calves. This also works as a sort of trial to see if we need to change anything before the builders are finished.

We moved over the youngest nine calves. It seemed so nice with the breeze, the bright building, and the open atmosphere. I walked there again at night to check on them. They seemed happy. Who doesn't love the first night in a new house?