November storm

It feels like we're being tossed about by a classic November storm – except this storm isn't wind and rain, it's the flurry of activity that has occupied our month thus far. For the first time in a long time, we took a real trip – and actually took five days off from chores. And, as all dairy farmers know, each day you plan to be gone requires two days of preparation in advance, so we spent the first ten days of the month getting everything ready for our absence. Into that mix we added a visit with the young man who shadowed us as part of Minnesota Milk's Dairy Connections Program.

All dressed up in Dallas.

Our time away from the farm was like Dorothy's trip to Oz, but our return to the farm brought us right back into the storm. We didn't even have our bags unpacked before the arrangements were being made to combine the high moisture corn (that we really thought would have been done before our trip), chop and bale the corn stalks, and empty the manure pit. We took a short break to celebrate Glen's birthday and then jumped into fall harvest. The combine took seven boxes out last night and we started the bag of high moisture corn this morning. Glen checked the dry corn just to see where it was at; the corn was at 18%, so now the combine will be going straight from the wet corn fields to the dry corn fields. All I can say is it will sure be nice to have all the corn done. Then maybe things will settle down for a couple days before our Thanksgiving storm blows in.