A blur of firsts

Like the photo below, July turned out to be a blur of a month. But even though it didn't quite turn out like I thought it would, it still turned out to be a remarkable month — one with lots of firsts.

For the first time since we've been farming, we took the 4th of July weekend off and did what the rest of our society seems to do that weekend — spent it at the lake. We swam, we boated, we kayaked, and we grilled. It was a blast. And we all have the tan lines to prove it. (No photos provided. Sorry. I forgot my camera at home in the rush to hit the road.)

We came home from our mini-vacation and jumped right into second crop. (And I swear it feels like we haven't sat down since.) We decided to try making individually wrapping bales. It was a good decision. Everything went remarkably smooth and we now have a pile of marshmallows stored right next to the farm, separated by field — a luxury we've never had.

We finished hauling the marshmallows off the fields a mere three hours before the worst storm of the summer (to date) blew in. We lost power for 16 hours and had to use our generator for the first time. Between the pastures and the yard, we had 17-some trees damaged or uprooted, including our apple tree which was severed near the ground and landed in the ditch across the road.

On a brighter note, Dan found the first litter of kittens of the year, living under the silo blower in the machine shed. For as old as they were when he found them, and for how wild the mama kitty is, the kittens were remarkably tame.

Another highlight of the month was having our friends from up north come stay with us for a couple days. They entertained the kids and helped outside so I could get our balance sheet and cash flow statement updated, a task that needed to be completed before we could start our heifer yard project. (There might not be anything more maddening than being stuck in the house doing bookwork on some of the nicest days of the summer.) One of the afternoons, Sammy and Jennifer helped Dan and Monika make cupcakes for the first time.

The morning after Sammy and Jennifer went home, Mother Nature dropped four inches of rain on the farm in less than three hours. There was water everywhere. The photo below is of the lake that formed near the inlet that drains to the pond. The inlet simply couldn't keep up. I think it was Mother Nature's way of telling us we shouldn't have tried to re-route that waterway when we built our lagoon.

After the rain, came the heat. And all the extra work that went into keeping everyone (animals and people) as cool and hydrated as possible. We went through gallons of Gatorade, chocolate milk and electrolytes (we added a mid-day feeding of electrolytes for all of the baby calves to make sure they got enough fluids).

One night, Monika decided she needed more than fluids to keep cool. She took the milk house hose, filled a pail half-full and climbed in. It wasn't long before Dan wanted a pail of his own. They spent the better part of chores that night sitting in those buckets.

My reward for all of the time I spent doing bookwork was the start of our heifer yard project. My second post when I started this blog was about someday pouring concrete for our heifers. That was back in the fall of 2008. After nearly four years of putting up with the muck, we're finally pouring concrete in the heifer yard. The excavators spent two days last week prepping the yard and the concrete crew started pouring last Friday. I teared up when the first cement hit the ground.

It looks like the blur will spill over into August; third crop is due on Tuesday and we'll probably test milk on Wednesday. Hopefully, they'll finish pouring the concrete early this week. Then we'll have to put the yard back together and move the heifers back. It'll be a crazy-busy blur, but, by the end of August, we'll look back and say that it, too, was a remarkable month.

Great farm dads

I started working on this post well over a week ago, with plans for posting it on Father's Day. And here I am finishing it up now. That's kind of how everything feels right now — about a week behind.

But, just because Father's Day has passed, doesn't mean I can't celebrate the great farm dads in my life. I think these photos are too great to not share. And, if you want to read the column I wrote about farm dads, you can find it on the main Dairy Star site.

Glen and Dan milking Dinah. Dinah was Dan's first favorite cow.

Glen and Dan taking a break together.

Glen and Monika unloading TMR for the cows.

The moment which inspired Glen to say,
"I think we're going to need a skidloader for each kid someday.

Break time in the barn. Ice cream is always better when it's shared.

Dan and Papa Dad going out to check the
beef cows on one of our trips up north.

My dad's idea for toting Monika's sippy cup along while carrying her.

Dan helping Papa Vern fill the hoppers on the corn planter.

Dan telling my Grandpa Erwin about the fly swatter.

Happy belated Father's Day!

Well-behaved goslings

Usually, when I'm in the pasture getting cows, the geese and their goslings are in the ponds. But one day, while heading out mid-morning to check on a close-up cow, I stumbled across the geese moving from one pond to another.

As I was watching, something occurred to me — dang, those goslings are well behaved. When the goose and gander ducked down to hide in the grass, so did the goslings.

When the goose (or gander, I couldn't tell which) decided it was time to make a break for the water, she honked and the goslings hustled.

I wish Dan and Monika listened as well. Maybe if, like the goose and gander, Glen and I devoted all of our time to parenting, our children would be as well behaved as the goslings.

Then, again, maybe not. And parenting would be a lot less interesting if they didn't have minds of their own. But, once, just once, I would like to only ask them one time to put their barn boots on, or wait by the door, or _______ (fill in the blank).

At least we've got several more years to work on listening well before they leave the nest.

In the field…
As much as I love baleage, I have to admit that putting our first crop of hay up as haylage was a good decision. We haven't tested it yet, but it should be some pretty high quality feed. We finished cutting on a Tuesday evening and started chopping on Wednesday afternoon. The last box went in the bag at about 1:15 a.m. I think this is the first time we've harvested first crop without Mother Nature washing (or threatening to wash) the windrows first. The regrowth looks good, and this rain will help immensely. Before we know it the second crop will be ready.

In the barn…
Switching cows is going much better this year thanks to the nifty gates Glen and our brother-in-law put up in the barn this winter. Its amazing how switching cows sharpens our math skills; every milking finds us doing the math to figure out how many cows to leave outside and to make sure we didn't forget a cow out in the pasture. We just started calving in a group of heifers. The first three had heifer calves – and even better than that, one of them is a red and white out of my old show cow's granddaughter. The next couple weeks will be especially busy with new heifers and new calves.

I hope your summer is off to a good start!

Signs of summer

Memorial Day is always heralded as the official start of summer, even though the calendar says otherwise.

Balloons start popping up at the end of driveways, marking the location of graduation parties. Church parking lots start to fill up on Saturdays for the summer wedding season.

It's also the time of year when farms all around the state open their doors for Breakfasts on the Farm. Here in Stearns County, our Breakfast on the Farm will be held next Saturday, June 4th at Schefers Dairy near St. Stephen.

For me, I know summer is officially here when the discbine starts laying out swaths of alfalfa and orchard grass. We're going to try making haylage with our first crop. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Along with the smell of fresh cut hay, there are some other tell-tale signs of summer:

• The kitchen floor could almost pass as the barn floor since nobody thinks they're going to be inside long enough to warrant removing their shoes and nobody wants to stay inside long enough to sweep the floor.

• Despite the sunscreen, Dan and Monika are developing farmers' tans from all of their hours "working" outside. But it's hard to tell what's tan and what's dirt until you hose them off in the shower.

• I have a list of ideas to write about that's two pages long, but I don't want to stay in the house any more than the kids do, so the items on the list keep increasing faster than I can check them off. Ditto for the photos to share.

• Heat and humidity. We had our first pressure cooker of a day yesterday. As we were sitting in the grass under a tree, Dan asked simply, "Why is it so hot?" (I'm not sure, since I had to put long underwear on again last Friday.)

• The bugs are back. First the June beetles started showing up in the sandbox. This morning there was something buzzing around my head while I brought the cows in. Dan even had his first wood tick of the year.

Without a doubt, summer is here. I hope your summer has plenty of sunshine, dirt and bugs (not the biting ones, though).

Bovine waterbirth?

I won't say that it would be boring, but dairy farming would be a lot less eventful without the pasture.

When I brought cows in yesterday morning, Laugh wasn't with the herd. So I walked back out to look for her.

I found her on the bank of the back pond, just standing there and shifting her weight the way cows do when they're in early labor.

The back pond. (This isn't Laugh, but it's the only photo I have of that pond...)

She ambled away when I got a little closer, so I left her there to labor in peace.

When Glen asked where Laugh was after I got back to the barn, I jokingly told him she was out by the back pond planning her waterbirth.

He only half laughed.

During our first summer here, he ended up waist-deep in one of the ponds trying to prevent a bovine waterbirth. The calf's feet and nose were out and the cow was just standing in the pond like she had every intention of delivering the calf right there.

I offered to go check on Laugh an hour later, but Glen said he could do it a when he went over to the neighbor's to feed the heifers.

After he'd been gone for awhile, my phone rang.

"Was Laugh actually IN the pond when you checked on her this morning?"

"No, she was just hanging out on the east bank."

"Well, she's in the pond now! Can you open the gate to the waterway? I'm going to bring her up to the barn." (We're using our grassed waterway as a calving pen for the summer.)

Not more than a couple minutes passed before my phone rang again.

"You're not going to believe this…" Glen started.

He said that when he got up to the pond to chase Laugh out, her calf was standing right next to her, up to its ears in the water. From a distance he hadn't been able to see the calf at all because its black head was camouflaged by Laugh's shadow.

He grabbed onto the calf and pulled it out of the water. Since he didn't dare leave it on the bank, he carried it all the way back to where he had parked the truck.

At least the calf was dry by the time they got home.

We're not sure if Laugh delivered the calf in the water or if it rolled down the bank and ended up in the pond. Hardly enough time had passed for the calf to be delivered, get up by itself and walk into the pond. (Enough time had passed, though, for a leech to find its umbilical cord. Eew.)

Regardless of how it happened, we're just glad the calf is alive. We named her Lilypad. Her sire is one of Glen's favorite bulls, so he said he would have been more than a little upset if things hadn't turned out okay.

Hopefully, the rest of the summer's deliveries are a little less remarkable.