The 12 Days of Christmas #7

We awoke to a heavy fog in our little valley yesterday. Bitter cold is soon to be returning and the cows are back in the routine of being well fed with several bales of hay each day.
"What a perfect morning to do a little cleaning, listen to A Prairie Home Companion and enjoy a hot cup of tea while Danish Cowboy takes the kids feeding with him," I thought naively to myself. (Above: Do you see them? Do you see them slowly plodding towards us?)
"You have to help me feed," Danish Cowboy lovingly says. The words break my trance. His brother has to go to church and can't help? During Advent? Then I have to hear all about how this self-proclaimed meteorologist I am enjoying my breakfast with and all of the other fake meteorologists before him have figured out that precipiation falls 90 days after a heavy fog. I'm not sure if light fog means a slight drizzle or flurry and heavy fog means a downpour or blizzard. I'll let you know in 90 days. If Danish Cowboy's weather predictions hold true, we are setting ourselves up for a house full of baby calves come March 20th as this is the time we are scheduled to start calving. I'll stock up on the air freshener. The cow apparitions finally become reality and they disperse into small groups to enjoy the hay that Danish Cowboy has spread across the prairie. They will parade into the feeding grounds over the next 10-15 minutes, some cows being hungrier and more aggressive than others. It amuses me to watch how they will stop at one pile of hay, take a bite, decide whether or not it suits their needs, then quickly move on to the next pile. Herd relationships also play a role in who is allowed to graze at a certain pile and who is not.
Eventually everyone settles down to their chosen hay and we gladly watch as they contentedly munch and crunch. Tucker Dog keeps an eye out for the tractor and his master as well as any snowshoe hares that might happen to cross his path. One of these things is not like the other.

It's my poor, starving horse. The cruelty of feeding the cows on one side of the fence and not giving Argo any of the goodies is just wrong, don't you think? Send your complaints to Danish Cowboy. I'm not in charge of the hay distribution around these parts.

Autumn Arrives

Autumn is finally here. The horses have been moved to a winter pasture, making the barn and corrals at our house seem empty.My dismal failure of a garden has been cleaned up and I am already anxious to receive my Fedco seed catalog in early January. Try, try again! There is no other way!
The hay has been hauled and the wagons, which will hold a chopped version of that hay, have been anally and obsessively lined up. I know who is responsible for this, but I'm not telling. Besides, it makes for a cool picture. "Five little hay wagons, all in a row...the sun setting nicely, casting quite a glow..."
The corrals, recently emptied of the horses, are now stocked with hay sufficient for the newly weaned heifer calves which will be arriving today. There is finally time for evening walks around the house and evening walks are made all the more fun because the children can actually...walk.
We can even explore the tall grass in the roadside ditches, off limits during the warmer months due to the threat of rattlesnakes.
We get in some good family time these days, which is a great thing. Evenings spent visiting the barn cats, making Play-doh worms, and hunting trips with friends (although they are not so much trips as hunting drives. Danish Cowboy told me when I first came out here that if you chose to walk and hunt, you would starve. But when it comes to eating wildlife, I would rather starve. As much as I want to enjoy this most organic, natural form of protein, I just can't do it.)
The newly weaned heifers will be in their freshly prepared corral when I get home from work this evening. They will bawl all night long and continue bawling intermittently for the next few days. Just when you think they've forgotten about mom, one will let out a cry and the rest will follow suit. I'll shed a few silent tears for them and take some pictures. They are the most wonderfully curious little creatures you've ever seen.

2009 Stay-cation Blog Post #2

Hay season is in full swing around here now. Haying at the Home Place below the rock hills.

Haying at Hesselgessser's way down south. Every piece of land has a name, usually based on who it was purchased from or the person that homesteaded it but who is now long gone. Mike's, the Pardis Place, the Yarger Place, and the railroad section are all names that I have come to recognize. These places also have official legal names such as the Southwest 1/4 of Section 8 Township 28 North, Range 75 East. That's not very exciting, now is it?

Danish Cowboy spends hours of the day in the swather but occasionally hops out to make sure he is cutting everything at a proper height. He also leaves a small 6 inch strip of grass/alfalfa standing every few passes. This helps to act as a snowcatch, on the off-chance that we should ever receive any snow.

Since the kids and I are on stay-cation this week, our job is to load everything up in the big orange pick-up and pick Danish Cowboy up in the field after a long day of work. (We would probably have to go do this anyway, but it's a lot more fun if I haven't been working all day long.)

For our efforts, we also get to ride in the swather for a few trips up and down the field.

And as a bonus, I learned a new word for the day: weather-checked. As in, "these tires are so old that they have become weather-checked and will have to be replaced soon." Sometimes I think Danish Cowboy withholds information from me so that he can impress me all through the many years of our marriage. He just throws these wonderful tidbits of farm life out randomly and makes me fall in love all over again.
And as a bonus for the kids, they are treated to juice packets,
which I have come to discover is a fine way to end a long afternoon in the field.

How We Make Hay, Part I

Way back in March I told you that "hands down, calving season is my favorite time of year," or something to that effect. Yeah, well, I lied. I do not tell untruths very often so I am sorry if I have offended you, but after this cold calving season and wickedly icy spring, I am tired of the cows. I'll fall in love all over again next March for a few weeks, but I am a fickle soul and will again lose interest and again tell, come June, just how much I love haying season. Really, it is hands down my favorite time of year. Danish Cowboy breaks the swather and baler out of hiding in the quonset building and begins the annual process of preparing them for hot days of work. And I get anxious to smell that intoxicating, sweet aroma of freshly cut alfalfa. If you've never smelled it, you have no idea. None.

We purchased a new-to-us swather last year from the South Dakota territory. Why only new-to-us and not new? This is a 2002 Canadian MacDon (as in Old MacDonald had a farm...get it?) and is nice but much less worthy than the green American standard John Deere. And it still cost us $45,000. Yeah, really. Thankfully though, we were able to get a good price on our old John Deere swather which helped to ease the pain a little bit. That old swather -- I got to drive that -- it was like a really big lawn mower. And it had a gas engine (this one is diesel). So when it got really hot and you had to fill it up, taking off the gas cap was great fun. More than once it literally exploded out of your hands. Oh, those were the good old days. Dry grass and combustible, explosive over-heated fuel.

Danish Cowboy has spent hours (days almost) preparing Mr. MacDon for his 2009 premier. You know, greasing all the moving parts, vacuuming, cleaning the windows, installing the Sirius radio, all the really important things. The header is 21' across and has numerous sickle sections which also need to be inspected to be sure they are sharp and up to the task. He spent all this time on it and then it broke down as soon as he started cutting hay. Something about a ball bearing or the Sirius radio not tuning in properly. I can't be sure. And now he has to wait for Canadian parts for his Canadian swather from Canada. That will teach him to save money in the future.

And then there is also the baler. Danish Cowboy's brother drives this thing which cost us $35,000. Here's some math for you. If we owe $80,000 on equipment and hay is worth approximately $70 a ton and the average bale weights 1.5 tons, how many bales do we have to put up to make this a profitable operation? Don't forget the cost of Diet Coke, net wrap for the bales, diesel, and the occasional can of snoose. I can't tell you much about the baler because I maxed out my question allotment to Danish Cowboy for the day.

I wish I were making this up, but...

the baler does truly shoot the newly made and tightly wrapped bales out the back to ensure adequate clearance. It's especially fun when the bale is shot down hill and you wonder how far it will roll. So learn something new for today: never stand behind the business end of a baler. Don't ever say this isn't an educational blog.