Soybeans and baby plants

The other farming that got done last weekend is the big field and side field were planted with soybeans.  I kind of chuckle inside when I say "big field" because in the scope of farming, it is not big.  For someone like me who grew up with a yard just shy of one acre and that one acre yard was the biggest in the neighborhood, well, the "big" field is enormous.  When we bought the farm 15 years ago, there were two fields that were being used as hay fields.  A 40 acre field that sits behind the house and a 20 acre field that is part of a larger parcel of land that juts off to the side.  And so without much thought, the 40 acre field became known as the "big" field and the 20 acre field is called the "side" field.  Pretty ingenious, eh?  At first, all 60 acres were planted in a corn/soybean/sometimes wheat rotation.  Over time though, the vegetable "garden" grew and grew and grew.  So now the vegetables take up about half of the 40 acre big field.  The other half of the big field and the side field are still in a corn/soybean rotation.

One of the things I love about living on a country road is the variety of traffic that travels up and down the road in front of the house.  Of course we get the usual cars and pick up trucks, but there is also a decent sized Amish community here and so horse and buggy traffic is a daily occurrence.  Hearing the clip clop clip clop of the horse's hooves and the sound of the buggy wheels rolling on the pavement is a familiar and enjoyable sound.  We also have a good bit of tractor traffic.  If Mike and I are in the house and hear a tractor coming, we always have to look and see whose tractor is coming and what machinery the tractor is pulling behind if any.  There is just some fascination with farm equipment I guess or perhaps it is just the neighborhood watch program in action.  Last Sunday when I was out putting the tarps on the movable chicken pens out in the yard, I was treated to the sight of Bill driving down the road with the soybean planter.

And pulling into our driveway .......

And crossing Peters Creek culvert on the road that goes back to the fields .......

After a few broken equipment delays that Bill had to deal with on some of the other farms he plants, he was finally able to make it over to our farm on Monday and get the soybeans planted in both the big and side fields.  This picture is Bill and Mike finishing up loading seed in the planter.

Mike's other accomplishment last weekend in the world of catch up farming was he went and picked up about 75% of our started vegetable plants from our neighbor Betty with the greenhouse.  So now we have flats of baby plants scattered here and there, but all within reach of the garden hose.

There are plants sitting in the yard behind the garage ......

And flats of plants sitting on one of our trailers .....

And flats on one of our hay wagons and beside the garage ........

And flats in the yard beside our bank barn .......

We did get about 1/4 of an inch of rain last night, but the forecast is for dry and breezy the next few days.  If all goes according to schedule, tomorrow will be the start of laying plastic and planting baby plants.  But farming never seems to stay on schedule so time will tell.

Ketchup ........... Catsup

This is the official catch up blog from the past 11 days.  It has nothing to do with a sweet tomato sauce that is commonly eaten with french fries or hot dogs, but any time I hear catch up, I think of ketchup.  So there you have it.  I guess since planting is SO far behind on the farm that we are playing catch up in the fields, it is only fitting that the blog follows along the same way.  Actually I WAS going to make a post last Monday, but our internet was out from 5pm to 6am Tuesday morning.  Then it was back to work at the clinic all week and I decided to choose going to bed at a decent hour rather than blogging.

So here is the scoop on the last week and a half of farming:

Last weekend we had dry weather the entire weekend.  At least I'm pretty sure it was because I spent at least 2 or 3 hours each day on the mower Saturday, Sunday and Monday too.  I did get the yard mowed, the pasture mowed, the area around the lower garden mowed and various paths I use take walks to the woods mowed.  Whew!

The new tiller was put into action and Mike tilled up ground where the green beans and corn are going to be planted.

Plantings included about 1 1/4 acres of "soup" type beans including kidney, black, yellow eye, black eyed peas as well as some edamame.  All the onions, rhubarb, horseradish and some new strawberry plants are in the ground. A few rows of squash and cucumber seeds are planted now.  Once again, slowly making progress.

Sunday evening I was out transforming my "chicken tractors" from their winter time stripped down look.....

......to their tarped summertime look ready for the 4 week old baby meat chicks that I moved out to the grass on Monday morning.

The chicks are always a little freaked out by being moved from inside the barn where they are bedded on wood shavings to outside where they see and feel grass for the first time.  Having a combination of a tiny little brain and being what we call a "prey species" (meant to be eaten by larger animals) makes for major freak out anytime anything in their world changes.

Fortunately, they are also food driven so once I got the feeders and waterers set up in their outdoor pens, all was right with their world.  These meat birds can be a little tricky to raise sometimes, but so far this batch is doing well.  I started with 59 day old chicks and moved 57 out to pasture.

Chick moving morning is always confusing for all the animals because it is a total break from their routine.  Basically this means that no one gets to eat "breakfast" until the job is done.  The chicks don't get fed until after they are moved because that makes moving day much nicer for me.  I learned this lesson early in my chicken rearing years.  Those early years I would finish the move to pasture and have brown spots of chicken manure all over my shirt, shorts and legs.  Now all I have to show for my efforts are a few scratches from the chicks' VERY sharp nails and some sore muscles the next day from bending over and catching 50 something chicks.  The dogs and cats have to wait to be fed too because when I start my morning work, I am on a mission to get the job done.  This confuses the heck out of them.  Every morning when I feed the cats they are all eagerly waiting by the food bowls.  By the time I finished moving the chicks on Monday, there was not a barn cat to be found.  I guess they decided they'd better go out and see what they could catch themselves.  Molly, the 14 year old Brittany, had the same idea.  While I was getting the chicks settled into the outside pens, she was out coursing through the grass.  She's always been pretty good at catching voles and moles in the yard and I am amazed how well she still hunts as old as she is.  I looked over just in time to see her snatch up a vole and in under 30 seconds it was devoured.  We got Molly from an elderly couple who lived in town when Molly was a year and a half old.  We laugh at how well she has transformed herself from a city dog to a farm dog. 

I was also able to start letting the 3 month old layer pullets outside for the first time.  Actually they think everything is going to eat them too so they spend most of the time standing on the concrete pad at the doorway of the barn.  But they are slowly learning to come out and forage for bugs and weeds.  It will be several weeks until they really get this outside stuff figured out.

Meanwhile the four pet hens are on temporary house arrest since the flats of greenhouse plants have arrived on the farm and are scattered in various locations in the yard.  The hens have quite the fondness for plants such as broccoli and if the hens are allowed outside in the yard, the broccoli plants end up with huge bites taken out of their leaves.  The hens do have access to a rather large fenced in outdoor area, but they are very used to being able to go everywhere around the barns and house. Their vocalizations while standing by the pen door make it quite clear that they want out.  They will live though and in a week or two, if all goes well in the fields, the hens will be back to pooping on the front porch.

There is more to catch up on, but that is enough for now.  Darkness is approaching and I need to wander outside and close up the chicken pens for the night.  Oh and some dinner would be nice too.

Nice crop of algae growing in the fields

The canoe that washed down the creek and ended up in our pasture is back home to its owner, but not without a little bit of drama.  I figured that I would head down to the neighbor's house this past weekend to let them know where their canoe ended up.  Then last Wednesday in the middle of the night it stormed and rained to the tuned of 1.25 inches.  When I got up Thursday morning, the creek was full and the canoe was gone.  So I started having pangs of guilt about not going down the neighbors sooner.  Canoes are not cheap after all.  All I could picture was the canoe traveling down little Peters Creek and into much larger Mill Creek and then to the Grand River and into Lake Erie.  It took until Friday for the water in the creek to go down enough, but then I took the dogs for a walk and went looking.  I found it hung up on a log sideways in the creek about 30 yards from our property line.  Whew!  I went straight down and told the neighbors who did not even realize it was missing because it has been raining so much that they had not been outside in their backyard.  The boys drove the truck over and went and rescued the canoe from the creek.  End of the canoe saga.

We have had almost 2 inches of rain this past week.  Just unbelievable.  As Mike said, the delay in planting crops is transitioning over from annoying to a little scary.  Hopefully we won't find out what a lot scary is like.  Again the USDA crop report that came out today shows just how bad things are in the entire state of Ohio.  Last week 11 % of the corn crop had been planted and this week it jumped to a whopping 19%.  Average is 93% planted.  See, it is getting scary.

So instead of working to make money, we spent the last week spending money.  It was determined that the tiller that broke was terminal.  Mike took a trip over to Pennsylvania and bought a brand new one.  Here it is all shiny and pretty.

Then on Sunday we went and picked up our tractor that just had the new front end loader installed on it.  Mike has been having a tremendous amount of fun driving it around and using it to lift heavy stuff (like the new tiller off the trailer).  I think he is in love with his new loader.  Here is the tractor with the loader and the new tiller on the back.  Ready to rock and roll as the saying goes.  As soon as the rain quits.

I finally got around to taking a garden progress report photograph.  The idea is to stand in the same location on the edge of the field and take a picture to show how the field changes over the course of the growing season.  Just to refresh memories, here is the photo I took on May 11th.

And the picture I took on May 30th

Pretty much the only difference is the trees in the background have more leaves on them and the standing water in the foreground has been there so long that there is quite the proliferation of algae.  I'm thinking though that algae is green and organic and it should add some nutrients to the soil right? 

On a much more happy note, the resident birds seem to be having a good nesting season.  I enjoy watching the wildlife on the farm so very very much. There is a hen turkey that has been hanging out in the front garden area almost every morning this week.  I see her when I go out to feed chickens every morning.  She must have a nest nearby.  And then here is a picture of one of our resident tree swallows that is using one of the nest boxes I put up.  Such beautiful and graceful little birds.

It ain't much, but planting has begun......

We've had a few dry days that have allowed Mike to get into the fields.  By dry, I mean days where it has rained less than a tenth of inch.  Every time a quick shower passes by, we resort to one of our favorite sayings: gee, I'm glad it rained again because the mud was starting to get tacky.  The entire state of Ohio sat last week with 7% of the corn planted (normal is 70%) and this week the number jumped to a whopping 11%.  Whoohoo!  Let's break out the wine glasses and celebrate.  Or perhaps more appropriately, pop the top on a Miller Lite.  Still it is progress.

Of course as soon as the weather gives us farmers minuscule weather windows to get things done, stuff like this happens.

See tiller on tractor

See tiller with hole in side that shouldn't be there

MAJOR MALFUNCTION.  Something big broke inside.  A gear.  The shaft.  Something.  This is NOT the time for this major piece of equipment to go down.  But it is what it is and we are awaiting word whether this is fixable or we will need to make a new equipment purchase.  Either way, the timing stinks.

Now Mike did get some of the garden area tilled before the tiller broke down.  So he worked hard to get his new planter set up and was able to get some spinach, beets and carrot seeds planted.  Finally!  Crops have been planted!

Today, Bill came over and finished fixing one of the tractors.  Needed a new hydraulic line.  Then he replaced some of the wheels that had gone flat on the disc.  So that is ready to go.  When it dries out.  In August.  Let's hope not.

Mike got the chisel plowing done.  Yay!

Meanwhile the baby meat chicks are growing leaps and bound.  This picture is from 4 days ago and it is amazing how much they have changed in just those few days.  They are 2 weeks old now and have reached the stage where I feed in the morning and when I come home at night, I swear they look bigger.  I'm glad they are not out on pasture yet in all this rain.  I usually get them outside somewhere around 3-4 weeks of age depending on the weather. 

And to finish off today's blog .............. you know you've had a lot of rain when ................

Peters Creek is a little (mostly) seasonal creek that runs behind our house.  It does run full during times of flood, but mostly dries out during the summer.  Well last week, a canoe showed up next to the culvert that goes underneath the roadway back to the fields.  I think I know which neighbor this came from, but I have to say seeing a canoe on our little stream is a first.