Baling square bales of straw.

After the oats are harvested with our combine, the straw dries in the field for a day or two and is raked into rows and baled.

Most of the straw is round-baled.  This is much easier than small square bales because all of the work is done mechanically.with round bales.  The round bales are used in the hoop buildings to bed the pigs.

We bale a couple of loads, (250 bales), of small square bales.  These bales are used to bed the sow shelters or to bed the trailer when we take animals to the butcher.

Square bales have to be unloaded by hand and stacked in the barn.  I always appreciate the round-baler more after finishing this job.

Corn (Zea mays)

I found this plant in my sweet corn patch.  It captured my attention, because the ear is at the top of the plant with the tassel.  It must be a genetic throwback to when corn was just another tall grass.  Normally, the ear is located one-third to one-half way up the stalk.

And I realized this is the reason corn can be so productive compared to other grains such as wheat, oats, or barley.  On our farm, corn can produce more than 9,000 lbs. per acre.  Oats only produces about 3,000 lbs. per acre.

Corn carries all of the grain weight lower on the stalk.  All other grasses and grains that I know of carry their grain weight at the top of the stalk.  This causes them to be susceptible to lodging or breaking over.

Here is a picture of some of our lodged oats. More of a challenge to harvest, but we finished harvesting the oats last Wednesday.

REAP food group, Madison, put on a wonderful “Day at the Farm” at Jordandal Farms, my direct-marketing partners.

People turned out in droves.  I think people want to visit a farm, but are too shy to ask.

Eric and Carrie went all-out showing off their farm.  Here is one of Eric’s Jersey cows with her five-day-old calf.

Here are baby chicks in the brooder house.  Each specific livestock had a sign with pertinent information.

Eric and Carrie showed off their chickens, Jersey dairy cows, and sheep.

We brought some of our Red Angus cattle and hogs to their farm.

Chefs from some of Madison’s finest restaurants prepared an excellent meal.  Employees and volunteers from REAP made everything go smoothly.  I can’t believe this was the first time they ever tried one of these.  Here we all are after a successful Day at the Farm.

A robin’s nest, with fledglings, in our cattle catch-chute.

I realized I needed to post this picture when WSB asked an astute question: “If the breeding season is short, will you get any sleep during calving season?”

Yes, and this picture explains why.

This is my proudest cattle picture.  I’m striving to breed problem-free cattle.  We aren’t there yet, as my post, “A Weekend During Calving Season” illustrates, but if birds can successfully nest in our catch-chute…

We pulled two calves coming breach, (backwards), in April.  We helped one calf nurse a cow with too-large teats.  We transferred a twin calf onto a cow that had lost her calf in the creek.  We pulled one large calf out of a heifer on May 7^th. But that was it, out of more than 130 births. We didn’t use the corral from May 7^th until the middle of June when we corralled some cattle for grass-finished beef.

Calving problem-free cattle in April and May should be fun.  I’ll keep you updated.

Breeding isn’t going as well as I planned.  Soon I’ll post about the problems we’ve already experienced early in this breeding season.

Amaranthus retroflexus

We used the hydraulic trailer to load hogs to take to the butcher today.  There is a flat piece of metal on each side of the trailer that collects manure.  I was amazed to see plants growing in the shallow manure.  And not just any plants, but the plants I wrote about yesterday: Amaranthus retroflexus and Chenopodium album.

I love living here.

Chenopodium album

Lamb’s Quarters in hand, Pigweed on right.  Or is it the other way around?  It may be, depending on where you live.

I took Shepherd and Gameboy to the Johnson Public Library and signed them up for library cards.  Serendipity helped me find “Stalking the Wild Asparagus” by Euell Gibbons, in the used book pile.  I quickly gave the librarian a dollar for this wild food foraging classic from the 1960’s.

I turned to the chapter on Pigweed, because Citygirlfriend has been sautéing Pigweed, lately.  But I was confused because the picture looked like the plant I call Lamb’s Quarters.  As I read further, I realized I need to start using scientific names.  Euell explains why, with reasoning that resonates.

“Years ago, I was very impatient with anyone using a long Latin name to designate a common, ordinary plant.  I considered the use of these tongue-twisting titles to be an affectation, designed to show off the knowledge of the user.  Why couldn’t these high-brows use the common name, which everyone understood?

I think it was the Pigweed, more than anything else, that cured me of this attitude.  Pigweeds are among the commonest of the unwanted plants in fields, gardens and barnyards in Pennsylvania.  Therefore, I was not surprised to find that pigweeds were also common in Indiana, when I traveled there.  I learned that farmers in Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, California and even Hawaii were troubled with pigweeds.  Obviously these farmers should get together and learn some way of controlling this troublesome weed.  The only difficulty with this procedure was that, in each of these localities, the “pigweed” was a different kind of plant.  To complicate matters even more, ‘Chenopodium album’, the pigweed of Pennsylvania, also grew in all these other places.  In some sections it was called Lamb’s Quarters, in some Goosefoot and in still other it was referred to as Wild Spinach.

I began to see why the botanical classification was necessary.  Many totally different plants are called pigweed in some parts of the world.  The plant I call pigweed is known by dozens of other common or folk names in different places.  Therefore any attempt to use the common name in distant places would only lead to confusion.  But I can say ‘Chenopodium album’ and a trained botanist from any part of the world would instantly know the precise plant meant.  Far from confounding the confusion, these Latin names greatly simplify the task of communication in this area.

More than that, the botanical name can tell me more about the plant in question than even the most descriptive common name ever could.  If I had never seen this particular plant, the name ‘Chenopodium’ should tell me that this weed is a member of the same family to which garden beets and spinach belong.  If I don’t have this knowledge at my fingertips, I can easily look it up in any botanical manual.  About this time I’ll begin to suspect this plant might be good to eat.”

Well said, Euell!  So I’m using scientific names now.  The plant in my hand  is ‘Chenopodium album’, and the plant on the right is ‘Amaranthus retroflexus’.  Both are wild edibles enjoyed at our table.

Our cowherd at the end of June.  We turned the bulls in with the cows on July 1^st.  This means they are due to start calving about April 8^th.  This is early enough for us as we remember early April snowstorms.

Cows have a tremendous ability to fluctuate their weight based mainly upon environmental conditions.  Low-cost managers time the peak nutritional requirements of the cow with the time of peak nutrition in the environment.  Put simply, calve in late spring.

May and June pastures in the driftless region are tremendous.  Our cows gain at least 100 lbs. from calving in April and May until breeding in July.

The picture below shows a cow in excellent condition in the foreground.  The background shows two cows engaged in homoerotic behavior.  This is common for cows when they are ‘in heat’.

This is a good sign, because it shows the cow is ovulating.  It takes good genetics and good management to keep cows on a yearly reproductive schedule. They need to calve, lactate, and have their reproductive tract return to normal so they can start cycling again.

Our breeding season last year was six weeks for the heifers and nine weeks for the cows.  We only had two cows calve in the last week of calving, so I’m thinking of shortening our breeding season to eight weeks.

Ian Mitchell-Innes is a South African rancher I heard speak at a Mob Grazing seminar.  He claims to have a 30 day breeding season.  I wonder how short of a breeding season we could have.

Our tallest corn.  We planted all of our corn April 19-23rd.  Growing conditions have been ideal, with rain every few days and a hot, very humid June.  I don’t know if we have ever had taller corn on the 4th.

(Rubus occidentalis)

Come along with me we’re goin’ blackcap pickin’,
Put on long pants so you can push through the thicket.

Pick out all the black ones better leave all the red ones,
The red ones pretty sour, but the black ones are heaven.

Purple mouth and fingers, lets ’em know what we been doin’,
If they wanna get some, we can show ‘em where we goin’.

If you got a bowl then you can fill it in a moment,
If you wait ’till next week, then you wait another year.

Following is an excerpt from “Circles” by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.”