Caught between Mortar and Pestle

Farming has not been easy or generous recently. Our primary energizer (8 Joule output) is broken. It stopped working a month ago and it is out being repaired. The back-up energizer (2 Joule output) is not doing the best job of containing our animals and they have been out a lot recently. Other then that, we are still hurting from our chicken debacle (hatchery sending us the wrong type of birds). We have also had heavy predator pressure form the raccoons on our layers so our egg production is limping along again.

The sheep are out, again

On the upside, we did get rid of one of the  raccoons, we did butch four sheep (however their carcasses were diminutive), and we might be selling some sheep off. I am trying to butcher and sell my sheep numbers down. The goal is to purge most of the Barbados blood in the herd and bring us back to where we should be. This will reduce our total herd down by 40%.

There just has not been much upside to farming this year yet. Nothing seems to be going well and we seem to find struggles in what should be simple for us. We are looking at ways (like getting rid of the lower quality sheep) to help the situation. Customer deliveries start up again in two weeks so I am looking forward to catching up with our customers.

May Progress & Challenges

We are moving forward through the month of May. We are making great progress on farm building despite me working. We have had several folks out helping so I want thank: Mark Bancroft, Jeremy Bennett, Michael Carter, Adam Faeth, and super helper Jim Stumo for coming out to work on our sheep handling system. We started off a couple of weeks ago by having the pad for the chicken building pored by a local firm. I am still waiting on the bill for that.

Concrete pad for the future chicken house and divided brooder

Next we started to define the sheep wintering area just behind (north) of the chicken house. The perimeter fence is made of hog panels secured to two wooden posts and supported along the way by two steel posts.

Sheep Winter Facilities Perimeter Fence

We later stared to frame a "Bud Box" handling system that can deal with both cattle and sheep. The "Bud Box" uses natural animal behavior to create an easy way to move livestock into lanes to be worked. 

Handling Lanes: Sheep on the Left & Cattle on the Right

There still is a few more posts and some earth work to go in the crude form. Then pieces of treated plywood and gates need to be screwed/hung and then we are in business. I hope to get it functional in the next few weeks. 

The grazing side of the business has been going OK. The weather has been difficult and full of fluctuations. In the last two weeks, we have gone from heavy freezes at night to 90 degree days and back to near freezing again. In general spring started off well and then things got cold for several weeks before getting hot and dry with lots of wind. From the stand point of a farmer dependent on grass growth, things have been pretty poor. The cold held back growth and the dry warmth did not help. Things are starting to improve now that it finally rained. We have grazed much of the north end of the farm and one of the rental properties up there as well. Now I am working my way though the south end of the farm. 

Water tank, hoses, and tank leaving the North end of the farm following the herd

Sheep Herd Grazing on the Base of the South Hill 

On the poultry side of things of things we have been struggling. Our death loss from smothering is unusually high from all of this cold weather. I am looking forward to having the new chicken house built so I have more control over the birds environment. Even with the high high death loss, something far more worrying has me concerned about broilers. I am concerned that they might no be broilers. Typically a broiler at two weeks become an eating pooping fat machine.

Our Current Broilers, Almost Four Weeks Old

May 12th, 2009 Broilers at about three weeks of age

The pictures are not of the same perspective, but the tiny birds of 2011 have nothing on the stocky broilers of the past. I think the hatchery sent me laying hens and i have 50 broiler orders to place in four weeks. I have to do some scrambling or pushing of orders back to figure out how to deal with this.

The laying hens have also had to deal with heavy predator pressures. I have a couple of large aggressive raccoons. They have killed a few hens and I have been stalking them at night with the semi-automatic 22 because they are very bold pest. I hope to find an answer to my raccoon problems and my lack of broilers soon. 

Layers out for a Dirt Bath

One Day at a Time

It has been so long since my last post that I almost do not know how to to start. A lot has happened since the middle of February. I will just hit a few of the highlights.

Back in mid-March, Janice made arrangements so I could use a mini excavator to put drainage tile in part of our farm yard. Things went well and I got around 350 feet of tile put in during that weekend.

Using the mini-excavator to put in drainage tile

I turned the livestock onto the pasture last Tuesday. It has been tough to get all the items that compose our portable grazing system up and running, but we are close now. It is nice to stop feeding expensive hay, but it is a lot of work to move electric net twice a day. The fast rotation is necessary this time of year because there is not a lot of forage and I need to limit pasture wear.

Cattle and sheep grazing on some rented ground

Two and a half weeks ago, 102 White Rock laying hens arrived. They are brooding well in the top portion of a hog feeder. This Thursday should mark the arrival of 165 broiler chickens. That will be batch one of three for 2011. We also have the website up to date and sent our 2011 customer newsletter out tonight.

White rock laying hen chicks

Hazel is doing well. Within the last week, she has learned to stand up with no support and she has begun to take her first steps. We have also been choring outside more.

Hazel standing unassisted

Hazel and I choring

Working, running a farm, being a husband and a father is very taxing, but I am doing it. It leaves me bone tired and struggling to keep up with things. That being said, we are moving forward with our production season one day at a time. 

Working Man

Sorry about the great length of time it has been since posting. There was not a lot of things going on to report about for a time then everything started moving all at once. Since the end of January, I have been elected to the Township Trustees (we most oversee several thousand dollars in tax revenue and use it in the maintenance of the public cemeteries (there is basically one) and the community park in the Elk Creek Township), I am now church council president (I did not seek this office, especially since we have to deal with issues with our pastors call), and lastly I started work with the federal government on a part-time temporary basis. I am working three days a week for the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) as a Soil Conservationist. Admittedly, I have not done much more then push paper as things have been so busy in the office that it has been hard to get trained. As I get trained, I will be dealing with an alphabet soup of programs that deal with farm conservation.

Back at the farm, we have had a few more lambs and lost one so we are at 18 lambs out in the building. The vast majority of the lambs are male so that bodes well for sales in the fall. We had about a week here where all the snow melted off and I let the chickens run outside during the day. One of those days cracked 50 degrees and Hazel and I sat on the front step outside and watched the birds in the front yard.

Several chickens are out for a late winter run

I made a decision to get rid of our three turkeys (the big Tom and his two ladies). They were not producing fertile eggs and we not performing guard duty to younger birds like they did in 2009, so I decided it was past time to see them re-homed. They have gone to a quail farm outside of Grinnell.

Turkeys just before we loaded them to leave

Other then this, a little more tree work has been done in the timber behind the house. I think about three to four more days of cutting and that project will be done for the winter. At the rate we are going at it, this will take about 4 weeks to finish. At that point, the ground should be workable again and I can start building sheep and cattle handling facilities. I got the tractor running yesterday and moved six bales from the neighbors place over to mine. That should feed the cattle and sheep for the next two weeks. Up the road from us, there are some old hog buildings being dozed and I talked with the landowner and he is letting me take the metal roof off a building. Jim and I got half the roof off in a day before the snow returned and made that task much harder to do.

Hazel drawn to the colorful night light

Needless to say, we have been keeping pretty busy. Hazel is doing well and adapting to being at the babysitter more. Based on her measurements at her most recent doctors check-up, she is still a tall and skinny child compared to her peers. She is a blast to be around and she is making new sounds every week in her efforts to communicate with us. Stay tuned her for updates as we approach the production season.

Winter Sheep Lessons

Well we are winding up lambing around here (14 lambs in the building and 2 in the house) and what can I say, I learned a few lessons. Lesson one: the ram does not get left with the herd for an extended period of time. Hence a long and intermittent lambing season. Lesson two: most of the Barbados ewes we purchased in the spring do not hold their body condition on hay alone, so they will be leaving. I will liquidate them in mid-June, when those that lost their lambs have had a chance to be rebred and they all have had pasture to raise up their body condition. Lesson three: lambing is likely best done (if done in winter) in March, not December and January. Lesson four: I have a better handle on how to take care of bottle lambs (feeding in the house for a week) and how to attach an orphan lamb to a ewe (headlock the ewe).

Lesson three, Janice and Hazel look after bottle lambs

This winter has highlighted several deficiencies around here. One being the lack of handling facilities and winter sheep lots. We had lots of trouble keeping sheep on our farm before we took electric net and layered it up against our high tensile exterior fence. The other problem we have been having is that the calves are not intimidated by the net in the winter. Frozen ground is not as good an electrical ground, so cattle on frozen ground do not receive much of a shock from the electric net. Hence the calves have been stepping over it and getting into the hay storage and the sheep area. 

I spy with my little eye: calves in the sheep shelter... darn you calves

In other news, we have continued to clear trees (you can catch a glimpse of it in the upper left corner of the above picture). We were selected to be part of the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) Savings Incentive Program  (SIP) and so I have opened the special savings account to begin saving for this program. These funds will likely get put toward a larger sheep hoop building that can house the sheep in the winter and finish out feeder pigs while the sheep are out at pasture. Janice, Hazel, and I went to the Practical Farmers of Iowa Beginning Farmer Workshop this past weekend to work on our farm business plan, which is a requirement for SIP. We will be going to the Premier One Winter Sheep Day next weekend to look at their handling facilities and to examine their building layouts. To conclude this month on a somewhat humorous note: 

Do you see something wrong in this picture?

No? How about now?

Our young ram Aegis had his head stuck again in the hay feeder. This morning was the third day in a row he got stuck. The first time I just cut out a tine (I was running late to a meeting), the second time I cut out as many tines as I could before the cutting wheel died, and the third time I cut out the last of the times.  Now, every other tine has been removed from the old hog crate to make it easier for the the sheep to get to the hay and harder for the ram to get his head stuck. 

Just Cold

Today is the coldest day of this winter so far. It was -8 F or -22 C when I went out to chore this morning. When temperatures are that low, we take certain precautions. I wear a heavy face mask. I forgot to remove my glasses before going out. With the face mask, you build up some condensation from your breath on them and then it freezes. When I am not using my fingers, they are balled up into fists in my heavy gloves. You actually try not to wear too many layers because when you do move, you sweat and then when you stop moving, it gets cold.

Thermometer reads -8 F

Managing the livestock when it is that cold takes a few extra bits of attentions. First, the cattle take their hay down in the cover of the timber. I drag it down there on tarps and dump it for them to eat. I was impressed that our Cobett cattle water had less then a half an inch of ice buildup on top. That is thin enough that the cattle can break through it, but I usually open it up for them. I also collect eggs twice per day to limit the number of eggs that will freeze and crack in the building.

Cattle eating hay in the cover of the timber

Cattle Cobett water 

We have been lambing for several weeks now. I am down to two ewes left to lamb. As the ewes have been lambing, I have been moving them inside. The last two ewes to lamb are inside right now. We currently have 11 lambs with their mothers inside. We have some lambing trouble with with our Barbados ewes. They have not maintained their body condition on winter hay like our Katahdin sheep and we have lost a few more lambing.

 Ewes with lambs at feeding time

 One nice thing about winter is it is time to think about the next year and do some planning. Janice and I have a beginning farmer planning workshop coming up, we have been reassessing our production levels, and trying to plan farm expansion and look for some efficiencies. We recently did some visioning exercises and my wife has placed mine in a place of "honor." She blogged about it. It is nice to think about the future and try to work out the many kinks in our little farm. Other then this planning, I have done some tree work with Jim, but for the most part, I have been inside with Hazel taking care of her and enjoying her company.

Hazel playing in her room

I will start working for the federal government at the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) office in Newton part time. My skill sets are perfect for this work and are just not going to fit better anywhere that close to home. We used student loans to come up with the down payment on our land and this job represents a way out of that debt with in in two to two-and-a-half years. It will mean less time to farm so we are paying considerable attention to efficiencies on the farm and we will be thinning down our sheep herd to our best animals this year. I do not know if other changes will emerge, but for the time, these are the only changes we have currently planned. I will keep you posted on any changes that come up.

A Warm End to 2010

We have had three days of December thaw to close 2010. Along with 2010 has gone our 8 inches of snow with just a trace left in the shadows and where it drifted a bit.

A view of the south pasture (looking west) from atop the hay bales

Janice and Hazel have spent some time off the farm around the holidays. This has left me to my own devices for 11 days to do things about the farm. Admittedly, I was not all that productive, but I did mange to clean out my chicken building and brooders, just in time to start lambing. Two ewes lambed, but one ewe did not survive. I brought her lamb into the house for the first night and then drafted the lamb onto the first ewe that lambed. I had never done this before, but I had read about it a few times. I built a headlock in the building and put the ewe into it. The headlock has boards extending out from it to make sure the ewe cannot look back at the lambs suckling. It took a little time, but she accepted the lamb. 

Surviving Ewe and the lambs, the white ram is the adopted lamb

Unfortunately, we have lost a total of three ewes in a short span. The one died in labor and the others were older and less compensative and could not keep-up with the heard despite my efforts to slip them some extra assistance. The remaining sheep look pretty good and will likely come through winter fine. We still have a number of ewes left to lamb likely within the next six weeks. 

The flock at dinner time, the little shelter now has a steel roof on it

While Janice and Hazel were away, I did work on the tractor some. I got new tires put on the front end, it was miracle that the old ones did not go out on me, and put a new battery in it. Of course, after doing those things it does not want to run now, so I have to find some time to play with the wiring a bit. Something is likely loose somewhere. Jim from Pella came out twice and we started to clear out the less desirable trees from behind the house. 

More tree clearing behind the house

When Janice and Hazel got back we did get to open some presents, although Hazel mostly wanted to eat wrapping paper and play with the cat. It is amazing how much hair Hazel grew in 11 days. She also get about a pound heavier, moves around much better, and has learned to awkwardly wave at people. 

Janice, Hazel, & Nermal open presents

The last big piece of news is that I got a job two days ago with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) in Newton as a part-time temporary Program Specialist. I will start as soon as the paperwork can all get approved. Since it is a federal job, it might take two weeks. I am not entirely sure what that will mean for the farm next year. There is considerable flexibility in scheduling with this job, but some things will have to go. 

I am committed to cutting few things right now. I will be getting rid of my three large greeter turkeys and I am going to cull down my sheep herd. We purchased a number of lower quality ewes to breed to our high quality ram. Those ewes that perform well will stay, those that struggle will go. I will also be culling for size, condition, and ability to twin. I expect the ewe herd might shrink by as much as 1/3 to 1/2. It might be painful, but it will mean less work and higher quality in the long run. Other then these changes, I cannot say what outside employment will mean. I know that personally, I feel that we carry too much debt (buying a farm is rather expensive) and this is a way to pay off some of of those debts and create more breathing room in our finances. We shall see what 2011 has to hold for us, but I am hopeful and look forward to the possibilities. 

The herd at hay feeding time