Oh Hail and Other Stuff

A week ago, we got am unpleasant surprise of fifteen minutes of hail culminating in golfball sized balls of ice slamming into everything. We lost a large tree and chicken pen lid. Our garage doors, eave spouts, window sashes, and metal out buildings are all dented up, but we did not loose any windows. Luckly, the cattle were in a place where they could hunker down under the dense cover of hedge trees (they are rugged trees). We have not meet with our insurance adjuster yet because this storm dropped hail in a mile wide strip across the top of all of Madison County, including the entire town of Earlham. Since we did not loose any windows, we are lower on the priority list. 

Golfball Sized Hail

 Hail Drifting Against the Garage Door

All the Light Tree Debris Covering the Driveway 

Lost a Large Old Maple

My Uncle did not fair as well as we did. Two-thirds of the crops were hit, with a lot of it completly lost. We won't know the full effect for some time. The dry weather was already stressing the pastures and crops to begin with, so this is just compounding a difficult situation.

My Uncle & Father's Corn

The real victim was the home place. Of the seven windows on the west side of the house, all seven lost their storm windows, and five broke all the way through. Even the one in the attic under the overhang is broken (we had to board that one up from the inside). The siding is shot, the shingles seemed to hold, but that storm might have taken years off their life. Some of the cedar shingles on the barn came off and most of the windows were broken out. 

Starting to Board Up Windows at my Uncle's Place

Finished Boarding up the Broken Windows

Aside from the hail, we are plodding along. The first round of chickens have come and gone. We had a five day stretch of cold damp weather in mid-May, that got Phemonia started in the broilers and it killed of around twenty percent of them.  Those that survived turned out very well with nice larger weights. Luckily, the broilers finished out just as the scorching heat wave started. Mature broilers and heat don't mix well. Pastured poultry in the spring is such a risky venture in Iowa as the weather can go from cold a stretch to heat wave in the same week.

Spring Broiler Batch

The turkeys just arrived two days ago and are doing well. I have such a love hate relationship with turkeys. They are immensely cute, but they are also very fragile and are fond of smothering each other. They are a very risky enterprise that requires a lot of small adjustments.  They make it so I can't really travel in the summer. 

Brooder is All Set-up

Turkeys in the Mail

In their New Home

Yesterday, I took our first two beef to the locker this year. My trailer is really showing its age and I am increasingly concerned that it might need to be replaced sooner then later. The boy closest to the camera was very difficult to get off the trailer. We went back and forth for 40 minutes before I got him to back off the trailer. I then had to grab the alleyway rails and drive my chest into his head to get him to back up the remaining twenty feet into the holding pen. Thank goodness the other one was off the trailer and in the pen within five minutes. I will freely admit that I am a bit sore today. 

Two Beef to the Locker

The kids are doing well and Luna keeps getting bigger.  There is a lot of pressure from my daughter to build her a tree house this year. I do want to get a play structure built for the kids to encourage them to be outside and to make their outside activities increasingly self directed. Outside of the farm, our family has been pretty busy with Janice working 6 days a week, the kids at home for the summer, and me attending two to three functions a week. It is a pretty rare evening when I just get to see my wife. Stay tuned as we move into summer and hopefully we get some rain, get some projects done, and have some fun along the way. 

Tree House Plans

Kite Flying Again

Wrestling with Luna

Playing Robot Turtle (a programing game)

Moving Out

If you have not heard, we accepted a offer on our farm. We are still holding our breath a bit until it is all a done deal, but we have deadliness and a time horizon for our future for the first time in a year. We are currently planning on getting the cattle moved by November 3rd, and we are planning on being out of the house by December 1st. This timeline will make the next five weeks some of the busiest in my life. 

Proudly Displaying the Sold Sign

The kids are coming along on this journey with us. Our Daughter is preschool during the week, so I admit to not getting to see much of her. I try to take her out for evening chores so we can get some daddy daughter time. Our Son has a new babysitter to watch him once or twice a week. This has allowed me to start making progress on fencing at the new place. 

Pushing his New Dump Truck Toy (gift of his Uncle & Aunt)

Riding Said Dump Truck

At the new place, we have to go full steam ahead. I have a lot of fence to build, water lines to dig, and  building improvements to make and it is really doubtful whether or not I can accomplish what needs to be accomplished in five weeks. To start things off, I got my Uncle to bring over a tractor and knock down the weeds that had buried the place over the summer. It seems like the clutch has gone out of our new tractor so I am making arrangements to have that fixed. The most important thing is I am building fence. We are contemplating some customer and friend work days to help close the gap in what needs to be done. 

My Uncle Knocking Down Summer Weed Growth

New Corner Brace Going In

Back at our old farm, we still have a production season to wind down.  Turkeys are ranging during the day now. We have around 70 birds out on pasture right now. Our mobile prototype roost barely survived last year's turkey production season, but it did not make it through the winter. I have plans for a new mobile roost, but they were scuttled due to time constraints, So the turkeys are positioned around our old lean to, so they can come in out of the rain. 

Turkeys Ranging

I have been chainsawing for weeks so that I could get power up to our northern boundary fence. This has made it much easier to use our temporary fence to fence in the 10 acres that we rented north of the farm for our cattle to graze.

Power Line Running to the North Side of the Old Farm

Temporary Electric Net Covering One Side of the Rented 10 Acres

Cattle Herd Lounging on the Rented Ground

We started moving chickens outside. I have half of the batch outside, but the second half is waiting for a pen before they can move outside. I decided that trying to make the last old pens get across the finish line was a bad investment of time and resources, I have been dismantling it with my little helper and will start using parts from it to build a new pen this week. 

Chickens that Made it Outside

Old Chicken Pen Early in Dismantling Process

Old Chicken Pen late in Dismantling Process

Lastly, I spent a healthy chunk of change on a commercial freezer at a restaurant auction a few weeks ago. I wanted a way to get our chickens frozen faster, as the locker releases them after their internal temperature is 40 degrees or less. This also allows for more storage capacity. I now have the commercial freezer and three medium sized chest freezers empty. I hope that is enough to accommodate 1 beef, 4 lambs, 70 turkeys, and 180 broiler chickens that will all go to the locker in the month of October. 

Recently Acquired Commercial Freezer

There is so much to do and a very limited amount of time to accomplish all of it. Stay tuned as we take the leap of faith full steam ahead. 

Family, Farm, & Life Status Report

Well so much for more frequent updates. Wow, have we been busy. I will try to bring you up to speed with life, family, the farm, and the new farm.

I am no longer working part-time for the federal government. I left my position with the Natural Resource Conservation Service at the end of September, before the government shutdown. My role with agency had shifted (wetland determinations, high erodible land determinations (HEL), Conservation Reserve Program monitoring,  and the development of conservation plans) from being one that I found fulfilling to one where portions of our authority and responsibility to make decisions had been stripped away and moved out of the hands of my office. The result of that shift, left my position much more of a paper-pushing office job with little to no creativity or authority. My family and farm needed me more then I needed to keep doing that job.

On our farm we have completed our 2013 production system. In the first two weeks in October, we processed almost 50 turkeys, 100 broiler chickens, 50 stew hens, and 9 lambs. We also sold/traded two cow-calf pairs and just got a commitment on another cow calf pair. At the same time, we have had 5 little calfs born and are busy bouncing around the pasture playing together. We had a catastrophic predator attack on our remaining hens costing us ten hens and all of our two roosters in one night. It was the perfect storm of combined raccoon and fox strikes, and the last gasp for one of our pasture pens that is now being disassembled. The remaining 24 hens that we have left have not been outside since, so the color of our yokes is not as rich as I like to see it right now. One the sales from, we have commitments on all of our whole chickens right now, almost all of our turkeys, and beef continues to fly out the door. Lamb will start moving out this week as we distribute to Ames and Pella. I am pleased with strong sales of our product, especially since it has been so long since we have had some of it available for sale.

Little calves dot the hillside

When I have not been working on finishing the production season, I have been working out at the new place. Janice found a home daycare within 5 miles of the new farm and it is working out well for my son. He likes his environment much quieter then his sister and is fairly content to play with himself. He is doing well there and I am very pleased with the arrangement.

The new farm is a huge task and we have a limited amount of time to get things done before winter.  I figure that we have about 6 weeks to build a complicated drive way, clear off the rest of the trees (building sites and driveway lane), and level out the area where the new building is going. I have all of the trees along the new driveway mostly cleared off, the fence row has beed removed, the trees where the house site is located have been felled, but not cut-up, and the orchard trees we were planning on moving have been moved. We also started digging the driveway from the road. I think the next step will be to work on the driveway front he top side of the site access and pull the hill up. The driveway will enter the site 20 feet and begin to curve to the left (east).  We have to be nearly at grade by the time we cross the rural water line, just four feet past the fence.

Birth of a driveway

Cleared path the driveway will take as it climbs the hill (left/east)

I still feel like the hardest part of this task may have been clearing the trees among the road and just in from the fence. I must have cut down cropped up and largely hand drug over 100 trees in September & October. The pile of logs for posts & fire wood alone is sizable not to mention the rest of the degree. I am excited that I feel like the most tedious work is done. We were held-up a bit because the tractor died on me. It ate up much of a work day to get the fuel filter removed and replaced, and get the air bleed and worked out of the fuel lines, but it got done. I am not mechanically inclined, so I was pretty frustrated at multiple points during that process and am glad it is behind me. 

Family life is pretty good. I know Janice and I would like to see more of each other. We have a date night coming up, yay. We both know what we are working for will pay dividends and we are willing to make that sacrifice. I have enjoyed getting to know my son better over the last three months. He is quite attached to me and travel together a lot. He sits right next to me in the old blue truck and we sometimes break into pica boo with his travel quilt or copy-cat games during travel. My daughter is growing up very quickly. Her vocabulary has increased and the structure of here sentences has grown more complex since she started preschool. She wants to do more things by herself and help out around the house. I feel good knowing that she is at a quality preschool that I like and trust. I try to enjoy the time we get together since she often gets home latter in the evening. 

Vacuuming the living room before a house showing

Play-time with the kids

All and all, we are hanging in there. I have delayed the purchase of hay, because I did not know where we were going to be through the winter, but it is looking more and more like we will likely stay where we are at, since we don't have our new facilities up and running and we have not sold our home yet. Stay tuned as we move forward. If you made it to the end of this, then you are a die hard and I will try not to go a whole month between posts for a while. Stay tuned.

Last Processing Day this Year, and Thinking About Next Year

The last processing day is now behind me. Twenty-hours awake is tough, but not as bad as the last one. All 84 turkeys (we sold two) are freezing down right now. I got a call this morning, saying that our smoked turkeys are ready to go, and we are careening toward next week, where we will have three deliveries to make and all of our orders to sort.

It is good to be this close to payday, because I am pretty broke. Processing charges went up again this year and it is now running $7 to $8 per turkey. I left the locker over $600 lighter (plus I had to drop $75 on gas to get out there). This all has me thinking, home processing equipment would set me back about $3,500 and it is looking more tempting with the passage of time. It would bring new challenges like hiring some assistance, compost handling, and dealing with some regulations, but it would save the rough 2o hour marathons, those crippling butchering bills, transit stress on the birds, and I could keep the carbon that I am currently loosing in the poultry parts that stay at the locker (if composted on-farm, they can be used to build the soil). One limiting factor, would be that I could not sell 0n-farm processed poultry through the Iowa Food Cooperative. The cooperative represents about 10% of our business, so we might consider still processing a limited number of chickens and turkeys through our existing channels and the rest through on-farm processing. I have spent over $1,500 on processing this year with gas and if I raise the 180 turkeys and 440 chickens that I am looking at next year, then I will spend $2,150 on processing next year and at least and additional $375 on gas doing it. There will be some labor expenses, but it does not take too long to begin to rationalize the whole set-up. I will have to continue to examine this during the off season. I already help Galen Bontrager from time to time with his processing, but there are some things that I will need to improve my proficiency with before going down that road.

The Final Push & Looking Forward to Next Year

Things have been moving right along. As I write this, 86 turkeys are loaded in the trailer ready to to go at 2:00 AM in the morning to the locker. This is the last trip of the season to the locker and I am so happy to be done.

Fencing made some huge leaps and bonds forward. I got assistance from Jim Stumo for several hours and we strung several stands of wire and set some posts. I have an evening picture of a section of fence we finished today. I can say one thing, Jim is much better with a hammer then I am. I hope that come with time. I must apologize for the dark picture, the sun sets so early now.

I have also cleaned the retail space and added a freezer and repaired a second. It looks much better in there. I had wanted to get get the walls painted before winter, but I am not sure that is going to happen. I am at least glad the place is tidied up for right now.

I order lambing supplies for next year and the tags came. they will be numbered 1001 to 1020 s0 the 10 in the first two digits will be the year and the second two digits will be the order the lambs are born. One the back they say Wild Rose Pastures. I think the tags are cute and I can just see the little lambs running around with those tags next spring. My ram is still being rented out and I am glad to hear that he is doing his job. He really is a gentle giant and I consider myself fortunate that I got my hands on him. I will post pictures of him when he comes home after Thanksgiving.

Poultry Processing Day & Getting Cattle

I am never a fan of processing day. They are always a huge burden on me and they have spill-over effects into all the days around them. Processing day was Friday, but it begins Thursday. I figured I would walk you through the process.

Thursday:

Go to town to get cash and dry ice. Once I get home, I load a special old dead chest freezer (without a compressor) into the back of the truck along with towels, several coolers, dry ice, cleaner spray bottle, and straps to keep the freezer closed. The I hook-up the trailer and begin loading birds. We loaded 19 of the biggest turkeys but had one major hick-up and that was that the truck (my Grandpa's old, but very low miles, 6 cylinder, 2wd, 20mpg) could not make it up the wet sloppy drive way. I can't really blame it because of how steep our driveway is and how

wet it had been. If the tractor was running, I could have just pulled it up the drive with it, so I had to borrow a neighbors truck to get the trailer up the drive. On the plus side, I picked-up some chicken crates at auction this summer and they made loading 103 chickens so much easier then using the old rubbermaid containers I had used in the past. Next, try to get to bed and be ready for the early starts on Friday.

Friday:

Wake-up shortly after 2:00 AM and try to get out of the house as soon as possible. By 2:50 AM I was finally on the road. I arrived at the locker by 5:45 AM (that is late though). Turkeys go in first as they take the longest to chill. By 7:00 Am, all the birds were dead and chilling. I drive back into town and try to take a nap and later get some work done at the local cafe. As usually, neither of these went too well. The truck cab was cold, and another truck pulled up behind me a dropped of a steel trailer which woke me up (it does not matter where I park, this stuff always happens). I also got chatting with the locals a bit at the cafe, which limited how much work I got done. By 10:30 AM, I headed back to the locker and check in. Then I got the truck ready by

cleaning and wiping out all the coolers and the freezer and place the dry ice in them, put a towel on top of the dry ice, and load the birds. By 11:45 AM I was headed home.

To add some complexity to my day I saw an add on craigslist for several calves in Earlham (right off I-80 on the return trip) and I responded and bought two Belted Galloway Calves (one a steer and one a heifer). I arrived in Earlham around 1:00 PM and had had the calves loaded and ready to go by 1:45 PM. I got home by 3:30 PM and got the calves unloaded and trailer unhooked by 4:30 PM. I came inside for food, water, and to see Janice who just got home. I was back outside by 6:30 PM and check on the remaining 75 turkeys before I started getting the current freezers ready to receive birds and reorganize the space. By 7:30 PM I started unloading birds. I like to weight them, label them with their weight, and double bad them, right away as opposed to putting that off, because it will never get done that way. Anyway, I bagged and tagged birds until 1:15 AM. Then I checked and watered the remaining turkeys and was in be shortly before 2:oo AM Saturday.

All and I it was a very rough ordeal on me, but the one nice thing is that I have fewer birds to take care of here. One more processing day is done, with only one more to go this year. The turkeys were larger then I was expecting, but many of the chickens were tiny. We have a large shelf with around 24 chickens that weigh less then 2.5 pounds, If you want small chickens we have then, lots of them. Birds that small will barely, if at all, cover their cost of production. I am planning on going down to the Milo to take 10 processed turkeys down to their locker to get them smoked and split in half as an experiment. They will be on the Iowa Food Cooperative as soon as they are ready. Another processing day is now done with one more this year to go.

One month is too long

I must apologize for being away so long. Life became crippling in June and did not let-up until early July. We had big chickens out on pasture up until the week of June 22nd. That was tough raising 320 chickens on pasture. Our locker did not reserve our processing date so we had to hold the birds an extra week. That also hurt us because we were feeding $40 a day in feed there at the end. We had enough birds that two trips to the locker were necessary to get them all in. I am not doing that again.

Our poultry locker is Hansen Poultry in Kimballton (20 miles north of Atlantic). State inspection begins at 5:00 AM and Jeff Crocker likes me there at 5:00 AM. In order to do that, we load the birds the night before and then wake-up at around 2:00 AM so that we are out the door by 2:30 AM. I have always done this alone, but Janice came with me for the first time that week. Birds have usually all been processed by 6:30 to 7:00 AM. We then have until 10:30 AM for the birds to cool down to an internal temperature of 40 degrees. I usually drive to town and try to nap for about two hours and then go to the cafe for breakfast and to do some work. With Janice, it was harder to nap (two people +dog & small truck cab). We had 180 birds in our first load and left Atlantic around 11:15 AM, after loading every bird and getting them on dryice. We drove strait home and got back 2:15 PM.

If you remember the last full week of June, it was horrible. It was 90+ degrees with dew points in the mid 70's. When we got home, Janice started unloading birds into our freezers. This consists of wiping them off, weighing them, and tagging them. I went out to the pasture to fill waterers. I found a disaster. One of my pens had a waterer that broke. It consists of a big red bell drinker that hangs from a chain, fed from a five-gallon bucket that also hangs from a chain. This was a "Hansen-style pen" consisting of a wood frame with two cattle panels bent over the frame to make a mobile hoop house. String a few tarps over it, add sides, and you have a basic pen. Anyway, the handles on the bucket broke at some point and all the water spilled out when the bucket hit the ground. I am not sure when this happened, but it was likely early in our absence from the state of things.

To sum it all up, many of the birds had died and I had to burst into action to save those that were left. I grabbed watering cans, filled them up and went into the pen sprinkling water on the birds to cool them down. After that, I started to sort through he birds. Those that could stand I put next to a new waterer that I set-up. Those that were barely there, I moved to the shade and put their face into a shallow waterer and forced them to drink. I was not able to save all the birds that were that bad off, but I tried. I have never lost so many birds from any single problem or threat on the farm. All told, I lost 40 birds, half the pen. That was pretty depressing.

I spent the rest of my evening helping Janice with unloading birds and going back out to set-up a new pen for the surviving birds, and to compost those that I lost. What a crappy Monday.

Tuesday was a delivery run to Ames for our customers up that way. Wednesday was consulting work. Let's be honest, I do not make money farming. Right now, if the business makes money it goes right back into the business. I have to do some consulting work and I sell things on craigslist and on ebay from time to time to plug the budget gaps. I had a consulting contract with Practical Farmers of Iowa developing wildlife management plans for several farms in southern, Iowa. All of that work was due at the end of June, so in between farming I was working on these items.

Wednesday night was loading the next batch of birds (103 total). The second trip to Atlantic in the same week (3 days later) went much more smoothly. I was alone and did not encounter significant difficulties. It was just grueling and I slept better in the cab then I usually do. I sat down in the local cafe to do consulting and took some flack from one of the old farmers about the computer and being a college boy. I tried to tell him that I farm in Jasper county, but he thought I was lying. In the interest of being courteous, I held my tongue. Any farmer that is not curious about what other folks are doing or how things work is being a lousy farmer in my book. One the return trip, I stopped at a local locker in Otley to have my birds frozen down. I then went home to get birds together for our Pella customer deliveries that night.

Friday, I was visiting several farmers for consulting. The whole weekend was a blur of consulting work and on into next week. Monday, June 29th, was our Des Moines delivery. Did I mention that we got turkeys a few weeks back too. I will put a few pictures of the little guys. I love turkeys, but this batch has had very high mortality. Anyway, I took some time off over the weekend of the 4th and am getting back into the long list of tasks that need to be done around here. Besides, we are hosting my sister's baby shower on July 19th so I have to get the place together. I apologize for the length between posts (and the length of this one). I will try to correct those failings in the future.