Some One Ordered Lots of Rain & Fall Weather

Since my last post in mid-August, we have had a whole lot of rain. We saw very little rain in July and early August, so we really needed it. After a couple of hot days, it looks like cooler fall weather is starting to set in as well. The biggest thing that happened since our last post is that I sold almost all of my sheep. I sold 10 animals for $1000, and now all I have around here is four ram lambs that go into the the locker October 1st. We have not pre-sold any lamb, so we decided that the herd was not worth the work and that my time was better invested focusing on our other enterprises. If you want to order lamb from us now is the time, because once it's gone, it's gone. 

Some of Our Breeding Stock we Sold

Since the sheep left, I have been focused on building fence at our current place and at the new place. I completed a stretch of fence behind our house and put in a gate. We always put up temporary fence in the past, but with the sheep gone, we won't be grazing our yard as often.

Recently Installed Gate & Fence Behind Our House

To build off that piece of fence behind our house, I started clearing brush from our fence up over the hill north of our house. This stretch of fence has always been serviceable, but not great. I am working to clear the brush off, tighten up existing fence, and add an electric line on the top. I am planning on continuing this work on the north side of the farm, where the fence is pretty much crap. I have a few head of cattle that have made it their goal to work the fence as hard as they can to find a way out up there, and I am done with it. I don't want to leave the old farm to work at the new farm only to get a call that my livestock are out. 

I rented the neighbors ground north of us, because we had such a dry spell in July, the cattle got ahead of our grass, and I decided that the best way to manage the farm would be to put the cows on their ground and let most of my farm recover for 30 days. The ground I rented is pretty rough and has good fences on only one side. I want to get my fencing work done on the north side, so I don't have to put up quite some much temporary fence to make grazing that ground work. Needless to say,  I am scrambling to make what amounts to significant fencing improvements in not a lot of time. 

Clearing Brush Off the Fence

I just made my first trip to the new farm in around six weeks yesterday. As you can see from the weeds, the areas we tore-up the ground are a mess with massive weeds. I should have tried to plant annual rye grass or some thing this spring, but that did not happen. 

Three-foot Tall Western Ragweed

At the new farm, my big goals include getting the fences fixed, digging the water lines, and putting the next phases of electrical work. I still would like to move my cattle over to the new farm for hay feeding season. Yesterday, was mostly focused on assessing the situation after being absent most of the summer. I widened an opening in the trees to start running fence and working on corner braces. 

Widened the Path for the Fence & Installed Rain Gauge

My daughter is back in school, which does enable me to accomplish more sizable tasks again. One young child is much easier to do farm work with then two. I am quite sure that the change is good for both of them. 

Imitating Crazy Squig Miniatures 

Watching Fall Broilers in the Brooder

We are entering the home stretch here on the production season. In the next eight weeks we will processes a beef, four lamb, seventy turkeys, and around 180 broilers. I have to make meaningful progress on the new farm, add to our freezer capacity, finish fencing work, Completed two rounds of distributions, and try to stay ahead of the day-to-day. Add in showing the house, and the uncertainty about our living situation and it tends to be a very stressful time. We will get through it one way or another. Until next time. 

Sunset on the Farm

Eight Weeks of Summer

It has been way to long since I have blogged, pretty close to eight weeks. The long and short of things, is that farming has gone pretty good this year, but we have not sold our home yet, so things are not moving on that front. We have had quite a few lookers, but no buyers yet. With two kids at home this summer, farm progress is mostly limited to nap times and the occasional weekend. That pretty much means, if it is not urgent, it does not get done.

As for the farm, things are going better then they have in years. Our first batch of 180 broilers did quite well. We processed two beef in late June and sales from them have been brisk. Turkeys are doing quite well, despite having a young Red-tailed Hawk that is terrorizing them. We had seven calves born in June and July. The lambs look good going into fall, and our second batch of broilers arrives tomorrow.

Turkeys in the Brooder in Early July

Turkey Helper Feeding Turkeys in the Morning with Dad

Hawk Perched on Pen Terrorizing Turkeys

Brooder Cleaned out for the Fall Round of Chickens

The turkeys had made it through the brooder stage of Development with only a handful of deaths. This is incredibly rare. Things were going great until this hawk starts scaring the birds and forces 13 to die in a pile-up in their pen. Aside from that one incident, the turkeys have done well. 

A Whole Cluster of Young Calves Testing Fences All Across the Farm

Having so many calves is nice, but they have been testing fences and did cause a large breakout of the herd a week ago that forces me to extract the herd from a corn field. The vast majority of calves are male, which is good if you like grass-fed beef in mid 2016. This is the first year where cattle have really helped to pay bills and generate some income around the farm. We have processed two beef, with one more scheduled in the fall and we sold a cow and heifer as breeding stock. 

Cattle Spread Out Across the Hillside

We are closing in on Fall. My daughter goes back to preschool in two days, so it is time again to really pivot to focus on the new farm. I have told people I am moving cattle over there this Winter, so I have a lot to accomplish in a limited amount of time. Janice has been busy with classes work to finish her MBA much of the summer, so I have not accomplished much at the new farm. I think it has been almost six weeks since I started sinking new corner posts in to fence out the house and farm building area, and I have not been back since then.  I have to get the new fence built, replace posts and shore up the existing fence, install power, and install the water system, before I can move the cattle. That is a lot to do in 16 to 18 weeks.  

Starting to Sink Corner Posts at the New Farm

The kids are doing well. Our Daughter is helping more with chores, and our Son is growing more and more comfortable outside. With preschool starting up again, I have no doubt the routine will be good for both of them. She will benefit from the structure, and he will benefit from not having his Sister up in his business all of the time. 

Helping Daddy Herd some Sheep

Hat Boy

Aside from that, I don't have much to report. I hope that we get an offer on this place soon so we can begin to make plans. All of my hay is out at the new farm, and I sold my old tractor back at the old farm, so I have few ways to move hay around there. Fall aways seems like a giant rush of activity that is over before you realize it. Keep your fingers crosses for us as we enter frantic fall.

 Sold the Old Tractor

Changes are in the Works

It has been much longer then I thought since I last blogged. We have been pretty busy on this end as the weather has finally improved and our production is off an running. We have a schedule up on our website, broilers are in the brooder, and cattle and sheep are grazing again.

Cattle Grazing Again

There are some significant changes in the works. We have a close friend who is working on our new website, to help us update our look and streamline our messaging. We are looking at reusable bags for our customers with our logo and website on them. This is a minor change, but we think it might be worthwhile over our current reused plastic bags. Janice conducted a customer survey and is taking a very close look at sales data. The results of our survey have us investigating two major changes.

We are looking at liquidating our sheep breeding stock and getting out of sheep after we process our remaining lambs. Based on the survey, we have very few people who purchase lamb from us and managing the herd is quite labor intensive. The meat still in our freezers from last year is almost entirely lamb. It is possible that we could do lamb again in the future, but that would likely be a result of customer demand. We might also look at a model where we just buy lambs in the spring and finish them on grass. These are all options we are weighing right now.

The last and largest change we are looking at is changing our poultry ration. Currently our ration has corn in that is open pollinated and non-GMO. Unfortunately the soy part of our ration is made from conventional GMO soy meal. The problem with soybeans is you can't just throw them into a grinder and grind them, like you can corn. You have to heat them in some way to break down enzymes in the soybean that make it challenging for monogastric stomachs to process the proteins in the soybean. This is usually done in larger commercial facilities and creates a system where farmers sell beans on the open market and buy back processed beans of the same open market. It is not an easy task to source non-GMO soymeal and we have seen prices that are more then double our current GMO soybean meal. Our customers have indicated that it is important to them that we cut the GMO soymeal, so we are working on it. It will inevitably lead to a price increase for our customers, but we are trying to limit what that increase would look like. If you are a customer and you have any additional feedback you want to offer, we would greatly appreciate that right now.

In other farm news, we had an offer that came in last week on our farm, but it has not been finalized yet. I am hopeful that we can work the wrinkles out of it and create a binding contract out of it. We have chickens in the brooder that should be ready to go to be processed in mid June. I started planting 200 trees at the new farm. It is slow going, but I would like to have most of it done this week. Lastly, I am trying to get things sold on this farm (sheep, some cattle breeding stock, tractor, etc.). Things are pretty hectic right now, but I think we are at least moving in the right direction.

Brooder Black Board

Chicks in the Brooder

Tree Planting Moves Forward in Ernest

Awakening From A Long Winter Slumber

This winter has been something else. The cold weather has been unrelenting with dozens of days  below zero. It has been hard on the animals, it has made it harder to sell our home, and it has been very draining on our family. I will admit that I am tired of spending two hours a day out in this weather. Add in my Mother's passing, and the uncertainty about our 2014 production season, and you have very demoralizing conditions. Despite all of these challenges, we are determined to press forward. 

Winter Sunset From The House Yard

It is now March, and the Sun's power is far more noticeable. We are finally melting snow off the ground rapidly. Unfortunately, the ground is still very much frozen so almost all of the snow melt is runoff. Our forecast finally sports highs in the 40's and 50's. I think the -13 degrees temperatures of early in the week are finally behind us and we can look forward to more seasonable weather setting in. 

Stream Across the Yard

Following the Stream

The weather has made things hard for lambing season. We lost one lamb to exposure and the cold weather contributed to the death of another lamb, and forced me to make a bottle lamb of another. I have a little flock of two bottle lambs that follow me all over the place and often try to trip me. 

I have only have eight surviving lambs in the barn. We last three lambs and have seen many more single births this year.  I do have two ewes left to lamb, and I have my fingers crossed that we might yet see more twins. 

Some of Our Ewes and Lambs

Flock of Two Bottle Lambs

With the rough weather, we have been unable to do much of anything outside except keep the livestock fed. I am looking forward to that changing. Our new 50' by 50' building was delivered to our building site this morning. I am hopeful that the crew can start on it soon as I don't really want the building sitting on the ground for an extended period of time. 

Marked Site for New Building

The farm move does give us the chance to reevaluate things. A friend is rebuilding our website at the moment. I think we could use an update as our website has become pretty dated. Janice did a great job building our original site, but that was nearly 8 years ago. We are also considering looking into playing with our poultry feed ration to use a Non-GMO soybean meal. We are evaluating if it is even possible and what it might cost. 

This biggest change we are debating is weather or not we will phase out lamb as a product we will sell.   Right now, our sheep herd generates very limited income. The sheep do break-up cattle parasite loads, but we only run sheep on a limited part of the farm. Hair sheep also browse weeds and brushy vegetation quite well on our farm, but our future farm is much more open. Hair sheep also require considerable fencing to contain them, and I am concerned that predator pressure and the number of neighborhood dogs is much higher at the new place. I am not sure that sheep make as much sense on the new farm. To help us find answers to this questions and a few others about delivery scheduling, we are working on a survey that we will send out to our customers in the coming weeks.

The children have been a bit cooped up this winter as it has been too cold to play outside much. That being said, they have remained quite healthy this winter. Our Son's ears have really improved a lot; our family doctor credits not going to daycare all winter. The little guy is such a cuddly fellow and is quite a bit of fun to play with. Our daughter continues to be more independent and is much better at expressing herself since she started school last fall. All and all, we are all doing pretty good. Hopefully, we can continue to remain healthy and get to spend more time outside in the coming weeks. 

Little Shriek Fan

Inside Beach Day

Confronting the Cold

It has been all over the news, but we have had some of the coldest weather I can really remember and certainly the coldest temperatures and windchill since I started farming. On Monday, the  high temperature was -3 F and the low was -14 F with wind chills driving temperatures to around -50. We just got back from vacation Sunday night late and the temperatures were an unpleasant surprise to come home to. They even canceled my daughter's preschool on account of the cold Monday and Tuesday.

When I got home the cows had broken through a temperate fence and hunkered down in and around the hay bales for cover. After two very tight flights hauling kids through the airport as fast as we could go, I did not have the energy to extract the cattle from the hay bales and get them more shelter that night. Luckily, I had moved the sheep inside the building before I left for vacation in preparation for lambing in a few weeks. The building was a whopping 10 degrees Monday morning, still more then 20 degrees warmer then outside. Luckily, sheep chores did not get more difficult because of the cold weather.

Sheep inside our farm building

The chickens require a little more attention in this weather. This is the first time since I built the new building that I had to break thick ice on the unheated chicken water buckets. I am also collecting eggs twice per day so we limit the likelihood of having eggs freeze. Since we use roll away nesting boxes, where the eggs roll forward away from the hen to a collection grove, the hens are not usually sitting on the eggs to keeping them warm. 

Frozen chicken waters

Chickens that are happy to drink again

The cows proved the most challenging to deal with and are most of why I spent three hours outside Monday choring. The first thing I did, was to get the cattle a new bale of hay. So, I rolled a bale down the hill and pushed it over on its side before cutting the bale wrap off and putting the bale ring around it. The bale they we eating on before they broke into the hay was 3/4 gone and was quite exposed to the wind. I then had to pop some sheep net out of the ground using a hammer and pry bar so the cattle could get back to their water and also make use of the outside sheep shelters, since the sheep were inside the building. 

Cattle moved to the south side of the building

Cattle in a more sheltered place

Cattle now making use of the outside sheep shelters

 Then I had to cut the cattle off from getting into my bales of hay. I started by setting up some temporary posts and running a temporary fence line. I had to take a cordless drill and make holes in the ground for each of the half dozen posts.

Temporary electric fence posts put in with the aid of a cordless drill

 I also had to open the cattle water. I love my Cobett waterer, but that was the worst ice I had ever seen on the thing. It was 4 inches thick where the cattle last drank from it and 6 inches on the other side of the waterer. It took several minutes of work with the hammer and pry bar, but I got it open and then the cows, who were impatiently waiting for me, started drinking.

Thick ice on the Cobett cattle water

The cows swarm the Cobett once the ice is off

Lastly, I had to deal with the little things that happen when you move livestock into an area you don't usually have them. I had to reconnect that section of fence to my electrified fence because I had cut the supply line a year or two back for some forgotten reason. The I found that several calves decided to escape through a gap in the the wood fence that I had always intended to close off. So, that project got completed  and the calves got rounded up and returned to the pasture, but not before I chased them around the house yard far longer then I would have liked given the temperature.

Former small gap in the fence that the calves decided to exploit

All and all it is good to be home. It is hard traveling with children and it is nice to work on getting them back into a routine. I think my Son is the happiest to be home since he is not nearly as outgoing as his sister. It could also be that he was tired of ridding around in the back seat of a mini van with his father for several days. 

Watching Daddy int he back of the mini van

I am looking forward to preschool opening up again and life retuning to normal,  but Hazel and I did enjoy a morning of playing with Duplo blocks together.  I will keep you posted as the weather moderates and I get a chance to tackle some farm projects that could use my attention. 

Showing Daddy the rolling Duplo tower

2013 Farm Plans

I have had an almost three month hiatus from blogging and a far number of things have gone on during that time, but I will only touch on a few of them.  We had lambs in mid March to early April, 22 of them were born and 18 of them have made it. We stated off poorly, by having a good ewe get an infection in her uterus and die, and we then lost one of her lambs. We also had a ewe give birth to quintuplets, which we were able to save two of them.  Other then the bad start, this lambing season has been much better then past seasons. The sheep herd has been out on pasture for three weeks now and doing quite well.

Sheep Herd out on Pasture in Early May After a Very Late Snow Storm

This whole spring was the opposite of last year. It was cool for a very long time and it took a long time to get get the grass growing tall and fast enough to start grazing it. We had to buy quite a bit of hay to cover another three weeks of grass.  We also had another calf born during the last three months from a first calf heifer. All told, our herd now comes to 18 head. It is our hope to have larger supplies of beef soon, but our lead time on beef is around 27 months, so we do not have much supply planned for 2013, but 2014 is looking much more promising.

New Spring Calf Waiting for Spring Grazing to Get Started

The biggest news I wanted to share with customers is that the 2013 order form is live on the website. We are still planning on doing a customer newsletter, but it has not happened yet. Since we now have two kids to factor into things, there will be some changes this year. We will be making fewer deliveries to Ames and Des Moines in 2013. We looked into the cost of doing deliveries versus the return on that time & fuel this winter for all of our sites. Ames & Des Moines  had much higher costs per sale then Pella and represented a smaller percentage of sales then Pella. Pella deliveries will be monthly, while Ames & Des Moines scheduled deliveries will be June, August, October, & November. Hopefully, this will encourage people to simply order a bit more per delivery to cover the longer gap between deliveries. Customers in Ames & Des Moines can also order our products on the Iowa Food Cooperative, which deliveries to multiple locatins to in the Des Moines area and to Ames every two to three weeks.

Two children has also spurred some production changes as well. We will be raising many fewer meat chickens this year. Right now we still have inventory from last year. When that runs out, we will not have any more chickens until our October deliveries. Broiler chickens are quite a lot of work to raise (time, energy, materials handling) and the return on investment is not great. It is very easy to loose money on them if they are even a bit small. Cool wet springs are not always the best time to raise them, and we typically see better development of broilers in the fall. We will be starting turkeys earlier this year. If you want turkeys in October, they should be ready by October delivery time. When we built out new brooder building, we likely over insulated it. My objective is to shift turkey production earlier so the turkeys are moving out of the brooder as the hottest part of summer is beginning. We have also changed out turkey supplier this year in hopes to avoid some of the problems of the past three years. Right now all we have in the brooder is 50 layers to cycle into our flock later in the year.

Black Australorp Layer Chicks in the Brooder

We are working on a few larger projects this year. Progress on the chicken building continues slowly as I am hoping to finish work on the trim, nesting boxes, and eave spouts this month. We have some large fencing projects to tackle this year. A neighbor cleared out numerous trees last year in our mutual fence lines, but he left the ground rough and with no fence. This all has to be corrected including dirt work and new fencing. There will also be a lot of additional tree work to round out the project. With two kids and how far away from the house this work will have to take place, it will take much of the year to complete.

Look forward to quite a bit of lamb in October. There will be a limited supply of beef in August, and possibly more in October. Turkeys will be available again starting in October. We will see how things go this year. Right now, I am taking it a day at a time. I am sure there will be significant challenges juggling a farm, a 3 year old and a baby, so stay tuned.

The Marquardt Kids with Very Serious Expressions

Building a New Routine, Take Two

Well it has been a very long time since I have posted. It would have help if the first iteration of this post had not been lost to depths of the internet.  This has been the longest break since I started blogging several years ago. A lot has happened since the last post. Zane was born in November, we closed out our 2012 season, I have flirted with off-farm full-time employment, and we have stared to look toward the 2013 production season.

Zane was born in November, one day early. That happened to be the Des Moines delivery day for Thanksgiving turkeys. Janice blazed through labor and was done by early afternoon. Not long after things settled down, I looked at here and ask, "are you OK here, because I could still do our deliveries." She said she had nurses and would be fine. So, just after Zane was born I was racing back home to get orders packed and get into Des Moines. I made it back that evening just after my folks arrived.

Zane is doing well. He is a big boy (90 percentile for height and weight). He is a pretty mellow guy and most people who interact with of him, think of him as a pretty serious baby. That being said, he reliably cracks his big grin when he is being difficult or when he gets his diaper changed.

Hazel & Zane lying on the bed

Hazel is still adjusting to the change & wants to be held more. She is not used to sharing Daddy. She is getting better at helping, but you do have to channel it toward some thing productive that she can handle at this point. I am glad he is such a stout boy as I am slightly less concerned about her inadvertently hurting him.

Right now, the farm is in a winter holding pattern. The cattle are out on their winter pasture and the sheep are in their winter yard. We bolstered our limited hay supply back in November by purchasing 18 bales at auction and hauling them all to the farm ourselves. Based on our current trajectory, our hay should run out in early April. That is about a week or two before what I would prefer, so we might have to buy a couple bales in March.

Cattle grazing on their winter pasture

Sheep in their winter yard

We have not been working outside a great deal. Much of our time goes to juggling children. I have consolidated all of our layers into the new building, but I still have some work that I would like to do for the layers.  Jim, our supper helper, has been out a few times and we got steel cut and put up around the tractor. When we built the chicken building it became apparent that a simple lean to could be added for the tractor to keep it out of the elements. We finally got steel walls put up on that end of the structure. The building still has some trim work and eaves on the outside and more roosting racks and nesting boxes inside. After that we need to bring water around to the building, tile the area around the building and finally rock the high traffic areas.

Tractor storage now complete with walls

I interviewed for two off-farm full-time jobs in December. One of them, I did not get, and the one is on hold for for a few months while the organization works out some internal issues. I don't know what will happen on that front, but it will have an impact on the business and we will keep our customers in the loop if things shift around.  I will discuss some of the changes we are talking about below and how full-time work might affect things.

Looking at 2013, we will be raising fewer poultry. We raised three batches of broilers this year and next year we will only plan on two batches. We still have quite a few broilers in the freezers and with two children, I am not sure if I can juggle three batches of chickens. If I am working full-time, this will likely drop to a single batch of broilers. We will also reduce the number of turkeys we raise and change our chick supplier. We have attempted to raise 150 to 200 turkeys the last two years and we have been punished for it. The turkeys have been so variable and that volatility has been very hard on our business. In 2013, I think our goal will be 60 to 80 turkeys. I hope we are able to focus on them more as they grow up and have much better survival rates coming into the fall.

The biggest question for 2013, is what will become of our sheep herd.  We once had a herd of over 40 head and now we are now down to 12 head.   We culled our herd aggressively as we struggled through the past two years. This culling helped us bottom out through the worst of our struggles. What we have left are our best ewes and their daughters. We have made gains with our ewes, but the loss of our breeding rams has put us back to square one on the male side of our breeding program. Sheep are easy on water, but require a great deal of work  to fence and they can more easily over graze pasture then cattle.

The biggest problem is that lamb have not been a very profitable enterprise for us. We raise hair sheep and they are smaller then wool sheep, but have a more mild flavor. Unfortunately, we pay the same price to butcher a sheep with out smaller animals as folks with larger animals, so the locker ends up getting around 1/4 to 1/3 of the sale value of the lamb as processing fees. Because sheep need special fencing, it takes a lot more time to rotate them and as such they do not yield a very compelling return on my time. If I am working full-time, then this product offering will be phased out.

For 2013, we are looking to double down on cattle. Cattle are easier to fence, and if you have the water infrastructure in place, it is as easy to water 4 animals as it is to water 12 animals. We are working with the NRCS EQIP program to expand our watering system in 2013. We will likely use our PFI SIP money to complete that task. Right now, we are trying to locate some quality grass-feed steers that we can bring on farm to bolster our production as we try to build our herd up to the point that we have consistent supply levels. When we send out our customer newsletter in March, we will ask people if they are interested in purchasing quarters of beef. If you are, we will ask for a $500 deposit. This money will help secure a supply of cattle and help us to continue to recapitalize the business after several rough years.

Well that pretty much brings things up to date. I am struggling to get a handle on having two children at home and I am a bit nervous about what happens when you add in our production season. Stay tuned as we move into 2013 and build a new routine.