Squeaking One Out

It is the end of June and we have a long way to go on the larger farm projects for the year, but slow progress is being made. We have a big deadline looming in late August, where we will likely be hosting a  Practical Farmers of Iowa grazing gathering. I would like to have the creek fencing done, our handling facilities well under way, if not done, and our main building cleaned out and reorganized. As well as having the yard mowed and trimmed, the sticks picked up, and the flower beds and garden weeded. I know it is a pipe dream, but it is something to shoot for.

Jim from Pella came out and we finished a long stretch of fence on the north side of the big center draw. There was much chain sawing, poison ivy, sweat, and damp grounder underfoot, but that section is done. One step closer to completion. On the south end of the farm, I continue to sink posts for fencing the smaller draw. I picked up a few used wood posts off Craigslist the other day to hopefully get me closer to finishing that project.

Section of Fence Completed Two weeks Ago with Andy Larson

Fencing completed today with Jim from Pella, it is a long section going well past the tree

On another note, we went through inspection on Tuesday and we now have our egg handlers license. This will allow us to sell eggs through the Iowa Food Cooperative soon. Speaking the Iowa Food Cooperative, the cart open tomorrow, so check out the great products available. We also got 20 older hens from Fox Hollow Poultry Farm; Thank you Tai. Fox Hollow is a great farm outside of Elkhart that sells to several Des Moines restaurants, the Des Moines Farmer's Market, and the Iowa Food Cooperative.

A few of the hens retired from Fox Hollow Poultry Farm

That is it for now. I was well below my goal on the number of posts I wanted for June, but I squeaked one more in there.

Doggie Paddling

I have been a farmer dad for two weeks now, and it is still not settled out yet. Everyday is a constant struggle to get chores done in the morning and at night. The struggle is less so at night, but that is when I get caught-up on things that I can't really do during the morning. The weekends have become exceedingly valuable for pushing projects. We have also go to using a babysitter during the day once a week to free up some time for farm work.

Since my last post, we had Andy Larson from Ames out here and we built some fence when it was horribly hot out. We both looked liked like we took a dip in a lake by the time the day was done, but several corners were completed and we ran some line. About 1/3 of the large central draw is fenced. I have also started sinking posts on the much smaller south draw. The cattle are on the south end of the farm grazing the two steep drift hills and working their way down onto the crop land. I am now well beyond the range of my water system and the recently completed water tank trailer is allowing me to graze down there. The seeding on the crop land is very sparse and we have a lot of weeds to try and graze off. I am also going to broadcast Orchard grass seed ahead of the grazing so our livestock can work some of it into the ground with their hooves and hopefully improve the stand that way.

Water Trailer

Looking down toward the crop land (the corn field in the background is not mine)


Chickens continue to come along and we have a locker date set for July 9th. We will be trying a new locker outside of Bloomfield. It is 45 minutes closer and they will weigh the birds for me.

Chickens on pasture in a Hansen style pen

130 Turkeys arrived this week. They came a day early and the post office did not let me know they were hear until 11:00 AM, usually they call me at 8:00 AM. They got started on a bad foot when one of their heat lamp bulbs burnt out during their first night. I lost seven that night from smothering. Turkeys are incredibly fragile for the first two weeks. We try to keep losses down to 10% during that time. Other then the first night, the birds are looking good.

Turkeys are now here

In other news, the farm continues to be very wet in the low places (large parts of the house yard especially). We have had over 14 inches of rain since our last blog post. I just wear my rubber boots everywhere anymore. I might have cursed us. I bought the boots on sale and ever since then it has been raining. I am glad I bought them, but I don't think the curse is worth it. I picked up a bale spear for my tractor and put category one mounts on it so I can use it with my tractor, but the little tractor has not been able to lift the bales.  It is possible that they hydraulics might not be strong enough to move the bales, but I also did not get perfect angles on the bales I tried to move, so I will try again here and cross my fingers. The tractor is living outside under a tarp right now because it is so wet by the building and we barley got out of there with it. That is the month so far in a nut shell. The first round of deliveries is behind me and my mulberry orders are all filled. Until next time, cross your fingers for mild dry weather for fence building.

One of two marshes in our farm yard

Tractor with bale spear (so far not looking good)

Thick of Spring Production

Sorry it has been so long between posts. In the past few weeks we have been building some fence. Not nearly as much as is needed or I would like, but some fence has gone in and we have a nearly complete water hauling trailer.

Jim from Pella has been helping with the fencing, building the water trailer,  and has helped repair one of my pasture pens. We have had trouble getting chickens outside as promptly as I would like this year. My two original steel and wood pens need to be gone through and worked on to replace several rotting boards and to change the height that the waters hang so they have a bit more ground clearance. Half of the second batch of 180 chickens made it out to their Hansen-style pen, but the second Hansen-style pen disintegrated when moved. The Hansen-stle pen is best in hot weather because it is much more open. Jim and I have the pen that disintegrated closer to functional, but it is not quite there yet. The second half of the second batch ended up in the smaller 8 by 8 foot brown steel pen that Janice designed. That pen will shortly be too small for them, but it will buy us a few days to finish repairing the damaged pen. The little brown pen is where the young laying hens usually get moved to. Needless to say, our batch of laying hens is still in the brooder waiting for a vacancy. Being one pen down, we have had some flow issues to work out early this week.

Half of the second batch of chickens in a Hansen style chicken tractor

Friday was one of my 5 scheduled processing days of the year. The first batch of chickens went into the locker. Janice and I load the evening before, then I hit the road a bit before 3:00 AM and try to make it home by the late afternoon to early evening. From there chores get caught up on and then all the birds (177 of them) get unloaded about 25 at a time and wiped down, weighed, and double bagged before going into the freezers.

Trailer in position and ready to begin loading birds

Ryan loading chickens

Janice goes back to work on Monday and HAzel and I begin our first solo day. I also begin to do deliveries next week. Ames is Monday, Des Moines is Wednesday, and Pella is Thursday. It will be a busy week ahead, but they all are when you are in the thick of the spring production season.

Ryan holding Hazel and a Nermal trying to get in on the action

80 More Hooves

We made a large acquisition last week. We added twenty mature Barbados blackbelly ewes. This will bring us to over 35 ewes of various varieties of hair sheep.  The Barbados ewes have a strong flock instinct and stay together very well. We combined all of our cattle and sheep herds into one herd last week and are continuing to rotate them about every 36 hours. One of the new ewes won itself a Darwin award so we are down to 19, but the rest are doing well and learning electric fences and how to actually graze (they were in a dry lot before).

Barbados blackbelly ewes  in a tight flock

Existing sheep flock resting in the shade while the new gals graze

In the combined herd, the calves think they are sheep

Also in the pasture is our first batch of 175 broiler chickens. They are doing very well and appear to be gaining weight nicely. They certainly are eating quite a bit. The second batch is ready to move outside this weekend as well. 

Broilers on pasture

175 birds in chicken tractors

In other news, the water wagon is about ready to roll out to the pasture, the feed wagon lid was ripped off in a storm and needs repair, and fence building has commenced again on the south side of the central waterway. Hazel is doing well as well. She has gone from looking like a newborn to looking more like a baby in the past two to three days. I have also been at an INCA training workshop and have some work to sort through in that arena during the next week. I think the weather is going to be pretty calm in the foreseeable future and might even cool off a bit after the holiday weekend. That would be nice considering how hot the weather has been recently. Until later, thanks for reading. 

Moving Ahead Again

We are slowly moving forward again. After the tough weather at the beginning of the month, we have all of our first batch of chickens outside. We got half out before the bad weather and the other half a week and a half later. They are doing pretty good and are eating a lot of feed.

Broilers on Pasture

Yesterday, I drove the truck and borrowed auger wagon up north of Marshalltown and came back 3400 pounds of feed. I hope that lasts me four weeks, because it is not cheap to have that much feed around. It is around a 4 hour trip. Plus you have about half an hour prep and another hour to get the tractor on the wagon and get the auger wagon dumped into the barge with a lid out in the field. 

Sheep Emerging from The Timber

Ram Lamb

I have come to really enjoy sheep. Sure, lambing season sucked and I will be culling several ewes that were a disappointment, but I have the bug. I am going out to Illinois soon to pick up numerous well priced ewes to bolster our numbers. In the timber, the sheep have been opening up the place and beating back the poison ivy. Permanent fencing is now starting to go in after the sheep graze starting with the corner  posts. 

Where the Sheep have been & Where They are Going

Where the Sheep have been

The cattle are doing well and soon the existing cattle and sheep will be combined with the new cows. I want to thank a customer, Todd Lippker for the great livestock photos shown here in this blog post. Bye for now.

Adapting

We have been adapting to live with a baby. Janice has been doing a great job of taking care of Hazel. I am still clunky with normal diapers and am a but intimidated by cloth diapers. With time I will get there. The timer on Janice's maternity leave is ticking away and I have one massive project to knock out by mid June when she goes back to work and that is fencing out our waterways.

Janice & Hazel Take a Nap

One the farm lambing has been progressing and we are down to one ewe left to lamb. We hit a rough patch lambing with the weather, several problem ewes, and my inexperience. We lost a handful of lambs, but today we had two sets of healthy twins and now have nine young lambs bouncing around in the pasture. There is just one more ewe expecting.

First Set of Twins (the brown lamb is female & the black lamb is a ram)

Second Set of Twins (both appear to be rams)

Despite the rough weather, the 85 chickens we put outside last Thursday are doing pretty good. We have not lost any of them. We left the other half of the first batch inside to hedge our bets against the weather. The ones inside will be moving out tomorrow.

The new cows and calfs are doing pretty good. It took them a couple of days to start eating the pasture heavily. I suspect that that delay was caused by a change over in rumen bacteria from farms and pasture types. The effects of mob grazing are much more visible when you have 1000+ pound cows as opposed to 600 pound yearlings and sheep. The two herd (new cattle and the sheep with the yearlings have not yet been combined, but it will happen within the next week or so as the herds rotate closer to each other on the farm. On another note, all of the north hill has now been grazed over once this year by the sheep and yearling cattle. It looks better, but those heavy cows on that hill will do a lot to break up the old grass thatch and bring the hill back to life. Something to look forward to. Stay tuned as we continue to adapt to farming with a child, cows, calves, and numerous lambs.

Beginnings

The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity. Janice went into labor on May 1st and Hazel Lillian Marquardt was born at 3:41 AM on the 2nd.

Ryan & Hazel

At the same time that Janice was wanting to go to the hospital, I was outside with a lamb being born. I ended up leaving the ewe with feet poking out of her and called my neighbor for help. Good neighbors are awesome to have. He came out and pulled the lamb and built a small fortress out of gates and pallets from the stack I keep. The structure let him separate ewes and lambs from the rest of the herd of cattle and sheep. It was also need to prevent the ram from killing my neighbor.

Jesse's Fortress

Not only did Jesse get those items all the way out into my rugged pasture, but he also nursed a bottle lamb three times while I was away. We were unfortunately unsuccessful with the lamb and lost it that night. Oboe the mother lost all of her triplets and will be going to the locker this week. I am trying to think of some way to properly thank my neighbor for all the work he did.

The rest of the lambs are looking good. We have the twins that I assisted with in an earlier blog post from one of my best looking purchased ewes. We also have the little black ram lamb that Jesse saved.

Twins & Mother 

Newest Ram Lamb & Mother

Very Pregnant Ewes

Yesterday, I went and picked up cattle in Earlham. I also got to visit my great aunt over there. I brought home 5 to 6 year old cows with heifer calves on their side and a 3 to 4 year old cow due anytime June or July.  I have them in a separate pen and will work over the next week or two to introduce them to the rest of the cattle and eventually the sheep. After I got them unloaded, I raced to town to have dinner with Janice and see Hazel. 

Five New Ladies to Add to the Herd (one calf is hiding)

We have a busy week ahead of us. Janice and Hazel come home today. Chickens have to move outside tomorrow, 180 more chickens come Thursday morning, we need to tidy the place up because family is coming for mother's day on Sunday, and some where in there we will likely be lambing. Wis me luck, I hope I don't need it.