Things are a Brewing, mean while we are Carrying On

It has again been too long since my last blog post. We have been working on making a massive change in our farming operation, that being said it is not a done deal and I would rather not let the cat out of the bag until there is more clarity about this change. I hope to be able to share this change with you in the next week.

Our egg production is down a bit. We had a hard spring with a persistent fox that I struggled to deal with. He would strike in the middle of the day and use the cover of pasture, road, ditch, or even the draw behind the house as cover on the approach. We might have lost as many as 20 birds to the fox, but I finally got the darn thing with the last three bullets I had in my 22. I have found it hard to locate .22 mm rounds. All of the local shops are out. I presume that is associated with the threat of gun control legislation this spring. This does not make a great deal of sense to me, because there was no real threat about restrictions to the common .22 round, but then ardent gun advocates and I don't always see eye to eye on things.

For the time being I will try to share some of the more mundane things going on. The turkeys arrived back in late April. I got 82 in the mail, and I have something like 65 (enough of them die that I tend to lose count) that made it into early adulthood. That was higher mortality then I was going for, but I will have to live with it. I tried to run them earlier to avoid the warm weather of June and July we had last year. This year was quite cold for most of the spring. Many of the crops did not get planted in surrounding areas because of the cool wet spring, and even then some of them got flooded out. This year has been the diametric opposite of last year. I can honestly say that right now is the first time this growing season where it is getting pretty dry out. We are taking orders for Turkeys so let us know if you are looking for a Thanksgiving bird. Our birds should be ready for October delivery, and might be ready for September delivery.

We did not raise chickens this spring. It turns out with the cold spring that this was not a bad idea. Fall chickens should be arriving within the next week and I think we will have birds by September deliveries.

Cattle are doing well. We did just drop a beef off at the locker so beef will be ready for distribution by late July or early August. I love having grass-fed beef in stock and I eagerly look forward to having some available for customers again.

Cattle on Spring Pasture

Around the farm, we have been chipping on projects. We fixed the shop front, which had been damaged in a wind storm several years ago, we did finish putting the eave spouts on the chicken house, and we have been working on cleaning out buildings, and getting our scrap piles cleaned up. Jim, our super helper from Pella, has been a big help through this process.

I did take a weekend to pick berries around the farm. With the unusually wet weather this spring, the berry crop was amazing this year. I picked 15 pounds of berries in one morning with our daughter helping me. Our haul included mulberries, sour cherries, and Juneberries. In the photo below, I left our the cherries, but you can see the Juneberries on the left and the mulberries on the right. We have a variety of mulberries on this farm. We have the white and the dark purple ones, as well as their hybrid light purple to pink ones.

Juneberry and Mulberries fresh from Picking

I would like to take the opportunity to put a plug in for the Juneberry (Serviceberry or Shadush). It is an underrated small tree. Janice did not understand my enthusiasm when I planted them four years ago, but she is been eating her words this year. They are a lot like a blueberry grown on a carefree native small tree verses a temperamental little bush. They have been good in oatmeal, in cobblers, or just eaten straight. 

Juneberry Tree

JuneBerry Close-up, those are perfectly ripe.

Our little boy has been crawling since the middle of May, but he has never really felt like crawling was enough for him. After all he does have a toddler sister to keep up with. So he has been trying to pull himself up and move along surfaces with the occasional few seconds of free standing.  He remains as calm and as mellow as ever. Usually the only time he really protests is when he sister is interrupting his standing by dragging him around or when he tumbles hard.

Our Little Guy working his way along the Sofa

Our daughter has been, well, a toddler. She got a haircut about a month ago, which can be seen in the photos below. We have been working on toilet training. It is still a work in progress. She has a massive bladder, like her dad, and so we don't get very many chances to practice in a given day. She is getting better at being outside, but her fear of chickens, born about by a bad encounter with a rooster, still makes it hard to work with her outside.

Painting Time

Perhaps a little over-equipped to go Check Cows

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

February Limbo

February has come and gone and there is no massive activity to report. A couple of little highlights do rise to the surface and a worth sharing.

In early February, just after some of our coldest weather of the year, we had a calf from a first calf heifer. The little gal is all back and petty personable. Mom & calf have been inside almost the entire month so they pretty much ready to move outside.

First Calf Heifer with her First Calf

I have been taking stock of this year and what tasks we might get to this spring as well as identifying what resources we might need to finish out the winter.  I surveyed our hay the other day and we  are eating a bit more hay then I rationed. I believe I have a little over 30 days of hay. That means, we will run out of hay in early April, or about two weeks (4-5 bales of hay) ahead of where I wanted to be. Depending on how the spring plays out, we may have to buy a few bales 

We are staring to pull out our planning charts so we can work on our production timing. March is when we try to send out our customer newsletter to communicate our plans for 2013 and make our customers aware of opportunities to get special product or limited supplies of things. I looks like much of 2013 will be learning how to farm with two children. I still have the goal of adding to our exterior fence on the north-side of our property and on the east & west sides of the 10 acres I am currently renting. We will also try to put the finishing touches on the chicken building & do some dirt work. Dirt work would include tiling in front of our chicken building, adding a hydrant for the chicken building, and possibly extending our water system on the north side of the property a bit.  

In the next week, I need to move the new cow & calf outside, and move the ewes inside. We are not to far to the start of the lambing season. I hope to get 12-16 healthy and robust lambs this year. I also need to pull the bull out of the herd to avoid late fall/early winter calving next year. 

Not a lot of progress has really happened since January. I did manage to get on top of the poultry building and begin caping the top edge of the roof. I finished the task, except for the last 3 feet of a 39 foot roof. It helps if you buy enough raw material to finish the desired task. Sigh. 

Farm building seeing some trim progress

Our entire household has spent most of the month of February sick. We have all had head colds that developed into bronchial infections. We are almost all on medication now to try to break the cycle of starting to get get beater only to be just as sick as ever a few days later. 

Our Son is doing pretty good. We just weighed him today and he has cracked 15 pounds already. He is into cooing and making a vaiety of noises, as well has being assisted in standing. He did manage to roll over for the first time a about a week ago, that does not mean he is a fan of tummy time though.  

A Boy & His Mother

I tried an interesting experiment with our daughter early in the month. She is scared/dislikes snow. So I filled up a tub of snow and placed it in the kitchen sink so she could play with it, without the movement limitations of her winter clothing. She really enjoyed it and has generally been better around snow outside ever since. 

Playing with a Tub Full of Snow

Well that is it from the farm for now. Stay tuned next month as I have to be much more of a farmer again.

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.

Calves are Coming Baby Looms

Here we are on the back side of a long grind that is our fall production system. The last of the broilers went in to the processor in late September and the the few turkeys that survived the summer went in mid October. Although the turkeys were few in number, they were quite good sized, averaging nearly 14.5 lbs each.  Despite the lull in production we have been quite busy.

We brought the ewes home from an acreage up the road in early October only to have our rams vanish about the same time. The rams were with the cattle in our 13 acre field of warm-season grass on the western edge of the farm. We have talked with all the neighbors, but no one has seen anything. I have not found a body, they just vanished. Since we had to get our ewes breed, we snagged a young ram about a week ago and his is out in the pasture doing his job.

The cows were enjoying warm-season grass pastures because we finished fencing the western edge of the farm and put up a piece of fence on the southern edge of the farm. We have been working on this project since early July when we started tearing out the old broken down fence with a borrowed skid loader. I have started putting in posts behind the house to fill in a large gap on the west side of the farm that has allowed cattle to occasionally find their way into out house yard and orchard.

Belted Cow with Heifer Calf

Little Bull Calf

Right now, we are calving. It is a bit late in the season for it, but we got backed up last year because the bull we were going to use dropped dead before we picked him up. The important word in the last sentence is before, but that left us scrambling to find a replacement. We currently have three calves on the ground and four more expected. We are trying to sell one of our expecting mothers as she has always been treated like an odd man out by the herd (perhaps because she was born with no belt) and we are a bit tight on hay and would like to fully recapitalize the business so we are not so starved for cash next year. If you are interested in a 26 month old bred heifer who is due to have her first calf soon, let me know and we can talk about her.

Bred Heifer for Sale

One the sales side of things, we have been turning people away for turkeys as all of the survivors are spoken for. We have will not be at the Pickett Fence Creamery Sample Sunday this year for the first time in three years. To help offset some of the lost sales, we will be doing a full delivery cycle in December (Ames December 13th, Des Moines December 19th, & Pella December 20th). We are getting low on beef. We still have a lot of ground beef and beef patties, but much of the rest of our stock is out or almost out. Beef sales have been solid this year and have helped us recover from 2011's struggles. We will have some smoked chicken and stew hens available to our customers for the first time. 

One the home front, Janice is very pregnant with only around two weeks to the due date of our son. She blogged about it recently. Hazel has had a lot of trouble going to sleep. The combination of toddlerhood and two-year molars has made the task quite challenging, and to be honest completely exhausting at times. Hazel is good otherwise and wants to "help" out on the farm all the time. It has been an interesting challenge trying to farm with her at times. 

Hazel as Little Red Riding Hood

I am sorry it has been so long since my last post, and I am equally sorry that this post is so long. I am sure we will post again soon as we approach Janice's due date and the very busy couple days around November delivery dates. After all, the three delivery dates are right in a row (November 14-16), and Janice is due right in the middle of them (November 15th). Let's just say that things could get pretty interesting, so stay tuned. 

Fall Grind

We are well into our fall grind. We have 200 broiler chickens in the pens and 26 turkeys day ranging with a movable roost.  The chickens just got put outside mid-week. It took me far too long to get them outside, but I had to move the turkeys out of the pen and repair the pens because they were in incredibly poor condition after spring production.

Broiler chickens finally out on pasture

Chicken pen formation complete with a movable guard dog house

The chicken pens are moved along with the guard dog house every morning. At night large plywood boards cover the east sides of the pen to help conserve heat. Meanwhile turkeys are day ranging inside and electrified poultry net from Premier One.  At night the turkeys have access to a movable roost with a roof over the top of it.

Turkeys out in the day range set-up

One change we are still adjusting to on the farm is loss of our dog. Solo was struck by a car a few weeks ago and likely killed instantly. I went looking for a potential replacement immediately and eventually came upon a six-year-old Beagle we call Dusty. Dusty is working out all right. There some advantages and disadvantages to both dogs and I am still working on getting Dusty more familiar to chickens. It is not so much that he chases them, which he does not, it is more that he can bark much of the night and does not seem to yet be accepting of the night life on a lead or staying out with his dog house at night. 

Since our last post in early August, it has rained quite a bit. Things are still quite dry, but we have actually seen the grass grow a quite a bit. Admittedly a little growth looks good when we had absolutely nothing for so long.  As soon as it we get around five dry days in a row, then our hay will get made. This will be our first hay cutting of the year because the early summer heat scorched our first cutting. I am quite concerned about the price of hay right now and how much I might have to buy. With over 80% of turkeys dead from this summer's heat, we will be doing around $5,000 less in sales this year. I am nervous about the months ahead and just not very hopeful that we won't have much of the same financial stress that we had this year again next year.

Hazel has been complicating things a bit as well. She has been waking up around dawn, skipping naps,  and otherwise making it pretty hard to take naps. This shift is complicated by the increase in work load that the fall brings. I hope she just moderates back to her normal sleep patterns so I can have more breathing room to get my chores done. I have my fingers crossed.

Hazel painting with her feet and enjoying every minute of it

Breaking the Scorch

I am sorry the great length of time that has passed since my last post. Since May 31st, we have finished our two spring batches of chickens. The first batch was great. They got perfect weather (dry and warm early) and finished out averaging around 4 pounds. The second batch struggled with the beginning of our heat. We lost 31 of 198 directly from heat and then predator pressure picked-up at the end. Raccoons are more then resourceful enough to foil any dog on a leash. Because of the heat, the second batch of boilers had to have more time and still finished out averaging 3.5 pounds. We just got out third and final batch of broiler chickens this year yesterday morning and they are looking great in the new brooder.

Third Batch of Broilers for 2012 in the Brooder

Scorched Pasture From One Week Ago

In early July, the heat started to be oppressive and the rains pretty much stopped. I lost count of the number of days over 100 degrees F (37.8 C). It was brutal. We usually only get two cuttings of hay a year from our hay fields, but our first cutting baked into dormancy. As the situation got worse, we did not want to cut what was left of the hay fields for fear that we might kill some of the stand by cutting it so short. Needless to say we only have four bales of hay I purchased from my wife's employer saved up for winter at this time. We go through around 2 bales a week during the winter, so only having a two week supply of hat at this point makes me nervous. We will have to buy quite a bit of hay this year, but decent hay is very hard to come by, especially since a lot of guys are feeding hay because they have beat their pastures into the ground. We were beginning to run short on pasture, I figured we were looking at 4 weeks before we would have to feed hay until several recent showers improved the situation a lot. The pasture picture above is the same ground I mentioned earlier in the year.  We were lucky recently catching 1.25 inches last weekend, another inch on Tuesday, and another 0.25 inches on Wednesday. The grass has really responded, bolstered by temperatures in the mid-70s and low 80s (24-30 C). I am hopeful that these changes will help sustain a rally in our pastures. 

Our Very Limited Supply of Hay

The biggest concern I have is the loss of over 80% of our turkeys. They started off well in the middle of July, but after about two weeks they experienced developmental problems with their legs. Most of the birds lost the ability to walk and eventually died. We are not sure if this is a result of the heat, a change in the ration, or some other factor. The ration was sent away to Iowa State University for analysis, but they have yet to get back to us. We know of other farms with some similar problems, so I suspect that the heat affected the birds developmentally. Needless to say, having only around 30 birds left will leave us a very tight supply going into fall and will drop our sales this year a lot. Looking ahead to an expensive winter of hay feeding is not encouraging. I am not sure what we are going to do next year about turkeys, but we will keep you posted. 

A Few of the Surviving Turkeys

We butchered one of our cattle recently and that animal is now available for sale. We have round beef, ground round, hamburger patties, quite few steaks, and a limited supply of rump roasts. We will notify our customers when we do August deliveries at the end of the month about exactly what beef we have available and the prices on all of it. We will also be looking to sell off one of our breed heifers. If you are interested, drop me a line and I can get you details. Four of our lambs are going to locker in less that two weeks and they are already sold out. We will be selling our old registered Katahdin ram soon as we will be using a young ram for breeding in November.  Once again if you have any interest in our big older ram, drop me a line and I can get you additional information. 

Hazel in her new bed after having her first hair cut

On the home front, Janice's pregnancy is going along much better and Hazel is doing well. Janice is past the tough first trimester and is well into the second trimester. The ultrasound was back in early July. We know we are having a boy. We have agreed upon the name Zane Harlan Marquardt. We are expecting Zane in mid-November. Hazel can be quite a chatter box, loves the farm animals, especially the cattle and the cats. She recently moved to a twin bed on the floor, but likes to actually sleep on a blanket beside her bed. We will get there someday. That is it for now but stay tuned.