Oat Hay, something new

Finished up some oat hay baling last night. Luckily the tractor has lights, I finished in the dark. It is amazing how thick the oat hay was. The field that I cut next door yielded about 1 bale per 3 acres, the oats were about 4-5 bales PER ACRE! Next year I am going to consider putting oats in for hay, we will see how it feeds out this winter. The hard part with oats is getting it to dry, it took over a week to get it to dry. Grass can normally be baled in 2-3 days. Hopefully this week we will be done with the hay and then we can move onward, back to fencing. Does anyone out there have a pickup flatbed for sale? We bought "half of a truck" and need a flatbed for it.

More Hay

Started cutting on the home place,it is looking a lot more promising. It is not as tall as last year, but still pretty thick. We should have enough to sell to our hay customers and plenty for ourselves. It is a lot easier cutting this year than last, a lot of what we cut last year had not been cut in years and the between the rebel trees and gopher mounds it was tough going. The Vermeer 5400 we rented from Wollers has been working out real good. I was a little nervous running it at first but I am starting to become an old pro. The new hay shed is going to come in handy this year.

Hay Cutting

We started cutting hay this week and it is not looking real promising. The dry weather we had this early spring really set the grass back. To top this off, we spread about 1000 yards of manure from two horse barns. Manure from the one barn had a lot of sawdust in it that I thought was thorougly composted, well, it was not. From what I read, sawdust tends to absord nitrogen from the soil when it initially breaks down. Later, after it decomposes it will realease the nitrogen back into the soil. This condition leads to stunted grass. Until that time we will have thick but awfully short hay. So many lessons to learn! At least we have extra hay leftover from last year. This year will be something new for us, we are going to attempt to roll our own hay bales. Last year we hired Jim Knopik from Randal to tie bales for us. He did a great job with his Vermeer 604 baler. It put up great 4x5.5 bales that were wrapped nice and tight. Unfortunately he sold his baler and bought a new one that puts up 5x6 bales. They will be too heavy to handle and on the open market, most of our customers cannot handle the weight of a 5x6 bale. (our 4x5.5's were running around 1000 lbs, the 5x6's would be around 1600!) Thanks to Steve at Woller Equipment (www.wollerequipment.com) we were able to rent a baler for 2009. We were thinking about buying a used one, but just did not want to spend the money on a used one. We are going to hold out for next year and buy a new one. Time to get to bed, enjoyed the fireworks in Brainerd with the family.

New Baler

We have been mulling over a small square baler. We have had a number of people request a few small square bales, well today we brought home a "new" John Deere 24T. I say new, for this was likely new in 1964! No matter, it looks really good. We got it from George Booth, the other Scottish Highland producer that we buy some cattle from . I tried to pay him for it today, he said, "no, wait to see if you like it." Well, that is going to be sort of hard, I have nothing to compare it to! He even went as far as to come over and show us how to use it! They are going to be extra work, but it will be nice to have a few on hand. Now to get cutting hay tomorrow.

New Arrivals

Made the trip to Blomkest, MN, just south of Willmar, Wednesday night to pick up my red tri Aussie male pup, Chief. He sure is cute! I think he's going to fit in just fine and hopefully he and Daisy will have a nice litter next spring.

One of our yellow cows had a red calf about five days ago so we're enjoying a new little heifer calf as well. Dave rotated them to new pasture this a.m. so they're enjoying grass over knee high today. He just calls them and they come running!

Dave let Rodeo, the black and white shetland we have on loan for the summer (thanks Jim and Shari!), out for some grass this a.m. and he must of gotten untied because I noticed him heading down the driveway like he had somewhere to be. Dave and Daisy took the 4-wheeler after him and Daisy did her job and brought him back home. Dave is home today getting the equipment ready to start haying this weekend.

Fat Steers

Today we moved the rest of the steers off of the place. Father in law, Spike, has room for them in Pine River. They will be so happy to get on fresh grass, they will really start to put the weight on now. His friend, Jim Ellem, came down with his truck and trailer to haul them up for us. Wife Chris, neighbor Keith, Daisy the dog and I started moving them in. It went really well, neighbor Keith and Daisy are turning into real cow hands. We had to cut one steer out, he is going to market this week, the rest are all on fresh grass as of tonight. The one that was left somehow managed to get out. So, I let him run around the yard for a while. When it was time to put him back in, he was a little skittish. I tried a couple of times to move him in, no luck. Well, it was time to get Daisy. Boom, just like that she had him in and man, that saved me a lot of work! She is really starting to earn her keep around here. Unfortunately, with her doing all of the running I am likely going to start putting on a few!

The truck is ALIVE!

Well, today was the day to reconstruct the green dump truck. We were going to get started at 6 am, but neighbor Keith was LATE! I was amazed, he is never late, maybe Mrs. Keith needed a little of his time... Well, Keith, I and son Hunter started putting it together, wow, did it go together nice. It helps when you have neighbors like John who know how to make nice parts! No one got crushed under the box, so it was a good day. Now to get the rest of that dirt hauled.