Sunday, October 23, 2011

It Is Always Something!

"Farming is not easy, if it was more people would be a farmer." I use this quote frequently around our farm, especially the past couple of weeks when my dad, Tim and Andy are trying to get the crops out of the field.

Two weeks ago Andy exploded a battery when he put the cables from the battery charger on the tractor wrong. He was lucky he was in the tractor and not standing by it or we would be talking about a hospital visit. The next day he had a flat tire on the tractor he was using, lesson learned for him: You have to change the tire not just put air in it. This past Sunday the poor kid hit (just grazed no damage) my dad's new tractor. My dad's first brand new tractor in lord knows how long and Andy had to be the one to hit it. Of course he will never live it down even though there was no damage.

We have had grain bin dryers that didn't work. The bin repair people worked on one four days in a row with the same problem. As soon as they leave it would break again. Then the grain bin at our house broke. Tim would come home from work and have to work on the bin.

Then, we are not done yet...The combine broke down. That was a two day fix. This was all happening while the weather was beautiful and you kept hearing the local weather people telling farmers to wait until it rains to get the crops out because of it being dry and the potential for field fires. Now what is wrong with that advice? These people obviously have never farmed. You can not combine crops in the rain. Fires are a hazard that farmers deal with much like the weather, there is no control. Just be prepared! And my dad was, he made sure there was a fire extinguisher in the combine and a disc hooked up to a tractor. I stayed home the days they combined beans at my house, just incase.

One weekend the joke was anything Tim touched he broke. None of which was his doing and thank goodness he could fix it but hoses were coming off the tractors, the 4-wheeler froze up, the tractors that were running the auger were not working. It was just one thing after another.

Tuesday they finished all my dad's fields! Yea!

 We rent some ground from Tim's  mom and we are also in a 50/50 with someone on some more ground. It was time to start the harvest at these fields. We hire a friend of Tim's to combine those fields because it was closer for the them. Everything went well on Wednesday evening combining the small field at his mom's. Thursday while driving the combine to another field a wheel fell off of the combine. Scott (the owner of the combine) was so lucky he kept it under control. The road was shut down for several hours until everything could be moved. Needless to say the combine is out of commission. My dad who happen to be on the phone at the time with Scott, calls his combine man and he comes to our rescue. Now dad's combine operator is combining and Scott's crew is hauling what a combination, but it works. Now the Ethanol plant we are hauling to is getting to much corn and shut down on Friday at noon and then again this past Saturday at noon. So hopefully Monday we can be done and then begins the prep work for next year.

You might wonder what I do if I am not hauling grain and I am definitely not working on broken equipment? I am the taxi driver. I take them to the fields or pick them up when they get the equipment to the field. I am also the lunch lady. On the weekends I make sure they have one hot lunch but most of the time it is just sandwiches because they eat on the go. No stopping! A farmer starts when it is day light and they go til dark. I also usually have dinner ready as well if I am not working. I am also the photography, I love to document everything with a picture. I have so many pictures of tractors, cows, chickens it is a little ridiculous.

So you see it takes a small army to farm, a army that loves to be outside, that can work on anything that can basically take anything that is dished out and still laugh about because at the end it all gets done!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Oh Chicken Poo!

Did you know that the average chicken poops 30 lbs per year?  Why are you asking is this something you need to know? You don't! But I was wondering as Tim and I cleaned out the chicken house this weekend. We got to talking and couldn't remember when the last time we cleaned it out. That is bad! I am sure it was sometime this past summer we just couldn't remember when. We have 40 chickens that is 1200 lbs of poo! I swear it was all in the chicken house and why? These birds get to go outside whenever they want why not do their duty outside?

So I got online to find out that chickens poo before they fly and when they get scared. They do not poo when they are sleeping. SO, they can not fly in the chicken house (there is nests and roosts) so they must be getting scared! I have noticed a lot of feathers lately thought maybe they just drop them because of the weather change, but I haven't found any dead chickens.

We leave the dogs out in the summer so they can chase away critters. We hear them bark during the night but I never see anything. We once set up a live trap after losing 26 guineas and caught a rim horn owl. He was a pretty owl but he wasn't a nice owl. I got to look at him all day as we tried to decide what to do with him. (It is against the law to shoot them) We called the DNR and they said we should release him at least 15 miles away.

So getting back to poo. I found out that breeder hen litter goes for $19.67 per ton. We would only be about 800 lbs shy of making $20. (Tim is laughing right now because I am always trying to find ways to make money on the farm from the most random things). Next problem who would buy it? I can not see charging for poo!

Did you also know that one chicken lays 260 eggs a year. Forty chickens minus 5 roosters and we SHOULD have about 9100 eggs a year, that is 758 dozen eggs to sell. Notice the should! We seem to be a "do not get rid of" farm. We have some old chickens.  Chickens only lay eggs for about two years and their meat is only good for three years. We have some chickens that bless their little hearts have stayed around for about six years now. What are we suppose to do with them? Tim has had to shoot roosters (we have had a few that would try to fight us) but I do not think my hunter can shoot a hen especially when they come wobbling toward us at feeding time and can not wait for the bread crumbs or the sweet corn we are giving as treats.

I remember when I was a kid my family and my Grandma would dress about 100 chickens. That would mean that Grandma would pull their necks (us kids would love to watch them flapping around, it was our job to get them from under the vehicles). They would then put them in hot water and pull off the feathers. My Grandma would then chop off their heads and feet. We would clean some more then my dad would cut into pieces and we would put into freezer bags. Easy! (of course we kids didn't do any of the work).

Now it is our turn and I do not think I have the stomach for it. There are no lockers around that do this anymore (I have checked!) So what do we do? If anyone has any ideas or would like to help and do not mind doing most of the work if my stomach gets to me, let us know? We need to do something soon. We have more egg customers than eggs right now and I can not get more chickens until we do something with the old.

 And I thought this farming stuff would be easy!
Aren't they cute!

 That was our Owl friend. We moved him to 
Webster City.