Dairy Update

It's been crazy busy here lately. I'll put it to you this way. It's 8pm on Thursday and here I am blogging instead of watching The Office, because we just finished supper. It's been this way for weeks. The guys have been busy in the field. Our crops are out sans about 3 acres of corn. Pat is busy applying anhydrous ammonia (nitrogen fertilizer). His dad has been working on hauling out the manure pile. We stockpile during the summer when our crops are growing and haul it out in the fall after harvest. Since they are busy doing field work, that leaves the milking chores to me, Pat's mom, and our hired help. That's not out of the ordinary, but it means there is no getting done early!

If that isn't enough, we've also been calving heavily. Our cows calve year round but for some reason we always seem to calve heavier in the fall and spring. You'd think we could time that better! I'm currently at 25 calves, down from our peak of 30. We've had 5 sets of twins since the 13th of October! I've been pestering Pat for an actual calf barn instead of our hutches. We use wooden hutches with 5 or 7 pens in each hutch. A lot of people like the poly domes, but those didn't work well for us. The wooden ones keep our calves cool and shaded in the summer and insulated in the winter. I like our hutches, however, hauling milk to the 24 calves behind the barn gets to be a pain, especially in the mud and snow. My dream is to have some type of building (hoop barn or whatever) with 36-40 plastic stalls and an attached, heated, prep room. Funny, when did that become my dream...

At any rate, it's been busy on and off the farm. I have a 30 minute presentation to prepare fo school and so far all I've done is read the article I'm presenting on. I'm still searching for my motivation but it's not in the carpets that need to be cleaned, or the windows that need to be washed, or the piles of laundry that need to be folded, or the new blinds that need to be put up, or the mud room that's getting redone. I bet it's hiding in the dirty bathrooms or on the sticky kitchen floor. Someone remind me why I volunteered to host Thanksgiving this year???