WI Farm Life: Posting Catch Up Attempt

The first part of the week is always really busy. Joe helped me milk on Sunday night, and at this point, it looks like it will be Bruce and I for the rest of the week. While we milked Bruce hauled 3 loads of manure out of our spreader pit. When we built that area the intention was to have it deep enough so the spreader can be driven under the cleaner easily, and the cleaner could be installed as flat as possible so the cleaner would work easily. We have found this area useful as a holding pit and have been using it for a few weeks for the cow manure. The pit is now full enough that it is to the door so its time to clean. The manuer now gets hauled to the back of our farm and piled where it will be easy to reload and spread next fall. We let the cows out on pasture during the day yesterday. The sun was out and it did get warm. The cows are also getting used to not working for their feed so they spent more time complaining about being out there than we liked. When they came in the barn they continued to complain because Bruce didn't feed them as much as they had grown accustomed to. They were outside last night and inside today. The forecast was for upper 80's and building humidity but the humidity never did happen. As it turned out they could have been outside today also but we had hay to chop and knew we wouldn't have time to let them in and feed them in the middle of the day. Another guess of what to do. From the forecast we suspect they will be spending days inside for the rest of the week. The last milk pick up was again down but only 100#. Our milk trucker says his route is down 30% and Bruce knows of 2 neighbors that had animals die in the last round of heat so we shouldn't complain. Due to the increased volume caused by the heat the rendering plants (dead stock pickeruppers) are so far behind that they can't get them picked up in a timely fashion so farmers are left with a carcass that in this heat has a very short shelf life. Our milk is down 12%. Tough on the milk check but it could be worse.

Ed cut the last of the 2nd crop yesterday and we chopped it today. We can officially claim 2nd crop is done. Once the first crop gets stretched out like it did this year, the rest of the harvests follow so that will be the theme for this season. Ed raked the hay, I chopped and Bruce unloaded. Later Bruce chopped, Ed unloaded and I took pictures! Hopefully I will get some of them attached here soon. Bruce shoveled the silo off so it is level and will put the cover back on it tomorrow. We are within 15 feet of the top with another crop to harvest. That crop will also include the seeding ground so we will have about 80 acres total in that round.

While Ed was cutting hay, Bruce got the heifers home and gave them their shots in anticipation of breeding them. We have concern as to how successful we will be with the heat and humidity in the forecast but the process was started last week so we will continue and be hopeful. AI breeding costs about $45 per service plus another $25 per head to synchronise them so it can get expensive if you aren't successful and have repeated attempts.

We did something today that we have never done before. We bought hail insurance for our corn crop. We had discussed it randomly but for some reason we both woke up this morning with the feeling that we needed to buy it. Hopefully we won't have to use it but there is peace of mind knowing we have that covered.

Today was our "guess" milk check day and I liked it! This check is for the milk we produced from the 1-15th of the month and is based on what the markets are doing. We have a contract and we know they gave us too much money. The good news is we get to use it until the 17th when they issue the final check for the month and subtract the extra then. It will be fun while it lasts!