Another Amazing Day. Where Were These Days In Spring?

Some days I struggle with these writings because there is so much that could be written, and so little creative energy left at the end of the day that I aim for the high points.  These last days I could have written about the fact that we got a milk check again on Friday.  This check is the one that they give us more money than we have coming since we are contracted low.  From now until the 16th of next month we get to pretend it is really ours.  Our current special needs cows milk culture came back with an infection that will need to be treated for atleast 10 days which just drags milking out longer than we like.  We have been breeding cows like crazy. The wet spring and heat has moved this to later in summer than we like, which of course moves calving later and will collide with planting next spring. I try not to think about that. If Ed is cutting hay and we are chopping we have 34 tires involved.  The flat tire on the chopper the other morning didn't seem like a big deal, especially compared to our earlier breakdown list.  Bruce announced this morning that his apple tree grafts have a few apples this year.  He is excited that we will again eat apples from his grandmother's tree, even if at this point it's only a few. When Bruce has any free minutes at all he likes to putter in the garden.  This garden is small by Bruce's normal gardening style but it's growing well and we are excited about tomatoes and peppers that are now ripe and cantelope (Bruce's favorite) growing not quite fast enough to suit him.  We also have a bush cucumber and butternut squash and that's it.  Bruce grows his tomatoes between cattle pannels so they take less space and grow up. I have one flower bed and that is currently growing weeds.  Having so much spring rain, along with every potential nice day being used for farming or working in town, I was forced to be realistic and just give up on adding another job to my list.  I love dahlias and usually plant and dig them every year.  We had the garden covered with plastic so we could uncover it and plant when we had time, we just planted the bulbs there when we planted everything else.  I think the bulbs would have rotted by the time the flower bed finally dried out anyway.  They are now making us smile : )

dinner plate dahlias just have to make you smile : )

The tomato's are behind Bruce.  We have 14 this year in 32' of pannels

We continued chopping today.  We are slower at getting it done for a couple reasons.  The cutting takes the same amount of time as always.  Third crop is generally about 1/3 of what you harvest for first crop by design of how the plant grows.  For this reason we tend to rake a few windrows together first so there is more field time for Bruce and less for me.  Another reason to take our time is the silo continues to settle so if we add some every few days we get more in.  Ed stopped cutting a couple days ago because we were waiting for the bagger we rent.  Matt thought we could have one a couple days ago.  The frustrating part about renting is you have to wait. We have done this long enough to know that things happen and we too have had things happen and been the ones messing with the next guys schedule.  For this reason we don't cut until we see a bagger as a general rule.  Matt brought one this morning so Ed came today to start cutting again.  Bruce went out with the chopper to start which definitely scored points with me.  The strips we are chopping today are the ones I like the least.  They aren't very big but they are the steepest ones we have and always make me nervous, even after all these years.  I got out there and Bruce was out of the tractor looking for something.  When I got closer I realized he was rescuing a toad he had seen.  With the toad delivered to the corn field I continued to chop.  Mike road with me again.  He goes with Bruce all the time but these days are the first he has been with me in the tractor.  Today on the hillside he kept sliding under my feet while he slept which made using the clutch a bit dangerous for him.  Bruce came to switch chopper boxes when I got to the bottom strip.  This strip goes into a point which either requires driving in and backing back out with a tractor, chopper and chopper box or you just chop as close as you can get. Since Bruce was there he agreed to chop.  For many years Bruce was convinced that I could learn to back all of that up, and I can to a certain point.  A few years ago I decided to try to clean out a point by driving in and backing up and turning.  I was SO excited that I got all the hay cleaned up and managed to get out again, that is until I was back on the wind row and looked back.  I had managed to hit the blower spout on the chopper box and twist it so what I was chopping was being blown directly into the next field!  Since then Bruce has decided it's less time consuming to do it himself : )  Just as he got done he heard a "bang".  Randomly we pick up rocks that go through the chopper. Based on the damage he suspects this time it was a piece of metal, quite possibly off the haybine.  He had to stop and reset 3 knives that had gotten crooked, were hitting the shearbar,and making noise.  The last  loads chopped today went into the bagger.  We still have room in the silo so we will be filling both for a couple days.  The weather is perfect and as of today we have 62 acres harvested with 29 to go.