January 7th, 2025
7:30 AM I spend the first 45 minutes of the day trying to get the door of my truck open. A quarter inch of ice has the cracks of the door filled in tight and the plastic door handle does not stand a chance of prying it open. It’s a slow process in the winter. 9:17 AM I’m still 25 miles away from the farm and the road conditions have deteriorated quickly. Owen county received about 8 inches of snow but hardly any ice at all. This section of roadway apparently was plowed early in the storm and hasn’t received any attention since. It’s a slow process in the winter. 10:33 AM Arrive at the farm to find Greg getting the cows in the barn. They have found the weak fence and helped themselves to the hay in the hoop barns. They will now get sorted into two groups and moved to the two hay self feeders at the back of the farm. But first, we have to do the morning chores. 11:45 AM Finished busting ice open for all the groups to have water. All cattle are accounted for and doing well in the cold snowy conditions. Inventory shows we will need to feed 7 rolls of hay today. That will come later after we sort cows and move heifers out of the paddocks. We decide to eat an early lunch while we are near the house, before we go to the far side of the farm to move the heifers (this turned out the be a wise choice). 12:34 PM We head to the paddocks where 31 of our first and second calf heifers have been grazing stockpiled fescue. We need to gather them and move them to the heifer maternity barn where they will start eating hay and will calve in about 45 days. At first we do not see any animals. Once located, a quick count shows we are 7 head short. We find the last 7 head in the absolute farthest paddock from where they need to go. All 22 paddock gates will need to be closed. The 7 head have decided they like their spot down out of the weather and do not want to leave their paddock. Greg and I trek down the steep paddock and walk them up onto the lane. This takes at least a half hour of stomping and sliding on the steep snow covered ground in wet, heavy Carhartt gear. We decided we have had our cardio for the day, but the heifers are on the alley and can start their mile trek to the maternity pasture. 2:41 PM The heifers have made their way to a water pen that was left open and they will need pushed out of it and one more gate opened so they can get to the maternity barn. With the gates switched, we head out of the pasture when suddenly there is a bang from under the front of the truck. We are unsure of what has broken, but there is no longer any 4-wheel drive to pull us along and we are stuck. We abandon the farm truck and hike back to the house in heavy Carhartt gear. More cardio. We fetch the tractor and pull the truck to the house. It’s not much help in 2-wheel drive in the deep snow. We will finish our day using the tractor. It’s a slow process in the winter. 4:10 PM The cows in the barn still need sorted and moved to their hay feeding barns. Greg gets them sorted and I move the first group back the farm lane to the smaller self hay feeder. Greg brings the second group to the large bale feeder. We still have to fix the weak spot in the fence so everything stays where they should. 5:45 PM It has gotten dark and we still need to feed three bales to the calves. Luckily all the lights on the tractor work! But sharing the tractor cab with a roll of barbed wire, an ice chopping axe and a manure fork slow the process of getting in and out to get gates and cut string. 6:25 PM I take off all the wet, heavy Carhartt clothes, throw them in the back seat, and begin the slick two hour drive home. We have accomplished the days chores and all the cows are fed and comfortable. But it’s a slow process in the winter!
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Welcome to 2025! I hope you enjoyed Christmas and New Years with family and friends. It is always good to start the new year off with the rest and reset of the holidays.
During the past month at the farm we have been catching up on some projects that never seem to make it to the top of the list. A water leak caused our contractor to mobilize and address the urgent issue of water running down the side of the hill. In typical Eden Shale fashion, the water leak was coming from an old galvanized water line that didn’t run to anything, and previously we didn’t know it existed. With the water line now fixed, we had a list of other things for our contractor to do while he was onsite. We spread seven loads of rock onto existing winter feeding sites. We are developing a winter feeding structure for the heifers in which we procured some free road millings from a recent road widening project near the farm. This structure is the last location that we still feed hay with hay rings and it will soon utilize a Bo Renfrow structure to feed hay with additional bunk space for grain, and a creep area for the calves. It will also have incorporated a manure stack pad and wind break structures for the animals. One other project included completing an intermittent creek crossing. The above mentioned road widening project took out our main alleyway going to the west side of the farm. Recreating the alley proved to be too expensive so we created a crossing from one field into the adjacent paddocks. The contractor utilized existing concrete that was removed from the heifers feeding site and placed it as armoring for the new crossing. It turned out nice, and it should protect the small stream channel from the occasional crossing of animals from one side of the farm to the other. Other projects included adding a 3000 gallon tank to the water harvesting system at the heifer barn. This will give us approximately 7000 gallon capacity to water livestock with, but it now has the duel purpose of being able fill up our sprayer with harvested water using a 2 inch pipe. We have not tried the system yet, but initial calculations of the flow rate of a 2” pipe suggest that our 300 gallon sprayer can be filled in under 10 minutes. To compare, the garden hose with good pressure was taking approximately 50 minutes to fill the sprayer. That is a massive reduction of downtime while refilling the sprayer. I will give you an update once we start spraying in the spring. I hope your new year is productive and I look forward to seeing everyone at the KCA Convention in Owensboro. |
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