Abilene and Special Occasions

So I'm writing this on Saturday! YEAH! Yes, that's right a day before I post blogs, I'm writing it! I know that may not be a big deal for you, but I don't remember the last time I wrote the blog before Sunday! It's the small things in life that I get excited about!

So not a lot of about agriculture this week again. We've been finishing up wrapping hay and putting up hay. We still need to haul it. So not a lot of new things happening on the farm that I haven't blogged about before so I thought I would spend this week giving an update about Abilene and all the celebrations in our lives.

Abilene is now 4 months, 10 days old. She's getting spayed soon. She goes with me everywhere. We're always in and out of everything. She does less sleeping then she did when she first came. Abilene loves playing with other dogs/puppies. Luckily, Matt's sister, Jenny, has an outside dog that Abilene plays with several times a day to burn some of that puppy energy. I'm in the process of training her. We're so bless to have my cousin and cousin-in-law be basically professional dog trainers. They have several years of experience and are helping me a ton! Thanks Donda and Denny! She will sit, down and stay. She does this both on leash and off leash. I feel like a mom bragging about her children and you all probably care as much as those people listening to those moms. I get really excited about when she learns something new! We're in the process of making her a cattle dog so she can be a real farm dog! And she's doing excellent in her training! I love my puppy, but if we ever get another dog, we're going with at least a year old dog. The puppy experience is something I wanted to go through, but now that I'm going through it I don't need to do it again. Once is plenty...and my puppy is REALLY good. I can't imagine an untrained puppy. That would be awful! She's doubled in size since we got her. She's now 30 pounds. That's the update on my puppy. And all I got wrote on Saturday. Now it's Sunday. Feels more normal to be blogging on Sunday. It was a good attempt at not procrastinating!

Now for all the other special people in my life this week...(I'll go in order of event date)...

Henry and Margaret (my parents-in-laws) had their 27th Anniversary on the 25th. (Thanks Moe for putting the number of years on Facebook!) So we had a little dinner party on Friday night-the 25th. Now for those of you who don't know, you might be thinking I'm a very considerate daughter-in-law...having dinner for them on their anniversary. Well...you can stop thinking that. We had a neighbor family that did quite a bit to help with our wedding so I've been meaning to have them over for dinner to thank them. Well, just a mere 9 1/2 months after the wedding, I finally decided enough was enough they were coming over for dinner that night! So I call my mother-in-law and ask her to do this, this, this and this. Not knowing it was their anniversary because her son, the one I'm married to, neglected to mention to me that it was their anniversary. Our neighbors, the Slipke's, get here and Phyllis was talking about how she'd left their anniversary card at home. All I can say is thank God for good neighbors that know what's going on! Cuz I sure in the world don't! Epic fail on my first year as a daughter-in-law! Anyway, happy anniversary to you two and thanks for getting married and having your son so he could grow up and I could fall in love with him!

Margaret, Matt, myself and Henry

Next, Mauricio, Matt's brother's son, had his 8th birthday on the 25th as well! Happy birthday to him! And yes, another epic fail...do you think I got his gift sent to him on time? Of course, not. I haven't even got their Christmas gifts to them. So I apologize, but happy birthday to Mauricio and hope you had a fantastic day!

I thought I had a much better picture than this one, but can't seem to find it. Mauricio is the boy on the very right with the purple shirt. He filled in for his brother that was sick for being a sign carrier. He did a great job and I'm sure there is a picture somewhere, but like I said, I'm not finding it.

Next, Brooke, the Slipke's oldest daughter. She turned 6 on the 26th! Happy birthday to her! So glad that the Slipke's are in our lives and I apologize to those of you that don't have the Slipke's for neighbors because you're missing out on the best neighbors ever. I've been blessed to get to know them a lot better after I got married. They are amazing people and have beautiful daughters. It's always such a joy to get to be around them.

Brooke is on the left. Abilene in the middle and April on the right.

Next, Autumn, my oldest sister Kristen's daughter, is turning 3 today! We're hosting her birthday party at our house this afternoon. This little girl means so much to me. She's the first child I've really ever been around so everything I know about children has come from her. She's such an absolute blessing and joy.

I am not crafty at all. Not at all. So I'm very proud of myself for this. My sister picked this up and it was just wooden. Unpainted. So I painted it. For you crafty souls, you're waiting for the hard part. That was extremely difficult for me! I'm not patient at all so doing the details was incredibly time consuming! I'm so proud of my work. I was so excited when Matt got home the night I finished it. I was basically jumping up and down. Okay to be real...I was jumping up and down. You're already judging my non-crafty skills so might as well tell you the truth. 

Brome Seed Harvesting

Another week gone already? Surely not! We cut a little brome seed this year. Brome seed really isn't very fun to cut. It's fairly labor intensive. For those that don't know, brome seed comes off the top part of brome grass. The seed is grown on the top of the plant instead of on the inside like an apple. Combines go through and cut just the top part off. The seed goes into the combine bin and leaves the majority of the grass. Farmers can either mow the rest off for brome hay or graze it with cattle. Brome seed has to be pushed out of the bin. It's so light and fluffy it doesn't run out of the bin like other crops do. Brome seed is cut in the summer so you're pushing brome out of the bin when it's really hot. Once on the truck or wagon, it has to be stomped or packed down. Otherwise, you don't get nearly a full load. Then the seed sticks to socks and other clothing and one must pull this seed out one by one. See it's really not a fun process. However, it pays pretty good, so it makes it worthwhile.

This is Matt putting the head on. The head has to be taken off in between the different fields. 

So the yellowish stuff is the seed on top of the grass. That's what we're cutting. 

This is the a cut field of brome seed. 

This is Matt on top of the combine bin. That is the brome seed. He's in the process of pushing the brome seed out of the bin. This is very dangerous because there are augers in the bottom of the bin that he could potentially fall in. There are covers on the augers, but it's still very dangerous and should be treated with great care. 

We're were racing a storm, so I apologize this picture is dark. You can almost see Matt stomping the brome seed down so we could put more seed on the truck. 

 That's about all I got this week. It's been a very busy week with haying and wrapping hay and everything else we're doing. My immune system is telling me no more with a cold today. Thankfully, my dear husband told me I can rest and I'm very much enjoying it even though there is a lot of hay to be put up.

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Why Am I a Farmer?

The question of the week...why am I a farmer? Extremely long hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, intense physical challenges, uncooperative animals, work that needs done all at the same time, extreme stress, short tempers, words spoken (or yelled) that aren't meant, feelings hurt, animals that die and break your heart, hail storm, wind storms, storms in general that kill the crops that you spent the whole year trying to make, hours working with my spouse in all the aforementioned circumstances which leads to the words that aren't meant, the hurt feelings and hours of guilt for having said such awful things to the one person in the whole world that you are to SHOW the action of love to at ALL times.

This week has been the most difficult week of my married life. Yes, all 9 months of it. It's been a week filled with extreme stress, 500 jobs that need done RIGHT NOW or better yet 3 hours ago, several fights between Matt and I and tension with Henry. Hay needs mowed, brome seed needs cut, the brome head needs to be moved here, the wagon to hold the brome seed here, hay needs raked, brome head needs moved again, the wagon to here, the hay needs baled, the head needs moved, wagon here, hay needs hauled, wagon needs to be dumped, cows are out, and the list has gone on and on and on and on and on and on. The past couple weeks we've been working 14-15 hours days. Our routine has been to get up early, grab breakfast on the way out the door, work hard all day long, come home shower and fall in to bed exhausted, get a few hours sleep and repeat the next day. It has been physically and mentally draining.

The thought has crossed my mind more than once this week...why am I a farmer? I have an associates and bachelor's degree, I was involved in a lot of extracurricular activites, I'm a hard worker, I show up on time, I work while I'm there, I'd make a great employee to the right company. I could work an 8-5, come home in the evenings and work on the home improvements that I think about doing while driving the tractors, I could have the weekends off to do whatever I want, I could actually cook rather than using only a microwave. Several of you have told me, "Wait until you have kids...you think you don't have any time now, just wait." So why don't I do it? Why don't I walk away from the grueling hours, the stress, the arguments, the heart break?

I don't know. Yep, that's my answer. I don't know why I don't. Life would be a lot less complicated. I don't know why I don't. But I've created a list of some of the reasons that make farm life worth it.

1. I love Matt more than words can express. He's my whole life. He makes me so incredibly happy. He's the best thing in the whole world. He is my Forever and ever. Ask Matt what I've thought of him this week and I GUARANTEE those 5 sentences are NOT going to be the what he tells you. Having the chance to work with him everyday is a blessing that most married couples don't get to experience. Often I have to remind myself of what a blessing it is when he's telling me I'm doing something incorrectly. Correction-I'm not doing it the way he does it-which, of course, makes it wrong. Weeks like these make our marriage so much stronger. Somebody told me on our wedding day that couples that can work together stay together. I know, I know, it's only been 9 months, we're hardly experts, but I cherish every moment we have spent together (some moments more than others) and don't want to spend the days away from him with an 8-5. 
2. The rush of adrenaline, pride and sense of rightness (is that a word?) I feel usually early in the morning and late at night after a long day of working and accomplishing a lot. There is no other feeling in the whole world that competes with the feeling of turning that last cow/calf pair out to grass for the summer, beating the storm to get everything in and get done just as the first big drops of rain start to fall, or harvesting a good grain crop that you've been working on for most of the year. No other feeling competes with it. 
3. And last, but certainly not least, I am feeding the world. I'm a very, very, very, very, very small part of feeding the world, but I am part. I am part of the reason that we are making huge strides in making sure that every person in the world has adequate nutrition, in making sure that by 2050 when the world population gets to 9 billion that there will be food to feed everyone. Me in our own little part of the world am growing food, fiber and fuel that is shipped all over to feed, cloth and power the world. I am part of the less than 2% of America's population that is involved in production agriculture. The food, fiber and fuel that I help produce is feeding the scientists that are working to find a cure for cancer, putting clothes on the backs of the children in America and elsewhere that need hope and can get that hope from knowing someone cares enough to produce clothes for them, and fueling your car so you can get to work so you can continue to make the positive difference in the world that you are making. I'm a very small part, but the work that I do is helping make all those things possible. There's nothing else that I would rather do. 

So there you have it. I farm because I love working with my Forever, the feeling I get knowing I'm making a difference and knowing that I'm a very small part of feeding the world. Trust me, I will be reading this blog again, probably this week to remind myself again of these reasons. 

On a less serious note, I've had several people tell me they couldn't comment on the blog. I believe I have changed that so anybody can comment without having an account. Please don't abuse this or I will have to change it back. 

Another side note, I've been thinking about changing the name of the blog to something much shorter. To those creative ones of you, please comment your suggestions. The two I was thinking about are

1. Blessed Farmer
2. Why we Farm

Names need to be much shorter than my current one and something memorable. I was going to try to leave the blessed part in there, but not opposed to changing it if something better comes up. Please let me know your ideas! 

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

Haying

First and foremost Happy late Fourth of July. I hope you all had a fantastic time with your families and really took the time to reflect on what the fourth of July is all about. I spent the evening in the hay field picking up little squares of hay with my father-in-law and mother-in-law while my dear Forever tried to get the bale truck going so we didn't have to pick them up. Thankfully, he was successful, but we still picked up almost a trailer full so he wouldn't have to come back and get another load. We had an awesome view of about 5 different fireworks shows that I watched while loading the trailer.

This is the bale truck he was trying to get going, which he did! He's so talented at stuff like that. This truck picks up the bales, stacks them and then you can tip the bed up in the shed and it stacks them in the shed. If everything works right, you don't have to touch a single bale getting it to the shed. 

This was as close to the fireworks as I got and all I thought I was going to get to watch. Until later in the evening when we were loading the hay and we could see displays from our field. 

Such beautiful weather this Sunday morning that I decided to move out to our spacious deck to write the blog this week. It's been a busy and slightly stressful week for us. We've started putting up hay, started and finished cutting wheat and working on the streambank project we're doing. Lots and lots of things going on which means not enough sleep which means not as much patience which means an excellent week for marriage building.

My sister, Kristen, is in the process of writing a blog about wheat farming so I won't go into detail about the wheat harvest and let her do that explaining. The streambank isn't quite done yet so that leaves haying the focus of this blog.

The one picture I got of our wheat harvest. The combine dumping on to the truck with the grain cart in the background.

For those that don't know farmers put up hay in the summer to feed to their livestock in the winter when the snow is on the ground and the livestock can't get to grass. A lot in this area put up brome hay. Another common type is native grass.

The process hay undergoes to get to the final bale starts with mowing the hay. There are several different types of swathers, range in price from really expensive to not so much, they can go different speeds while swathing the hay, etc. Before cutting the hay, farmers look at the forecast to make sure there isn't a good chance of rain in the next day or two. Hay isn't supposed to get rained on once it gets cut. Then they must consider how much they can get raked and baled in the next day so the hay doesn't get too dry before it gets baled. Lots of things are considered before mowing the hay down.

After the hay is mowed down and cures for roughly 24 hours (that depends on weather conditions, humidity level, etc.) most hay gets raked before baling. Most have a rake that puts two of the swather windrows into one windrow for the baler. Of course, that depends on what type of baler they have, how heavy the hay is, etc. Putting the hay from one to two decreases time and inputs for the farmers. It also decreases the amount of hay that gets left. Raking the hay together flips the hay over so it can cure on the other side before it gets baled. Depending on weather conditions, the hay doesn't have to cure on very much after getting flipped.

Once raked together it is time for the baler. The baler takes the hay and forms a bale of hay. Depending on the type of baler, size of equipment to handle bales, storage space, feeding habits, etc. determines what size of bale you make. Some have four foot bales, some have five foot, some make big square, some make little squares. It all depends on the operation. Square bales have to be stored in a shed where they can't get rained on. They don't shed the water off like round bales do. Square bales absorb the water and that turns them moldy, then the livestock won't eat them which means that all the work you did to put them up was all wasted.

After you get them baled, they bales get stacked. If doing square bales, they are hauled immediately to a shed for storage. If doing round bales, they don't have to immediately be hauled. My parents always left them in the field for a week before hauling due to the fact that bales can start fires if they aren't allowed to sit in the field and get the heat out of them before being stacked together. The point is that you want to get them off the field before the grass starts growing again. If the bale is sitting on the grass when it starts growing again, the bale kills out the grass so it doesn't grow.

That's the shortened version of how hay goes from standing grass to baled, stacked hay. Then when winter hits and the livestock don't have any grass left or can't get to any due to snow, farmers then turn around and put the hay out to the cattle. There are all different ways to do that as well and depends on the operation for which method they use. If you have any questions, or I wasn't complete enough I would LOVE to answer your questions. So I apologize for not having any picture of the mower, rake or baler. Apparently, I was too busy doing the job, that I forgot to take pictures. I will try to get some pictures and update the blog so you can see the process, rather than just read about the process.

I've had a lot of people say that they can't comment in the blog. If that's the case, be sure to send me an email or Facebook message. I would love to hear from you!

My recipe this week is nothing exciting. Really it's not a recipe at all, but all about my creativity. Jenny, Moe or anyone else with any sense of creativity can stop reading now because you will think this is about the most pathetic attempt at creative and label me absolutely hopeless. I actually got Matt to grill for me last night and had my parents and Grandma come up for dinner. So in honor of the fourth of July I made a cake and decided to frost it like a flag. About halfway through any of my attempts at decorating anything, I decide I'm bored, not patient enough and most definitely don't have a steady enough hand to do intimate details. So to those of you that can decorate a cake or really do anything creative, I admire you and wish I had your skills. I unfortunately do not, but thankfully for you this isn't a craft blog. So here's my attempt and give me some credit for trying at least. AND the best part is that it tasted GREAT. Thank goodness food coloring and an awful decorator doesn't change the taste of the cake.