As Thanksgiving approaches it seems appropriate to share a great video regarding food production! Thank you Paul Harvey for the kind words. It sums of the pride I have to be part of creating healthy, wholesome food for the world!!
Friday, November 11, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
2011 Harvest Season Completed!!
The past 30 days have been SUPER busy. I'm so very happy to say that on Tuesday, October 25th we tossed the last of the tires on a feed pile, covering the high moisture corn which will be fed to the cows over the coming year. Here are some facts about our high moisture corn pile:
- We harvested 180 acres of corn for grain, using a combine to take just the kernels off the cob. The average yield early in the season was about 185 bushel to the acre, however some terrible winds dropped the yields in some fields to about 160 bushel per acre from corn stalks braking off, making it impossible for the combine to harvest.
- Taking an average yield of 160 bushel per acre, off of 180 acres, puts the total corn harvested and stored on farm at 28,800 bushel. Today, corn traded on the market at $6.50 per bushel. Not having a feed bill to the tune of $187,200 JUST FOR CORN, makes all the hard work of growing our own crops worth it. It also makes us grateful for being provided with a good growing season, allowing us to take some corn for grain. During a poor crop year, we don't have that luxury.
- There were 6 of us out pulling plastic and tossing tires on the pile on Tuesday. I challenged the group to come up with a guess to the number of kernels of corn on the pile. Guesses ranged from 4 billion to 6 trillion. Based on "Yahoo Answers", there are 72,800 kernels in a bushel of corn, so a rough estimate is that we combined, ground and stored 2,096,440,000 kernels of corn. That's a tough number to read - it's just over 2 billion kernels.
- When we plant corn, we plant about 39,000 seeds per acre. On the 180 acres of corn that we harvested for grain, we would have planted 7,020,000 seeds, with a return over 2 billion kernels or a return of nearly 300 kernels for every one planted! To bad the stock market can't provide that!!!
Anyway, here are some videos of the process we go through once all those seeds get back to the farm.
- We harvested 180 acres of corn for grain, using a combine to take just the kernels off the cob. The average yield early in the season was about 185 bushel to the acre, however some terrible winds dropped the yields in some fields to about 160 bushel per acre from corn stalks braking off, making it impossible for the combine to harvest.
- Taking an average yield of 160 bushel per acre, off of 180 acres, puts the total corn harvested and stored on farm at 28,800 bushel. Today, corn traded on the market at $6.50 per bushel. Not having a feed bill to the tune of $187,200 JUST FOR CORN, makes all the hard work of growing our own crops worth it. It also makes us grateful for being provided with a good growing season, allowing us to take some corn for grain. During a poor crop year, we don't have that luxury.
- There were 6 of us out pulling plastic and tossing tires on the pile on Tuesday. I challenged the group to come up with a guess to the number of kernels of corn on the pile. Guesses ranged from 4 billion to 6 trillion. Based on "Yahoo Answers", there are 72,800 kernels in a bushel of corn, so a rough estimate is that we combined, ground and stored 2,096,440,000 kernels of corn. That's a tough number to read - it's just over 2 billion kernels.
- When we plant corn, we plant about 39,000 seeds per acre. On the 180 acres of corn that we harvested for grain, we would have planted 7,020,000 seeds, with a return over 2 billion kernels or a return of nearly 300 kernels for every one planted! To bad the stock market can't provide that!!!
Anyway, here are some videos of the process we go through once all those seeds get back to the farm.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The View from my Office!!
Monday, October 10, 2011
Corn Silage Harvest is Finished!!!
This year, we harvested about 750 acres of corn for silage. September was particularly busy since while we were filling our 2 existing bunkers, we were also pressing to get a new feed storage pad built. In addition to hiring an engineer to design the pad, we needed to submit our plans to the DNR and get their approval.
The above picture was taken on a Friday, September 16th. You can see the large earth movers on the left side of the mirror - they were working on building our vegetative treatment area. This is a 5 acre piece of land that will act as a buffer should any nutrients run off the feed storage area. The large rectangular piece to the right of the mirror is undergoing final grading and where 4" of asphalt was poured the following week.
This next video was taken the following week when the silage pad was complete. My nephew's Austin and Nate found this to be a great place to run with their RipSticks. Unfortunately, they only had a few days before we started putting silage on the pad.
This video was taken from the pack tractor as we were putting feed on the new silage pad.
The overall size of this pile is 120' x 275'. In all it holds about 5800 ton of corn silage off of 250 acres. It took this group (plus 4 others not pictured) about 2 hours to roll out the plastic and lay out about 2400 tires on the pile.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Unrealistic Expectations....
The past few weeks have been VERY full...until a rainstorm last weekend that dropped 3 inches of rain in our neighborhood. That brought things to a screeching halt. We still have 285 acres of our own corn silage to put up and some of our uncles as well. That will be followed by manure applications for next years crops, a cutting of 80 acres of oatlage and harvesting 170 acres of high moisture corn. So with all that's left to do before frost and freezing temperatures, it's no wonder that the past few days we've been trying endlessly to make some progress with our corn harvest. It has meant several trucks getting stuck, needing to have a tractor and person in the field to pull them out and of course a lot of mud...that's where this is going...
You see we live in a land of plenty, but there still seems to be many people out there who want to enjoy highly nutritious dairy and beef products, but without ever encountering mud, odor, traffic...you get my drift. As far as I know the only way possible to get those products without those added inconveniences is to ship the cows out of the US - and I'm not sure that I want my food to be imported.
My frustration today stems from a visit by the town road supervisor. So we admittedly were tracking mud onto the road, but we also had a tractor with a scraper and a sweeper mounted on it to use intermittently to clear off the roads. Apparently we were doing a good enough job since he directed us to put a person on that tractor to continuously clean off those roads and if that didn't get it clean enough, they would order the fire department out to wash down the road. So, that was my job for the afternoon...I drove back and forth on the 1/8 mile stretch of road, scraping and sweeping, sweeping and scraping. We eventually did finish that field. I even continued sweeping when it started drizzling but opted to duck in the truck for about 5 minutes when it hailed. For about 30 minutes after all our equipment pulled out, I continued in the rain and wind to make sure our town road supervisor would be satisfied (he did drive by just as the hail started so he better not ever say we didn't try). When I finally, drove the tractor the 4 miles back to the farm (in the rain and by this time I was shivering uncontrollably) the road was clear of all debris.
It would have been so much easier to have taken a day off today and waited for things to dry out, however time is not on our side. And while I'm sorry to have such a negative attitude in today's post, I did feel it was important to remind folks that we do the best we can, but sometime we get pressured into working in less than ideal conditions and the result may be mud on the roads. But in the end we should all be grateful that we live in the land of plenty and are blessed with so very much. I probably wouldn't have reacted this way if we didn't already try so hard to keep neighbors happy. You see, we sent out 90 car washed to those who live near the fields we operate just a few weeks ago, asking them for their patience. We also bought that tractor I used today with the blade and sweeper specifically for this purpose and take great care to put out orange warning cones in situations like this. In the end though, one persons complaint and lack of understanding made a tough day even worse!!
Sorry no pictures, but I was too wet to dig my camera phone out of my pocket. More to come soon...I promise!!!
You see we live in a land of plenty, but there still seems to be many people out there who want to enjoy highly nutritious dairy and beef products, but without ever encountering mud, odor, traffic...you get my drift. As far as I know the only way possible to get those products without those added inconveniences is to ship the cows out of the US - and I'm not sure that I want my food to be imported.
My frustration today stems from a visit by the town road supervisor. So we admittedly were tracking mud onto the road, but we also had a tractor with a scraper and a sweeper mounted on it to use intermittently to clear off the roads. Apparently we were doing a good enough job since he directed us to put a person on that tractor to continuously clean off those roads and if that didn't get it clean enough, they would order the fire department out to wash down the road. So, that was my job for the afternoon...I drove back and forth on the 1/8 mile stretch of road, scraping and sweeping, sweeping and scraping. We eventually did finish that field. I even continued sweeping when it started drizzling but opted to duck in the truck for about 5 minutes when it hailed. For about 30 minutes after all our equipment pulled out, I continued in the rain and wind to make sure our town road supervisor would be satisfied (he did drive by just as the hail started so he better not ever say we didn't try). When I finally, drove the tractor the 4 miles back to the farm (in the rain and by this time I was shivering uncontrollably) the road was clear of all debris.
It would have been so much easier to have taken a day off today and waited for things to dry out, however time is not on our side. And while I'm sorry to have such a negative attitude in today's post, I did feel it was important to remind folks that we do the best we can, but sometime we get pressured into working in less than ideal conditions and the result may be mud on the roads. But in the end we should all be grateful that we live in the land of plenty and are blessed with so very much. I probably wouldn't have reacted this way if we didn't already try so hard to keep neighbors happy. You see, we sent out 90 car washed to those who live near the fields we operate just a few weeks ago, asking them for their patience. We also bought that tractor I used today with the blade and sweeper specifically for this purpose and take great care to put out orange warning cones in situations like this. In the end though, one persons complaint and lack of understanding made a tough day even worse!!
Sorry no pictures, but I was too wet to dig my camera phone out of my pocket. More to come soon...I promise!!!
Sunday, September 25, 2011
This summer's wheat harvest
For the past several years, we have worked wheat into our crop rotation. The wheat that is harvested is sold to our local coop and the straw that remains is baled off the field to fill our bedding need for the baby calves. This year we hauled over 600 bales off 108 acres - which is a pretty solid harvest. The following videos show us hauling those bales off the field and back to the farm.
Kelly and Bernie both have some mad skidsteer driving skills!!
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
My Fair Ladies!!
Last week was the Manitowoc County Fair, which for our family means there were craft projects to paint and lots of baked goods to eat. It also was quite busy due to the fact that Kelsey showed three of Soaring Eagle's finest calves. Ever since I was a kid, we would typically earn red and white ribbons with the occosional blue, but since this was a hobby for us and not a competition that made or broke us, we were always okay with that.
This year, much to our surprise, all three calves not only earned blue ribbons, but won their respective class. The following are video clips of Kelsey walking each calf out of the show ring:
This year, much to our surprise, all three calves not only earned blue ribbons, but won their respective class. The following are video clips of Kelsey walking each calf out of the show ring:
Kelsey and her March calf Konnor
Kelsey and her December calf Kaitlyn
Kelsey and her September calf Marli - note there was no competition in this class.
The real highlight of the day was having Kelsey and her cousins Brooke and Austin each walk one of these winning calves back into the ring for Junior Champion. Such a proud day for our family!!
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