Chicken Day

Just came in from lighting the scalding tank.  The tank gets lit a 5am.  But chicken day starts the day before.  Yesterday George setup all of the equipment, and Sharon put the finishing touches on the labels and made sure all of the pick-ups are scheduled.

Hay 2014

It's that time of year again.  The time of year that I remember how wrong NOAA weather forecasts are, and how the NOAA models can't even seem to predict weather less than 48 hours out.  Yep, it's hay season.  Our hay inventory is low this year and it won't get better.  The hay was cut late and while that gave us a higher tonnage, it also means that that it's doubtful we'll get second cuttings.  And with the weather predictions being less than helpful, I'm glad that I switched out the original rollers on the mower to the B&D rollers.  We've been able to cut hay and get it baled a little on the high moisture side, but up in about 48 hours.  This week we should be done with hay, but we'll have to see what the weather does.

I'm a little be behind on keeping up so I'll try to run down where we are and what we're doing.

The dwarfs all look good and have been fastened to their trellis.

And with the rain that we've had in such a short amount of time, they're well watered in! We had some hail and that took a few branches off of one of the rows of the dwarfs. Strange, but it was an inside row.  Not any other row, just one. 

I went to an IPM field day the end of last week in Eastern Iowa.  It was very good.  The more time spent scouting and learning from others is extremely valuable.  It's one thing to see disease and insect problems in a book or on on-line, but it's much different to try to look for it on leaves and fruit in an orchard and then come up with a plan to deal with it.

Our current orchard activity is removing all of the apples from the trees and using cloths pins to correct crotch angles on the small upper branches.  

The orchard has been pretty clean with limited pest pressure so far.  The cedar apple rust is back, but not as extensive as last year so far.  I didn't treat for it this year, but with two years of infection data, we'll make sure we come up with a plan going into next year. We did get sun scald on

our trees that have lighter colored bark.  I don't have a good picture of it, but the problem comes in the winter from the sun warming the bark enough to allow water to flow, and then freezing. It kills the bark on the south facing side of the trees.  We'll have to see how they handle it over the next year or so.  The other issue we had was the hail. We pulled all of the apples off of the trees again this year, but before we pulled them, the hail damaged most of the apples and left them with dents in them.

That would be a real bummer to have the crop damaged by hail, but then I guess that it's just another one of those things that you can't control.

Hopefully this coming week will be dry enough to start cutting hay in ernest.  We got a small cutting off of the back of the farm, but the bulk of the hay is still waiting for its first cut.  It has to be great for the bees on the farm.  The alfalfa is in bloom and every pollinator in the county must be able to smell it, if they can smell.  If you want to know what heaven's going to smell like, just stand down wind of the hay field with the alfalfa blooming. And then when it's fresh cut, and then again when it's drying.  What awesome smells.

Last weekend we processed chickens.  They turned out really nice again.  It's great to be able to offer such a high quality product.  Feel free to stop out any time and take a look at how we raise the chickens.  I think you'll appreciate the difference and see why we take such pride in how they're raised and processed.  It takes a lot of management, but as with most things on the farm its a matter of managing and working within the variables of the natural environment vs controlling the variables.  One example that always amazes me is that the chickens don't get eaten by predators.  Having pens that they can get into at night for shelter is enough to keep the predation to a minimum while allowing them to roam during the day. The other extreme would be to keep them always penned up or to put them in a building where we would totally control that variable.  The chickens are extremely labor intensive, so there's always a debate about next year. 

Finally, the high tunnel raspberries are HUGE this year.  I should have pruned them back early in their growth, but I didn't and now we're paying the price by having canes that are ridiculous.  The raspberries not in the high tunnel are about 1/4 the height.  It will be interesting to see how the berry production is on these canes.

Dwarf Apples

Dwarf apples generally won't stand on their own.  And in NW Iowa where the wind blows hard most days, that means some type of support system is required for dwarf apples.

We started out by measuring, measuring some more, and finally measuring a little more, to determine where the new rows for the orchard would be placed.  Then we sunk some posts that are about 10' out of the ground.  Then we sunk some short posts into the ground and left about a foot out of the ground to act as a strainer against the long posts.  Next we ran a strait line between the posts and measured out for flagging where the trees would go.  We decided to go 4' between trees.  That gives each tree 2' of branch growth.  Finally we used our Bobcat skid loader to drill the holes.  Then, stretching high tensile between the posts, we were ready to put the new trees in.  Once the trees were in we ran irrigation lines and emitters to the trees and finally we strung the high tensile with strainers and line posts.  It took about 2 days to plant the trees and get the waterline and the trellis system up.  We did end up with about 10 trees off the trellis in the last row.  Those we ended up attaching to pieces of rebar.  Eventually these will be attached to either trellis, or we'll switch to better posts.

Plant garden on Mothers Day?

With the temperature on the farm below freezing for more than 4 hours last night, the Mothers Day date didn't hold this year.  And it's supposed to be colder tonight.  Frost is one thing, but freezing temps for that long are something all together different.  Our apple trees for the most part are at 1/2" green tip and tight cluster.  For tight cluster, at 27F for 30min a 10% loss is expected.  At about 6' high (where our weather station sits) we were down below 29 for about an hour, but our weather station in the high tunnel said it hit 27F and that is one foot off the ground.  Chances are we had 27F for quite a while at ground level.

Twins

We had a couple more calves.  Unfortunately it was from the same cow, and we haven't had very good luck with twins.  So the standard process now is to take the calf that isn't sticking with the cow and put it in the barn.  That means bottle feeding, but it's not so bad.  Both twins are doing fine. 

First Calf of 2014

We moved the cows, bull and last years calves down to the back 9 yesterday.  It took a little time and persistence to get them through the gates and different parts of the pastures, but they made it.  Not quite sure what I was thinking having the bull down there with them though.  If he got to work this early we'd have calves in Feb. and that isn't for me.
We checked on the cows this morning and bingo! our first calf was on the ground looking healthy and fit.  We got him ear tagged and banded.

Handling the cattle always has a sense of excitement about it.  There's always that little bit of extra caution when you're moving them and they're all excited, kicking up their heals (literally) and running to new grass, that they could forget themselves and plow you down.  Then there's the excitement of ear tagging and banding while mamma wants to get between you and her calf.  They have a protection instinct in them that you want to see, just not too much.