September 2011 – Modern Farm Wife

Aw, Shucks. Wrapping up a Corn(y) Harvest

09/29/201102/11/2016by Modern Farm Wife12 Comments

Please forgive the title. It’s early and I’m a few cups (ok, a few thermoses) of coffee away from a sharp sense of humor. For now, it makes me giggle.

Anyway. Corn.

In farming, there are essentially two periods of complete insanity each year. Sure, there are little sprinkles of craziness between the two, but planting and harvesting (in my mind, at least) are the busiest times of year on the farm.

We (again, I’m using this pronoun loosely) plant corn every spring. The process typically takes a few weeks and the days are long, long, long. The Dairy Man will spend hours upon hours in a tractor. I see him for brief meals on the go, or I don’t see him until he’s crawling into bed. So, that’s spring. After a summer of basking in the sun and growing tall and leafy, our corn stalks are ready to be harvested in early fall.

Two weeks ago we wrapped up the corn harvest. Excuse me for a moment while I pop a bottle of champagne and do a slightly awkward happy dance.

Finishing corn harvest is a significant milestone. At this point, things really slow down for farmers (with the exception of one more hay cutting). I’ve always loathed the cold and snow of winter, but I do enjoy the moderate reprieve in the farming lifestyle that comes during the colder months. Things move a little more slowly. The days are shorter and a “dawn till dusk” workday is inevitably truncated. I eat carbs, wear thick sweaters, and actually get to spend evenings with my husband.

As we entered our second harvest as a married couple, I started to get flashbacks of this time last year. These flashbacks, naturally melodramatic and a little bit whiny, reminded me of a time when I barely saw my husband, ate my meals alone, and did all of the housework by myself. These were the dark days of a newlywed country transplant. It’s a good thing the Dairy Man had the sense to marry me before corn harvest. I was already locked in. But I digress. This year I had the benefit of a toughened psyche thanks to 12 months of farming fun. When the Dairy Man said, “Well Jess, we start corn harvest tomorrow,” I knew what to expect.

With my commute and work schedule, I wasn’t able to get as many in-action harvest shots as I would have liked, but I did get a picture of THE PACK. Well, more specifically, it’s one of THE PACKS, but this is the biggest by far.

All 700+ acres of our corn is harvested for cow food. Corn is just one of the many ingredients that goes into our feed rations, but it is by far the biggest component. Unlike sweet corn, which is grown for biped consumption, our corn grows all summer long and is harvested right before it dries up.

During corn harvest, a machine called a chopper drives through the field and chops up the corn, stalks and all. This product is called corn silage.

When you harvest corn, you have two options for storage: in ag bags or in large packs covered by plastic sheets and tires. The Dairy Man and his father used both methods of storage this year. Ag bags are easier to seal to ensure that the corn silage doesn’t get moldy, but packs are more space-efficient. Since we had a LOT of corn to put up this year, we went with both.

The process of bagging corn silage is essentially identical to that of bagging hay. Trucks drive the silage to the bagger and the Dairy Man makes sure the bags get loaded properly.

Packing corn silage, on the other hand, involves making a huge pile of corn and driving over it with a tractor to pack it. Hence: the pack. Once the pack is finished, the farmers cover it with plastic sheets and tires to keep out any trace of oxygen.

One night I had the opportunity to ride on the pack with the Dairy Man. And, oh dear, I was bored after about 30 seconds. Basically the Dairy Man drives up and down, up and down, up and down the pack ALL DAY LONG. Backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards. Talk about seasickness. The reason they undertake this monotonous task is because the pack of corn has to be tightly compacted in order for the corn silage to be preserved over the next year. So they drive on the pack. Up and down. Backward and forwards. All.day.long. My husband is a better man than I.

Though, I must say, the view from the top of the pack wasn’t half bad.

Corn harvest is finished, but our cows will be chowing on the silage from these bags and packs for the next year. And really, it’s all about the cows.

Family

“Boy cows.”

09/20/201103/19/2013by Modern Farm Wife5 Comments

A few weekends ago, our old friend Josh came to visit the dairy. Amongst his many other wonderful traits and skills (sorry, ladies, he’s taken), Josh knows how to film and edit video. As someone who just discovered the panoramic setting on my normal camera, this skill always amazes me. Josh makes informational videos for his adorable nieces. What a guy. And really, all kiddos should know about cows.

Josh made two videos, a “boy cow” version and a “girl cow” version, the former of which you can view below. There’s no such thing as a boy cow (it’s either a steer or a bull), but that’s how Josh introduced them to his little nieces. It’s an easier transition. Anyhoo. The Dairy Man was running late for the tour that day, so I’m the star …er… narrator of the video. My information is almost always correct—not bad for a gal who didn’t know an iota about farming until she met her Dairy Man.

As I explain, steers are male cows raised for beef. They differ from bulls in that they don’t have the parts necessary to perform bull-ish duties. We have a bunch of steers just up the hill from our house; they enjoy leering at us and mooing… all the time.

So, without further ado, enjoy this brief video introducing you to the dapper gentlemen on the dairy: the steers. They are incredibly friendly and love to lick things. And people. And cameras.

(*Disclaimer, after watching this video, the Dairy Man informed me that the steers are more like 15-18 months old. Not two years. Close, but no cigar.)

Moo.

Family

Make hay while the sun shines

09/13/201109/12/2013by Modern Farm Wife19 Comments

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write at three different points this summer. Not coincidentally, that is the exact number of times the Dairy Man and company have cut hay. Now, as we start thinking about our fourth and final hay cutting of the season, it’s finally time to explain this crazy process. Get ready for me to drop some serious ag-knowledge on you.

Three to four times a summer, I lose my husband to the hay monster.

I’m happy to say that hay cutting only lasts a few days (as opposed to a few weeks of corn harvest), but what it lacks in duration, it makes up for in insanity. During hay cutting, the Dairy Man routinely sits in a tractor into the wee hours of the night and never has a break longer than 20 minutes at a time.

Poor, naïve me didn’t know a thing about hay cutting until this year. The Dairy Man and I married late in the summer of 2010 and thus I dodged the bullet for one more year. But I was quickly brought up to speed this year.

First and foremost, these are hay bales.

Aren’t they lovely? There is something about a nice bale of hay lounging in a kelly green field that just epitomizes the country life. But how did these bales get here? What are they used for? And where do they go?

Hay/grass/alfalfa is used for animal feed. Specifically for our dairy, we add hay silage to our cow feed ration. (Don’t worry if that term doesn’t mean anything to you. Someday I will bore you all silly with a description of a feed ration. Get pumped.) Farmers cut hay 1-4 times each summer—depending on heat and rainfall—or approximately every 30 days.

So, what exactly goes into the process of cutting hay? I thought you’d never ask.

Each farmer is a little different, but our (and I use the word “our” in the loosest sense of the word. I’m a supportive observer. Maybe I should switch my pronoun to “his”?) haying process has five steps.

First, we cut the hay down in the field. Second, we wait for the hay to dry.

Third, the hay is raked or merged using a big machine (this helps to dry it out).

Fourth, the hay is baled or chopped. Fifth, if the hay is chopped, it is loaded into ag bags (pictured below) to be mixed into feed during the winter. Bales are stacked in the barn to be used for immediate feeding.

Jersey the dog really enjoys this part.

The Dairy Man and family both bale and chop hay. Personally, I’m partial to the bales. They’re so pretty. I have this insatiable desire to try and roll one down the hill.

I was a journalism minor in college, so naturally I had a few questions for the Dairy Man after he explained this process. I won’t always get this detailed in my farming 101 explanations, but perhaps it will be interesting to learn about the iconic hay bales you may see whilst driving through the boondocks.

Why do you have to wait for the hay to dry?
Because hay can spontaneously combust if it is too wet. Yes. Combust. As in light on fire. Burn the barn down. On a less dramatic side, it can also get moldy.

How long will the hay sit in the ag bag before it becomes cow food?
Hay needs to ferment in the bags for a few months before it is usable in feed.

Why can’t you just cut hay once? Why on earth do we keep cutting it, letting it grow, and cutting it again? This is craziness!
You have to cut the hay before it blossoms. Once the stalks bloom, they start to allocate nutrients towards seeding and reproduction—thus depleting the nutritional value of the hay. Since we want our ladies to eat spinach instead of iceberg lettuce (yes, that’s an analogy; the cows don’t eat salads), we cut the hay when it is full of nutrients.

Why do you have to work like a madman to get the hay in rather than spreading the process out over a number of days?
The farmers are trying to stay ahead of the rain. Once the hay is cut, you don’t want it to get rained on. If the hay is rained on, the nutrients can drain out of the hay and it becomes worthless. That’s why they will work until 2 a.m. or for 16 hours straight.

While there are many intricacies of haying I’m probably leaving out, this is the jist. Even a modern farm wife should have some idea what goes on around the farm, right? I’ll give you a minute to recover from all of this new knowledge.

Now, on to corn harvest. Oh boy.

Family

Shoo, fly, don’t bother me.

09/06/201103/19/2013by Modern Farm Wife8 Comments

There are certain things in this life as a modern farm wife that I’ve simply come to accept. Dirt driveways; phone calls in the middle of the night; two TV channels; dinnertime=moving target; the smell of manure; bellowing moos from up the hill; painfully slow internet; an old farmhouse; living in a town without a Starbucks or a Target; an 80 minute commute to work.

But the things I cannot get used to are the flies.

It’s a fact of life: when you live on a dairy farm in the summer, you share your outdoor space with hundreds of buzzing black flies. There’s something about warm manure pits bubbling in the sun that really gets flies all hot and bothered. Yuck. But the flies do not stay outside. At every opportunity, they sneak into our home to meet their demise at the hand of a flyswatter, lighting fixture, or by drowning in the dog’s bowl.

It seems like every time I open the kitchen slider, at least three flies zoom in. I spend half my life stealthily sneaking up on these pests with a flyswatter in hand. I derive an exorbitant amount of pleasure each time I squash one of the buggers into oblivion. I channel Rambo on a daily basis.

I live amongst the flies. And I do not like it. In fact, it can be downright dangerous. No, really.

This week I was picking up Jersey the dog from the corn field on my way home from work. During corn harvest he gets to hang out in the field with the Dairy Man all day.

I opened my car door to put Jersey in the backseat and cracked the windows to give him a breeze. In so doing, approximately 15 flies made a beeline into my car. I spent the drive home swatting flies away from my face and trying to coax them out the open windows while the pup barked and tried to eat them. By the time I got home, I was convinced we had succeeded.

But I was wrong.

Unbeknownst to me, my car was still buzzing with activity (I crack myself up) when I climbed in the next morning. I was only on the road for a few minutes before they launched an aerial attack: dive-bombing my face, landing on the bare foot pushing the accelerator, and burrowing in my hair. Needless to say, mild panic ensued. My multitasking skills were put to the test as I tried to drive the car, keep my legs in constant motion to prevent flies from landing on them, and open all the windows to create a wind current that would suck out the pests. It was chaos. The car swerved back and forth and I tried to keep it together while squealing “ew, ew, ew!” (in a very dignified fashion).

Eventually the flies exited, but the the emotional trauma remained. Well, not quite trauma. But I was flustered and itchy. Long story short, our dairy will always have flies, but from now on, my windows will always remain up and I will carry a flyswatter in my car.

Bring it on, buggers.

(Enjoy this lovely and threatening picture of me from 2008. Somehow, it just seemed appropriate.)