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Memorial Weekend – Day 3

Posted by Kevin Carpenter on May 27, 2014
Posted in Still alive in 2019  | No Comments yet, please leave one

Just too cute to make this photo any smaller…

That is Larry, the best of last years bulls.  He is a clone of his father with the same pleasant disposition.  Loves to get his chin and ears rubbed.  Need to find a home for him, he is just WAY too good of an animal to put into our meat program.  Thought I had him sold this spring, but the deal appears to have fallen through.

Oh, also in the photo is my son, Frank…  As usual on the farm, no shoes.  Not even in the winter – just can’t keep them on him.  We gave up trying.

In the background is some of the earthwork I talked about in previous post.

So today we worked on raising that fence we layed out the previous night.  And worked… and worked… and did a bit of planning, and more work.  Eventually turned what started out as a small holding/sorting pen into a switchyard.  We can now sort between three fields, with a fourth planned.  Dozen of T-post driven, half-a-dozen wooden post set, and hundreds of feet of electric wire recycled (meaning hours of untangling) from previous projects.  Since we can’t cross tree lines like the cattle can, we need to have one equipment gate added as well.  Quit about 6pm, totally exhausted, but with a nice feeling of accomplishment.  Went in, drank a quart of tang and another quart of water, cooked up more brats and took a break. 

Finished the day by going down to the bee hives, in full gear, and removing the old frame body and related parts (we had left them full of bees so they they could move on and settle in).  Had noticed the night before that the cinder blocks where the old hive was placed was full of bees, as in maybe 5000 of them, and they were not resettling into the new hives.  Not a total surprise, bees tend to “home” into one spot.  In an ideal world, you move hives at least 3 miles in order to reset their homing instinct, but instead my hives were placed a mere dozen feet from where the original was.  Net result – those that moved with the foundations, inside of the hive, were fine.  Those that were outside came “home” to discover no home.  Solution?  Pick up the cinder block, covered with 3 layers of bees, and move it in front of one of the hives.  Bees were NOT happy.  Dozens were swarming me trying to sting, but the gear protected me – almost.  The veil came in contact with my chin, and one bee managed to sting me there.  Also, half the lost colony was still on the ground and in the grass – nothing to do but to disturb them in hopes they discovered on the hives.  More unhappy bees.  Ended up walking the 500 feet or so back to the house and STILL had a dozen or so trying to attack me.  Gave them some time and then gave up and started whacking them.  Eventually timed it and ducked into the house.

We didn’t get on the road until almost 9pm, home around midnight.

Overall – an EXCELLENT weekend!

Memorial Weekend – Day 2

Posted by Kevin Carpenter on May 27, 2014
Posted in Still alive in 2019  | No Comments yet, please leave one

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What a difference a few hours make.  The photo is of that same calf from yesterday about 12 hours later.  Looked twice as big and full of life!  Yes, that is Mom behind her.

The “big event” for the day was to split our bee hive.  Last year we lost 9 of our 10 hives to wax moths, mostly because I didn’t know what they were.  Life lesson learned.  Our one remaining hive was doing VERY well, and showing signs of swarming.  Evia and I went out in full gear (jackets, coveralls, masks, gloves, and smoker going full blast) and proceeded to dismantle the one hive and create two new ones – placing every other foundation into each of the two new hive bodies.  Apparently they were getting ready to swarm, we saw LOTS of queen eggs, which is just outstanding.  I will be very surprised if we are not successful in doing this split.  Actually went much better than expected – had we known how easy it would be (smoke if a wonderful thing in distracting bees) we would have taken photos.
  Of course, there is some risk both hives will now fail, but I think that is pretty low, and some risk everyone will go back to just one of the two new hives, but the next day they seemed pretty settled, so I’m guessing that is low risk as well.

Evia put a roast in the slow cooker in the morning.  Alas, I noticed a few hours later that it wasn’t plugged in.  So our “slow” setting got changed to “high” – it still cooked for about 5 hours and was great.


We had planned on castrating the bulls this weekend, but the days were too hot to move them.  Saturday night we thought about it.  Sunday came and went with us realizing that if we moved them in the evening, they would be back by morning since we had a low spot in our fencing they had discovered.  We had previously talked about running a new electric wire to segregate off the field with the bad fence, and decided to scope that project out Sunday evening after dinner.  We ended up getting the plan figured out and the wire run, but not raised, before it got dark.




Memorial Weekend – Day 1

Posted by Kevin Carpenter on May 27, 2014
Posted in Still alive in 2019  | No Comments yet, please leave one

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Day 0:  Managed to get out of the house Friday afternoon, picking the kids up at the bus-stop and leaving directly for the farm.  Made it to Kirksville about 8pm and hit all of our regular stops:  MFA for gas, Orscheln for salt blocks for the cattle, 24D, and other farm stuff (thank goodness for farm sales tax exemptions), Walmart for a new audio cable (just to discover my iPhone restore did NOT restore my music!), HiVee for groceries.  2 hours later we were at the farm, kids were asleep, all was good.

Saturday was spent surveying the erosion control work we have our neighbor, Donnie Yantis, doing.  Donnie has 2 full time jobs:  Raising >100 head of cattle and doing earth movement.  He has spent some time this spring building some structure to reduce erosion in our fields, we hope.  We need a good drenching rain to test them, but have not had one of those yet this spring.  In fact, things are getting pretty desperate rain wise out there.  Normally folks start haying in June – this year they barely have enough grass to feed their cattle, much less haying extra.  We need rain!

Last weekend I made a first pass at spot spraying my south field.  Was very happy to discover I hit about 90% of what I needed.  Went back with another tank of 2-4D and got the ones I missed.  Also spent an hour or so with my neighbor, Sonny Darr, and spot sprayed one of his fields.  2-4D is incredibly cheap – about $0.30 a gallon made up – spent maybe $3 worth to do all of Sonny’s field.  Will have to go back and hit the ones I missed next trip – but that is ok.  I’m sure I’ll find more to spray on my fields as well.  In fact, I know I will.  I went to our north field, that we typically use as a grass stockpile, and was surprised at the amount of multi-flora rose and other brush popping up in it.  Left the wild blackberries (great eating!), but went through about 45 gallons of spray getting the worst in that field cleaned up.  Finally finished spraying with a tank of Roundup on my driveway.

Needed to till some of the earthwork Donnie had done to prep it for seeding (presuming we get some rain) and took the tractor back to that north field about 8pm – with perhaps 30 minutes of light left.  Was pleased to see that Dawn had given birth that evening.  The photo above is of a very wet calf, perhaps an hour or less old.

Actually ate three meals today – almost rare, but it got hot in the late afternoon, so took time out to make brats for lunch (with beer of course!).  Relaxed until about 6pm and then went back our for another couple of hours of work (and caught that newborn on my phone camera!)  Went back and cooked what was marked “boneless country style pork ribs”,  We had noticed in the store a bone fragment or two, which we laughed about.  While preparing and cooking the meat, it was apparent the meat was fully boned!  Wrote the store manager about that.  Reading the Hormel label it clearly indicated this was “bone in” Pork, despite what the store label (with the weight, price/lb, total price, etc.) said.  Also discovered when reading the Hormel label that up to 12% (meaning 11.99999%) of the weight was a “Patented Solution injected into the meat to increase tenderness and juiciness” – e.g. to increase its water weight.  Not happy on either count and swapped several messages with the store manager over the weekend.  They offered a refund, I requested they stop redefining “boneless”. Gave him a pretty hard time around the 12% water add too, especially since the “Patented Solution**” was defined anywhere (hate it when something is asterisked and then not defined).  Anyhow, that was meal #3 around 9pm.

5/19/2014

Posted by Kevin Carpenter on May 19, 2014
Posted in Still alive in 2019  | No Comments yet, please leave one

We got out of sync compliments of spring colds, ended up skipping a weekend and not getting out here for 3 weeks.  Good news, we plan on coming out for the 3-day Memorial Day weekend next week, so might get caught up a bit.

We have not been getting the rain and warmer days as usual.  Neighbors are quite concerned about the grass situation (specifically, the lack thereof) and their ability to hay in a month or so.  I was hoping to rent some of my neighbors fields for haying, but at the moment, he is concerned he won’t have enough for his own cattle.

I sprayed 35 gallon of Clethodim around the fruit trees, berries, and vines.  First year trying that, hopefully it will help with grass (Clethodim is a grass-only herbicide commercially used on virtual everything we eat from the plant kingdom.  Just a pain to mix, requiring crop oil, emulsifiers, and ideally ammonium sulfate.  Never make it in the consumer world, but for farmers, no-big-deal.  That was Saturday.

On Sunday I sprayed about 60 gallons of 2-4D trying to control mostly multi-flora rose.  That covered my southern field, house field, and made a dent in a small 8 acres field.

We have been spending years working on getting rid of undesirables plants.  Mostly that is a weekend or two or spraying for whatever we are trying to kill.  The first few years it was honeylocust trees (the ones with 6″ thorns) – we have those pretty much under control.  Took them out basal spraying 20% Remedy mixed with diesel.  Amazing stuff, a pint of that mix can kill a tree with a 2′ diameter base.  We started on multi-flora rose last year along with thistle.  Both go down to 2-4D, although the thistle is tougher.  Also started on shingle oak sprouts using something called PastureGuard last year.  Expensive, but by goodness it appeared to work.  I wasn’t sure last summer, but nothing I hit well survived this spring.  Rather hoping 2-4D (very cheap) will work on the oak sprouts this time of year – at least the leaves haven’t built up any wax yet, so the mix is spreading nicely.  In any case, should know in a week when we come back.  Worth trying.

Was pleased with the field we attacked last summer for multi-flora, very little regrowth.

Alas, next weekend is castration and fencing.  Neither is a lot of fun (well, fencing can at least feel rewarding when the job is done). At the moment, it looks like we will have one good day, and then two days of rain.  That will a least make the