I've Got Nothing

I don't have anything to say, but here's some photos.

Drunken Sailor

I have been on a bit of a spree this last week. We have been in pretty desperate need of a better hay mower for some time now, so I had been on the lookout for one, but hadn't found anything very good in my price range. I was also lamenting the fact that one tractor isn't really enough to run this type of farm. In addition to the Oliver loader tractor we have all I've got is a 1947 John Deere A that runs fine, but just doesn't have the weight or horsepower to really do the job.


Frank's dog Oscar

So when my buddy Frank, who deals in used farm machinery called me to tell me he had a 1975 David Brown 1210 available at a pretty good price I just couldn't resist. Who knows, maybe it's a midlife crisis that made me buy a little English sports tractor. But anyway, we put it on the dynometer and it tested at 68 horsepower (the Oliver came in 20 HP short of the 66 HP it is supposed to have), and everything seems to work on it other than some minor rewiring that is needed for the lights. Heck, the brakes even work (unlike the Oliver).

Then of course, as soon as I had pulled the trigger on that deal I found a really good hay mower that was in my price range so I ended up getting that as well.
Now if it ever stops raining we will be ready to go.

Added 8/2/09- I must have done something to anger the Haybine Gods in a former life. I got around the field 1 and a half times before this machine broke down yesterday. New parts are on their way for a mere $220.

Roll' em

The combination of lousy haymaking weather, my geriatric farm machinery and the fact that I am starting to feel old after a long day of stacking hay bales has inspired me to give round bales a try. Our neighbors Randy and Jamie Loch have a flock of sheep in addition to their Maple syrup and fiber mill businesses, so they have a round baler like almost every one around here but me. We are basically stuck in the sixties machinery wise. Anyway, we do a fair amount of barter with the Lochs, generally meat for machine and operator hire. Since I needed to get some of our first cutting done quickly I thought that having Randy round bale it would be the quickest option. And then our hay mower fell and broke her hip, so Randy ended up mowing it with the discbine that he uses as well.



I picked up a round bale spear to mount on the tractor front end loader so I should be ready to start hauling the 75 bales or so out of the field by this afternoon.

Muck Boot Endorsement

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Muck Boots Online
offering to send me a free pair of muck boots in exchange for a review on the blog and a link to their site. Their thought was to have some farmers with blogs put the boots through their paces and report back with their findings.

Being that we have had rain something like 19 of the last 28 days I have had plenty of muck and high wet grass to try them out in. Muck Boots have my ringing endorsement. They are quite comfortable (I have had them on all day most days since it has been so wet), and the treads are aggressive enough to keep me upright on the perilous chicken manure slick that is left after I move the pasture pens. The boots I got (The 15 inch Hoser model) have the top part made out of something that is stretchy enough to fit over my burly man gams, and breathable enough that they don't get very sweaty like boots that are rubber all the way to the top do. They really are nice.

All I can hope now is that the people at John Deere and New Holland aren't asleep at the switch. I would be open to giving a review on a tractor (70 horsepower or greater please) and a new hay mower. Or a cattle trailer. Really, I'm open to all offers.

(Drilling) Mud Puppy

Tibby After a Bath

Tibby our old (13) Black Lab /Dalmatian doesn't like loud noises. Last night a thunderstorm blew through and there was one particular clap of thunder that seemed to knock everyone in the neighborhood out of bed.
Well, when I got out this morning I didn't see Tibby anywhere, but I didn't really think anything of it.
Then about 6:30 the phone rang and it was one of the guys from the gas well drilling rig about 3/4 of a mile to the east of us. He told me that they had spotted this dog cowering down in their drilling mud pit and had pulled her out, and got our number off of her collar, which I thought was pretty nice. My understanding of the drilling mud was that it was a slurry of clay and water that they use to cool the drilling bits, but I figured I had better call Cabot and make sure I didn't need I Hazmat suit on to give her a bath. They told me that's all it is, so here's hoping it's true.


The Well Site from Clodhopper Farm

Bubbles + This Cow = White Calf

This afternoon I was up planting some plants in the pool when I noticed a cow down in the pasture with a very wobbily legged white calf trying to get it's act together. Last year we had this calf born which I found kind of surprising. I wasn't quite as surprised this time, and probably won't be at all the next time. Last years calf ended up growing horns, which is also unusual for our largely polled (genetically hornless) cattle, so I will be interested to see what this one does. I can hardly wait until next year to see if I hit the white calf trifecta.



In other interesting bovine related news, a week or so ago when I got to the barn in the morning there was a dead newborn calf laying in the Cow Shed East. That is the shed where my young cattle spend there winter, so there should not have been anything that was old enough to have been bred. A year of age is really about the earliest that we would expect a heifer to start coming into heat, and if left to their own devices they generally won't calve for the first time until close to their second birthday, which would put their breeding age at about 15 months. The heifer that delivered this calf was only about 14 months old, and the calf was fully formed, so it seems that somehow she got bred at about 5 months. I hate to have lost the calf, but I am really happy to have not lost the heifer as well. She seems to have bounced right back from it. As you can see from the picture, she (number 5) is still pretty tiny compared to a mature cow.

Will Farrow

If you look carefully you will notice that the above photo is not actually a mirror image. We had four bred sows (gilts actually) that we have been expecting to farrow sometime this month. Yesterday afternoon the first one started and ended up having six pigs, five white and one black. I thought that the second one would go later that night, and when I checked on her at 3 she also had five white ones and one black one. That one ended up having two more black ones for a total of eight. So far they have both been good mothers and haven't sat on any.

"Dark Age Technology" or "Cattle Panels are Garbage"

This fall when I moved the cows into the Cow Shed East that we built last winter I opted to take the quick and easy option of buying cattle panels to use as fencing. I am sure that the cattle panel company would have offered a warning that these panels need a little more in the way of support than I was offering them, but we had abused them in the past with pretty good results. And since I was short on time and not absolutely broke I figured even at $38 dollars a piece that the panels were the way to go. Somewhere along the line though they decided to stop bothering to really weld them together, and a few short months after installing them I realized it was going to be money not well spent.





So last week I went back to using dark age technology (with a few modern twists) and cut a bunch of wooden poles out of the woods, which I attached to the shed posts with pieces of angle iron with steel loops welded to them to hold the poles.