Farmin' Update

This blog has always been and will always be about farming and the different aspects of it. Parts of that involve my pets, my kitchen and my family, but a vast majority of it involves me and my husband, Caleb, and our farming opperation. It was been a while since I have written about what's going on, on our farm.

I won't lie, this time of the year is our "slowest time of the year. The crops are in the ground and growing and the cattle have grass and water so we are able to relax a little more...

...well at least as much as any farmer ever relaxes, which isn't much.

Here are some of the pictures from earlier this sprinf till now of checking the corn and seeing how it was progressing.

One thing you will see a lot of farmers doing during the growing season is walking the fields. They don't just do this for exercise...

...they are out there checking their fields to see how the crops are growing.

They will check for areas that may need to be replanted, for places that are nutrient deficient, if there is a bug infestation, if there is a weed problem, or just to see how it's growing.

Once the ears start to form, the reasons for checking the corn fields completely changes. Now we must go and see how the corn is developing...

...we are looking to see how well the corn pollinated and how big the ears are in hopes to find out we are going to have a bumper crop.

Sometimes you might find the biggest and best ears of corn you have ever seen and other times you find these little wimpy ears. It all just depends on the weather you have had and the variety of corn you planted. Those two things go hand in hand.

Some varieties will do well in drier years and not so well when it's wet and others in the opposite years, while still others may just be average every year.

Here the past few weeks we have seen a lot of this...

...ears of corn laying every where.  Caleb can't hardly go by one of our corn fields without stopping to pick an year. 

Yesterday he went into corn picking over load while we were on our weekly drive.

He talks about raccoons or deer getting into the corn, but really its just him.

He gets pretty excited when he finds some nice ears like these.

You might not believe me but there is an old man in a straw hat somewhere out in this picture.

...and he was doing the same thing Caleb was doin'...

....snitchin' ears of corn.

Their main reason for getting ears right now is to check and see how close it is to being ready to harvest.  With as dry as it's been out our way the corn is gonna be ready before we know it.

To see if the corn is ready you need to check it's moisture, and the way we do that is by hand shelling the corn you picked and then placing it into the moisture tester.

Ya put the lid back on and push the button...

...then let it do it's job.

This particular field was still awful wet, with 30% moisture. You want the moisture to be down somewhere either below 15% or 16% if I say one way or the other it will be wrong so we will just leave it at some where close to that. 

We did actually have a couple of fields that were down around 21-22% moisture and Caleb thinks with as hot and dry as it is that we will be harvesting by this time next week.

Well, corn is not the only crop we raise. we also grow soybeans. and somewhere out in this field is a farmer who is hiding down  in these beans.

There he is. He's down there checking to see if the plants are setting on any pods or not.

Currently we have a whole lot of these beautiful little purple flowers all over the plants and we are hoping they will turn into pods filled with beans.  But if we don't get a really nice rain before long our beans won't have a chance.

Well, that's what's been goin' on with all our crops here on the farm. soon enough we will be harvesting some corn and I will have some of those fun pictures for you.

I have one more set of pictures from our vacation to Minnesota and and a canning post and by the time I get those done I will probably have some harvest pictures to share with you.

Hope all ya'll are doing well and stayin' cool in this crazy heat.

Lot's of Love,

J

Big Barn Country - Part 2

Our Second day up in Big Barn Country was a fabulous day when we weren't getting accosted by Louie the cat.

While heading out to Brent's house we drove by this farm and I just loved it, with it's big silos.

So imagine my excitement when I found out that this is where we were going the next day. I turns out Brent was good friends with this family and we spent a better part of the morning visiting the man that owned it.

We visited with the man about the farming history in the area, about the land prices, about spraying, about his egg production, and everything else you can imagine when it comes to farming.

Well not everything cause after we left Caleb had half a million more questions he wished he would have asked him.

I'm pretty sure this was Caleb's favorite part of the vacation.

This is one of two of the lay houses that this farmer had on this farm. They weren't in production anymore, and are used for storage instead, but when they were housing chickens they were home to 75,000 birds. Now that's a lot of chickens!

After dinner, we headed off to the arena where Brent has a one of his Cutting Horses in training, but not before replacing a shoe that miss Chica here had thrown.

As you can see she's not too thrilled about the whole situation.

She sure did give Brent a workout on this day. I'm gonna guess it took at least three times longer than it normally takes Brent to replace a shoe.

side note: Brent once made a comment on how many pictures I take of Caleb so in a chance to even it out I tons of pictures of him while we were visiting.

Since she was throwin' a little fit Caleb got the duty of keepin' her still.

Once that was done we loaded here up and headed down the road to the arena for a little work out.

Testin' the "brakes" to make sure they worked.

For the most part Caleb and I sat on the fence and watched. Well he watched and I took pictures.

I did however get to try some spinning on Chica, but I was a little awkward at my first attempt. One thing I did realize is that it's a good things I don't live any closer to Brent cause I'm pretty sure I could get hooked on workin' with cuttin' horses.

The horse on the far left was Brent's other horse that we came here to see and man was he a beauty! I wanted to load him up in the back of our truck and take him home, but he wouldn't fit, how sad!

After a long day in the sun at the arena we decided not to go riding again that evening cause it was in the 90's and evidently the warm weather followed us from Southeast Kansas. So instead Caleb came up with the idea of Bowling and a way we went to the local bowling ally / bar and grill.

And to show you how special we are, we had the entire bowling ally to our selves...

...maybe that shows how special the bowling ally was.

Haha, actually it was a nice little bowling ally and the food was to bad either.

Round One went to Caleb, and look I didn't come in last and neither did Kristin. So that only leaves one person which meant there had to be a rematch.

FYI: I put the names in for round one. The owner asked us to move to another lane for round two and Brent wrote the names in this time and this is what we ended up with....

Cleb = Caleb

Krisy = Kristin

Toad = Me - don't I have such a sweet cousin to give me a name like that...to be honest there is a lot of history with this name.

Bo = Brent

Round Two goes to Brent, unfortunately for me that meant I was last....it was the name that threw me off I just know it! ;)

Here's what the sky looked like when we left to go home. It didn't end up being much rain but it did bring the temperatures back down to the upper 70's unfortunately for Caleb and I we were leaving the next day.

I be getting the trip home pics up as soon as I can, as well a cooking post and a farm up-date.

So I had better go for now and get busy.

Later Tatters,

Toad

Big Barn Country - Part 1

We are back and even though we had a marvelously wonderful time we are soo very glad to be back.

About a week and half ago Caleb and I get all packed up and headed down the road for a little time away from home.

I even gave our truck some TLC and washed it before we left.

We first headed to NE Missouri for a couple of days for a family reunion and then we headed farther north.

It wasn't easy getting my husband talked into leaving the farm, he's kinda a homebody (actually a farmbody). So my tactic was to find a cousin that Caleb enjoys talking to...

...this is where My cousin Brent comes into the picture...

...now add in some big barns and a whole lot of corn fields and you have Caleb's perfect vacation destination.

Lucky for Caleb he married a girl who also likes looking a crop fields too, but little did he know that the trip would also involve riding some horses too, but we will wait till later to tell him that.

So, we are off and our destination is Le Sueur, Minnesota, to visit Brent and his lovely wife Kristin.

So, there's only one way to get up there from Missouri and that's goin' through Iowa.

Ok, you could get there many other ways, but they would take a lot longer.

So, big barns and corn fields here we come.

It's not a road trip without some pretzel rods...oh yeah!

I even got a little time behind the wheel on this trip...

...which meant Caleb was on camera duty.

I think I was singing here...not sure...

...maybe I was talkin'...

...who knows.

This is the view we saw all the way up there. Acres and acres of corn with large farm steads and barns all over.

After a long drive we finally made it up to our destination.

Their house is such a cute house with a wonderful porch.

After we arrived there Brent loaded up all the horses and all the tack and we headed down the road towards a local park and got ready to head down the trails.

I didn't have to tug on Caleb's arm too much to get him up on the back of a horse...

...he actually did really well.

It was a wonderful time and other than the mosquitoes we had a really great time.

My only complaint was that I had to listen to Caleb wine about his back end being sore for the rest of the trip. Honestly I thought he was a touch ol' farmer, but I guess I found out other wise! haha

I will hopefully have part 2 up tomorrow or the next day.

Tootles till then,

J