Busy august

The dogs patrolling the fence line with me. 

August is partly lazy -- watching the crops grow -- and partly busy -- cutting, drying, baling and stacking hay.  It's also the time to do all of the work that you really would rather do when it's 80 degrees out and sunny, and not 40 degrees and raining and windy.  Which means that I took a walk around the fenceline and noted the places where the fence needs work, and took at look at the crop conditions.  I planted some alfalfa earlier this year, about 10 acres of it, and it just didn't do very well at all.  I'll probably disc it and try again in a week or two.

The ground looks dry, but that truck is up to its axles.  Punched through into the mud.  

 Part of the hay that we put up is bedding hay.  We've got volunteer stands of canary grass that grows in lower, wet areas,  and honestly, it's pretty nice forage for cows when it's young and tender.  But towards the end of its life it's a little closer to bamboo or straw.  We can't harvest it easily when its young and wet, but at this time of year the ground is dry enough we can go and bale it and stack it in the barn.  We'll use it for bedding materials for sows having piglets, and to provide roughage for the cows if the alfalfa is too rich.  It also provides a windblock inside the barns, which makes it cozier for the animals.

 Some of the corn is doing a weird thing.  It's got corn cobs growing on the tassel part of the corn.  Only a few percent of them are doing this, and they've got normal ears farther down, but its odd.

The bulk of the corn is now 8' tall

We're on schedule for the corn to be ripe around september 1st.  September is usually a fairy warm month, so I'm crossing my fingers we get the right weather to dry the corn on the stalks.


In the last two weeks:
  Weeded the vinyard and started tying the vines to the lower trellis wire
  Cut and baled 400 bales of bedding hay, stacked in the barn
  Cut and baled 800 bales of alfalfa hay, stacked in the barn
  Delivered 20 BBQ pigs of various sizes to many happy bbq people
  Sold 60 piglets
  Sold 3 steers at auction (400lb steers - $1100 each.  amazing. )