This has been a crazy busy year so far!!

Well, I got all the first cutting baled.  I now have approximately half of what I need to get through the year.  Still a lot of growing season to go provided the weather doesn't get stupid.  With the extremely wet spring we endured so far I fear that we will now go for most of the summer without any considerable rain.  That will yet to be seen.

After raking all the hay on the rental fields I brought rake home with truck and took baler back.  Then, after baling and hauling were completed.  I brought tractor and baler back on the trailer.  Barely fits but it fits!!!  Have baler will travel!  I actually went from this field to another that I am share cropping with the neighbor and baled up another 16 bales before I got home.

 The first load of hay.  Not the biggest load I can haul by any means but these were wet baled so they are about 1700#'s / bale.  Limited by weight here!  If I am hauling dry bales I can get about 18 on per trip. 

Everyone enjoying the sunshine this morning.  This was right after breakfast.  The first beautiful Sunday morning we have had all year so I decided to enjoy my coffee before starting today's tasks!

Another goal this weekend was to complete the boar's nest...a little duke's of hazzard throw back!!  We built a separate pen to keep the boar in when we need him away from the females, like when having babies or when we need to change the breeding time.  So he gets his own little room in the area where we had the original pig pen.  First I had to remove all the old barn rafters.  Most were damaged or broken and so low that I couldn't stack much hay in the barn.  If you look at the pic below you will notice the new boards I installed when we replaced the roof to take place of the old ones.  They are much higher and allow me to use 95% of the barn space instead of approx 55%. 

After removing the old rafters.  Opens the barn up a lot!!

 

Had Steven's help today.  He is a great worker and we can get a lot done in a very short time!  After constructing the boar's nest we installed a loft over top to allow me to maximize my barn space for hay storage.  I used to be able to get a couple hundred bales in the barn.  I now am expecting between the barn and the loft over the sow pens I will be able to store 500-700 bales.  Depends on how well we stack them!

  

This is a pic standing back looking into the barn.

 

 Now I just have a lot of cleanup tomorrow.  This weeks tasks include baling some more hay for the neighbor, fertilizing the hay fields, setting some more fence posts and some heavy cleanup of the barn area!

Hope all is well with everyone.  We send three cattle to the butcher shop later this month!!!  Can't wait, we are all out of pork and will barely have enough beef to make it till the beef is ready to pick up.  Pigs head to butcher in august!  We are getting ready to pick out the pigs we will fatten for the end of the year this month.  We are planning on doing one batch each year for finished hogs.  The other litter will go straight to market after they are weaned as it is very difficult to fatten hogs here in the winter.  Also going to try a new system for raising them in the winter this year.  Been doing a lot of research into Swedish style hog production and deep bedding technique's.  Very interesting and should work very well!!

Will try to get into updating more often.  Been so busy with hay the last couple weeks I haven't had time to do so. 

Have a great week!

Kenny