Some updates from the month of June!

Earlier in the month I walked down to check on everyone and noticed all the babies laying by the shed.  I had to sneak up on them and snap the pic quick but I got one just before they all took off!

In a past post I mentioned mixing beer and hillbillies in a garage when oil changes are involved.  Well I have a new one to add to the list of "should've known better" items.

My buddy is getting married at the end of July.  We decided to through him a bachelor party complete with a day of all our friends here on the farm shooting our different guns and having some fun.  As a way to say goodbye to his past and do it in a fun way he offered up his old car as a target for some stress relief.  I offered my garage as a location to drain all the fluids before we took it to the field next door to shoot at it the next day.

In preparation I had also mowed all my second cutting here at the farm so it would not get ruined during the festivities.  My other buddy Willy showed up to help unload the wagons as I did this cutting into little squares.  I pay him with all the food and beer he can drink. 

While we unloaded the last load of hay my buddy Keven started draining all the fluids from the car.  As soon as Willy and I finished unloading I headed into the house to get everyone another round of beer and Willy headed to the garage.  As I entered the garage I came into the end of a conversation where my buddy Willy talked Keven into crashing the car into a tree for fun since he was gonna blow it up anyway.  Well the three of them got really excited really quick and I had enough time to run for the tractor to follow them and pick them up and bring them back to the house.

Although they didn't quite make it to the tree they did have some fun and we may or may not have driven the tractor over the car for fun as well.

We then came back and parked the tractor and walked up to the garage to find my wife staring in the open door at her bay of the garage.

This is what she was looking at....a mess!  They all got so excited that none of them remembered to remove all the containers containing all the fluids from the car.....from beneath it before hauling ass backwards out of the garage for the field!  To make it worse I was out of floor dry so by the time he came back the next day with more the oil covered most of my wife side of the garage!  Luckily it was Keven who did it and not me so she found it funny instead of getting mad!!!

PS.  he also cleaned it most of the way up and Willy and I finished the next day.

I wanted to through this pic in.  For some reason the baler kicked out ten little bales of this size.  Willy suggested selling them for guinea pig hay.  They are about 20 lbs and kinda cute!

Live edge cherry bench.

  My wife finished the second sanding and sealing of the new bench.  I think it looks awesome!

Berkshire sow in her new mud hole!

We are soon to have little piglets so it was time to kick Red Balls out of the pig lots and shut the sows in till the babies are born.  To do this I needed to make them a mud hole.  Five minutes with the tractor and 350 gallons of water and they were moved right back in!!

These are just a few of the things that happened here over the month.  Been quite hectic and I am looking forward to the weeks vacation I am taking starting the 4th!!!

Have a great day everyone and I will get some updated calf pics soon!

Kenny

Sorry for the long delay in posting.

Today is honestly the first day I have had since my last post to sit down and type something up.  We are swamped at work with projects and deadlines and if you couple that with all the stuff here I have been constantly busy.

I will be posting some pics later today.  Fifty's daughter finally had her calf and it is a little bull.  Also some other things to talk about so stay tuned!!

Kenny

50's legacy continues!

As I headed out to feed the pigs last night I looked out to the pasture and counted calves and noticed three white spots instead of the two that I have had for a month now.  I grabbed the kids and zipped out on the 4-wheeler to check it out.  We found that fifty had just had her calf. 

Fifty standing guard over her new calf!

 At first she wanted nothing to do with me being near her calf!

Considering letting me close!

 However, after a couple of minutes she stepped away to check to make sure there were no other threats in the area and I had a second to touch it but not check it for its sex.  However, because I touched it it decided to try to get up.  

The first steps!

 Once it stood up I was able to tell it was a little girl!!!!!!!  We purchased fifty and brought her home back in 2006.  She had a little heifer with her at that time but we couldn't get her bred and sold her.  She was three at the time and had one heifer previous to that that died after it was born.  Since we have had her she has had one bull and three heifers.  Her heifer Precious, the first one to be bred so far and have a calf of her own, had a heifer last year as well.  Her name was Pearl and we sent her to my buddies ranch in Montana.  Her sister will be bred this summer and her name is Princess.

Finally walking!

I now introduce you to Peanut!  I gave Fifty's heifer last year to my daughter for her first calf.  I am giving this years heifer to my son for his first Calf.  He named her Peanut.  We decided last year to name all of Fifties daughters and grand daughters with names starting with the letter P. 

Peanut, Fifty's newest heifer calf. 

Shortly after we departed from Peanut to check the other cows we looked over and saw Peanut running around and hopping up and down!  It didn't take her long to get her legs working!

I am very excited.  We are having another great group of calves this year and last years calves look awesome.  I can't wait to see how they produce when we butcher them next Year!

Have a great day everyone and I hope to post pics of Precious' calf soon.  She can pop any minute now and I am getting antsy!  

Kenny

Finally some steady rain, pictures, a passionate discussion, and first cutting is done.

Good morning everyone.   What a wonderful way to wake up!  I was awoke this morning to the sound of steady heavy rains.  I haven't been awoken that way in over a year and a half and this is the first real rain day off I have had from work in over two years!

So, since I have the day off I have both kids at home with me.  My daughter is still asleep at 9am and my son was up at 7am.  I am spending my morning catching up on paying bills, filing paperwork, bookkeeping, some reading of my new Eastern Farm Directory that just came yesterday, and later some misc. stuff outside.  

I wanted to make a post this morning that was sparked by an article I just read in my fresh magazine.  This article hits home to me and I will share the link for everyone to read.  I someday would like to meet the man who wrote it as I quite enjoy reading his articles and he seems to be a very down to earth and well rounded person.  His name is Ken Knight, we also share our first names, and he wrote a great article this month, The Color Purple Fades When Exposed to the "Cooler".  In this article he discusses how 4-H and county fairs have completely missed the mark on what we are supposed to be teaching our children when it comes to livestock projects.  When I was a kid and started going to the fair with pigs and cattle it was still a pretty fair field.  Of course those who's parents had more money usually had better animals because they could afford them but the basic lesson was still learned. 

As a youngster in 4-H you take projects to learn something new.  Projects can range from sewing, cooking, animals, mechanics, and everything in between.  The point is to learn something new and grow from it.  Most of the other projects are able to be judged quite fairly because their results are a direct reflection of the time the child puts into it.  However, with animals it has morphed into something completely different.

Toward the end of my 4-H career there was a shift at the fairs from it being a learning experience of how to select, raise, and sell an animal and make a profit as well as develop good animal husbandry skills, to he who spends the most money wins first place.  The focus went from the kids learning realistic real world marketing and business to something completely wrong.  It would be like going to a car show and picking a winner for a race amongst all the cars without ever looking under the hood or even driving them.  While the cars may look awesome on the exterior they may not have anything worth while under the hood.  There are all kinds of tricks to hiding problems in car bodies.  The same holds very true for animals.  If you have enough money you can take a decent animal and feed it all kinds of different ways to make it fatter, fluffier, and you can even refrigerate them to make them grow hair to cover up what you can't hide with the fat.  However, if you took those same animals and judged them on the rail there is no way to hide what you are really looking for.  How much meat and fat there is!

For the program to get back to reality the winner should not be picked in these events till the animal is judged on the rail.  I would even go one step further and say that feeding budgets and incomes should be included.  If the children are going to run a business you have to maximize product as well as income.   We are not teaching children what was originally supposed to be taught....how to select an animal for proper genetics, feed that animal profitably and properly, produce a sellable desirable product, and make profit while doing it.  Instead we are teaching them that if you have enough money you can buy whatever you want and if you do not spend enough money you will lose!

My children are being taught the original point.  I also teach all my customers who by off of me these same points and help them teach their kids how to it should be.  Today it is like everyone is running a race and spending a lot of money and only one person can win.  This seems to be the way everything is in society today.  I hope we soon realize that if only one person wins then everyone else is losing.  It is time to start being realistic and change the way, and what, we teach our children!


Now, on to some pictures.   I was able to get a great picture of Frosty and her calf from last year.  He will be one year old at the end of this month.  He is only 100-150# smaller than his mother. She is the one on the right.  Her mother, Sally, is in the background with her new calf.  I absolutely love this cross.  The shorthorn breeding brings the milk and frame for a larger steer while the angus x charolais brings the muscling.  Furthermore, Frosty is a small cow and eats less than my bigger mommas but her and her mother produce some monster steers!  I am really excited to see how they produce at the butcher next year!

Frosty and her yearling, she is a shorthorn angus cross, her son is charolais x angus x shorthorn

I am officially done with all the first cutting.  I extended my bale storage area last year to give me more space.  There are 87 bales of hay in this picture.  Last year that would have taken a 3.5 rows to store them all.  Now I can get 40/row.   Also, due to my brother pushing the bales through my fence twice last year I decided to add another feature.  I put a wooded fence post at the point where each row will start.  The wrapper then pushes the bales into the post instead of ripping up the fence!

All the first cutting line wrapped.

On Sunday the kids were playing in the pool in the yard while Steven and I were working on finishing up the hay and other stuff.  I looked into the pasture and saw a family of geese.  So I grabbed the family and ran down on the four wheeler to get a closer look. 

Since the kids were in their swim suits and it was quite hot out I decided to introduce them to my swimming pool as a kid.  

Lisa and Alex playing in Conser Run!

My son is fearless and walked right into the deep part which was up to his chin!  They were a little leery at first but quickly found it fun and have been asking every day since to go back down again!

I hope everyone has a great day.  I hope the rain pushes an awesome second cutting!  As for me and the kids we are going to head outside and see if we have any new calves and try to get something done today!

Kenny