Wheat and double-cropping ...

DH talked to an Extension forage specialist at Purdue about the wheat hay. They decided whether to let it grow and bale it will depend on the stand and how it develops over the next few weeks with warm weather and rain.

If it looks good, one plan would be to bale it in big squares then double crop soybeans after it.

It always seems like we could sell more hay if we had it. This might make more good hay available for sale over the winter.

Note to self ...

Wheat hay:

Pro: Volunteer wheat is already greening up on last year's wheat ground. If we made hay there for the beef cows ... 1. It could free up some of the better hay to sell. 2. Field work on those acres is already done, would save on time and fuel. 3. Would save on seed and fertilizer cost of planned crop.

Con: 1. Will it grow enough to mow and bale? 2. Will the cows eat it (they are not too awful picky ...) 3. What if there is some weird fungus or something that's dangerous for the the cows? 4. Input costs of mowing, raking and baling, twine and labor (We use the smaller tractors for hay, though)

What about wheat pasture ... h'mmm ...

Wait a minute, and it'll change

I last wrote about the joy of going outside with no coat or hat (or various other layers).

Had to get them back out. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had pouring down rain, gusts to 50 miles an hour and then snow again. *sigh*

The winter wheat sown last fall has all germinated and greened up. With the heavy rain and flooding, patches of it were damaged -- or as DH would say, "drowneded out." The price of wheat dropped quite a bit yesterday based on the USDA crop report but seems to have recovered now. We no longer forward-contract it, but still watch the markets and growing conditions in other areas pretty closely. I expect we will soon start reading harvest progress reports from Texas.

Despite all the uproarious weather, my daffodils' buds are plumping up. These are against the east foundation of the house, a sheltered spot with morning sun. Hope to see them soon and very soon.

Open the Windows

All I can say is wow. After a long winter of record cold and snowfall, today the sun is out, the sky is a hazy blue and it is 68 degrees outside. I went outside with no jacket or parka, no fur hat, no mittens, no down vest, no wool sweaters and no long johns. Only finding an actual dandelion or two would make it better.

Ah ...

A new book ...

Our friend Lisa in Wisconsin sent us a copy of her new book, The Gold Standard, one the Heartsong Presents mystery series. Heartsong is an imprint of Barbour Publishing.

Here's the set-up: "Just how high a price does buried treasure command?"

DH got to it first. Since he reads a few pages at a time, I waited and waited for him to finish it. I thought he'd like it since it was set on a farm in rural Wisconsin.

After he finished, I asked for his impressions.

"It was good and interesting until the very last. Then they arrested --"

"Don't tell me -- I haven't read it yet!"

"Well, then, the last part was all mushy stuff. It was pretty good until then."

So there you have it -- a man's perspective.

Lisa said in an e-mail that the book need to be have a certain percent of romance, just like cattle feed has to have a certain percent of protein. With that perspective, maybe DH will overlook ruining a good story.

Here's a little something about the book: "School teacher Judy Winters sets out to solve the mystery surrounding her Aunt Louise's murder back on the family farm. Amid her sleuthing, Judy encounters Hart Wingate, a young man who rented the adjoining farm and helped Aunt Louise with farm chores. When Judy learns that her boyfriend, Graham, has secretly been visiting Louise, she decides to move away from him for the summer and think over the situation.

"As Judy explores her aunt's house, she finds and follows clues in Louise's mother's diary to unearth buried treasure. But was the treasure behind Louise's murder?"

I'm reading it right now.

Lisa is one of my buds from ACFW, American Christian Fiction Writers. So ... I guess I'm out now as a writer. We became acquainted via the group's e-mail loop. I can't say enough about ACFW's emphasis on encouraging and building up writers at all stages of their career.

As soon as I figure out how, I'll have to add a link to ACFW to the blog.

The home place

Here is a picture of the home farm, where Grandma and Grandpa live. The house was built in the 1840s. Behind it (not shown) is the original log cabin. Most of the trees are locusts.

In the foreground are our some of our beef cows and calves. They are "black baldies," crossbred. They inherit their black color from their Angus side and white markings from their Hereford side.

Way in the back, by the fence, is our old boss cow. She is half Holstein, so she's long, tall and almost too bony when she's raising a calf, because of her high milk production. She also lets other calves bum extra milk off of her without a fuss. One of DH's hay customers said that cow was so ugly that we should sell her and buy some good ones. However, she's had the biggest, growthiest calves every year. Can't judge by appearances.

Obviously -- juding from the leaves and size of the calves -- this picture is several months old.

I blush to admit I just figured out how to upload pictures

Road trip! Road trip!

We road-tripped to my parents to deliver the freezer beef they ordered from us. The kids were wired and tired, excited to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house, tired from a long day at school and irritable as they are jammed into the back seat like peas on a pod.

(Our Buick LeSabre that seemed as roomy as a luxury yacht is now quite packed as the kids just keep growing bigger and taller.)

To reduce the mayhem, we started playing a counting game. First they planned to count horses and cows and "bury" them as we passed cemeteries. Then they decided to count cars and trucks and scrap them as we passed junk yards. They got into a disagreement about junkyards or cemeteries.

We settled on counting "strange lawn things" which we defined as any lawn ornament that made you go "Huh?" when you saw it. For instance, a vintage bull-dozer in a front yard, or an iron bedstead in the middle of a flower garden. Or a lard kettle. Or wagon wheels. Milk cans. All sorts of things.

The bull-dozer was our top prize.

Next was a cross section of a huge log, painted to look like a giant watermelon slice.

Next had to be a lawn "glow ball" (I think the garden catalog calls it a 'gazing globe') that looked homemade. As a matter of fact, it looked like a bowling ball coated with plaster embedded with glass pieces. Sort of a stained glass, mosaic effect.

I'm sure we'll notice more as the weather improves and people start working in their yards.