This week’s story is about my time in 4H showing hogs and trying to improve them with Dad. Just like any youth activity, there are a lot of ways kids can learn the wrong lessons.  But with my parents’ help, I can’t imagine my 4H experience being any better of a life lesson.  I grabbed a bale of hay and set it at the back of our truck.  It was about a three foot drop from the back of our ton truck to the ground.  We didn’t want our new Hampshire boars hurting themselves jumping out of the truck. Mom came outside to see the two young boars Dad and I picked fro ..read more

Goodbye to 2023! It was a difficult year. Lost my dad in March. 2024 looks good! We will be continuing our meat drops this winter until the first outdoor market April 13. Let us know if you’d like something. Thank you ..read more

We’ve probably had over 10 inches of rain in September and October. It’s a little late after a dry summer, but it’s nice to remember how productive our pastures can be with the best fertilizer, which is rain. We plan to wean our spring calves next week and then we’ll be able to graze everything one more time before winter. The cows, free from the burden of nursing a calf, will put on weight before winter ..read more

I’m not sure what kind of flower this is, but our out back pasture has a lot of it ..read more

I don’t normally do this, but this author must’ve caught me on a good day, so when she asked if I would do a book promotion for her I said sure send me the book and I’ll read it. And guess what? It’s a good story and she’s a great writer. It’s young adult, so not my typical reading, but it is very readable and that’s the number one quality I feel for good writing ..read more

Litters are doing well. I’m amazed at how tough the piglets are as they start to venture outside ..read more

We are excited for a couple of litters ready to pop any day now. Hoping they avoid farrowing during the predicted winter storm Wed/Thurs, but probably will, as a dropping barometer tends to induce labor ..read more

I don’t have a good photo of bedding cattle, so I just threw this one in here of a nice heifer calf from this fall. Bedding cattle, for those of you who don’t know, is the practice of laying down forage, usually straw, to give the cattle more comfort in winter or in muddy conditions. For those of you who bed cattle on a hillside, here’s something to try. The natural inclination, for me at least, is to bed around the contour of the hill, which works fine. But one day I decided to bed up and down the hill, and I saw right away that the cattle prefer and utilize the bedding better when it’s bed ..read more

The second tip in my series is about hooking and unhooking hydraulic hoses. Took me a while to figure out why sometimes it seems there was pressure on the hydraulic hose when I went to hook it up and then I realized if I unhook the hydraulic hose with pressure on it then there is pressure when I go to hook it back up again. So to make sure there isn’t pressure I almost always shut the tractor off and move the hydraulic lever back-and-forth to release all pressure before I unhook any hydraulic hoses. Let me know if this helps any of you ..read more

Old Farmer Tip #1:  Sorting Livestock Contributing to the axiom, “Nothing is given so freely as advice,” I’m starting a new series of tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years. You don’t need to corral livestock to sort them.  If you have livestock which come to you and are used to going through a gate into the next pasture, which is true for most of us rotational grazers, you can sort at any gate by simply moving a few steps back and forth. Sorting animals who are facing you, wanting to go by you, is a breeze.  The challenge is to have patience and work slowly enough so you ..read more