Once it's "farming time" in the spring, when Glen can actually get out and work in the fields, the daily schedule of chores and meals becomes a thing of guesswork. During the winter our evening meal is usually around the 6:00 mark, but the rest of the year it can be anywhere from 5:30 when I get home from work, to 8:30 when he gets done whatever he was doing. It makes planning meals a bit of a challenge, but we survive.
Tonight it was decided that supper would be best at 7:00. Glen had some temporary fenceline he wanted to move so he went off to roll wire for an hour or two. This left me to figure out which of the jobs I had to do would best fit into the same time frame. Two weeks ago I visited my sister's greenhouse and came home with a trunk full of bedding plants which have been waiting on the deck for their place in the sun ever since. Monday evening had been an absolutely perfect night to work outside and I had weeded for two hours before supper and at least an hour afterward. All I needed was another day like that and I would be ready to put the plants in, so I decided that's where my time was best spent.
It didn't take long for me to rethink that one! All it took was a walk across the lawn to pick asparagas and my evening plans were modified to something I could do inside - away from the hordes of mosquitoes that weren't there two days ago. I bee-lined it right back to the house and started cooking. The plants would have to wait.
As it happens, the Weather Channel's prediction of thunderstorms and heavy rainfall rolling up from North Dakota was right on the mark, so even without the bugs I wouldn't have lasted long. Although most people are done seeding, there are still a few acres left to be sowed. Glen has about 80 acres of flax to put in, and then maybe 60 of grass for pasture land. It sure would have been nice to get this rain on the land after the seed was in the ground, but we'll get done eventually.
I'm told that this weekend we will be "working cattle". This means bringing them all into the big corral and sorting the herd. That sounds pretty tame to what really takes place ... we have two bulls now and since the youngers cows and heifers are daughters of the older bull, they have to be sorted out to go with the new bull, so first we cram them all together and then split them into groups in different pens. There's anxious cows calling for their calves, calves bawling for the mamas, yearlings bucking and kicking up their heels in the confusion, and a farmer who expects me to be able to read his mind. The whole preformance is very upsetting for the cattle - and it usually takes our marriage a while to recover, as well.
To make things a little more tricky this year one of our pens is full of feeder steers. These are last year's calves that we ended up keeping too long thinking the border was going to open. Now we won't get our money out of them unless they are up to butcher weight when we sell them. Glen has heard about a small packing plant which only buys unmedicated animals and is trying to find where it is and if they are looking for a supplier. We aren't registered as organic farmers but there are only two animals in our herd which have been treated with drugs. If there's a market out there that will pay a premium for that kind of meat, we can certainly supply it.
1 comment:
Jocelyn;
I am not really sure about the Canadian markets, but I know there is an ever-expanding U.S. market for organic meat and other such products. People are willing to pay top-dollar for it, which is why many of us can't affort to buy it...the prices are so high, at the supermarket, organic meat is something we instinctively pass over based on price alone.
That higher price, however, is good news for both the processor and the cattleman, and I would think that would be great news for you, especially in light of the wild weather you described earlier. I sincerely hope you find a prossessing plant that will take that meat, because I believe if you do, you'll fetch a rather high price for it.
Well, Nicole and I will be in Tennessee this weekend. The surface reason is for her cousin's wedding, but that provides a perfect excuse to look at houses and land, so while we are down there, we are going to do just that. I think we have decided that (unless we can get a through-the-floor bargain) we are going to rent a small place for a couple of months while I get settled in to a new job, then we will buy our land. The only reason for the wait is that we've been told by several lenders that we have great credit, but because we would be completely new to the area, they have little assurance that we will have a stable income. We will, of course, but until we can provide paper proof, the offers they are giving us include very high interest rates. Land is cheap in much of East Tennessee, which means if we buy at a higher interest rate, we'll be paying much more for the land than it actually sold for. We don't want to do that, because we fear it might render moot any profit we would make off the land.
So while we are there, we are going to look at a few places we are interested in, check the price, and I am going to disseminate my resume like crazy. I'd like to get settled and buy rather quickly, because Nicole can tell you, I hate to move...so the sooner we get it over with, the less of a grump I will be.
I really am sorry to hear that the rains came before seeding was finished. I hope that you and Glen have managed now to get most of seeding completed and that since then, you've had more rain-when it was needed
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