From the Pastures: A time to give thanks

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. It’s been a beautiful fall, so far, especially after we got some much-needed rain. Harvest is mostly complete around here, with very few weather interruptions. The animals are enjoying the cover crops — mostly wheat, oats and turnips now since frost took care of the sunflowers, buckwheat and sunn hemp. There still is a little winter peas out there, but I think the seeding rate could be upped a little there next time.

My neighbor, Ken, drilled about 60 acres of wheat Oct. 21 and with our first rain right afterward, it is looking great. The warm temps have really helped. I used a pendulum seeder to seed 150 acres of the rye on both corn and bean stubble and that’s all up, as well. I’m planning on beans after beans on some acres and the rye should be a good break crop, as well as give the ewes plenty of early grazing.

We have a few hogs we are grazing for our meat customers and since they’re on sheep pastures they do OK when the ground is dry, but after rain I have to lock them up since they can become bulldozers in no time and I don’t want to destroy the pasture too much. They go to the locker this month, so no hog chores this winter.

We have 20 bucket calves, Jersey/Angus, on pasture with a little grain and these we will carry at least until spring. We sold 30 head of yearlings last month and started a new crop of calves on the bucket last week — this time Charolais/Jersey. They start off a little bigger. Time will tell if the market will like them, but for now I do.

Since Ruth’s brother finished harvesting, Ruth is done running the combine for the season, so it’s catch-up time at home. We have new end walls to put up on one of the greenhouses, as well as new plastic, so I hope the weather will cooperate. Along with some fence building and calf chores, we should have plenty to do before winter.

Fall is a great time to enjoy the fruits of our labor as farmers and to remind us of our many blessings as we approach Thanksgiving. Be sure to give proper thanks to the author of those blessings. Happy trails.