It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Autumn

Winston is reaching the age when I will need to trap him in the barn and sell him. It will be a tricky operation, and upsetting for him, for his mother, and for me:

 Blue and Remy have another 6 to 8 weeks in their corral before I can let them loose in the south field. They will be happy to regain their freedom, and I'll be happy that my life will be easier:

 My north field produced a second crop of hay. It was cut, then tedded, then baled. The neighbor did the baling, using the kicker to fling the finished product up into the wagon which was towed behind the baler. His uncle, on another tractor, raked the cut and dried hay into windrows so the baler could pick it up and turn it into bales:

 I love the aroma of hay, both in the field and in the barn. It is also a scenic operation:

I took this photo to show how the baler collects the rows of hay and processes them into bales:

 But there are occasional breakdowns and problems. This stop was to refill the bin with four big rolls of baling twine:

 Flowers were still blooming, so I brought two more vases of them to church. This one contained flowers of Tree Hydrangea, Rugosa rose and Sevillana rose:

 Sunflowers and Daylilies:

I didn't think there would be many apples this year, but like other years, I was wrong. When they began to fall, I was shocked to see there were so many:

 They weren't big, pretty, supermarket apples - but they were good:

 Over on the other side of the house, a Yellow Delicious dropped small apples, and some animal, probably a Chipmunk or Red Squirrel, has been using these old steps as a dinner table:

 The plums began to ripen, but I have learned to wait for them to fall before I eat them. That's how I know they're really ripe and sweet:

Making Hay While The Sun Shines

One day I discovered two tractors in my north field, one of them with a tedder for turning over the hay to dry in the sun:

My neighbor was cutting the field in sections with one tractor, leaving it in windrows to dry. Periodically he used the tractor with the tedder to help it dry:

He was busy mowing more of the field with the second tractor:

The hay looked good, almost all grass and clover. I was sure glad I'd sprayed and bush hogged the weeds in June and July:

The Red Clover was in bloom and seemed even more colorful than usual:

I took my share of the first full wagon of hay bales and he drove off with the rest. Last year he sold the hay but this year he has more cattle of his own to feed:

And to prove it really is autumn, the New England Asters began blooming amid the Goldenrod:

And our wild Sedum, called Orpine, continued to bloom but turned a darker pink, almost purple:

My Tree Hydrangea, which had been blooming for a long time, began to develop a reddish tint as its flower clusters prepared to end their display for the season:

"And what is this mess of a weed patch?," you may ask. It's one of the two patches where I planted 12 Globe Thistles this year. They looked so much like Dandelions that I decided to not weed them anymore and hope they'll sort themselves out next spring. I certainly don't want to be pulling up my newly planted Globe Thistles:

The red Rose Mallows were the second ones to bloom, and they added depth to the spectacular display in front of my house:

Making Hay While The Sun Shines

It was two weeks later than last year's hay making, but we finally got good hay weather. Two neighboring farmer brothers arrived to cut my hay one fine day:

The mower is an exceptional piece of equipment, handily making tight turns and piling the hay neatly into windrows to begin drying:

The standing hay had looked too weedy to be useable, but they assured me it would look better, which is to say grassier, once cut. They were right:

They began in the small south field and then proceeded to the north field. The biggest portion of the south field is now a pasture for the cattle and does not produce hay for the winter:

They began raking the hay on the following day:

The windrows were turned over to allow it all to dry in the sun:

The cut and drying acres of fresh hay filled the air with a wonderful aroma:

And I found it fascinating to watch the ingeniously designed farm equipment at work:

On the third day, they brought over the hay baler:

They drove along the windrows and the baler picked up the cut hay, spinning it inside that big, red box:

When the spinning mass of hay reached the correct size, they stopped and the baler wrapped everything in orange twine:

Once the bale was collected, spun into a five foot diameter bale (about 1000 pounds) and wrapped in twine, the baler opened up and out rolled the bale. It reminded me of a giant, mechanical chicken, laying an egg. Here's a brief video:

What's Happening Around The Farm

Summer has surely awakened me from my winter stupor and I've been busy. Remember that old fashioned rose? I read that the pioneers took shoots from their roses, stuck them in the ground and placed a gallon jar over them. So I tried it. Alas, it looks to me like the poor cuttings are baking inside the jar. But I won't give up until they've had a month or more to get started:

The Peonies began to bud and the Mountain Ash bloomed:

The neighbors proudly showed me their five day old heifer calf and her mom. Both were beautifully colored and the cow had the biggest udder I've ever seen. I was told that she does have a big udder, but in this case it was still swollen from freshening, or beginning milk production:

I built a free choice mineral feeder so the cows could eat as much or as little as they wanted, whenever they felt they wanted some. It worked nicely, except that they also used it to scratch their heads. I'm not sure how long it will last with 1200 pound cows pushing on it:

I put up temporary fence posts with a single strand of electrified wire across the middle of the big field to keep the cattle out of half of it. They were eating only the grass, leaving just weeds to grow and reducing both the quality of the pasture and the amount of hay I'll get this year. Now I have 3 sections of pasture closed off to them:

Gracie was due to come into heat one day but instead, Violet (who I'd thought was already pregnant) came into heat. I called the artificial insemination man and, just before he was to arrive, called the cows into the barn for grain. Then I shut the barn door to keep them in there:

They milled around and munched on hay until he arrived. Then we began closing the gate on them, crowding them more and more into the corner where the entrance to the squeeze chute (that aisle on the left) was located:

Violet was the first cow into the chute. I locked her head in the gate and gave her more grain. Then the A.I. man checked inside her to be sure she was in heat. He said she was very much in heat, meaning our timing was good:

"Hey, what's going on back there?"

Then he got the straw of semen out of the storage tank (liquid nitrogen) and emptied it into her. She didn't seem to mind. Now, if she doesn't come back into heat in 21 days, I'll know that at least one cow is pregnant:

My neighbors began haying their fields:

Hay in windrows basked in the sun beneath puffy clouds. As brutal as this past winter was, the summer so far has been glorious:

Snapshots From Summer On The Farm

Here are some random scenes from summer on the farm, beginning with the newly mowed hay in windrows in the south field. And just look at that sky!:

Wild cucumber growing abundantly over an old stump in my lawn:

Hay bales drying in the sun:

Mowing hay in the north field:

He needed a wide turning radius:

I'd missed the cutting of the hay in the south field, so I watched with interest when they did the north field:

The chicks were growing rapidly and no longer needed heat so I turned off the light bulbs:

I kept opening their door to outside but they refused to go there. After all, they were happy and comfy inside. Who needed the outdoors?:

They were really beginning to look like Barred Rocks:

I put their food and water outside to tempt them:

It didn't work, so I took some of them and put them outside through their door to see how they'd react:

How did they react? The huddled, as if fearful, in a corner. I decided I was going to have to work on getting these birds used to going outside, but I'll post about that in the future: