Shelter from The Storm

[wvdexters]

Hans, What a thoughtful and generous thing to do. With winter coming and so many families in difficult times, your gift will be so appreciated I am sure. A fitting end.

[lonecowhand]

wvdexters, do the spaces between the boards invite loads of flying creatures in your barn? (bats, hornets, pigeons...)
Any issues there?

[wvdexters]

Birds nest in the rafters sometimes, mostly barn swallows. Luckily no pigeons out here.

We haven't had any problems with bees in this new barn probably because it is all so open. But they do like to get into the old barn and build nests in the walls, mostly yellow jackets and wasps. I stuck my hand in a wasp nest while I was looking for a tool a few yrs ago. They got me pretty good... not a good day. LOL

[genebo]

I love the barn swallows. Watching them harvest insects in mid flight is beautiful. My barn is very open, and barn swallows like to nest in the rafters. They probably make a good dent in the fly population.

One year I really messed up. I hung fly strips throughout the barn. They caught a lot of flies, but one day I went in and found several baby barn swallows stuck to fly strips. I was unable to save them. All the fly strips came down and none will ever go back up.

[lonecowhand]

Well, did the Dexters make use of all y'alls shelters during this last storm system, or just "tough it out"?

[lakeportfarms]

Ours are always outside...we had a real warm up, lots of rain, then high winds to blow dry them. But the snow all melted and the ground thawed, and the mud was about as bad as spring. At least now it's lightly snowing and the ground is starting to freeze again. One of our pastures is a disaster, but we intended on trashing it this year with lots of cow traffic and smoothing it out, it was pretty bumpy when I'd take the tractor over it, especially when it is frozen.

I'm getting three semi's of sand delivered today, to put around the sacrifice areas and waterers at various locations around the property. I can't take it any more!

[genebo]

Wow! That is really rough.

[lakeportfarms]

I should have gotten the sand a long time ago...we have a rock hard clay.limestone layer scraped and compressed by a mile thick layer of glacier 10,000 years ago. When we had global warming and they finally melted off the farm over a thousand or so years, a loam soil was deposited on top. Beautiful soil for farming, we have some of the best soil in the state for that. But it also means a very high water table (in some cases only a couple of feet below the harder pack top layer. When that top layer gets saturated, there's no stopping the depths that we can sink in other than that glacial layer that was scraped layer 3 feet down. When the ground freezes hard down a ways, which it had a week ago, it breaks up the soil compaction, and then when it thaws of course the ground is really soft. Plus the inch of rain we had a couple of nights ago.

My tractor makes the biggest mess. When I'm taking out round bales the front end is loaded so heavily the front tires just sink in the high traffic areas at gates and such. I put a heavy box blade on the back to help, and I really need to get the back tires loaded to help put more weight on the larger tires back there that will float more over the soft soil. That's next on the list.

It has been so wet and cool this year that there are still a few remaining soybean fields that haven't been harvested, and quite a few corn fields that still have standing corn in them. Even in drain tiled fields, which most are, the farmers are having to wait until the ground freezes to get their machines on them. Most all of this corn needs to be dried, so the price they're getting is discounted because of the high moisture content. There will also be heavy use of propane, and if we have a cold winter like last year, there will possibly be propane shortages again and high prices for those homeowners who heat with it, not locked into contracts.

However, in the scheme of things, our problems are minor compared to those in the California. I read an article a couple of months back about the elaborate methods illegal pot growers are using to steal water from some of the ranchers and farmers there. One described 8 MILES of PVC pipe that was laid and hidden leading to a field of marijuana plants. Priorities, you know...

I'm not picking on you again Bill

[genebo]

I use granite screenings in and around my barn, instead of sand. I get the screenings from the local gravel company. It is cheaper than gravel. It compacts quite well. My barn floor is so well compacted that I can run a manure fork between the build-up of hay and manure and the top of the screenings. It makes cleaning out the barn almost as easy as if the floor was concrete.

Outdoors, the build-up over the screenings gets wet and slippery and is harder to clean. However, the depth of the wet stuff only extends down to the top of the screenings. A couple of inches, maybe. The cattle keep good footing, but my rubber boots slide around a bit.

The barn floor of screenings was put down 11 years ago and has had to be added to. I clean up outside once a year and add more screenings.

Corn! I bought 50 bushels of corn yesterday for $4.53 per bushel. There were at least 20 18-wheelers full of corn waiting in line to be unloaded. I was the only one there to be loaded. This much corn will last about a year. The chickens and ducks and guineas get a couple of pounds every night to draw them into the henhouse to be locked up. The cattle and goats get a little bit mixed with minerals and sweet feed in the morning.

I have no way to test the moisture level in the corn I bought. I hope it's dry enough not to mold. Fingers crossed.