I'm hating this winter!

[lakeportfarms]

How do some of you stand not having frozen ground and good snow cover during the winter months???  I hate El Nino!!! We started with 16" of snow in November...without frozen ground.  So it melts and we have lots of mud.  Then it gets really cold and I have giant ruts and ridges without snow on top that makes it tough to drive on.  Then we get some more snow and cold temperatures, but then it melts again and basically makes lots of little lakes all over the pasture, which freeze again with cold temperatures and renews the rock hard ruts and ridges.  Then comes a nice big lake effect snow, only to melt again and create mud, which again freezes.  Then comes rain and warm temperatures, and we're back to lots of mud.  Now we're due for some snow again, but highs in the mid 30's before so I sure hope the ground freezes again before it snows and our temperatures go back to the lower 20's.

I'm afraid we're going to have another spring and summer like a few years ago, when we had some highs in the 80's in March, only to have temperatures in the 20's and 30's during April and May that killed all the apple blossoms, followed by a drought from June to September and $100 for a 4x5 round bale, if you could find it.

Rant over.

[Blessings Farms]

Rant anytime Hans but it still did not change it . I kick a lot of tires
I feel better at least .

[lakeportfarms]

Bring on the good old days!  Our view out the window at this time last year.  Right now it's grass and open water :-(

[Deleted]

I think(hope) you are wrong. The past winter you are talking about was much warmer than this I dont think our ground ever froze that year. It was also very dry we got almost no rain or snow all winter. The winter paddocks were dusty all winter here.
But ya the mud sucks and the cows hate it. as far as hay I am set here 100 extra bales I could not sell. People are almost giving hay away here. I will not do that I will sit on it and use it next year.

[genebo]

Last winter was like that here. Cold then warm then cold again. The ice storm that followed the re-freeze is what cost me Brenn. He was trying to breed 3 cows after the ground re-froze into rough ice. He must have slipped and fallen, for he hurt his back so badly that both hind legs were paralyzed. He had to be put down.

That's just one more reason I don't like winter.

It's supposed to snow a little tomorrow morning, then more next Monday and Tuesday. C'mon, spring!

[wvdexters]

Rant on ... The snow has mostly melted now, and with the added rain we've been having, it has made a real mess of the place. It's slush, water and mud; tall boots or you'll lose a shoe.  And refreezing at night.

We spent the afternoon cleaning out the other side of the barn, and moving Vera over. Trying to find a nice, dry place for her to calve in the next few days. Hopefully this will all dry out soon.    

[lakeportfarms]

I hope you're right Mike. It's so hard to tell around here because we have our little micro-climate because of the lakes. When the lakes are mostly open, we have what seems to be endless cloudy days during the winter and spring. So when we get the snow or rain we never seem to get much sunshine to help dry it all out until we hit June and the temperatures warm. Having lived in other areas of the country, like the Boston area when I was 30 or so, I remember getting snow, but it was followed by a LOT of sunshine compared to Michigan. The amount of sun when I lived in Colorado was amazing!

This year I'm going to pick up as much of last years hay that I can around late May when people are panicking about clearing out their barn for first cutting, and since our first cutting is usually in late June I'll make sure I stock up on that as well. I may also process a number of steers early on on grain so there isn't the grazing load during the summer months. I may even sell off some steers to the people who call me when green grass comes in wanting to raise them on their own property for butcher in the fall. Well, maybe not...Of course they want the 2 year old steer for $700...lol I would rather take him to a USDA processor, invest in a few more freezers, and sell individual cuts at that price.

[Deleted]

 cows are walking around like they are walking through a mind field. Even on the areas that are not rutted up and froze they expect it to be.
I have to haul some more hay back from the hay fields this weekend. Going to try and run several loads early tomorrow morning while the ground is still frozen. Will probably have to stop around 10 or 11 as it will be starting to thaw by then. 

[genebo]

Hans, I like your idea of stocking up on last year's hay just before first cutting.

I did that for 2 years and not only got lots of hay, I got it at ridiculously low prices. The cattle loved it. If it was low in nutrition, they made up for it by eating a lot of it. I got round bales of orchard grass delivered to me for $10/bale. He needed to clean out his barn for new hay.

[wvdexters]

Some of the "old farmers" around here say "if you are feeding this yr's hay, you are already behind."

[lakeportfarms]

Good advice on the hay. Even if they waste more it still goes to good use in improving your pastures for the grazing season. Just make sure it's the first hay that you feed them...lol I'm sure you all know why!  

[lakeportfarms]

Here we go again. It's 36 and raining now. The ground is not frozen. I've just spent 2 hours trying to get the tractor unstuck to feed cows. Tonight and tomorrow 7-8" of snow. Then high temperatures of 20 and lows near zero for the next week. I give up. I should have put the cows into their spring sacrifice areas for the entire winter too. Half of our pastures look destroyed and the other half are under water, soon to be a sheet of ice.

I promise NEVER to complain about cold temperatures and snow again.

[Deleted]

I got my hay hauled Saturday morning. It warmed up and yesterday everything was melting it did not thaw more than the top inch or 2. Same as you now it will not be above freezing for a week.

[wvdexters]

Cold will be settling in for the next few days. What a mess.

It's time to move the group up to a pasture with a hay bale waiting, but I'm trying to hold off until the ground freezes a bit. We can't get any other bales out anywhere right now. This is going to freeze up for a while but it is going to be icy.

I saw where Patuxent Phil did not see his shadow this yr = early spring. Hoping he's right.

[Deleted]

Dont know where that whole groundhog idea came from. I have never seen a ground hog out in February. The first time I do there will be something really wrong with the weather.

 

[lakeportfarms]

Here we go again. A beautiful day here Saturday, with a high approaching 50 degrees and sunshine. The ground was barely frozen under all the snow, and all the snow melted we had lots of mud again and soft ground. It's back below freezing now, so at least the ground (or I should say water on the ground) has frozen somewhat, but now they're predicting cold rain or freezing rain Wednesday turning to snow with 8-10" of accumulation by Friday. There is just no winning this winter. Our cows are getting too fat, and I'm feeding a fraction of the hay that I usually do. However, I'll make up for it by probably having to feed hay this summer on trashed pastures, not to mention thousands of dollars worth of seed and labor getting them back into condition.

[Deleted]

trashed pastures? I thought you kept them in sacrifice areas in the winter. I have no choice here with our soft soils here if I let the cows outside of the growing season. Even 10 cows could trash a 100 acres. 
We had several days that hit 60 or close to it. I was surprised it took about 3 days for the ground to be thawed more than about 2 inches. I did not think it had froze that deep to begin with. Now I think it has mostly thawed. No rain in the forecast for at least a week So it is starting to firm up a little. No more standing water anyway. 
We typically are dry in march before we get enough heat to kick in spring rains. so the ground does have a chance to dry up some. Bad news that means fire season is coming soon. I started working on making My own "fire truck" this weekend. Basically Water tank in the back of a truck with a pressure washer mounted to the rear. It was the old junk pressure washer I was working on fixing. After we had fire burn a lot of our farm a few years ago I want to be prepared. If it happened again I could loose a lot of hay.     

[lakeportfarms]

Feb 22, 2016 15:07:44 GMT @dexterfarm said:

trashed pastures? I thought you kept them in sacrifice areas in the winter. I have no choice here with our soft soils here if I let the cows outside of the growing season. Even 10 cows could trash a 100 acres. 
We had several days that hit 60 or close to it. I was surprised it took about 3 days for the ground to be thawed more than about 2 inches. I did not think it had froze that deep to begin with. Now I think it has mostly thawed. No rain in the forecast for at least a week So it is starting to firm up a little. No more standing water anyway. 
We typically are dry in march before we get enough heat to kick in spring rains. so the ground does have a chance to dry up some. Bad news that means fire season is coming soon. I started working on making My own "fire truck" this weekend. Basically Water tank in the back of a truck with a pressure washer mounted to the rear. It was the old junk pressure washer I was working on fixing. After we had fire burn a lot of our farm a few years ago I want to be prepared. If it happened again I could loose a lot of hay.     

I keep them on the pasture in the winter, because the ground is always frozen and there is snow on the ground. Sometimes a lot.  I'll move the hay feeders with each new round bale, distributing the hay and manure up and down the rows between the apple trees.  Usually mid-March, it's warmed up enough that I take them off and put them in the sacrifice areas for two months, until mid-May when the grass has gotten off to a good start and I can begin rotational grazing.  The dispersed hay and manure spots from the winter feedings have nearly disappeared, and there is fresh lush grass from the hay that has been fertilized by the manure.

The problem is keeping the cows in the sacrifice areas for an extended time makes a huge mess of the sacrifice areas, which are pretty large themselves.  In a normal year, I can run over the sacrifice area with a disc, broadcast some seed, and by the time August rolls around we have lots of fresh growth in those areas to get us through the summer slump.  The sacrifice areas are the lanes I use to get to/from the pastures, so it's a pain to crawl along waiting for cows to get out of my way when I take their food out to them.

Over and over again this year I figured that this was the last "thaw" and although there was some damage to the pasture, it was manageable.  But the thaws and the heavy snows kept up their cycle.  By now, it doesn't matter any more, I'm just going to lightly disc everything, get some seed down, and they'll be in the sacrifice areas as long as necessary to let the pastures recover.  Rotational grazing will still help, in that it will be lightly grazed and then allowed to rest when I do get them out there, but I'm going to have to be ready to put them back in the sacrifice areas in the event we have a hot dry summer so I don't stress the pastures again.

Our snow cover is completely gone as of today, and when I went out this evening to feed I was slogging through mud again, though it was frozen this morning.  Going down to 15 tonight, but back to 35 tomorrow during the day.  Then comes the snow...10" maybe, Wednesday and Thursday.  Then back to more normal temps of 25-30 daytime highs with lows in the teens for a couple of weeks.  Then they'll go on the sacrifice areas and I'll wait for some dry weather to fix up the pastures, and hopefully I'll have a chance to frost seed them but I may have to rent a drill from the local conservation office.


 

[wvdexters]

Yep! Excellent title to this thread.

We had to get a new hay bale out yesterday. Almost buried the tractor. The pasture looks like a mud bog and it's raining today.

[lakeportfarms]

Sorry Karrie, I hope that bale will last you a bit. For us, the ground is barely frozen at the surface but if I drive over it enough times with the tractor it turns to mud, and now we're getting 12-14" of heavy wet snow today and tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to the thaw of all this!

[wvdexters]

We're thawed to about 8 in down, but still froze solid underneath. Nothing is draining, so it is ponding and mud even on the hillsides. The bale should hold for a while. With the warmer temps now, hopefully we'll get lucky and this will be able to dry out pretty soon. I should also tell you that I almost got the Rav4 stuck in the farm rd around midnight a few nights ago. Everyone was asleep too. Luckily I got it out because Jeff would not have been too happy with me. It does really need washed though.

I can't imagine 18 in of wet snow on mud.  You are going to need waders when it thaws.

[lonecowhand]

Geez, I can't "like" any of this news, or this page! You guys are getting clobbered out there!

[lakeportfarms]

We ended up with 13-14" here by mid day. I spent most of the day clearing snow from the driveway at the house, and also at the farm. I had to whack some snow off of a cedar tree that was pretty heavily loaded and bowing over. It was a heavy wet snow, which we are not accustomed to around here. To our South in Detroit they only got a couple of inches, we were just north of the rain/snow line so we had mostly snow. Even just 30 miles East of us in Canada it was almost all rain. I guess I prefer the snow, even though it's later in the season. Now there are early rumblings about another double digit snow middle of next week but that is a week away and not to be taken seriously, because it's the same kind of track that this last one took.

The biggest problem I have is that the ground never completely froze again after our warm weekend, which melted the foot of snow that we had the week before. So if I put anything at all on the front loader of the tractor it just noses down and buries the front wheels into mud. I could float enough without the load on the front, so I ended up plowing some lanes into the pastures to remove all but a few inches of snow, and it's supposed to get to the lower teens tonight so hopefully that will make it to the ground and freeze it solid so I can get in there with some hay. They're going to need it. Otherwise, I plowed out their sacrifice areas to try and get things ready for when it warms up again, and then they are coming off the pastures for good.

Hopefully everybody in VA and Judy dodged the serious storms and numerous tornado's that were in that area!

[genebo]

We dodged the worst weather. One tornado passed west of us and the next two passed east of us. Winds were only about 30. Tree limbs fell, but no trees. Two inches of rain.

I haven't heard from Judy or Gale. I'm worried.

Four people died and a couple of dozen were injured in the state.

The warm weather has engendered some growth in the pasture. I spotted new grass poking its head through the manure piles that the ducks had spread.

[jamshundred]

Just swimming in mud here and buried in over a thousand emails I need to wade through from a server that went wonky.

[Deleted]

next 3 days near 60 then it will fall and snow but not as much as hans got. 4 weeks until calves start here.

[lakeportfarms]

We're due to get to the mid-40's, this weekend. It won't be quite enough to melt the snow, so I'll leave them on the pastures but get the sacrifice areas set up. Next week mid 30's during the day and 20's at night, with snow mid-week. I think next weekend it's time to put them on the sacrifice areas since a few days later they're predicting temps in the 40's for an extended period. Today is pretty, sunshine and a high in the upper 20's. Everything did freeze pretty well last night so I was able to get out with the tractor and the round bales.

I think I'm going to invest in a 3 pt. bale spear. It won't work for putting the hay in the hay saver feeders that I have, but I also have round bale feeders that I can use in each pasture. Or I could set the bale down and than just grab it and put it in with the front end loader once I get to the feeder rather than driving all the way out making ruts. If we do get the kind of weather that we've had, I can use that and not worry about the front wheels of the tractor sinking in with all the weight on the front end loader. I got my rear tires loaded last fall, and I also put the box blade on to try to prevent it but it hasn't been enough this year.

[Deleted]

I only put hay out with a 3 point. My tractor with a loader is not 4 wheel drive and it is 2 big to fit in my garage.  

[lakeportfarms]

Yeah Mike, the more I think about it that is the way I should go. I have a JD 4600 4wd compact, and I rely way too much on the 4wd to get around in the snow and mud when the front loader has hay on it, even with the loaded tires and back blade. The large rear wheels float so much better over the snow and soft ground than the smaller fronts. Even if I use the loader with hay, if I put a 1000 lb round bale on the back it is better than the box blade, and more often than not I'm feeding more than a bale anyway so it would save me a trip all the way back to the hay storage.

[Blessings Farms]

Glad you guys in the south are ok . Any word from Gale yet ? The only weather
we worry about is the tornado season and it can be wild here . Are temps. are
20s to 60s with enough moisture .