Aug. 5, 2003

Hello farmers. Yesterday we had some excitement in the neighborhood, a neighbor's haystack caught fire from spontaineous combustion and he lost the whole thing, about 400 tons, his whole winter supply for all his cattle and horses. I sure hope he had insurance on it, most ranchers insure their fields against fire or hail loss, stacks against fire and even livestock against accidental death. If he didn't have insurance he will have to sell all his stock. Apparently he had a custom baleing outfit bale up a lot of hay for him and they didn't wait for it to be quite dry enough. We had gone to LaGrande and were comming home and saw the smoke from several miles away, more or less in the area of our place, it is about 2 miles away from ours. When we passed his ranch we could see that it was his haystack and not his house. The stack had fire comming out the top, sides and ends. The local volunteer fire dept was there along with a lot of the neighbors. There isn't anything that can be done about a haystack fire because the fire starts inside it, and by the time flames erupt and you can see it there is a raging inferno inside the stack. If it is taken apart it just burns faster, almost explosively, and by that time it would be a total loss anyhow, so all that can be done is to keep it from spreading. I think all the neighbors are checking their insurance policies today to make sure they bought haystack coverage.
This morning I helped my neighbor move his cattle to our place. He had them here a couple of months ago and now the pasture has regrown nicely and his pastures are getting quite eaten down, so they are back, this time including the bull. We also moved his flock of lambs to a different pasture, they are weaned and not missing their mothers anymore, some of them have been sold as organic lamb already. He is hoping the word will get around that his lambs are available as organic meat and not have to sell so many on the regular market. This past week he made a marketing trip and visited several restaurants in the Willamette Valley to let the owners know his lamb was available. One restaurant wants the lambs whole and they want to cut the meat to their own specifications. His beef is also organic. He's been working on a marketing program for several years now, the first year he only sold about 10 lambs as organic, this year he has already sold 20 and has orders for more. These are the lambs I take care of at birth so I am quite interested in how they grow and where they are marketed.
We had some rain showers this morning, I thought it felt like a sauna out there after the sun came out. After I helped move cattle and sheep (on horseback of course) I gave Breezy his workout, then went to town to run errands and get some groceries. Now I'm going to throw a chicken on the BBQ and go irrigate the garden. Our rain didn't amount to much, maybe 2/10 of an inch if that. Certainly not enough to help the garden much.
Have a great evening everyone, count your blessings.