June 24, 2004

Good morning everyone – has been awhile since I checked in. Life has just been too busy lately. DH went to Sedalia today to watch sheep show. He and Julia will probably go back down on Saturday for the auction. He would like to buy some Hampshire ewes to help bulk up our herd for show lamb purposes.

I am still trying to catch up from being gone a week to St. Louis. I had a good time down there – learned a lot and met some great people who work in USDA Rural Development agencies across the US. I have to go Kansas City in July. Maybe I can hook up with some of the Missouri people. I am so busy at my job. I can’t believe they initially made this job part time. They just keep piling on the responsibilities. One coworker apologizes. I would rather have a lot of work than watch the clock because I don’t have enough to do or I have to look for things to do. Although I do get tired of those who wanted everything “yesterday”. Best part of the job is what I seem to do best and that is to nag. If I catch somebody spending money on something they are not supposed to, I get to let them know.

We had a bit of bad news last night as our friend said he is going to terrace the corn field that we were scheduled to put our cows in this fall. Luckily, dh had decided to raise a field of sorghum this year so we will have silage. However, we are still afraid we will not have enough feed. We had been tinkering with the idea of getting rid of a few cows so this has forced the issue. We will probably sell three of our older cows and their calves and one bred heifer. We are also going to sell Homer the gomer bull since he is starting to age. (I will not miss him – he chased me out of the lot the other day – although if I would have had my stick with me, he would have left me alone. He seems to be getting more cantankerous as he gets older.) I guess the cow/bull market is crazy. Old bulls are bringing .50 a lb. Last week Hosta gave birth to nice bull calf. You might recall that Hosta was the heifer that Julia showed last year and did well with but we had a hard time getting her settled. It is hard though when they don’t calve at the same time as the others do as we will be playing catch up for a few years. We prefer they calve in spring. Julia is a bit disappointed as about half of her cows didn’t settle on the first time around with artificial insemination. The process of insemination involves taking the frozen sperm out of a tank and thawing it in a special thermos. He found out from a friend that the thermostat may be off so he checked it. The water was actually too hot which may have killed the sperm. Always something!

We sold all of our lambs except a few we are keeping back for ewe replacements. We didn’t have any corn left in the corn bank and it was too expensive to feed them out.

Julia attended a graduate agriculture study class last week. She was able to go on a grant so it cost nothing. She earned 3 credits towards a graduate degree. She will even receive a stipend to cover her living expenses for the week. The class covered a lot of different things from landscaping to agriculture careers. She said she was told that a typical Midwest farmer needs to gross $300,000 in revenue in order to earn a wage of $35,000. Julia decided to work on a Masters degree in Agriculture Diversification to cover her bases in case a teaching career doesn’t work out.

We sure have been having some strange weather - cooler than normal and lots of rain – everything is growing so well and is so green. In the past two weeks, we have had over 3 inches of rain off and on. We had our alfalfa cut and baled into large round bales. We had 36 bales from one field which I'm sure is a record for that field. It has grown so fast that it will probably be ready to cut again in a few weeks. We also cut and baled a small field of brome grass. Some of of the windrows were a bit damp but we had those baled separately and will feed to the cows right away. There was a 50% chance of rain today and we didn't want to risk it - just a guessing game. We are using a different guy to bale this year and so far we are very happy with him.

Well my break is over – better get back to work. I sure did rattle on today. You all take care.