Friday, August 15, 2014

Farm Photo Friday, 8/15/14

I would like to start doing a weekly feature on my blog entitled "Farm Photo Friday". I post several farm pictures a week to my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts, and each Friday I plan on selecting one or two of them and provide more of the back-story/context than a simple caption will allow. Let's start this edition off with a sunrise...



I took this photo of the sun rising over the sorghum field east of my house on Wednesday morning after Dad and I had finished milking our cows. I've been taking quite a few sunrise photos lately, and this one has been one of the more popular ones across my SM channels. The sorghum in the foreground is only about knee-high and shouldn't be ready to harvest until October, so I'll probably get another shot or two from this location.



We spent mid-morning working through a big group of dry cows and pregnant heifers. Our goal was to sort out all the ones due to calve before Labor Day and move them to the maternity pasture. Instead of using corral panels, we deployed in a 2-1-2 formation with the cow dog acting as a rover. Dad and Jeff were up front sending the ones we didn't need while trying to keep the ones to move in front of them. I was in the middle keeping the "stay" group moving back while cutting off any "movers" that slipped by them, and JD & Doug were in the back as our last line of defense against cows that didn't want to go where we wanted them to go. After some running back-and-forth and perhaps a choice word or two, the nine cows and one heifer we needed were successfully sorted out from the rest of the herd.

Let me know if this Farm Photo Friday feature is something you find interesting, and by all means tell me if you see me post a photo elsewhere that you would like a little more information about. Thanks for reading, and y'all have a "dairy" good weekend!

3 comments:

luvsclassics said...

Good Morning Gilmer Dairy farm.

Thoroughly enjoy all your photos of the dairy farm.
Great idea for weekly feature photo with explanation.

What is that plant used for in the foreground of the photo ? ( not harvested yet).
I like the cows, and learned more about today's photo.
Appreciate all the work that went into moving the pregnant cows to separate pasture. All of you must have worked up an appetite. Any favorite recipes served back at the farmhouse?

Will Gilmer said...

@luvsclassics Thanks for the question! The plant growing in that photo is a forage variety of sorghum. We will chop the entire plant (stalk, leaves, and grain) and turn it into silage, which is the main ingredient in our milking cows' daily feed mix.

Katherine @ Grass Stains said...

Yes! I love this feature. Keep it. :-)