If you were keeping up with me on Twitter or Instagram this past Sunday night, you know I had a long evening. Armyworms had once again invaded our hay fields and required extermination as soon as the afternoon milking was finished. I was expecting to spend several hours in the tractor cab, so I ran home to change clothes and grab a couple of sandwiches my wife had packed for me. Later in the evening and well after sundown, my wife pulled into the hay field I was spraying and hand-delivered this cup of her homemade Milky Way ice cream. She had made it for the ice cream social that was to be held at church that evening, and wanted to make sure I got some. So the purpose of this photo is to mention the fact we had more armyworm problems, but more so to recognize my wife as being totally awesome!
We have finally started seeing a lot of activity in our maternity pasture. I think we have had ten calves born this week, and that is just the tip of the iceberg of what's to come over the next couple of months. Despite all the fresh cows rejoining the milking herd, we are also drying off other cows at about the same rate. Our calvings vs dry offs should stay roughly equal for another couple of weeks, and then in September we will start to see our milking herd have a sustained increase.
We started harvesting our corn this week, and hope to have 25 acres chopped and packed into the silage pit by the end of the day. You can see in this picture that the bottom half of the corn is starting to brown, both a sign of its maturity and the result of hot, dry weather. Most of our fields are sloped and terraced, and we have a good number of "short rows" to contend with (look just right of the tractor). We've avoided any major breakdowns up to this point, but we have a long, long way to go before this harvest season is over.
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