Been a Little Busy

Fall has come and gone (not officially but Winter starts next week) and with that comes craziness and chaos both on and off the farm.  Lately I have been finding myself putting in more than the "normal" 60 hour work week (at the office) to more along the lines of 70-75 hours a week.  Daylight savings day has come again and really messed up my abilty to get home before dark and get a lot of farm work done after I leave the office.  I really wished they would just leave it alone, while I appriciate the extra hour of sleep 1 night a year it really doesn't make up for the hours of productive work that could have been done if I had 1 more hour of sunlight in the evenings.  So until the shortest day of the year has come and gone I guess I will have to keep the Energizer company in business with all of the batteries I will be buying for my flashlights.  Oh not to mention so much darkness while taking care of the chores makes it really hard to get good pictures. 
Harvest is over and all the corn has been hauled to town.  As Thanksgiving has come and gone and Christmas is right around the corner, I will have to say the I (and Mark) are VERY THANKFUL for all the help and use of a couple of semi trucks that my father-in-law provided to make sure that we got the harvest done as efficiently as possible. 


Grain Cart and Combine 



The calves have been off the cows for 80+ days now and they have long forgotten that mom was such a big part of their lives.  They spend their days eating, laying in the sun, and at about sundown every evening there is play time.  They run in circles bucking, kicking, butting heads with each other and playing king of the mountain (manure piles are so much fun for them).  We are just under 7 days away from delivering the steers to the feedlot and we will be picking out our replacement heifers this weekend. 
We have moved all of the cows off their summer vacation homes to their winter home on the corn fields.  They have 1 more stop before they will be back around the yard for calving.  We preg checked them prior to taking them to the corn field and all of the open (not pregnant) cows were sold.  According to the vet the bulls had a sucessful 90 days and work hard enough to earn their 9 month vacation.  The cows will stay on cornfields until the sometime in March when we will move them into the calving pasture "delivery room and nursery". 


Cows waiting to be loaded and hauled home



As if we are not busy enough in November we took on a group of heifers that the neighbor purchased and didn't have room for at his place.  We just have to feed and care for them (we already have to start the feed wagon and loader tractor every day to feed our own calves) for a few months until he sells them.  They came in preconditioned (vaccinated while still on the cow) but not weaned.  After they showed up I had forgotten how nice the quiet was since our calves had been weaned for quite some time.  They did break out of jail on night 2 and got in with our calves.  One made it out of all of the fences and into our cornfield 1/2 mile north of the yard.  After a little bit I got her talked into coming back with her friends and we fixed the fence and put the heifers back in jail for a few more days.  Other than that they have stayed healthy and are eating well and have been moved out of the jail pen into a bigger pen. 
Somehow the year has flown right by again!!