Pigs are coming home

We are going to pick up pigs that we took in on Saturday. We took in 10 pigs, we sold 9 of them but kept one for ourselves. We are also going to pick up some beef that we took in. I'm sorry todays post is short but things are slow lately.

Rain

We have been waiting to plant for days now, but all this constant rain has kept us out of the fields. We have our new planter all set up and ready for planting. At least it is not like last year when we got all the crops in early and then it rained. The gas prices are going up, as if you haven't noticed, and that will make the price of farming go up! The prices for wheat and corn are going up though so hopefully it will make up the difference.

Waiting...

We have been waiting to plant for a little bit now but the fields are still too wet to plant. the wheat got sprayed yesterday, but only on the no-till ground. The field where we fitted was still wet and the sprayer was cutting in too much. Wednesday we started to plant in our garden. things have been fairly slow lately while we are just waiting to plant. We are planing on next week to start planting.

Spring is coming... slowly!

Next week is spring break and its only going to be around 50! This should make for a cold spring break. The weather channel says that this is about average temperature for this time of year but it still does not have the spring feel! I am hoping they are wrong and it will get up to 70 the whole week, but I'm doubting that my dream will happen. Yesterday we found out that our request to a government program for a barn got accepted! It will be used for compost, we signed up last year but we did not get it. So we signed up this year and it got accepted! We also worked up the garden a little bit Wednesday hoping that we will be able to plant some veggies that we have started in the house soon!

Festus

This is our dog his name is Festus (of of Gunsmoke) this is when the big ice storm hit so this picture is a couple weeks old, but its a pretty good one. He is a German Shorthair. He would be a relly good bird dog... if we would have trained him when he was young. All he does now is run aroud in the barns and around all our trees and chases the birds, the only time he stops it to eat and sleep! He is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he has become part of the family! Comment if you think I should dig up a more recent picture!

1941 Farmall H

This is our Farmall H, we inherited it from my great grandma. This picture was taken a few years ago, after a 5 year restoration. Before it was covered in rust, had no decals, and the metal was all bent and dinged up. We did a coplete restoration, we had everything taken down and all wore out parts were replaced, we sand blasted it, and put new tires on it. It looks like a show tractor but we still farm with it!

A few facts on the Farmall H

- Produced from 1939 to 1952, became the top selling individual tractor model of all time in North America with over 390,000 sold!
- You could get it with steel wheels or with rubber.
- In 1940 the starting price for one with rubber tires was $962

Something new

I am in 4-H and I have been taking a steer to the fair for 7 or 8 years now and every year I have taken a Black Angus. Just like everybody else. I believe part of the reason for that is due to the fact that Black Angus is about all that is around our area (southern Michigan). So this year I decided that i would mix it up a bit and take some thing different from the norm. I decided i would get a Brangus, sure they still are 5/8 Angus but I didn't want to stir things up too much and I wanted something within my price range. I also have some books on cattle and one book said that they gain on average about 4.11 lbs. per day! But it does not say what type of feed they are feeding so I doubt I will be able to achieve  results, but I will certainly try to! I had to drive 2 hours to get him, but that was the closest breeder. It was hard to tell the difference from him and the rest of our herd, which is mostly Black Angus, but there are a few features that are different. I am told when he gets bigger, he is around 800 to 900 lbs. right now, that he will start to look more different from the others.