Friday, June 4, 2010

Farmer Fridays - Our Memorial Day Weekend







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Welcome to my first Farmer Fridays.  I hope that you will enjoy reading about the happenings on our family farm. 

It is often said that there are no such thing as holidays for farmers and there is a fair amount of truth to that especially if you are a livestock farmer like my family.  The care and well-being of our pigs always comes first even on days like Christmas.

 
 

Needless to say our Memorial Day weekend was very busy, but my mother-in-law and I did start the weekend by taking flowers to the cemeteries to remember those in our family that are already gone especially those that were veterans like my husband's grandfather who was a WW2 veteran.

After our trip to the cemeteries and a brief stop at the mall, we were very busy on the farm this weekend.  Each year, it is our goal to be done with planting season before Memorial Day weekend; however, that is at the mercy of Mother Nature who has not been fully cooperating this year. 

After a great start, we had all of corn planted by the end of .  And then the rains hit and we were out of the fields for 2 weeks straight.  This is killer for a farmer and his/her attitude and ultimately their family during the spring. 

So every one's spirits were high when we saw the weather forecast for the Memorial Day weekend.  Although rains were possible on Sunday and Monday, we worked very hard to get as much done as possible in the fields in addition to taking care of our pigs.  My husband planted soybeans (My friend, Ott,A, did a good job explaining our no-till beans in her blog.) and my father-in-law applied anhydrous ammonia (NH3) to the corn.  As my kids would say, we apply anhydrous ammonia to the corn to help it get bigger.  In all honesty that is what it does.  It is a form of Nitrogen which is essential for the corn plant to grow an ear and it has to be applied before the corn is too big to drive the tractor through the field. 



My mother-in-law and I were on standby to deliver meals, help them move from one field to the next, and keep the ammonia tanks full which meant several trips of back and forth to the coop to fill up the empty tanks.  (Just being around these tanks makes me wonder how anyone could ever think about making or using meth.)




Although we didn't get everything done before the rain arrived on Memorial Day weekend, things are looking pretty good and we need a couple more days of good weather to be done in the fields for the Spring. 

 

The plus side to the rain was we did get to end the weekend with a Memorial Day cookout full of the following homegrown goodies: pork burgers, lettuce, bacon, and strawberries.  Yummy! 

We also said an extra prayer that Mother Nature will be our friend going forward this summer.

6 comments:

  1. I hear ya! We had to cancel our plans for Sunday so Russ could be in the field but we did get to cookout on Monday! Love the Farmer Friday idea! Are you ever going to add a Linky to it?

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  2. You're allowed to drive that tank around? No women in this farmily (typed that by accident, but think it's a pretty cute name for us!) are allowed to pull trailers. It will be an exciting day when hubby finally lets me do it. :)

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  3. I love it! And Katie's right...my family runs screaming to the next state at the mere THOUGHT of me pulling a trailer around! hee, hee!

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  4. Lovin' the Farmer Fridays! Add saw the pics and she said "That looks like Uncle Tom's tractor!"...lol!

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  5. Love the Farmer Friday Badge!!! Thanks for givin my blog a shout out. glad to hear your are gettin the crops in and the nitrogen applied. It will be knee high in no time.

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  6. Thanks for all the great feedback. We do actually get to drive the tanks around and they will on occassion let us run the tractor or combine if they need our help; however, we never get to plant which is alright by me because I would be afraid I would never be able to keep the corn rows straight enough.

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