



Colonel's Blog, Earthdate 14 March 2023...
Hey Y'all! Happy Pi Day! We posted a new YouTube Video yesterday: Beef Cow Move to a new pasture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvuaLIB22Kw Check it out and subscribe to our channel!
A frigid 20 degree good morning from Air2Ground Farms! Shelley affirmed that I can be tired of the cold weather. I am a summer-loving person and although I love what we are doing so much that I'm able to tolerate the weather, whatever it happens to be, I am finished with cold for the year. That said, the weather doesn't seem to care how I feel as it will be back in the teens by the weekend. The animals are all very good this morning and I'll highlight the hogs. The top two pics are the hogs this morning when I went down to feed. That group of 5 were so snug and satisfied that they didn't even get up to eat. They opened their eyes, saw it was me with their breakfast, and went right back to sleep. We will begin prepping for their next move today. We will move them into a new paddock that surrounds our load-out pen. We begin feeding them in the load-out pen around a week prior to loading them for the trip to the processor. That gets them used to going into the pen at least twice a day. More layer chicks hatched yesterday! The bottom pic is the first 10 making the trip from kitchen incubators to garage brooder, a much less stressful trip than the ones that showed up in the mail! We have 15 layer chicks in the brooder now. One is still in the incubator and will most likely not make it. It pushed one foot out of the egg before getting the egg split in two which meant that it couldn't push the egg apart. All of our research says that if you assist in their hatch, they will most likely not make it, so we left it to try its best. After a day and a half of trying, it became apparent that it wasn't going to get out so we helped it out of the egg. We'll see if it makes it. There appear to be more that are going to try to hatch so we may have another couple of days with new chicks--in fact one just popped out. The beef chickens are still doing very well. We fed the beef cows and sheep a higher quality hay yesterday, a mix of grass, clover, and alfalfa. The only issue we ran into was that the bales are too big for our bale unroller to lift off of the ground, so we'll have to carry the bales to the pasture with the tractor and then hook the unroller to them so we can begin unrolling immediately instead of using it to transport the bale. Yesterday, we made yogurt and cheese, completed some house projects, changed the float valve on the cattle waterer, and uploaded a YouTube video. We received confirmation that our taxes are complete so we will make a trip to town soon to sign and mail. Shelley and Makaylah are on their way to Springfield to get soccer equipment for Makaylah to start spring practice today. We will also get an electric net around the garden, do some more milk barn improvements, and begin the next hog paddock today.
A news blurb of which you may not be aware from Defense News Online reporter Stephen Losey: "U.S. Air Force pursues major aircraft retirements in 2024." The article states the "USAF wants to retire 310 aircraft, including 42 A-10s." I believe he highlights the A-10s as they have been a major Congressional sticking point in the quest to retire aircraft. The USAF's 2024 budget calls for buying 72 new fighters--48 F-35s and 24 F-15EX. As someone who spent a few years involved in these negotiations, I have a bit of an understanding why the USAF is requesting to retire older aircraft in order to purchase new ones. As the overall budget is finite, all dollars spent on maintaining and upgrading older aircraft take from the available pot for newer models. I'll attempt to break it down to a personal finance example using vehicles. Let's say you must have a vehicle to commute to work every day and your current vehicle is older and things are starting to break down. You are now spending a lot of money fixing that old vehicle, to the point that you begin looking at getting a new one. You compare the costs of maintaining your current vehicle to the cost of getting a new one. After exhaustive research, you determine that although expensive up front, you are better off buying a new vehicle than continuing to maintain your old one. That is the position the USAF is in. For the past few years, once the USAF gets to that position, Congress has denied the request to retire the older aircraft. They often approve the purchase of new ones, but will not allow retirements. This would be like your boss telling you that although you decided to trade in your old vehicle on a new one, you can get the new one but you have to keep and even upgrade your old one--but you don't get a raise. So the USAF is often left in the same position you would be in...how to make the budget ends meet with conflicting priorities. My opinion, if someone from Congress asked, is to allow the retirements as requested so the USAF can quit spending so much on older aircraft and get on with the new ones. The last pic is an F-15EX in its Test paint scheme. Notice the additional weapons stations on the wings to the outboard of the external fuel tanks. This allows the F-15EX to carry even more weapons than the F-15E! In the pic, it has 12 medium-range air-to-air missiles!
We posted a new YouTube video yesterday: Beef Cow Move to a New Pasture
Local Farm Report for 13 March 2023:
Harvest:
28 Chicken eggs
14 Duck eggs
1 Goose egg
5 1/2 Gallons of milk
Sales:
2 Gallons of milk
Farm additions:
7 layer chicks
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
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