Colonel's Blog, Earthdate 29 Jan 2023...
Hey Y'all!!
Good Sunday morning from Free Missouri! All of the animals are good on the farm today. The temperatures are mild this morning and dropping throughout the day to below freezing this evening and then it will stay below freezing until sometime Wednesday afternoon. The falling temperatures are dictating the farm projects today. We will refresh everyone's straw and ensure all water troughs are full to the brim while the hoses are thawed. Yesterday I said there weren't any farm projects, but I did mow about 3 acres on one of our steeper hills with the tractor and bush hog. It is slow going and there are often 'pucker' moments but it needed to be done. We chose to mow the hill now because the low-lying areas are still a bit soft from the precipitation and we try our best not to rut-up the soil in our pastures. We also celebrated Shelley's birthday with our annual trip to eat sushi. The top pic is Shelley with her flaming 'Oh my god' roll. The next pic is Shelley and Stella and the bottom pic is Shelley and Happy, both taken this morning while we were milking. Stella is now at the age that she 'high-tails' it around the pen when we come near. She is quite excited for whatever it is we are going to do. We are bringing in around 6 gallons of milk per day so we plan to make some different cheeses today.
Birthdays are an occasion that often make us slow down and think a bit about time and what we are doing with it. I have mentioned in a few blogs that we learn from the gurus like Joel Salatin. In one of the first books we read regarding this lifestyle, Joel suggests that the maximum age to start a farm is 30 years old. His reasoning is sound and I think that on the whole, he is most likely correct. He posits that if you get started farming after 30, you will not have the energy or stamina to do everything that is necessary when you are building it up. He is speaking about our situation, a 'first-generation' farm, not a situation where you are taking over an existing farming enterprise. Well, neither Shelley nor I are very fond of being told what we cannot do, so Joel's suggestion simply made us that much more determined to make this work. In our minds, we just have a couple of decades worth of work to make up in the next couple of years! Joel says that you know you have a successful farming business when multiple generations are living off of the proceeds of the farm. We are a long way from success using that definition, but I can say that we are healthy and throw around 50 pound feed bags like we were in our 30s. I suppose time will tell if we were too old to get started in this adventure, but until then, we are having the time of our lives!
Local Farm Report for 28 Jan 2023:
Harvest:
21 Chicken eggs
7 Duck eggs
5 3/4 Gallons of milk
Sales:
N/A
Cheers! Rich & Shelley
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