Winter Storm Prep

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 9 January 2023…

Hey Y’all!

Good evening and happy Tuesday from Air2Ground Farms. The weather is not good. It’s been raining/snowing and 35 degrees for a couple of days. Tomorrow and Thursday are forecast to be quite nice and then the arctic moves to Missouri. Friday, a winter storm is supposed to move through and by Monday the lows are forecast to be -6 with strong winds. Some estimates call for up to 10” of snow and it may be a week before the temps go back above freezing. That said, all of the animals are doing well! The top pic is Tozer, smiling for the camera. Next is Tozer and Lucy hanging around during our morning rounds. Shelley is saying good morning to Tank and TJ and the following is a close-up of Tank. The last guardian dog pic is Nala and Missy. Our Livestock Guardian Dogs (LGD) are all a cross between Anatolian Shepherd and Great Pyrenees. They all do a good job guarding the farm, with each having their own personalities and strengths/weaknesses. During a farm tour this weekend, we all witnessed Lucy chase a stray dog all the way away from the farm. We initially thought she was coming to play…that wasn’t the case and the stray high-tailed it down the road…with Lucy in hot pursuit! They rounded the corner and went out of sight with Lucy returning a couple of minutes later. The stray must have gone far enough for her satisfaction. The last pic is the beef herd and sheep flock rejoined to form a flerd. I’m sure you remember we joined the two into a flerd multiple times throughout the summer. We decided to put them back together to give them both access to the woods/cedar trees with the arctic weather on its way. The sheep have shelters but don’t always use them. Not the smartest animals! Today was the last day of milk for a couple of months. We decided to push up the date a bit to dry Happy off, again due to the extreme cold inbound. She hasn’t had any of her GMO-Free dairy ration since Saturday morning. We milked her Sunday morning, skipped Monday altogether, and milked for the final time this morning. Temporarily eliminating her feed and slowing/stopping milking signals to her body to stop producing milk. We will keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t get an infection. We treated her udder to hopefully preclude any issues with mastitis. She is also at the end of her bale of hay, the part she will eat but doesn’t really enjoy. We believe we’ve done everything we can to ensure a smooth “drying off” and look forward to the break in milking, which has been a daily chore for over a year. The next couple of days will be focused on preparing the farm for the extreme cold, from fresh straw for the poultry, hogs, dairy cows…to moving the generators inside so they will crank if needed. We have a list an entire page long of things to get in place. I hope you are able to keep warm this next week and have no issues with the winter storm!

Our Video from Friday did really well and is now our most viewed. Monday we answered a couple of questions to include "are veggies keto" and our sheep management. Check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpegy3ggeR8

Cheers!

Psycho & Shelley