Archive for April, 2008
April 30, 2008 – Wind Turbine Foundation Poured!
After the 3rd scheduled attempt, today was finally dry enough to get a cement truck with 5 yards of cement back to the wind turbine site without sinking out of sight. Todd and James set the layout for the tower and four guy wire supports. A perfectly flat site is ideal, but hard to find, ...Read more.
April 29, 2008 – More Loader Benefits
I don’t have a long trailer, so when I fetch cattle panels (16 ft long), I usually put them on racks on top of the pickup and topper. It’s kind of a pain to load and unload from such a height, but it was the only way to get them home. When I went in ...Read more.
April 28, 2008 – Hot Chicks and Cold Nights
I wonder how many googlers will be very disappointed in viewing real chicks after searching for “hot chicks” in a search engine! I’ve found over the years the most reliable predictor of unseasonably cold weather is the day chicks arrive on the farm. This year is no exception – we expect a low in the ...Read more.
April 27, 2008 – A Constant Battle
There’s always something to do on the farm, but eventually the most urgent things spring to the top of the list. One of these items is this fence. We’ll call it the “Leaning Fence of Melbourne.” It’s a bit of a pain to tear out the old, but this one is way past its prime. ...Read more.
April 26, 2008 – Stocking up on Fuel
We’ve always bee forward-looking about having supplies for future times. Years of canning food for the winter, buying meat by the hundreds of pounds at a time, and most recently signing up for a wind turbine. Now, I’ve locked in most of the fuel to heat the house next winter. There’s no one who predicts ...Read more.
April 25, 2008 – Egg Season
We are at the height of the egg season. We do not supplement extra light in the winter to increase productivity, so the spring brings a natural flush of production. This year, I’m going to try to freeze some eggs in ice cube trays for cooking later in the year when the flush of eggs ...Read more.
April 24, 2008 – Thingamajig Thursday #115
Here’s this week’s “Thingamajig” entry. Also check out the last thingamajig answer. As always, put your guess in a comment below. Hold mouse over this sentence to pop-up answer. one year ago…”Congrats to the Hermivores”
April 23, 2008 – Trees In
It was finally dry enough (barely) to plant the trees that have been sitting in the basement for the last week, waiting for a window in the rain to get in the ground. It’s a “climate change” collection – trees that we are marginally in the growing zone. I planted some Michigan Pecan, Persimmons, Paw-Paw, ...Read more.
April 22, 2008 – Claire Strikes Again – Awarded a Trip to Washington DC!
As if earning the trip to Arizona yesterday wasn’t good enough, today Claire found out that she won an essay contest from the local Rural Electric Co-op and earned an all-expenses paid+ trip to Washington DC this June! It is part of the Electric Cooperative Youth Tour. Here’s a brief description from the Youth Tour ...Read more.
April 21, 2008 – State Envirothon Champions!
Today the Marshalltown high school Envirothon team won the state competition! It means Claire and her teammates get an all-expenses paid trip to Flagstaff Arizona later this summer to participate in the National Envirothon Competition. Here’s a part of the press release: A team of five students from Marshalltown Senior High School beat out 14 ...Read more.
April 20, 2008 – Manure Handling 101
Even though the ground is still very wet, we couldn’t put off cleaning the hen house much longer. The last few years we were able to do an early spring/late winter cleaning, but this winter did not provide that opportunity. We had a better system this year – to keep the scoopers engaged the whole ...Read more.
April 19, 2008 – Moving Fence
After another rainy week, it’s important to keep moving ahead, even though the saturated ground prevents us from getting the new trees and grapes in the ground. So today, we moved a fence to enlarge an exclosure in the pasture to accommodate the trees, even though we can’t plant them yet. With saturated ground, it ...Read more.
April 18, 2008 – I Feel the Earth Move
Last night was the 5.2 quake centered in Illinois. It was felt west of Des Moines, so we were in a place where we could have felt it. We think we did, but never would have thought twice about it and didn’t realize it at the time. We both woke up (this was at about ...Read more.
April 17, 2008 – Thingamajig Thursday #114
Here’s this week’s “Thingamajig” entry. Also check out the last thingamajig answer. As always, put your guess in a comment below. Hold mouse over this sentence to pop-up answer. one year ago…”Coming out of the Deep Freeze”
