Archive for the ‘Farm – All’ Category

May 9, 2012 – Big Gardening Day on the Farm

It was a great “getting things done on the farm day.” It was the first day that Linda and Claire were home all day, so the garden and other things were transformed.

First, Claire volunteered to clean out winter from the hen house. About five overflowing loader buckets (liberally soaked with water to aid the composting process) and the hen house was ready for fresh bedding, and next year’s compost is on the way.

Many plants and seeds and mulch found their way into the garden as well. We got the recycled lumber tarps out of the barn, Linda planted a bunch of peppers and tomatoes. I went to the neighbors via the bumpy dirt trail between the crop fields and retrieved two loads of loose straw from the loft of their barn and put the tomato cages on, pounded the stakes in, spread the mulch and wet it all down.

This photo shows some hearty garlic on the right, a cattle panel trellis that we put up this weekend.  It has pole beans on the outside and lettuce and spinach underneath, hopefully to last a bit longer into the summer with the shade of the beans.  To the left of the trellis is some space reserved for viney plants before a row of tomatoes.  It’s nice to have that mulched portion of the garden already weeded for the whole season!

At the end of the day, I took some time to pull thistles from the pasture.  It appears that last year’s pulling them out by had greatly reduced the population in the paddock we tested last year.  We’ll continue that on the other paddocks this year.

April 27, 2012 – Beautiful Lettuce

It’s prime lettuce season.

Doesn’t this look yummy?

March 25, 2012 – Prairie Fire

We helped out at a prairie burn this afternoon at Two Friends farm. I’ll mix it up and take you through the burn backwards.

At the end of the day, about five acres of prairie is torched.

Sending Martin out batting cleanup while we go try to find some cold ones (not really).

After setting the backfires, the main fire gets rolling.

A burning ring of fire!

Martin with a flapper to help smother flames along the edge of a fire.

Nice flapper work on the right side of the photo!

Starting the fire nice and slow – a back burn against the wind before starting the main fire.

March 22, 2012 – Early Spring Blossoms

The first fruit tree blossoms decided to unfurl the last few days.

This plum is first out of the gate.

Just for a reminder – here’s a shot from exactly today four years ago today!

And this is a shot of our road from earlier in March 2008. All the 80 degree days this March have made snowy Marches a memory.

March 17, 2012 – Man v. Chainsaw

With the advent of the warm weather, I’m behind on the pruning.  Today, I thought I might catch up by speed-cutting down the willows by using the chain saw instead of the hand pruners.  Perhaps the execution was faulty.  While I failed to separate my leg from my body, I did manage to turn it into an ER room visit for 6 big stitches right near the inside of a knee.  Claire was home, and while I felt I could drive, I wasn’t sure I could drive home, so off she came with me.  The two hours there went quite quickly as the basketball tourney was on the waiting room TV and the suturing room TV, which was decorated in a Nemo theme.

The doc said it was easy as chainsaw stitch-ups go as the chain didn’t “bounce” two or three times making a road rash like some chain saw incidents.

March 10, 2012 – ‘Tis the Fighting Season

Every spring Mr. Cardinal finds an enemy he needs to fight somewhere on the farm.  In year’s past, a male cardinal spent hours of the day banging into his reflection in the front picture window.

This year, he has found his rival to be a bit more clever and found him hiding inside the mirror on the car.  I sure hope humans don’t spend the same amount of time and energy fighting phantom enemies!

March 6, 2012 – Linda Counted Among the Powerful Except by Hy-Vee

This morning I dropped Linda off at the airport for an event in D.C. she was invited to participate in by Oxfam – here’s a press clipping about the event:

More than 70 powerful women from around the US and the world, including actor Kristin Davis (Sex and the City), former Haitian Prime Minister Michelle Pierre-Louis, Top Chef Masters competitor Mary Sue Milliken and many more, will join international relief and development organization Oxfam America for a Sisters on the Planet Summit on March 7 to mark International Women’s Day.

The women will also meet with Members of Congress to advocate for policies that support women farmers around the world.

Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, will offer keynote remarks to the morning gathering. An award ceremony and reception in the evening will honor Kristin Davis for her work to raise awareness on global hunger and poverty.

The following day, International Women’s Day, women leaders including former high ranking government officials, civil society leaders and veterans and farmers from across the country, will take to Capitol Hill to advocate for reforms to the US food aid program in the Farm Bill that will save money and lives.

Here’s where Hy-Vee comes in – the not-so-good part. On February 28, she dropped off her D.C. clothes at Hy-Vee to be dry cleaned. She asked me if I could pick them yesterday up when I brought Martin to piano lessons. The clothes were not there on March 5. I asked what dry cleaners they were at, so I could go there to pick them up – they said all their dry cleaning drop-offs for the week are sent to Cedar Falls on Fridays and returned the following Tuesday – so it could be a week or more. So I had the privilege to call her as she was enroute to Ames to stop at Younkers before she came home to make a new wardrobe purchase!

February 26, 2012 – The Sweetness of February Begins

It was a good Sunday.  I had been pretty much cooped up working indoors the last few weeks, so I was looking forward to a nice day outdoors.  Today was double-duty farm work.  It was time to boil down 15 gallons of maple sap and begin pruning the fruit trees.

Here’s the world famous mobile sugar shack.  An old barrel stove on a metal wagon that can be moved around to account for the wind – and it was windy today – near wind advisory criteria.  This photo pretty much shows it all.  Cart with wood, buckets with sap, coffee cup, willing boy, stove and evaporator pan a bubbling, and maple tree with container in the background.

Today’s enterprise is uber-sustainable.  The wood is from the storm last summer, the plastic cartons that use the sap will be converted to tomato shelters in a few months, and the leftover logs that hadn’t burned all the way were snuffed out for some biochar.  To top it off, we produced more electricity than we used.

While we wait, it’s a good time to begin pruning the fruit trees.  Martin starts on this one that needs some attention.

But eventually, the kids tuckers out and finds a makeshift resting place in the branches of an apple tree.

February 22, 2012 – Sap’s Running!

I thought it might be time to tap the maple trees for the spring sap run.  A quick email to our friends at Morning Sun farm found they had just tapped their trees and already had 50 gallons in the hand.

Drill a hole.

Pound in a tap.

Sap flow!

About four hours after getting the taps in, this tree has already filled the buckets about 3/4 full.

February 4, 2012 – Claire’s got Stones!

At least curling stones.

You’re looking at about 640 pounds of pure unadulterated fun on ice.

Macalester offered up an free afternoon of curling to a busload of students – Claire was all over it as a daughter whose father neglected her by never once taking her to a hockey game, even though her little brother witnessed the Frozen Four championship game.  Here a nice man instructs the kids how the game is played.

Not yet skilled at using the broom as an extension of the arm to maintain balance during the throw, she’s down. I hope she was able to say that the stone made it into the house.

OK, at least Claire made it into the house!

As with most sports, although you might not think of it, every possible warning is issued to protect from legal action in the unlikely event a stone becomes airborne.  I just went and added the Canadian cult film Men with Brooms to my Netflix queue!

January 27, 2012 – Not Your Father’s Mr. Potato Head

When I was growing up, the only fun we had with potatoes was pushing plastic face parts into a tuber.  Things are different now.

Now, kids are using potatoes to generate electricity, as demonstrated by Martin’s potato-powered clock.  Sure it’s a bit bulky for a clock, but it’s potato-powered!

January 14, 2012 – First Lego League Iowa Championships

This week was he culmination of the First Lego League season.

It’s a crazy scene in the atrium of Hoover Hall at the ISU College of Engineering as the 72 teams that qualified for state gather.

Team Mu? watching the robot on it’s mission to complete as many tasks as possible.  The other two parts of the competition, the presentation about an innovative solution and team problem-solving exercises  are just as important as the robot programming, but less camera-freindly.

The team poses with long-time FLL supporter and Emcee Brandon.

The team poses with this year’s award, third place in the State in the “Gracious Professionalism” category.  This is one of the core values to First Lego Leaugue and is described as following from FLL:

With Gracious Professionalism, fierce competition and mutual gain are not separate notions. Gracious professionals learn and compete like crazy, but treat one another with respect and kindness in the process. They avoid treating anyone like losers. No chest thumping tough talk, but no sticky-sweet platitudes either. Knowledge, competition, and empathy are comfortably blended. In the long run, Gracious Professionalism is part of pursuing a meaningful life. One can add to society and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing one has acted with integrity and sensitivity.

Photos without high hopes gardens watermark are courtesy of Frank Roessler.

January 9, 2012 – 2011 Skystream Wind Turbine Results

Ok, the numbers are in from last year’s Skystream production. In summary, the Skystream produced an average of 387 kWh per month. This compares quite favorably to the average of the previous two years (333 kWh), and our household electric use dropped from an monthly average of 857 kWh in 2010 to 819 kWh in 2011. So, the Skystream produced 47% of our electric use in 2011.

Production stats for the Skystream Turbine for 2011.

2009 Summary
In 2009, the Skystream produced 4012 kWh, an average of 334 kWh per month. The farm and household used 11,068 kWh, an average of 922 kWh per month. The Skystream produced 36% of our energy.

2010 Summary
In 2010, the Skystream produced 3993 kWh, an average of 332 kWh per month. The farm and household used 10,284 kWh, an average of 857 kWh per month. The Skystream produced 39% of our energy.

2011 Summary
In 2011, the Skystream produced 4643 kWh, an average of 387 kWh per month. The farm and household used 10,145 kWh, an average of 819 kWh per month. The Skystream produced 47% of our energy.

January 8, 2012 – The Storm that Keeps on Giving

The extraordinarily warm winter to date allows for some jobs that might have waited until spring.  We’re still cleaning up debris from the storm.  It was nice enough to get the chain saw out today and cut up some more trees and haul more branches to one of the burn piles.

We’re probably about 80% done with the cleanup, if you don’t count whether the trees that were snapped off 1/2 way up come down or not.