This winter I took a break. I decided to stop blogging and reading blogs a bit to keep my sanity. There are so many blogs out there that I've been reading or stopping by here and there that have really started to rub me the wrong way. Ones that tout that their way of life as the only way to live or that this type of food or way of raising food is wrong on so many levels. If I were to start blasting certain groups of people, I'm sure I would get lots of nasty responses saying I was wrong or that I'm being mean. I realize we are all entitled to our own opinions, but it still doesn't make it right to speak against a certain group of people when they are doing their best to provide for others.
I come from a farming background. Not a corporate farm, but a large family farm. At least it's fairly large for the area I live in. Some people would feel it is tiny compared to farms in other states, but in our little slice of the world, I think it's a good sized operation. It's a conventional farm. GASP! I said it, conventional. We grow wheat, soybeans, milo, sesame, and sometimes corn-although, we don't have the moisture to grow corn successfully. I know there are a lot of people who only feel organic farms and small locally grown produce farms are the way to grow food. Well, guess what. The world would starve without conventional farmers. Self-sustainable farms can't feed the world, let alone all the people in their own state. It takes ALL types of farms to feed the world. Locally grown produce is wonderful! I applaud those who take on that task and succeed, but we have to think larger scale here. There are a lot of people who have no desire to grow their own food. That's ok. They may provide a service that those of us who do grow food may need. You are either reading this post on a computer or phone. Who makes those? Certainly not me and possibly not you either, but there are people out there working their jobs and letting the farmers grow their food, while they make the farmer's phone, computer and other technology. It's a win-win situation in most cases. (There are always exceptions...)
Ok, I think I'm done with my soapbox, but it may get revisited. On to what's up on our farm!
We are starting up a new season on our farm. It's been a rough start though. We have 16 acres of wheat planted by our house and there hasn't been much moisture this winter. Yes, we had about 12 inches of snow this winter, but when you melt that down, you don't get much water. Since the snow, we've had .2 inches of rain-that was just this past week. Well, that isn't enough to get the wheat up and going strong enough to produce a good crop. On my way to work this morning I was noticing that the wheat is heading out. Yikes! Our field is only about 6 inches tall. Not tall enough to already be heading out! We have brown patches in the middle of the field that will probably not even produce a head. Hopefully we'll have enough to harvest this summer. It could be a sad harvest this year. We may try to double crop some milo, but that typically is a bust too.
The garden is in for the most part, but the wind is wreaking havoc on my planting schedule. I have a few heads of lettuce that I transplanted in one row, but I'm unable to get out and plant lettuce seeds for fear they'd never make it into the row and would blow into the tree row. I'm working on mulching my rows this year with wheat straw. We traded 3 bales of prairie hay for 6 bales of wheat straw with a friend of ours. This straw should help keep weeds down to a minimum and the straw breaking down in the soil should help amend it and create a good base for the future. I used some straw last year in one part of the garden and I can already see it starting to work it's magic in the soil.
Our 4-H lambs are finally here. We are going to keep the ewes after the fair this year and hopefully breed them back and start our own herd. I don't know how this will work, but we are going to try. It should be a little easier than dealing with cattle, but it's an animal, so that thought will probably be thrown out the door when we starting having issues, and I know we will have issues. :)
Now I'm off to a high school track meet. I'll try not to blow away in the 30+mph winds we are having today..... My son runs the 110 m high hurdles and of course the wind is out of the west today, so they will be running INTO the wind. Every other day we've had meets, it's been out of the north or south and of course they were running into the wind those days too. But today, the track runs east and west. Most days, that would be ideal, because you would have a cross wind that is a little easier to deal with. Nope, no such luck. Hope he doesn't crash and burn!
