July 11-17

The cold, wet spring made weed control in the field corn difficult this year.

Hilling potatoes

A loader makes moving manure easy.

The spring wheat is doing well this year, its been a marginal corn year so far but a good year for wheat.

July 4-11

We have tomatoes, peppers, and peas planted in the greenhouse.

While cutting hay today I lost a tooth on the haybine.

It looks like the bolts snapped off, I couldn't find the tooth anywhere so I'll have to get another one.

The potatoes are up and growing.

June 6-12

Planting barley

We've had a cool wet spring in Northern Wisconsin. The small grain crops (rye and wheat) enjoy this weather.

Spring wheat.

The First Week of June

Saturday June 4th was the first farmers market.

We are selling our flour at the Ashland farmers market.

The End of May

Seeding one of our pig pastures with oats and peas.

Cultipacking

There's been three litters of piglets this month.

We've been having trouble finding feeder pigs this year so we're fortunate that we have a boar and sows to produce our own feeder pigs.

May 2-9

Disking with the Oliver, we bought a 14ft disk last fall. Its heavier and does a better job chopping up the soil than our small disk.

Plants in the greenhouse are coming along. Last year the lettuce was ready the last week of April. Its been a cooler spring this year though.

Grain drill #3 is finally functional. It had been sitting outside for 25 years and needed a lot of work.

Some barley seed was left in the seed boxes and caused the metal to rust. So I gave it a coat of paint.

On the older John Deere Drills I've seen the support straps between the seed boxes and the frame break. I was able to reinforce and weld them back together.

On Friday one of our sows farrowed, we ended up with eight live piglets. There were four still births which is a bit high.

The sheep got their annual haircut a couple days ago.


Plus a manicure (hoof trimming).

Napoleon in his summer coat.

March 2011

The soil in the greenhouse is thawed and its warm enough to plant lettuce.

Some of the pigs like to burrow into the hay.

Two of our sheep have had lambs. The lamb total is 3 so far.