ID System

I have been slowly putting on the legbands or Rescounters as they are officially called. I have successfully attached 50 of these so far. I have 90 more to go. The antenna should be installed on Monday and then I will be able to know more things about my cows and how active they are. Today I plan to plant 40 some odd acres of corn. The early corn is up and is looking good...

FInished Wheat

We finished the wheat this evening. We cut 122 loads total. The trench is full so we will be doing something else with the triticale. It still is not ready. Very little grain in the heads. So, we will chop some hay tomorrow and then cover the trench. They may be coming to install the Electronic ID system tomorrow and the well man will be coming also... I hope. We are currently out of water and I seem to have trouble cleaning up without it....

Look Back/Look Ahead

Yesterday we cut 40 more loads of wheat. I was very pleased. I hope to finish the wheat tomorrow and start on the triticale. We may not get that far but you never know. We have cut 100 loads of wheat so far and have roughly 35 more to go. I have no idea how many loads of triticale there are. At least 100.
Tomorrow is Jayden's birthday. He is three. I can hardly believe it. Wed. is our anniversary. You tell me how many years we have been married... Bet you can't unless your family or were at church this morning...

Wheat

We have been chopping wheat the last two days and will be starting again here in a half hour or so. We have cut 60 loads so far. This has come off of 26 acres. It is producing more than I anticipated and I am not sure we will have enough room for it. We may have to make a pile on the ground...
So, how will you be spending your holiday weekend? If you need something to do let me know... I can put you in a truck for a day....

Water System

My well driller, Tommie Moore, called me yesterday morning and told me we had two options. We could go with a conventional well system or we could install a constant pressure system. The constant well system is relatively new. It has only been available for a year and a half or so. I don't know if you are aware of this kind of system or not but here is how it works, I think...
First, I told him before he started we needed 20 gallons a minute. He thought we would be doing good to hit 5. So he knew we were looking for a lot of water. If memory serves me correctly we are going to set the pump at 500 ft with a 1 inch line, it may be an inch and quarter line. From the top of the well to the pressure tank we are going to run a 1.5 inch line. This, according to the book, should carry 25 gallons a minute. The pressure tank will hold 180-200 gallons of water. The pump will be a variable speed drive 3 horsepower pump. If the well is full, 65-70 feet from the top, it will pump 30 gallons a minute but as the water level drops so will the gallons a minute. At 500 ft. it will still pump 20 gallons a minute. However, if we are pulling two gallons a minute off of the system the pump will only pump two gallons a minute instead of running wide open like a conventional well. Also, by using the constant pressure system with the variable speed drive pump you can cut the wire size back 3 sizes which saves us about $1000 dollars. We have the ability to set this pump at the amount of pressure we want in the system. 40 or 50 lbs. Oh we will be dropping a 1 inch line out of the pressure tank to tie into the old system. When we build the new facilities we will go back and drop a bigger line out of the tank so we can get the amount of water we need. Very cool, I think. The cost is something else Over all this well will run us about $12,000. This due mainly because of how deep we had to go. But in comparison to a the conventional well system it is still $1100 cheaper....
Such is life...
Donations will be accepted....

640

Well, it is a deep subject....
640 feet and 30 gallons a minute... I am in shock. I couldn't believe it... 30 THIRTY Three Zero amazing...

500

The well driller came today. Not good news so far. We hit 500 feet this evening and had a whopping 3 gallons a minute. This is a stressful predicament to be in. The driller told me the rock had really changed in the last 40-50 feet he drilled and he thought we should go another 100 feet and see what happens. He said he picked up some more water in the last 40-50 feet also. I was hoping to find 20 gallons a minute. Maybe tomorrow we will hit a lake down there somewhere....

Bored Wife

I have a very bored wife and buggy wife... She had to stay home from church this morning because several of the children have the throw up bug. So she is now feeling somewhat house bound and buggy. Cheerful but buggy none the less. How do you deal with a buggy spouse....

Fisrt Bank & Trust

We have officially changed banks. Well, we are in the process of changing banks. The bank we are switching to focuses on the ag industry. So, we should fit in a little better....

Planter Troubles

I have a John Deere 7000 corn planter. Every year we have had a different set of problems to work on. This year a belt has decided to malfunction. This planter is a six row planter so, naturally, it has six planter hoppers. Each box has one of these belts and yesterday they started breaking. I made three trips to Phillips Equipment for parts. I don't know why they are breaking... Wore out I reckon. Another belt broke today but I finished the field anyway. I pretended I was using a five row planter instead of six. The hopper that wasn't working was on the outside of the planter or one on the end. Another trip to Phillips before I start planting again.

Corn Planting

I have managed to plant 55 or so acres before getting rained out. I planted in the rain till 9:00 last night but I was unable to finish due to the falling darkness. Hopefully I can finish this evening or tomorrow. It rained this morning, however, the sun is suppose to shine this afternoon. We are having the wettest spring I can remember. Let me rephrase that. We are having the wettest spring since I started managing the farm.

Poll

It is time for another question.
What is your favorite scripture or passage and why?

Plans

It is always good to have plans so I try to make some on rare occasions. I plan to plant some corn tomorrow. At least I plan to try. It may still be to wet but all I can do is try... Next week we may start chopping again. I need to check and see what stage the grain is at...

New Well

Those of you who read my little updates are aware of our dwindling water supply. We have decided to drill a well and do it soon. I am unsure how soon but as soon as they, the health department, can give us the permit...

Burial

The girls have just finished burying the little mouse MIL was referring to in her comment on my last post. I am unsure when the mouse died but it has received a royal burial. The ladies are currently looking for a flower to grace the grave. I remember burying many cats in my time. How about you? Have you buried your pets?

The Boring Life I Live

I am currently sitting in a hotel room at Holiday Inn near Carlise PA. I just checked our email and we a 66 emails in our inbox for the last 24 hrs. About half of them were weather related. These emails were in regards to tornado and thunderstorm warnings. Out of the remaining emails there was one, 1, ONE email for myself. And this one email was in regards to work. It was my milk quality reports. If that isn't a boring life I don't know what is...

Gone

I left this evening for Grandpa Kauffman's. We, my wife and I, will be going to a homeschool convention this weekend in Harisburg, PA. Should be fun. I am exhausted and am loking forward to relaxing a little before a crazy week next week.
We have discovered we need another well also. Did you know it takes 4 lbs of water to make 1 lb of milk. Which means we were using at least 36,000 and some odd lbs of water a day. Our two wells were not and are not keeping up so a new well will be drilled soon...

Quick Word

A quick word here. I am sure you are all dying to know what is going on at Malfunction Junction. We are still hauling manure. I think 15 more loads will finish this task. Corn to plant. Might get to that Thursday...
Sierra and Aleya think the manure smells good. Isn't that funny? Most people hate it. I love my farm girls...

Work

Let's see, first I will mention the cows. Cows are interesting animals. They thrive on consistency. Since we have been feeding the rye we chopped this spring they are slowly gaining ground or milk in this case. We added 25 more milking cows and on cow calved this morning so we are milking exactly 130 cows. I am on an everyday pick up because I am afraid the cows will run the tank over. If we were not on an every day pick up we would have shipped 17546 lbs of milk tonight. The tank holds 17,717....
Now for this weeks working schedule. I need to cover50 acres with manure and plant 70 acres of corn before 6:00 Thursday evening. We also need to help Dwayne, neighboring farmer, finish chopping. Next week we plan to start chopping the wheat and triticale. Then we need to immediately finish planting corn....
I had off this afternoon and feel somewhat ready to face the new week. This past week was an exhausting one for everyone involved. This week looks exhausting as well. Time will tell...

Yard Sale

Our annual yard sale is tomorrow. She has more stuff than she has ever had before. The neighbors gave us a bunch of stuff and her mom gave her lots of stuff. We shall see...

Jayden

Jayden came up to me last evening and told me My fever hurts...
He didn't have a fever though and I think he was in a pouting mood.