It was suggested that a new thread be started to regenerate some interest, so I am jumping in and hope I am not stepping on anyone's toes. I'll link this to the old thread.
We came from here
The thread "Farming-January 2019" in Farming forum


Tell us what's happening on your farm, your neighbor's farm, your general area? For those who aren't currently farming, feel free to ask questions or make comments.

HERE WE GO!

In my area haying started about July 1. Here on our dry hills we only get one cutting, in the valleys where there is a much longer irrigation season they get 3 or 4. Some sell hay but mostly they grow it to feed their own beef cattle. We don't grow hay, only pasture which we lease to a neighbor for his cattle. My own little dab of farming consists of growing garlic which is sold to a buyer and goes from there to several farmer's markets and some restaurants, and also growing rhubarb until the weather gets too hot. This year a hundred pounds or more went to a buyer who juices it and freezes the juice, then mixes it with juice and fruit of other kinds for jam.

I am a lurker here on the Farming Thread. Live in typical Surburbia, no farming here. I just like to read the posts about farm life.

Here in Fort Bend County all the corn and sorghum has been harvested, and I noticed that the first bale of cotton for the county just made front page news in our local paper! I have two new Longhorn heifers and am changing from beef cattle to collectors' item breeds. The chickens are laying well, but they are getting past their prime production, and I need to add some replacement chicks this fall which will start producing in the spring. Pig and retired racehorse situations unchanged. The only garden produce we grow is for our own use, but we have ample citrus fruit each year to send to the farmers market. We no longer grow our own hay as it is cheaper to buy from a neighbor, and we only feed a small amount as the pastures yield ample forage most years. As we had a wet spring and early summer, I have been shredding pastures almost non-stop to control the weed crop. I don't mind; it sure beats drought!

Next...

I enjoy reading the farm threads having grown up on a Minnesota dairy farm. There is not much farming in my area of east Texas, some ranching with cattle and haying but the big farm industry in this area is poultry farms.

Because of my upbringing, I love living in a rural area. I own and use two tractors to make life easier as I get older.

@MaryE I admire your "own little dab of farming". I still work but daydream of selling plants/produce at the local farmers markets. Maybe someday...

Thanks for starting a new Farming thread.

We no longer actively farm, but the Spousal Unit helps a couple neighbors with field work and also does some custom silage bagger, as he did not sell that when we quit the livestock.

Crops look really good for the most part. Corn is tall, and the soybeans are lush and deep green. I have not looked at the beans our land renter has here to see if they have lots of pods.

We were so very glad we were no longer doing crops given the horrible, wet spring we had, tho it was not nearly as bad as those poor guys in Illinois, Missouri, and other states toward the west had it. Just rain, rain, and more rain. At least the farmers around here will get a crop, tho it might be a little later than normal. Time will tell.

Wow, a good response already!

Anna, do you still work at the livestock sale yard?

Yes, I do. Monday and Wednesday afternoons at Equity Livestock but just during the calf sale portion. And I write health papers for the monthly dairy sale on the 4th Friday of the month at another sale barn. I don't have to do papers for the sheep and goat auction any more as one of the gals from the vet clinic now does that. I am not sad.

So I started a new thread and then disappeared due to computer problems. I have an old browser and don't know if my computer will support an upgrade (it is old). Then I couldn't get into my email, got my daughter in law to fix that and now every place I go I have to sign in which at least on this site required asking for a new password which I lost and then found again. This time I wrote it down!

After months of dry weather we are finally getting some rain. Got enough to enable us to burn a big pile of weeds that have been accumulating since mid summer. The pile is (was) in the pasture so I wanted to get it burned before the neighbor's cattle came back to scatter it. Cattle are being moved around to take advantage of harvested hayfields and pastures not grazed since spring. A herd came past our place yesterday and another was moved in another direction. We are in an open range area which means that cattle can use the roads. Most people have fences to keep them out. If you hit a cow with your vehicle in an open range area the owner of the animal is not responsible for damages and the vehicle owner is supposed to pay for the cow. Most ranchers have their animals insured so hopefully they will get paid either way.

Texas law is similar: fence out, not fence in. However once when I moved some of my cows down the road to another pasture and they left evidence of their passing on the road in front of a new (non-farm) neighbor's house, he asked when I was coming back to clean up!

Seriously? Did they not know it was a farming community when they moved in!

The previous owner of this property sold off several 2-5 acre lots along the road and people have moved out from the cities who do not understand rural life. It got worse when the county paved the road. So my nearest neighbors are suburbanites not farmers. I did manage to buy back some of the land, but, alas, not all.

Some gents around here really , really pushed phate with their corn planting, though it was sweet corn.
Some fields, in an area where there is commercial vegetable farming, the corn was still tasseling out two weeks ago.

I am not on a farm but even my one sweet corn just hit peak picking stage last week.
With the now continuing wet weather they will be picking corn with a high moisture level which means either spend bucks drying it, or lose due to moisture content, or take a chance , and there are still a few around here, put it in a corn bin on the cob and let it air dry hoping for a cold , windy winter.
No January warm up.

I hope all our local cotton farmers have gotten their harvest in. Many areas are now under water. Farming is a risky business!

Today, October 1st, is the 9th year of my "liberation" and when I finally "got a life". Here are some photos from that day. With the economy in the crapper and the weather issues this year, we are SO glad we don't have to deal with it any more. However, we certainly feel for those that still do.

Congratulations! Dairy farming is the world's most relentless, demanding and exhausting profession, but I' glad there are still those brave souls who will do it.

Crikey..............raining here yet again. Just what we so do not need.

But no muddy cows to milk!

porkpal said:I hope all our local cotton farmers have gotten their harvest in. Many areas are now under water. Farming is a risky business!

With the continuing rain and already high water, IF, if the forecasts for a very cold and snowy winter come true, next spring will be a redux of the early eighties when lakes were hitting record highs.
If it is like 1965 when a mid spring sub zero snow storm hit followed by quick very warm weather, flooding up here may be the worst in over fifty years and farmers will planting only the high ground at best.

One large field, not large by today's standards but at least 60 acres had deep standing water in it for near a decade before some one unplugged drainage tile.

It's been weeks since I was here due to a very busy canning season. Now the garden is empty and the jars are full, canning kettles, etc, put away until next year. I still need to clean and reorganize my storage room in the basement but that will come later this winter when I am recovered from my second hip replacement and bored with winter inactivity. Surgery is scheduled for Oct 29. All of the saleable garlic has been sold and the seed stock has been planted. One of our granddaughters and her husband came to spend the weekend and help me plant. The three of us put almost 2,000 cloves into the ground in about 5 hours time, one clove at a time. The next day it was mulched with wheat straw and is ready for a winter of growing roots. The tops will come up through the mulch in late March. It grows quickly and will be all harvested by the end of July. I should have my new varieties arriving any day now. It will not take long to get them into the ground because I only bought a pound of each. They will be grown out for seed stock and replanted next fall for something to sell in two years.

A few frosty nights, one of them down into the upper teens, finished my garden. I was ready for it to be finished. Boxes of tomatoes, pears and plums piled up in the kitchen kept me busy. I pulled up and removed the worst of the weeds that were going to seed. Pigweed is the worst. I can get rid of that by just pulling the plants and hauling them to the burn pile. Bindweed isn't easy to control and I don't use chemicals, so it will always be with me, making a carpet between rows and plants, and climbing anything going upward. I spend a lot of time with a hoe and also down on my knees. You can feel blessed if you don't have bindweed. The roots break off easily and every one of them makes a new plant.

The ranchers around us are still rotating cattle through hay fields to use the last of the pasture. We had some rain about a month ago, followed by nice Indian Summer weather, just enough to get grass growing again. Our neighbor will bring about a dozen cows with fall calves to our place in the next week or so. Some ranchers are still cutting and baling hay. They can bale at 20-25% moisture without it molding when the weather is cold vs needing about 10% in the summer. No mold, no danger of a haystack fire. Then they feed it to the cattle before spring and all is well.

You sound amazingly organized and productive. Impressive!