June and summer have landed on us simultaneously. It's 80f out, sunny and dry with thunderstorms in the forecast for tomorrow. We skipped church today and Stan chopped the hay that they didn't get done yesterday. It's thinner than he'd hoped, the weather has not been kind to the growth rate.



we came from here: The thread "May, dare we say SPRING?" in Farming forum

Gosh, June has come around quickly. I never did get everything done in May that I had on my TO DO List.

The neighbor didn't get done with his silage last night, the hired guy busted something. If you saw how he drove, you'd wonder how ANYTHING stays together. Well, neighbor is just as bad, if not worse. Gives the SU a rash to watch them. Neighbor's kids were there today and I guess they were going to do the wagon shuffle thing so the SU didn't have to go.

Quite warm today, and windy. I'll be surprised if something doesn't blow itself here at some point. Don't need to be blown off the face of the earth............

The morning started bad: just crawling out of bed at 6 when the phone rang and Stan's brother said the heifers at his place were out. I got dressed as fast as I could, told Stan who was milking and asked if I could go up. Did. When I got there, the worst was over, but there's always time for one more romp, especially if the the rain is coming down in buckets. Needless to say, I was not extremely pleased with any creature involved by the time it was over.

But, Kathleen...........it wasn't YOUR yard they ran in and made ginormous footprints....................

Heifer escapes are a real plague. They always seem to be laughing at their would-be captors! I am probably jinxing myself, but I was just thinking the other day that none of ours have been out recently...

Our neighbor has started to cut hay. I haven't looked at the forecast, but the early cut hay usually gets rain. Today is sunny, 56 degrees at 9am, with a north wind. North wind usually means dry weather, so maybe that cancels out the hay rain. I'd be rich if I could just make it rain where it's needed and not rain on the hay.

I would certainly be willing to pay you for that ability!

You'd be so busy you wouldn't know what to do. Rained out here late yesterday afternoon, but cool, dry and windy today so more haying tomorrow

The SU and i are "farming" this week. We have a milking/chore job that started yesterday and will go thru Friday morning's milking. We have to go back and milk for the same guy from the morning of July 4th thru the 6th. I had to tell them that they needed to find someone else for the evening milking on the 4th, as we have a family deal at noon, and I have a band concert in the park at 8 pm, and we help with the fireworks display. Well, not the display, per se, we are the clean-up. LOL A dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. The crew gives us alot of crap about our rakes. I got 2 of the 30 inch wide ones at Farm and Fleet. I told the guys "these are industrial strength rakes. Unless you have taken a class to learn how to properly operate them and are certified, you have to use the small ones". Sure makes it easier to rake up all that paper junk with a good-sized rake. Sometimes it would be wonderful to have a lawn mower pulling a yard sweeper.

Not much new here: shredding pastures, clearing fence lines and fixing broken stuff. Same old, same old. _ But cattle prices are GOOD!

June is haying month around here. I think the closest dairy farm is about 100 miles away. Twenty years ago there were two in our county. All beef cattle and hay production now. Our neighbor, who farms with an odd assortment of ready to fall apart machinery, has a field of grass hay in windrows, ready to bale, and his baler broke down yesterday morning and is still just sitting there. Parts for a 50 year old baler are hard to find.

I'm still planting the vegie garden, things are really off schedule this year. I need to install some drip lines today, plant my bush beans, beets, chard and kohlrabi, maybe more, and pull a lot of weeds. Having surgery in the spring was a bad idea. It really put me behind. I have squash, cucumbers and tomatoes that I started in the greenhouse, set out into garden rows. The weather turned cold (almost freezing 3 nights right after I put them in) and we were away so I couldn't do anything but hope they made it. They look bad but might pull through. Some of the others I raised are planted right into the ground in my neighbor's greenhouse, so I do have a second chance of getting enough tomatoes to can this year.

Rattlesnakes are slithering around. Hubby killed one by the shop on Saturday. Ryan, our neighbor, was on his way down the hill to tend his potato rows and nearly stepped on the thing. Usually we don't see any on our place until late July or so. Gotta watch and be thinking snake all the time now. Most of them will rattle a warning, but not all of them. Some just coil and strike.

No dairy farms near here either. Our neighborhood is mostly beef cattle and small properties of non-farmers. Going west or south there is a lot of cotton, corn, sorghum, hay meadows, and more cows, of course. I will have to do a little research to find out where our nearest dairy cows are.