Thursday, May 31, 2007

Today was crops with Henry. Henry is really hard to understand when he speaks but I had a nice time anyway. I drove a big tractor pulling the manure spreader. The hardest part is slowing down by downshifting rather than by using the brakes. I also couldn’t quite figure out how to back up to get under the manure “faucet” at the manure pit. Something to do with the spreader being a trailer and me turning the wheel the wrong way. I was getting pretty good at going forward by the end of the morning. After lunch, I had a break from tractor driving and power washed one of the pick up trucks. I do like power washing so that was fun.

At 2:30 we had a talk on forage by Everett, an agronomist. He talked about what makes good hay good, what factors go into deciding when to mow, what factors people use in deciding what hay to buy (facts and fiction) and the differences between different grades of hay. I took more notes than anyone and I guess we don’t need to since we’re not tested but I feel like this is valuable information that I don’t know and not that I won’t be able to find it elsewhere but why not just write it down now?

The red building is called the dry barn, cows that don't get milked live there. The tractor in the background is hooked up to the machine that pumps manure out of the manure pit to load the manure spreader. The concrete walls are part of the feed bunkers.
Some corn. I swear, that field looks greener every day.