Hey! They clean up pretty well!

Permit me a proud moment of bragging...because I have good cause, not bad character...

This past weekend the Wife had the pleasure of working at the Farmer's Daughters' Prom.  The Wife had the joy of shopping for dresses with the Farmer's Daughter and the Haus Frau Farmer's Daughter.  We looked at hairstyles, accessories, shoes...lots and lots of shoes...we talked logistics of time-frames and conversations with people-we-really-like versus other-people.  It was a pleasure to spend a month of planning and seeing the results of age, maturity, and life-experience.  We had a great time.  Then came the moment of truth...the Wife left the Farmer's Daughters with the beautician and went to the Prom location for set up and preparation.  Having already been briefed by the Haus Frau Farmer's Daughter on good photography-know-how(the Wife was the photographer #2 for the event)...the Wife was off and running!
It was between the pictures of the appetizer table and drink fountain table that the Wife was able to see the most beautiful girls in the event walk through the door.  The Farmer's Daughters, with their BFFs(who are also farm-girls) walked in like Greek Goddesses(a look I think they were pleased to have attained).  They floated on clouds, laughed liked music, and conversed with ease...making all in their presence feel like royalty. And all the Wife could think was, "They clean up pretty well!"
See, covered in the muck and damp from the rain.  In the middle of feeding a bottle to a calf, or hay to a horse, a farm-girl is pretty impressive.  It wasn't a charade for an evening.  They weren't playing a part.  They really are these beautiful Goddess looking ladies on a day-to-day basis, just cleaned up for the "Ball". They are beautiful on the inside as they muck stalls, wipe off grime and bend down to clean gooky-noses all out of love. Daily they are disheveled and dirty with no make up on...But when that farm-girl can get cleaned up and walk with the best-of-them(in high stiletto heels) in a situation so opposite from her day-to-day...THAT'S pretty impressive.

Dear Farmer Gets Comfy

When the day is done, and the work is at a point where Dear Farmer can sleep(because work is never actually done), Dear Farmer comes inside the house all excited.
The woodstove is still blazing, the weather outside is muddy and wet and cold (spring in the North! Yippee.), and Dear Farmer begins the process of getting comfy.
Aching joints and sore muscles get oiled. Bumps, bruises and nicks are identified and patched up. And then he sits down in front of the stove.
Off come the wet socks to be hung behind the stove, wool is a wonderful material!  It's kept his feet warm and dry all day!
Off comes the crocheted hat from the Farmer's Daughter (also wet), to be hung to dry.  He loves this hat! It's his favorite!
Off comes the flannel button down shirt. It's also dripping wet.  We make sure we take everything out of the pockets...the pens, the notebook, the index cards(his field and herd logs), and the immense amount of hay. Into the laundry it goes. He's now down to his T-shirt.  He goes and changes this for a dry and clean one for the rest of the evening.
And finally the pants come off. No, this is not a strip-tease!  The pants are covered in muck and mud, poop and hay, and don't forget the occasional egg that he's sat on accidentally while working on the chicken coop.
(Seriously, would you want your husband sitting around the house in these pants???)
To put everyone's mind at ease...he's wearing polar fleece PJ pants under his work pants, so he's not in his undies! So, the pants go into the wash as well.
And now, Dear Farmer is officially comfy.
With all the work clothes off, the house shoes on, lounging in a T-shirt and PJ pants...he's ready for some good conversation and coffee.
Sounds like it's time for some Country Hospitality!!!

Dear Farmer Places an Order Online

Dear Farmer is of the opinion that phones are for calling and talking to people...not texting, snap-chatting, insta-gram-ing, taking pictures, or reading on.
Dear Farmer likes to do business with a handshake...not bids, quotes or contracts.
Dear Farmer likes to buy things from a person...not the self-checkout, vending machine, or online.

These days aren't like the days when Dear Farmer was a boy.  Bread costs more than a nickle a loaf, gas costs more than ten cents a gallon, and there are some things you just order online.
"Back in my day..." Dear Farmer will begin a story, and the children groan.
"Pop! Get in the twenty-first century!", they say.  But that's not when Dear Farmer was born.
So, ordering online is a big "to-do" when Dear Farmer has to do it.  He only orders from companies that he's dealt with in the past...ones that have people on the other end.  Then spends hours "one-touch" typing in the desired items. It's so painful, none of us can watch him anymore.  He has to do it himself!
Then, after hours and hours of filling a cart....he calls in the Wife to checkout....
He has learned that the quick typing and quick clicking is un-nerving...so he usually tries to leave the room when it comes to checking out.  There are some times he has to be present for the orders because they need special instructions...he's usually found rubbing his head for the headache that comes on afterward.

No, these aren't the days that Dear Farmer grew up in.
It only takes two days to get something from an online order, he doesn't pay extra, and we don't have to wait at the mailbox for the delivery.
Pictures of animals are sent instantly from farmer to farmer with questions, concerns, or for sale.
Decisions take seconds, not weeks.
Modern machinery can do the work of three-hundred horses.
His tractor can do 45 mph on the road!

"Those Good Old Days", we remind Dear Farmer, "you still get to live.  You walk among your herd, hear the softness of the hay being munched during feeding, touch the tops of the grass as it begins to seed-head. You work in the beauty of creation every day! One afternoon ordering an automatic chicken door that's timed to close at night and open at the break of day(so that none of us have to do it)...that's really not that bad!"

Late-Night Hay Feeding

Dear Farmer was all in a tizzy...rain was coming!
 Lots of rain, over a relatively short time, makes the fields very sloppy for the tractor.
Sloppy for the Farmer.
Sloppy for the feeding process.
Dear Farmer HAD to get fifteen very large square bales out into the fields before the rain came and he would not be able to traverse the tractor-path due to rain.
Hooking up to the hay-forks and loading a helper(WhizBang!Farmer's Daughter) onto the tractor, out they went....two bales at a time...this means they would need to make ten trips to get the cows the needed fourteen bales of hay and three new-to-us feeders into the fields.
They started the process at four-thirty in the afternoon. Tractors don't move very fast.  The process of just picking up two bales can be time consuming.
By five the rain started coming. Little drops can feel really big when you're in an open cab riding in the open fields.
By five-thirty the temperatures started dropping. The two made a quick dash inside for winter coats and gear.  They were feeling the cold chill quick!
By six in the evening the wind kicked up. They were on trip six and just hoping to get in before...
By six-fifteen it was pretty dark.
By six-thirty it was dark and the family was sitting down to dinner...feeling a little bad that we were eating grilled pork chops(Dear Farmer's favorite meal) and he was still on a tractor working. DONE!  Now they just had to park the tractor back down at the machine shed and walk back home in the cold, dark, rain.
Dear Farmer and the WhizBang!Farmer's Daughter sat down to dinner.  We had the food warm, the woodstove hot, and the fellowship lively.
Dear Farmer won't be doing that one again soon.  He can sit back and enjoy the rain...

Dear Farmer is used to this phone call...but not this ending.

"The cows are out!"
If I had a dollar for every time Dear Farmer got that phone call...I'd have thousands of dollars! And rain, snow, or shine.  During hay, startled awake, or driving...Dear Farmer drops everything and goes to call the "ladies" back to the fields of safety.
"The cows are out!"
At 10 pm when he just falls asleep.  At 4 in the morning.  While we're on a date.  When we're sitting down to dinner.
"The cows are out!"
Absolutely the worst time to hear that is when we're out of town....which is what happened this weekend.

Dear Farmer and the Wife attended the MOSES Conference.  It's the largest midwest organics conference, and the place where Dear Farmer isn't alone.  ALL the farmers have the same lifestyle.  ALL the farmers are in the same boat, doing the same paperwork, and needing some "atta-boy"-time.  This conference is that refreshment for all those farmers.  And the Wife?  Really, she was just along for the ride.  She went to the conference, heard the speakers, and came out patting Dear Farmer on the back("Look, Dear, you're not alone.").
After a wonderful weekend, on the trek home, we got the phone call.
"Pop! The cows are out!"
sigh.
(then the rest..)"Don't worry, Pop.  We got them back in ourselves.  Drive Safe!"

Wow!  What a blessing to have a family that knows how to do what you do!  A family that can pitch-hit without you, and appreciates you all the more.
Makes you feel like you did things well...makes Dear Farmer feel a tingly and happy inside.

#MOSES2016

So you want to be a farmer? The Reality of Being Organic and Sustainable

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work."
-Thomas Edison

If you thought that recycling made you sustainable and organic meant that you didn't use deodorant, then we're a shocker for you.  We take that to a whole new level!!!(Yes, we do use odor protection.)
Sustainable means we put up enough hay in the summer to feed the herd in the winter, and we're planning on growing the grass again next year. So we mow it when it goes to seed-head.  It's not a nice lawn look all year.  Sometimes during the summer it may look quite shaggy-depending on rainfall.
It means when there's an apple tree in the field, we pick it and sauce it so we have food in the winter. We don't complain the apples are the size of your thumb. Sometimes sustainability can take on the same look as common-sense...a chicken gets used four different ways. First as a vet for the cows as it cleans the pasture, next as an egg layer, third as a stew bird for dinner, and lastly as chicken broth preserved for later. We use the sun and air we breathe to dry our clothes, for light during the day and that "fresh air" smell on our sheets.
Everything that's sustainable is hard work, there's no skating by.  Burning wood for heat means cutting the wood, splitting the wood, and stacking the wood-sometimes in the coldest day of the winter.
But it's so worth it!
Organic means we don't use anything God didn't create for fertilizer, animals, and food.  We use our own animals to fertilize the pastures, then give them a dose of watered down compost for good measure.  We don't breed animals to have the biggest body-parts for show or production, we take them as God made them and use them right. That's why our goats have horns, cats have claws, and chickens have bone and skin!  We let the animals eat the grass, the apples, the leaves, the herbs-and we don't peel back an ear of corn for them.  This is the way God meant it to be.
Before you think this is all daisies and roses, can I be quite frank?  Because of this life we live...there are things you may want to consider...wear mud boots(real ones, not fashionable ones) to get to the door. There's chicken poop everywhere.  Why? They have wings, they fly any where they want to.  That means to the house, not just in the barnyard.
There's a goat who will greet you at the car door, and will gladly display for you how she can urinate on your foot and poop all the way to the front door of the house.
The cats like to leave "gifts" everywhere.  Dead mice, voles, ground squirrels, chipmunks...
Be prepared for dirt.  The windows are open in the house and it coats the furniture...really, I dusted it off six times today from the dark wood piano!  The dirt covers feet, shoes, clothes, and gets under nails.  It sticks to the cobwebs created overnight, and onto the faucets where children were washing it off.  It doesn't matter how we attempt to get rid of it, it comes back. A magazine cover will never show the reality of farm life dirt.
The mess. There's a plethora of misc. tools, equipment, toys, and vehicles that don't run. The reality is, we're busy staying alive, there'll be a time to make it all clean(when the dumpster is here), but right now isn't that time.  So, if you're OCD(which I find I am) take a deep breathe and close your eyes as you walk past it. The mess won't change the taste of dinner, and it also won't make the photo shoot for the magazine cover(thankfully).  So just move on. Lastly, prepare yourself for a new brand of sweat.  I promise, we do use odor protection, but it doesn't help the amount of sweat we produce.  It doesn't matter what time of year it is, there's hard physical work we're doing.  Whether it's under the hot sun or bundled in the dead of winter-people around here are sweating!  No need for aerobics class, we pitchfork hay around for hours. Snow-shoeing and cross country skiing are means for checking the fence lines.  Walking miles is a form of transportation, not relaxation. And when you see people standing around this kitchen with dripping hair or frozen hair and wet shirts and socks, covered head to toe in dirt and poop-laughing about the day they just had...know that they've accomplished the "Organic" label that went on that product in the store. AND LIFE IS GOOD!

The Goats Preferred Warmer Weather

Really, can you blame them?  Just a couple short days ago they were nibbling on pasture grass.  Today they are eating dry hay.  A couple of day ago they were sunning themselves on the deck.  Today they are laying on a bale of hay out of the cold wind and off the cold ground.  We are all pretty sure that when they come out to greet us, they are saying, "Where did the sunshine go?"
When the Wife strapped on the snowshoes to take the goats on a walk they looked at her with eyes that said, "Is this what we have come to?  You expect me to...what?"
When the Farmer's Daughter and the Pied Piper went out to milk the goat she tentatively got on the stand and looked back at them as if to say, "You warmed your hands, right?!"
Everything moves a bit slower in the cold. The goats are nice and insulated between the forage from the woods, the pasture and the chicken feed they gorged on when Dear Farmer forgot to cover the bucket. Their winter coats have grown in nice and thick, thanks to the alpine heritage.  They really are ready for winter.  However, I think they are praying for a quick spring with the rest of us.

The Feeding Frenzy

Dear Farmer has a feeding frenzy going on down at the barn, the cows are coming up for hay.  There's a hundred head coming at the hay bales and they are HUNGRY!
With the hay feeders set up at the barn and the water-tanks winterized, he's feeling pretty ready to endure another northern winter.
Dear Farmer pokes around while the herd jogs into positions, when he looks: the cows are butting eachother for primier positions at the hay, calves shoved into the feeders by the mob, and hooves sticking up in the air(cows were piling up on one another).  There was no discontent sounds, just happy-munching and snorting.  The winter feeding frenzy is in full swing! And Dear Farmer smiles, it is all good.

Winterizing Water

Dear Farmer has been preparing for winter.  It seems it will come without our opinion on when or how much...So, Dear Farmer has placed the mobile coop in it's winter location(it can't move through snow) and placed hay bales around it so the cold wind doesn't blow so much through the floor.  And he's set up feeders for the hay to be dropped in, so it stays off the ground and snow.  Now he's making level ground for the water-tanks to sit on, installing heat-tape on hoses and heaters in tanks, so in the freezing temperatures, all the animals have water. The cows will lay out in the field, nibble on hay and lick snow, but they really enjoy a long drink of water!  The chickens will cuddle in the coop and peck the scratch and water nipples.  The goats keep us entertained with their antics and the children prefer to not have to bring them cups of water when they look thirsty. All the creatures need water all year long.
Have you ever thought to winterize your water?  Many people live in houses where pipes don't freeze in the super-cold northern winters.  But the animals don't have that luxury.  So, Dear Farmer is caring for them, doing what they cannot, and spending a week leveling ground and insulating water systems.  Farmers don't just twidle their thumbs and look at the sky when the weather turns cold.  There's still bunches of work to do.  Like figuring out how to get a drink of water to an animal in the middle of a freezing cold winter.

Dear Farmer has one of THOSE days...

It's one of THOSE days...you know the ones...nothing goes right and everything you planned becomes nothing that you planned...THOSE days.
It started with needing to catch chickens to go to butcher at 4am.  Just what everyone wants to do at 4am...and Dear Farmer can do it, if he wakes up at 3am and drinks a pot of coffee first.  He feels that prepares him adequately to bundle up on a frosty morning and pluck still roosting(ie sleeping) chickens off their roosts and into crates to be transported to the butcher.  Then, after an hour of chicken catching and being pooped on...he gets to come inside and drink another pot of coffee, then go out to do chores.  This is where things turned bad...while drinking the pot of coffee a farmhand jogged inside to let Dear Farmer know that we were nearly out of chicken feed.  Dear Farmer popped onto the phone with the feed supplier (because everyone in the farming world is up and moving by 5am--except for Dear Farmer's Wife), who was also drinking coffee.  The feed supplier informed Dear Farmer that their delivery truck was broken.  How to get feed???  Well, after chores the plan was to move hay from the storage where the large hay fields are to the fields where the cows winter.  This can be an all day process...it wasn't going to be now.  Now, Dear Farmer also had to drive down two-and-a-half hours to get chicken feed, drive back two-and-a-half hours to bring it home, and unload it all.  And so, Dear Farmer suited up, and away he went.  Loading hay for transport went smoothly, but took longer than expected.  Brought hay back and unloaded all the hay-smoothly, but longer than expected.  Loaded up for chicken-feed run, and took off with the Keeper of the Flame to pick up feed.  En Route the two major roads (both toll) were under construction.  Ergh, crawling through and already running later than expected was not in the plan!  Then he got off on the wrong exit, and had to figure out where he was...Dear Farmer, is not techno-savvy, GPS isn't even an option...so he had to drive twenty minutes out of the way, to figure out where he was, to go around a block, and get in the right direction again...finally making it to the feed supplier-and found out he had forgotten the bags to dump feed into back at home.  Thankfully the feed supplier scrounged up enough bags and loaded up Dear Farmer for the return trip back home.  Dear Farmer tried to pull out the day from the pits and met up with Fabulous Uncle for dinner (late) and drove home (later) and made it in the driveway by 10pm.  While  in bed that night he was moaning about his rear-end being in real pain...found out he had been sitting on a roll of electrical tape for his 16 hours driving vehicles all day.  It was really one of THOSE days, but he made it through in one piece, not wanting to do it again anytime soon.

Waiting and Hoping for Hay

When the Wife was a child she could not have thought that as an adult seeding a hay field would be something she would be concerned about.  But she is finding that seeding this particular hay field is an "angst" in her wonderful world of agriculture.  This hay field has lain fallow for a year, so it first had to be disc-d, rock picked, disc-d again, rock picked, seeded, and then dragged.  This is what the Wife has learned this year:
Disc-ing has nothing to do with dancing, mathematics, or an Olympic event.  Disc-ing is where a tractor hooks up to an implement that looks to have dozens of round metal discs on end.  This implement in lowered to the ground and run over the ground.  It is not plowing, it is taking the ground and breaking it up, pulverizing the dirt, and preparing the dirt for seed.
Disc-ing the ground brings rocks to the surface.  No seed grows on rocks.  Rocks damage farm equipment and possibly Dear Farmer.  Rocks need to be removed.  They are best removed by a rock picker of some-sort.  There are rock pickers that you connect to a tractor, another in a long line of farm implements, and rock pickers can be people.  Manual labor tends to be more thorough and more testy.  The question here has to be answered, "Do I want to deal with people whining while picking rocks, or spend the money on a rock picker?"
The ground must be disc-d so many times because after the rocks are removed(each time) new ground is uncovered that must be broken and pulverized for planting.
Seeding is the act of planting seed.  There is forty pounds of seed needed per acre...the seed must be present before you can begin seeding.  Mice like to eat the seeds, so do other rodents, birds, and deer. To order seed years in advance is not wise.  It's like storing ice-cream in your freezer the day your baby is born for their third birthday...not only is it tempting for someone to eat it, but it will be no good in three years.
Seed must be ordered and delivered in a timely manner to get the seed planted.  Planting can only happen when the conditions are perfect.  Dry, but not too dry.  Warm, but not too warm.  Sun-shining, but not too sunshiny. Not too early, and not too late in the year.  And the planting will take time.  One full day, nothing else will get done.
After planting the field will need to be "dragged".  This is not something that is done with drugs, and it does not mean the work is boring.  A "drag" is a massive angry looking farm implement that is flat with spikes poking out of the bottom and possibly chains.  It looks more like a medieval torture device, being pulled behind a tractor.  It's heavy and nasty to delicately push the seed into the ground and dust the top over with dirt.  Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?  Once the dragging is done...the name of the game is "Wait and Hope".  Wait for nature to do what it will with the seed.  And Hope it comes up and the field can grow into an amazing and lush hay mix.
This is what has happened to cause this particular field to be an "angst" in the Wife's life:
Dear Farmer went to disc...the disc broke down.  Three different times this happened!  It consumed three days of fussing with a broken implement for it to accomplish next-to-nothing! FINALLY Dear Farmer fixed everything to disc, job finally done.  Dear Farmer has had to cut other fields, care for other chores, and bale hay...while that was happening someone was to have picked the field.  Someone didn't, and didn't and finally did, and did it badly.  So Dear Farmer went to disc again, and broke the disc on rocks, and had rocks pelted at him...and sent people back to do a better job.  When they were finally done, it was late in the year. The weather was not perfect...Dear Farmer waited...and waited....and then he disc-d as quickly as he could. Then he sent people out to pick rocks...and they did an okay job. And it rained.  And the rain destroyed the job Dear Farmer had done of discing...and he had to disc again.  The disc was tired, and it did not want to work.  But Dear Farmer pushed it, eventually-in October-the job got done.  October is too late for planting, but Dear Farmer really had no choice.  He cannot keep the seed, which was ordered early in the year, through the winter.  So he planted the seed.  Then he called the help to drag the field...but the help decided to go home early that day(ARGH!).  So Dear Farmer went to bed...wondering...will the seed get wet before the help comes tomorrow to drag???  The help came to drag the field...and it's late in the year...it's cold and dry, blowing and overcast, and Dear Farmer really doesn't want to have to plant this field again.  The Wife really doesn't want to have to live through another year of planting this same field.  So...we are Waiting and Hoping that next year we will have a hay field with hay growing in it.

The Great Egg Hunt

The chickens have abandoned the nesting boxes for "safer" housing...which happens to be the deck railing right outside the kitchen door.  (Side-note: do not use that door.  The Kirby Salesman found out why last night, as he stepped in fresh chicken poop and realized he was surrounded by sleeping chicken butts.  He didn't really try to sell us the vacuum after that.)  One of the results of this is the hunt for where the chickens are laying the eggs...because they aren't using the nesting boxes or the deck.  This summer children were finding eggs in the bushes, the goat pen, the tiger-lilies, and even on the driveway.  As the temperature has decreased, so have the number of places the chickens have been laying.  So the hunt was on!  Where were the chickens laying a dozen eggs a day???  The Wife had a treasure hunt list for the children to work off of, "Did you look in the: playhouse?garage?stroller?Burley?grill?4wheeler?3wheeler?little truck bed?big truck bed?...."
After a month of finding (maybe) one egg a day, the Keeper of the Flame(oldest of the Farm-boy Trio) came in with his shirt bulging! He did it!  He found a nest with three dozen eggs in it!  Ooooo....how long did he suppose they had been there?  So the eggs were tested using the sink/float method. Bad eggs are supposed to float, and good eggs are supposed to sink.  It's really not 100% accurate, but it gives a good idea of whether or not you want to crack one open.  These are the eggs that we put in the fridge and mark "Crack with caution".  Where did he find the nest?  In the middle of the hay-bales!
Now, in order to reach the eggs in the middle of the hay bales, one must meet certain criteria.  One must be shorter than four-feet, small enough to fit in a foot-and-a-half opening, not be claustrophobic, not be allergic to hay, and willing to squeeze into a small dark cave of hay in order to hand out chicken eggs....The Wife does not meet the criteria.  So, the Wife, should she desire eggs, must make the job of getting the eggs as desirable as she can. Not wishing that any of her children should be found on a couch in a fetal position explaining the deep-rooted reasons of their fear of scrambled eggs as the job they had as a child...the Wife must stay up-beat and positive about spelunking for eggs!
Promises of brownies for breakfast, cookies for snack, and french toast for dinner abounded and children volunteered to procure the eggs for the Wife!!!  Daily we have a dozen eggs, now.  How absolutely wonderful!!! The prize was so worth the hunt!

Dear Farmer's Broken Window

Dear Farmer is on the last hay-cutting of the season(YIPPEE!). Something that we are all excited for!  His last fields to cut are the really rocky ones.  They weren't so bad, until torrential downpours eroded the top of the hills and caused deep grooves going down into valleys. Now it's a real nightmare to cut.  The rocks ping around you the entire time as the mower hits them and throws them up in the air with no rhyme or reason.  Well, off Dear Farmer went, very grateful that his tractor is an enclosed cab and he has something(even if it was glass) between he and the rocks.
He broke numerous cutting blades, but he'd fix them, and continue cutting.  The rocks were pinging and pelting, but he continued cutting.  He counted the number of rocks that hit his cab windows.  Each time one hit he offered to God a prayer of thankfulness for the rock not hitting himself. 'One...two...three....'
At rock 'seven' he wondered,"How much more can this window take?"  It was rock 'eight' that answered that question.  Dear Farmer said it sounded like a gun-shot, and suddenly glass was everywhere!  Though the glass was all over, the rock still didn't hit Dear Farmer.  (The Wife is so grateful for the enclosed cab on the tractor!  Dear Farmer is grateful, too!)  That finished the hay cutting for the season.  Dear Farmer decided that if a rock could smash the tempered glass, he wasn't going to continue cutting and risk the next rock smashing his head just as hard.  (The Wife is so grateful that Dear Farmer didn't take the chance.)
So he drove home. The tractor can still be used to bale the hay, it'll be a little louder than usual, but all will be fine.  The dealership has been contacted and a new window ordered.
Dear Farmer drank a little more coffee than usual that night.  He said he nearly "greased his shorts" when he heard that sound and all the glass crashing around him.  But we Praise God it's just a broken window.

The King of the "Selfies": Honorable Son No.2 and the Farmer's Daughter

[this is a picture of me at the fair]
[this is a picture of me in a car]
[this is a picture of me with a friend, in a car, at the fair]
In Dear Farmers day...there was no such thing as a "selfie".  Dear Farmer and the Wife had cameras when they were young(we're not THAT old), but rarely, if EVER was there such a thing as a "selfie".
The next generation...they do "selfies"(see above).
Have you noticed there are no farmers doing "selfies"?
What would a farmer's "selfie" look like?
[this is a picture of me with my tractor]
[this is a picture of me with a cow]
[this is a picture of the cow killing me because I wasn't paying attention while taking a "selfie"]
No good can come of that.
Honorable Son No.2 and the Oldest Farmer's Daughter compete for the prize as "King of the "Selfies" in our home.  Apparently there are unwritten rules for "selfies".  Your lips have to stick out in a pucker, your eyebrows have to be up to make your eyes bigger, or you have to look like you're screaming.  The two of them tie on these.  They take "selfies" stealing eachother's hats, hugging animals, kissing babies, and sitting on tree limbs...do they ever work?  (In all fairness, they do work)
Ahhh...maybe that's the REAL King of the "selfies"....the one who's bettering themselves by working, instead of taking a picture of themself. Hmm, what is it Dear Farmer tells them?  "If you're doing all the things we're supposed to be doing, you don't have time to do anything you shouldn't be doing."
[there is no picture of Dear Farmer, he's in a field cutting hay, providing for a hundred head of cattle and a family, not complaining, not whining, just working] 

A moment for a "spot of tea" on the tractor

Dear Farmer has been brewing tea.  WHY? Glad you asked!  Let me tell you...
He brews a "compost" tea to spray on the hay fields.  By spraying compost on the hay fields he is able to give the fields a healthy and fast dose of all that's good to bring the micro-organisms in the dirt to optimal health.  It's like if you or I were feeling "yucky" and we were to start taking a multi-vit...in a few weeks we'd start feeling better.  But if we were to eat right AND take the multi-vit in a few days we'd feel better.  The "compost" tea is like if we were eating right and taking a multi-vit...but for the field. Just like compost for your garden can get kinda stinky, the tea can a little too.  However, it gets really stinky because Dear Farmer adds to it liquefied fish.  Uber stinky and highly healthy-making the tea go from "good-for-field" to "WOW-for-field".  So, today Dear Farmer is driving the tractor spraying a "spot of tea" on the fields.  Making the grass grow healthy, so our cows are healthy, meaning our meat is healthier for you!

Flat Tires...ugh!

A flat tire on a car during road travel is a real inconvenience.  A flat tire on a tractor is a real hassle.  A flat tire on your hay mower-is devastating. Dear Farmer got a flat tire on his hay mower yesterday...
It was the phone call in the middle of the afternoon that alerted the Wife to a difficulty in his workday.  It started with a man on the other end of the phone that sounded really tired...it ended with a "can you pick me up?"  Both Dear Farmer and Wife had a little drag in their step for the rest of the day.  This was not a good day to be put a day behind...the sun was shining, it was a good day for mowing. Dear Farmer had to do other things-basically there is no lack in things to do!
Not people to drag long, it was a pick-me up when Dear Farmer was able to invite a fellow-farmer over for dinner("So, I got a flat tire today, want to come for grilled pork chops?")  see: country hospitality:example B . The next day the tire was fixed, and back on the mower...and it rained.  Now rain...that's a whole 'nother monster!

You mow grass? We bale it.

Sometimes we refer to ourselves as "Grass-Farmers".  Take away all the modern-day drug culture and look at that description as it really is, word-for-word.  We grow grasses.  A multitude of them.  Before we were farming full-time we didn't know how many grasses there were.  There's timothy, rye, fescue...
and none of them that we grow are ornamental, they all have a specific purpose.  Healthy blood, healthy heart, healthy coat, healthy eyes...the list goes on.
Dear Farmer lets the grass grow to seed head, and then he cuts it, tedders it, rakes it, and bales it.  Because we are organic farmers, NOTHING chemical goes on the grass!  Nature walks on it, that's it.  This process of making hay takes time with sun and no rain.
Where we are Dear Farmer gets two good cuttings of hay.  The first cutting is okay, it grows fast and is hard to get in.  Spring usually rains a great deal, and to get in the hay amidst the rain drops is difficult.  It needs to have a solid four days of sun.  The second cutting is the best, it grows well because of the spring rain, and has the most nutrician.  It's not usually difficult to bring it in, it's getting to it all, because it's all ready at the sametime.  Sometimes there's a meager third cutting...it's only taken if Dear Farmer thinks we're going to be really short on hay from the winter.
The best part of hay-season is watching Dear Farmer skip out to his tractor, with a big grin on his face!  He's going to be playing with his "toys" all day.
So, the family waves good-bye to him(dressed in our swimsuits), knowing we won't see him until the dew nearly sits on the grass.  He's off to do his "Grass-Farming".