Sidey Angus Farm Diary - June 1998

It was about 80° F (27° C) today with a very nice breeze and sunshine. My hoof trimmer was able to stop by and we trimmed on eight head in preparation for the Ohio Angus Preview Show later this month. He commented that the group looked stronger than anything we have fielded before. I know my cow/calf pair is better than any I have shown previously and I'm really happy with my September heifer too. Time will tell.

Dad finished up knifing 28% nitrogen as a side dress to the corn this evening. It's nice to have that done now.  The corn always seems to jump after the applicator knives open up the ground.

Completed several advertisement layouts and a brochure today which kept things busy for a while. On my way to the printers I noticed a field of corn that was almost waist high in height. Our own corn is just at the knee high stage.

We are well into applying our broadleaf herbicide program  to try and finish before the corn gets much bigger. We eliminated atrazine from our rotation almost 8 years ago with nothing but good results as far as I am concerned. We have done very well the past couple of years with a program of Harness^® grass herbicide at preplant and a planned post of 2-4-D and Sencor DF^® for broadleaf control. I've been extremely impressed with how the Sencor supercharges the 2-4-D and allows us to reduce both application rates and costs and I am not a fan of Sencor normally.

Today has been just a good day to be alive. Got an unexpected online visit with my best friend so noon time was fantastic and just the best part of an excellent day for me. It was Sunny and bright, with big puffy marshmallow type clouds floating by and an ever so slight breeze. Couldn't ask for more.

Spent the afternoon working with the show string and spending time walking the pastures and doing a good look at each animal in the herd. I like to do that every so often to re-examine why I have them and to gauge my breeding program as well as to just enjoy being around them and outside on a perfect day.

The West Central Ohio Angus Association will be meeting here at the farm tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 pm. We are finishing up plans for our District Angus Show to be held August 28th at the Allen County Fairgrounds in Lima. Everyone interested is definitely invited.

We ended up doing a full jack up of the barn and replacing and/or shoring up all of the front support beams. In the end we raised the master cross beams  and the barn on the whole almost 10 inches higher. It had been 25 years since this had been done and it had really settled and sagged. The barn is 120 years old this year and is of pin and peg construction. I think it looks great now and it's nice to see all the joints so nice and snug again.

Overnight we had more heavy rain and added another 1.2 inch (3.05 cm). The lower pasture is under about a foot of water this morning and we lost about 25-30 acres (10-12 hectare) of soybeans in the river bottom ground due to the flooding.

It's been very mild and pleasant the past several days. lows in the mid 50°s F (13° C) and highs only in the mid to upper 70°s F (24° C). The weather has really seemed to bring a large group of our Spring calvers in heat at the same time. We have been rebreeding them heavily to VDAR New Trend 315 and TC Stockman 365.

I power washed the trailer and acid treated it to try and make it a bit more presentable. I even put new mulch on the floor. It is all nice and spic n span looking so I won't be as ashamed if people see it now.

I'm taking a Leachman Tonto five year old cow with her January bull calf by GAR Precision 1680; a January yearling heifer by JR JuiceZ005 and a September heifer calf by Finks 5522-6148 this year. That'll be more than plenty for me to handle by myself but I used to run a bigger string than that alone during my summers from college. It's kind of more of just seeing if I can still do it and remember how to do it right I think. I used to love it and hope that maybe this will get me thinking that way again.

I enjoyed seeing a lot of good friends and meeting alot of new ones as well. I helped with ring announcing for the junior show and it was very nice as it allowed me to learn the younger junior members names better. We have a super bunch of junior members coming up in the Association and It was great to meet a bunch of those kids after the show down at the swimming pool. Of course it might have been nicer had I not been swimming with them with my clothes still on. My friend and their advisor, Edith Luli was the first adult put into the pool followed by Pam Brosey, Ben Gibson, Mike Broshear, Windy Hinson, Ron Stewart and myself. As Edith says it was one of the nicer parts of the show and definitely the coolest. My shoes are finally dry now too. I'll pack an extra pair next year. I think we scared off alot of people seeing the 20-30 "mildly" raucous juniors in swimming suits and we seven adults in our street clothes bobbing in the hotel pool for an hour or so.

We are extremely late with making the first cutting but the tonnage is phenomenal. We baled 1,020 square 58 lb (26 Kg ) bales of Alfalfa and 212 round 900 lb (408 Kg ) bales of medium red clover yesterday and another 1,000 square and 140 round bales of red clover today. Dad had made 75 round bales of Alfalfa last Thursday as well. We are in excellent shape with the hay inventory going into the the second cutting in a few weeks. The hot weather is bringing the regrowth back strong already. It always has to be terribly hot stacking hay in the mows or it just wouldn't seem like hay season I guess.

Several neighbors started cutting wheat samples today but moisture results were high and varied. We intend to take a few sample cuts tomorrow to check some of our earlier varieties. The medium red clover in the wheat fields we checked tonight were as strong as any I can remember. It is just an excellent  year for the clovers in the hay stands, in the pastures and the new seeding under the wheat crop. All the extra moisture helped it even if it did stunt some of the corn. We will know how it affected the test weights in the wheat tomorrow if all goes well. I am expecting them to be low.

Had a couple visitors stop by to walk the herd and purchase bulls around Lunch time so it was a not a bad day even if a little slow. I will deliver tomorrow and will get the opportunity to check out some of the crops in South Central and South West Ohio that way.

The mosquito crop is definitely strong this year. I worked on new fences both yesterday and today in a wooded area and was swarmed by enormous numbers of them.