Sidey Angus Farm Diary - October 1997

October 03 - Getting lax

Sorry about the lack of diary update earlier this week, It was my birthday and I am getting lax in my old age. All I can say is that I have definitely had better ones.

I finished up a sale catalog for the Showcase customer Angus Sale this week. The Showcase sale is at Springfield Ohio this year on October 29th. I am also trying to finalize the entries for the Miami Valley Angus Association Show & Sale that will be held November 29th at Eaton Ohio. I am sale manager and the entries had to be to me by today so that I can get everyone cataloged and start the advertising. It looks like another really good offering.

It's currently about 2:30 PM and I am waiting for hay to dry so that I can finish up round baling. The sun is out, the temperature is about 80º (26.6º C), and there is a breeze so it should be ready soon. The Alfalfa is gorgeous and is yielding very well. We started baling yesterday and it is yielding about 1.7 ton acre.

We are starting to take off soybeans as well. Moisture is at 11.5% on the first field. Yield looks to be about 40-42 bu./acre (6 hectoliter/hectare) which is not bad for this particular field. They were no-tilled, and drilled solid.

October 05 - "under the weather"

Not really feeling great last evening and again this morning. It is much warmer than usual, in the mid 80sº (28-30º C) and the fan in the cab of the tractor I was baling with yesterday malfunctioned. I would much rather be out in the sun with a 95º (35º C) temperature than in a cab with no air circulation!

The field of soybeans we took off last evening was very good. About 50-55 bu./acre (7.5 hectoliter/hectare) moisture was down to 10.5%. We will blend them with some higher moisture beans. Before we went to narrow rows and started no-tilling a few years ago, we were tickled pink if we got yields much over 30 bu./acre (4.3 hectoliter/hectare)

October 07 - Wheat drilling

Started to no-till drill Wheat on Monday while continuing to harvest soybeans. I am drilling the wheat while dad is harvesting. the rest of the family is in support with wagons, seed etc... I only put in about 50 acres (20 hectare) per day then go home to water and feed the cattle. It has been very warm and dry so we are not in a great hurry. We use a 15' John Deere 750 no till drill and I can cover about 10 acres an hour (4 hectare/hour) without really pushing it. We have our seed in hopper wagons using brush augers to load seed into the drill. This turns filling the 40 bu. hopper into a one person job and is a lot faster.

October 10 - Old friends

Finished the wheat Wednesday and I switched over to running the combine yesterday. We purchased a new John Deere 9400 last Fall and it really does a fast and good job with harvesting the soybeans. We only have an 18' header on it so we can don't have to worry about forcing too much into the machine. This size head works best for us because of the width of our local bridges and roads not to mention our barn openings. The new plastic and stainless steel header is really a fantastic system. It flexes to the contour of the ground so much better than Anything that I have ever used.

Received e-mail from two very good friends whom I had not heard from in quite a few years. They are both doing great! Karen is based in New York producing and working as AD on film projects while Brian is in LA and doing animation for Warner Brothers network among others, and did all of the graphics for an ABC special "The World's greatest Magic" airing the night before Thanksgiving. Hearing from them really made my week!! Karen & I share the same birth date and were classmates and co-workers at the University of Cincinnati. I have always thought the world of Karen while Brian worked with me at Cincinnati Bell and was one of the main persons responsible for helping me understand computers, animation and whatever computer graphics understanding that I have.

October 15 - Cooler

It has really cooled down temperature wise and starts to feel like Fall. It is about 50º (10º C) for the high. This is low even for the time of year. The September baby calves are really starting to go after the creep feed. We started to put fresh ground ear corn in our creep feeder after noticing them eating beside their mothers. 90% of the herd do not see corn or any other grain but we do grain the replacement females and freshening cows just prior to calving and for a short time afterwards during the Fall & Winter when the pasture is not as strong.

October 17 - Finishing Soybeans

We are planning to finish up the soybean harvest this afternoon and tomorrow. The rain and cooler temperatures earlier in the week raised moisture in the crop to about 14 to 15% so we held off till today. We have had some really strong frosts the past three evenings and the sun has been hidden by the clouds most of the past week.

Hope to work cattle next week. I want to wean, weigh and separate most of the 1997 calf crop. I also have to finish up on the Miami Valley Angus Association Sale Catalog and get it to press. I have been working on several web sites and I am heading to the Masterfare Angus Sale tomorrow so I am a little behind on getting it done. The biggest problem has been the rash of entries that arrived Way after the deadline. I think people try to see how late they can get information in and still be accepted. I felt in a pretty good mood earlier this week so alot of people got Very lucky!

October 22 - Filling Cribs

We did not receive any rain earlier in the week so working cattle was out and filling corn cribs was the priority. Started Monday afternoon and finished the first crib today. We have two large corn cribs which each hold 3,000 + bushel of ear corn. They are elevated two foot off of the ground and are fairly narrow being only 5 foot wide. This allows for air on all sides and lets us pick at higher moisture levels. The corn we are picking is at 28%. It is a 113 day variety from Terra. We are using a two row Avco-New Idea Corn picker pulled by a 190XT Allis Chalmers tractor. Not real high tech stuff, but it works well and we save the cost of propane to dry down the grain.

The corn is beyond excellent! Our region does not irrigate crops. The first 20 acre (8.09 hectare) field yielded 169 bu./acre (24.1 hectoliter/hectare) when shrunk and adjusted to a 15% moisture level. Our average yield on this field for the past ten years is 128 bu./acre (18.25 hectoliter/hectare) We have been very blessed this year with optimum growing conditions. Farmers just 30 miles North have been flooded all Summer, while Farms just 50 miles South have been experiencing drought this year. I have heard reports of 25 bu/acre (3.56 hectoliter/hectare) yields in Butler county from fields that usually yield 125 bu/acre (18 hectoliter/hectare).

October 24 - Cribs Completed

We finished filling the last corn crib last evening (almost). We needed two more hopper wagons (about 260 bu.) to top it off when the main gears went out of the picker. We had not repaired/replaced these since the mid 1970s and the picker was just not designed to run 160-180 bu corn. We are working on it today. There is rain scheduled for the next 3-5 days so it is a good time to do repairs and maintenance.

It has been in the upper 20º (-6º C) temperature wise during the nights and had highs in the 40-50º (5 -10º C) range this week. It is supposed to warm up quite a bit this weekend. I never did mention that Masterfare had a great sale last Saturday. It made me happy that I have so many good DHD Traveler 6807 daughters coming on in the herd. They are really valuable in the sale ring due to their performance and that of their calves.

October 28 - Warming Up

It is supposed to start warming up today and actually get back into the normal high temperatures range for this time of year which is 61º F (16.1º C). I as not ready for the snow the other evening even if it was just a spit every now and then. I like it a bit cooler and we did not get pounded like the West so I will not complain too much. The sun is out and the September calves are really enjoying it.

The September Finks 5522-6148 heifer out of my foundation Sapphire cow by "Extender" is really blowing past the other calves. She is starting to look impressive with her mass to age ratio. I also am becoming extremely pleased with the December JR Juice ET daughter out of The Summitcrest Heiress cow family.

We did repair the corn picker, but will be starting shelling corn instead this afternoon. A neighbor reported that they had their first field yield at 191 bu/acre (27.235 hectoliter/hectare) on a dry basis and I trust them not to exaggerate too much. They stated that this was probably 30-50 bu./acre (4.27 - 7.13 hectoliter/hectare) better than usual. Our final figures on the soybeans showed that we averaged right at 48 bu. acre (6.84 hectoliter/hectare) on 450 acres (182 hectare) this year. It might not be as high as some of our neighbors report but we are Very happy! Now, if the price just goes up a little more....

October 30 - Blow Out!

It was not a good day Wednesday! The grain bin drying floor collapsed overnight dumping 3,000 bu. of 28% moisture corn on the concrete pad underneath. We have been after the local grain handling supply and repair group to work on our secondary bin for over two months with no avail and so we are stuck. We had ordered a new stiration unit for that bin. They say it has been in stock for a while but they are very busy and will get to us sometime. We will probably have to begin selling off the corn at a substantial discount by Saturday to prevent loss because of spoilage.

To end a great day, late yesterday evening, three boards on the a section of the North wall of the home corn crib broke loose dumping about 30-40 bu. on the show heifer lot. We got that repaired and cleaned up but I ended up missing the Showcase Customer Angus Sale last evening. I think bad luck is supposed to come in 3s so I would rather get it over with today and get back to normal. I guess this just makes us appreciate the good times more. It could be much worse. I understand that there are still people in Nebraska without power and I remember that kind of situation very well. I would rather have my problems.