spring is in the air.....

in central IL.
We have had very mild weather for awhile now. We took advantage of the weather to undertake a very importan project last week. There is no more obvious sign than the undertaking of the spreading of the poo! If you grew up on a farm you will have memories of this rite, good memories or bad, hard to say but memories non the less!



Oh yes, its hitting the fan in this pic!


If that wasnt proof enough how about some new calves enjoying a mild day?


This is a pic of some of our replacment heifers watching as we clean out the feedlot.


The steers take in the activity. As you can tell they are wild!



This will probably come back to haunt me but, this is our 2010 utility loader tractor. It has given us alot of reliable service. Most people had bad expirences with these tractors but for us, it has done a good job. I will keep my fingers crossed now!!


Here is one of our yt posters. Tritown is taking a break from pitching poo away from the bunks. Seems like his buddy Kruser could have come lent a hand but maybe krusers wife didnt approve! Hmmmm.


Last but not least. Im sure you have heard stories about the dog watching the gate while his master drives in and out, well we do things a little different around here!! Oh a dogs life.


This is the year that winter never came. We were agian today over 60 degrees. Chance of rain tonight. We are going to get ready the next couple of days to do our spring plowing. If we miss this rean we can probably run in a couple days and we will hook the drill up and get ready to do some seeding of oats. Its warm and dry and soon we will have green grass. Welcome to spring everyone!!
bill

Thanks for the update and pictures.I sure do enjoy them.

Vito

Always a pleasure seeing your posts Bill. 'Specially the pictures, and Wrigley too!

thanks for the pictures. nice looking cattle. I really like that last picture of Wrigley.

The question is- is it really here?
Finished up the bulk of the plowing last week with little frost. Thurs. AM plowed some headlands, and it was dry enough with no frost! That is unheard of right here. Probably not so unusual for you out there. We've had about .7" rain and some cold and flurries since, so it's wet and sticky now. But I'm glad, that's much more normal!

You gotta get Wrigley a drivers license, he's spending most of his time in the seat behind the wheel.

Bill,
As always I enjoy your pics of your farm. I have always liked hauling manure. It is always a good feeling to see the cattle resting and enjoying fresh bedding after a long Winter. I see Wrigley is doing a superior job of supervising the manure hauling crew's work. LOL Thanks again. Keep posting pics.
Kow Farmer

Bill,
I like the guard rail fencing and gate. How/where did you come across so much of it?
Pete

We have had a very mild winter, especially compared to the last 2. I am not complaining about the warm weather, but we have been very, very dry for this time of year. The last 5 or 6 summers have been drier than usual, and we are coming up on planting season with a serious rainfall deficit. I do expect that we will have another cold snap or two before it's all over. March and sometimes even into April is a very volatile period for weather in this part of the world.

A few years back I undertook to clean out my neighbors lagoon after they sold the cattle off and no longer had any interest. The tractor was underpowered for the borrowed pump so the pump wouldn't agitate. I pumped all I could and then went in with the loader. It seemed like weeks before it started going down. I had always enjoyed cleaning out and spreading in the past. This was proverbial shoveling SH!t against the tide.

Yep, always liked cleaning the feeding barn and spreading. Felt good to get some "seat time", and it meant spring was finally here! It was infinitely better after we got the loader tractor, so we could minimize the pitchfork work.

Wrigley's looking good, as usual.

I am sure may of you have participated in this ritual. As l lok at bill's fine equipment I think back to my father who was a dairyman. Barn was the most modern of ot's time. It had a overhead track that had a dump carrier that the manure was scooped into then carried about 100 feet from the barn and dumped in a big pile. so Spring comes and the ritual began. Dad had a new JD horse drawn Manure spreader an several teams of horses that were fat and sassy from running in the corn stocks all winter. one of the old steady teams would be used to move the spreader to the poo pile and unhitched while the latest addition of the Manure fork was put to work. The spreader was loaded heavy then a young team was hitched on the loaded spreader. This was his way of sort of rebrakeing those ornery young horses. Pull the fully loaded spreader to the other end of the farm and then unload it on the way bsck. After acouple of loads they were glad to stand & rest while the spreader was loaded. gitrib