Posted by Don-Wi on December 13, 2007 at 02:22:15 from (76.235.235.216):
In Reply to: Save the world???? posted by Nebraska Cowman on December 12, 2007 at 16:10:53:
I'm just gonna throw in my $.02 worth.
Global warming, while we may contribute to it in some slightly remote way, is just a cycle of the earth. What killed the dinosaurs? The Ice Age. Then it warmed up again. It takes more than a couple years for these changes to take place and is all a part of the natural cycle.
Yes we should try and get off of foreign oil to power our economy though.
The only thing that has changed on our farm are the input costs. We don't sell any grains of any kind, so while the higher returns are good for most of you guys who raise corn and soybeans, we only have a larger fuel and fertilizer bill to pay in order to feed our small herd.
Most of you guys have no idea what it is like to have to try and keep a farm going the way we run it. We only have about 50 head, and we only have about 70 acres to sustain them on. Now 70 acres isn't nearly enough so every year we need to buy lots of hay and basically pray that we have good weather so that we get as much as we can out of our hay and corn fields.
Every year we plant about 30-35 acres of corn and that will ussually fill both of our small silos and get us by for 10 months. In a good year, we can also fill a bag. This year we filled a 10'x150' bag, as well as most of our silo space. That lets us cut back on the hay so we don't have to buy as much. The other 2 months without corn silage, we ussually feed them better quality 2nd and 3rd crop hay to try and keep the milk up some, and we also feed them some haylage if we happen to have some we chopped only to beat the weather. Otherwise all of our hay is baled and stored in the barn.
We try to seed down a new hay field every year(5-10 acres, sometimes more), use oats as a cover over the alfalfa and then combine the grain off and feed it out over the year, and clean some for planting the next year.
Both of my parents work off the farm as well as myself, and if we didn't there is no way the farm could go on without the extra income from working off the farm. For us, a major expense is a $500 repair bill, not to mention the $1200 that we scraped together last spring to buy and fix up a newer hydroswing haybine that sped up our haying time considerably only because now I cut 14' instead of 9'. For some of you, $5000 isn't a very major expense and can get something just because you feel like it or think it's worth it.
We do lots of things the old fashined way because we simply can't afford to upgrade. We need a decent hay rake, but even a old used one will cost over $1000 it seems. Our corn planter is getting old and isn't as accurate as it could be, but a much newer 25 year old planter is still $2500 or more. We just can't afford to buy all the things we really need to replace.
I watch some guys on here just seem to throw money around like they've got a money tree out back and it almost makes me feel sick.
Sorry to rant and go off in another direction, but some things just get built up for a very long time.
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