Springtime at the Farm

 I challenge you to find a harder working profession than the family farmer. Farming has got to be one of the most grueling professions across the world. The earliest farmers broke the ground with a pick and a hoe. Moving on to a single bottom plow drawn by a horse or oxen. Today’s farmers have it much easier, but the work is still grueling, long and tiring. Spring and fall are “go time” on the family farm. Here on the Finken Farm, they have been waiting weeks for the snow to melt, the ground to thaw and the temperatures get high enough not to kill anything they plant in the ground.

This year, that day finally came. A few weeks later than a typical year, but the day finally came. I left home just after 8am on Monday, May 1^st. Destination, Douglas North Dakota. Nine hours later, I pulled into the driveway where I was greeted by Farmer Bob, his son Dylan, son-in-law Chris and my high school friend (Chris’s dad); Bob #2.

Greetings done, we went straight to work. It was only a couple of days ago, but I have no idea what I did that evening. I do remember it was after 11:00 when I went to bed. The next three days were the same, up and out of the camper around 7am, working all day, turning off the lights after midnight. My body is sore, achy and tired. I've stolen a few minutes here and there to work on the blog but have not had time to read what everyone else is up to. 

My main job here is to load the semi-trucks with seed and fertilizer, deliver said semi-truck to the field, and help Chris fill the seeder.

Chris spends most of his time in the seeder. Two days this week he went in the field at 7am and did not get home until after 2am. Go time! Dylan is treating and loading seed for their seed customers, Farmer Bob does a little bit of everything; these last few days were spent fixing things and making sure everything runs smoothly. Chris’s dad, Bob (see how it can get confusing?) has been cleaning carts and semi-trucks between loads and has been a big help cleaning and organizing things in the yard.

That last paragraph is such an understatement that I want to delete it. Everyone does so much more, but if I was to summarize it into a few words that would be it. But then again, I am writing this at 5:30am in the morning after getting less than 6 hours of sleep, so I am sure my brain is only working at about 50%.

Since I have written so many blogs about my activities up here, I will not go into detail, but here are a few pictures I took while doing my thing. Like these pictures of me loading urea from a bin into a semi. 

Then I take the semi out to the field where Chris is seeding and we load the seeder tanks with urea, seed and fertilizer.

Loading a cart. That beast will hold 1300 bushel or roughly 80,000 pounds.

One of the dirtiest jobs is getting the last of the grain out of a bin when it is almost empty. You have to install the drag auger (pictured) and sweep/shovel until it is clean. Dust mask is a must!

5 days in, Chris has about 1,500 acres of seed in the ground; averaging 300 acres a day. The best day was 450 acres. In an ideal spring they would plant all the same crop before moving onto the next. It saves time cleaning, calibrated and a few other things. This year, we are doing whatever fields are ready trying to get things in the ground as fast as possible. This means wheat one day, canola the next, then peas, then back to canola….. you get the picture. As soon as one field is ready it gets planted as soon as possible.

One thing I love about coming up here is all the life that arrives with spring. All the birds that migrated south for the winter have returned and are in their full breeding plumage. I took a drive early one morning and captured a few of the waterfowl that frequent the area. 

Like the blue-wing teal, the crescent moon brightly featured on the drakes head.

The Northern Shoveler, not my favorite bird but pretty in the spring. 

One of my favorites, the Scaup. Or as we call them up here; Bills. These are some of the best pictures I have gotten of them flying. They run on the water before lifting off, that is what you see in the first picture below, the splashes where they were running. 

Bufflehead or butterballs. These speedy little birds are often the frustration of many duck hunters. 

Although they do not migrate, it is always fun to see pheasants. To me, they have to be the prettiest upland gamebird. I did not even see the hen in the picture below until I was putting it into the blog. They blend in so well!

So, what is new here? There is always something new after I have been gone for several months. This year, it is the treatment set up they put on the east end of the yard. (10) 4,000 bushel grain bins, a treatment building and a new treater. The install was fraught with issues but it is finally up and working (scratch that, still more problems) with seed orders going out all day long. Luckily, they have a portable one as back up, so the orders are still going out.

 

This is a picture of the portable treater set up. The grain goes from the bin to a cart where it is weighed, then into the treater and eventually into the truck. 

As a follow up to last week’s post on the cattle branding, I had several people ask me why ranchers still brand their cattle. While I am nowhere near an expert on the matter, I will tell what I do know.

South Dakota, and most western states require ranchers to brand their cattle. But why? First, ranchers need to be able to identify individual animals for vaccination reasons, knowing which cow is getting old or not producing and a variety of other reasons. But it all started years ago to help identify who owns what cattle when cattle herds were all mixed together on a large range. And to prevent rustling. Believe it or not, the same reasons still apply today. Just on the cattle we branded the other day, there were two ownership structures in the group mixed together. They referred to a list to determine which calf received what brand.

Would you believe rustling is still a real thing? Well, it is. An average single head of cattle can be worth anywhere from $1,500-$2,000 with some being much more. Think about that the next time you drive by a herd of 1,000 head. And before you think that all cattle ranchers are super rich, many of those ranchers have a loan on those cattle to be paid each fall. Some are rich, most are just trying to make a living.

But there has to be a better way other than branding the calves, right? Ear tags are a quick way to visually identify cattle, but they can fall out, be removed and changed and are not permanent. What about tattoos and chipping them? These are wild animals. To tattoo them, you would have to sedate each one, take the time to tattoo it and good luck ever catching that cow again and inspecting the tattoo. The same goes with chips. Chipping them would be easy enough but it is expensive when you are dealing with hundreds or thousands of head. Think about how expensive beef would be when that cost was passed along to the consumer. Then there is the whole reading the chip. They don’t just let you walk up to them and read the chip. Someday there may be a new method, but for now, branding is still the industry standard.

Meanwhile back in South Dakota; Here are two picture I took with the drone right before I left.

Looking back up towards the house from the windmill

Forrest's rig outside our house

Barb, Forrest, Somer and Lily continue to have fun. Going on hikes, more disc golf, riding their scooters in the Custer State Park.

They get all the fun while I am up here grueling away. How long will I be here? So far, we are 25% done. If all goes well, we could be done in 20-25 days. But things never go well, we have 5 days of rain forecasted, so we have no idea how long the planting season will be. As hard as it is, I enjoy the work, the lifestyle and being able to play farmer if only for a few weeks!