Sunrise this morning!

Boucher Farm

Made cheese today, and starting to cut hay again.  May see Dan later...or not.

It's buttermilk-brined chicken tonight, regardless.

Ooops!

Behind my house

That drainage tile?  That's supposed to be buried and not on top of the soil.

Fieldwork

Swanton Property

Today, I dropped off Dan on the Penell Road to drive equipment back to the home farm.

I am duty bound not to let him out of sight until the tractor starts moving - just in case it doesn't.

Last year's round bales (not ours, we put those under cover).

Penell Road

Freshly cultivated fields.

Today on The Farm

Penell Road Fields, Swanton

 Tonight, Dan and I went to the Swanton property to pick up a pickup left by one of the tractor drivers.  It's fieldwork time again.  We are plowing under fields and planting cover crops.

This is what's left behind after the combine removes the corn from the cobs.

Boucher Farm, Swanton Property

Here's another view, and believe it or not, there's a dead beaver at my feet!  Lord only knows who left it there, but the suggestion that we throw it in the back of our truck and bring it back home was emphatically rejected by me.

However, the driver of the silver truck did gift it to a trapper.

Floaters vs Sinkers

We changed the tires on this truck, one of the many that transport feed off the fields and to the bunker out back.  The new ones are called "floaters", designed for tender or wet terrain.  They are very expensive.

These tires are rounded, have few treads, and do not dig in and sink the truck when the load is full.

The Radish

Radish 

Remember last year, when we planted some radishes as a cover crop?  A few came back on the fringes of the cornfield and are the size of large daikon!  Still not going to eat them, though.

Fieldwork: Washout at The Tracks

We didn't get a lot of damage to our fields or properties from the torrential rains, expect for our piece in Swanton.  We call it "The Tracks" because you have to cross the railroad tracks to access it.

Note the size of fieldstones that come up in these fields.

Main fields have drainage tiles running to this ditch, but it is where the culvert creates a bridge over it that it had some major erosion.

You can see the repairs better here (the darker-colored earth).  We may have to replant some corn, but the soybeans are in.

It's been a funny sort of year, hasn't it?

Fieldwork: First Cut

Dan is cutting hay, in spite of the threat of rain.

He put down 110 acres in a day.  And me?  I brought him lunch.

Carter Hill Property, Boucher Family Farm

They worked until 9:00 p.m. getting this field ready for planting today.  This is the backside of Carter Hill, the highest point in Franklin County, where Dan and I lived before building a house on the "home farm".

Project Sunflower: Down, In The Ground

Boucher Farm, Home Farm Property

Finally, a break in the weather.  In this photo, the ground is being smoothed prior to planting.

In this one, the seeds are being planted - finally!  We've almost got all the grass and corn planted as well; with luck, it will all be finished before it rains tomorrow.

Inspecting the Fields

Poole Property, Boucher Farm

On Sunday, Dan and I drove to one of our Highgate properties to see if it was dry enough to get equipment on.  It's not, and those truck tracks in the mud were made by turkey hunters.

Project Sunflower: The Story So Far...

The entrance to the processing room is open and ready for equipment to be delivered.

While we were at farmer's market this weekend, the plot behind the house was turned over.  Got seeds ordered, waiting for presses to arrive, looking for bottling options, and sketching out label ideas.

Round Baling Out Back

Didn't have much of an opportunity for photos; they started making round bales when I left the farm and had it all off the field by the time I got home.  The bales weren't wrapped and had to be put under cover so they would not get rained on.  We are officially done first cut!

A Solid Week of This, and then Some

(Flickr gives me no love.  I tried using iPhoto for videos again, but it's all spinning ball errors and eye-stabbing.  They are both dead to me.)

The Boucher family has been busting to get all the corn in the ground for a hard ten days or so.  This is just half an hour of activity at our Swanton property:  dump truck full of rocks pulled off the field, Dan's brother Denis getting the 12-row corn planter refilled by hand.

600 acres of corn, done!  Soybean planting in progress. Dan has had enough of fieldwork; it's too much to deal with on top of regular chores and equipment breakdowns (and farmer's market and cheesemaking).  The amount of acreage under the plow has increased exponentially in the last ten years - and he's ten years increased as well.

Next up: first cut of hay. Probably Monday.

Same work, different field

Dan has begun working our "Poole property" near the railroad track that follows the Mississquoi River in East Highgate.

The field on the left is not ours - Dan is working the field on the right. Can you see the property line?

It's that time of year, again

After manure has been spread in the fields (we contract that particular task out to professionals) it needs to be worked in.  So that's what Dan did last Sunday morning after breakfast at the diner - and Monday between rainstorms, and Tuesday between rainstorms - in addition to the twice-daily milking chores.

The ground was a little wet from precipitation, but not enough to get the tractor stuck.  The manure truck, however, bogged down and needed a tow out.

Fieldwork: Two days of mowing

In spite of the cool, cold, damp, Dan and his brother Denis decided to put the alfalfa down.

If the sun stays out for a full day, it will be ready to chop and store in the bunker behind the barns.

Working on that farmer tan

For the past two days, Dan has been on the tractor with the smoothing harrows trying to keep ahead of his brother Denis on the planter.  All the corn is in the ground (650 acres of our own plus 75 for another farmer); they are putting in soybeans now (130 acres) and doing a fair amount of rock-picking (20 dump-truck loads so far).

You can barely see Dan in this shot because he is wearing the same color shirt as the tractor.  I've just brought him lunch which he will eat as he drives, instead of taking a real break.  He is doing all this fieldwork in addition to both morning and night milking.

Work after evening chores

This is the view from my front lawn.  The cows have been milked and Dan is trying to get the field across the road ready for corn.

His brother, Denis, will be doing the planting tomorrow or the next day, depending on the weather. He often works past dark if the fields are ready.

It is called "The Test Plot" because many varieties of seed will be planted in separate rows to showcase how well they do.

Why plant different varieties? Because Dan's father owns a business that sells seed and fertilizer just to the right of this field. 

The final pass

After the rain, Dan went back out to finish smoothing out the rows so his brother Denis would be able to easily run the planter - or was it the seeder? - over the field.

This is the view from the cab, each row has tines that look like curved arrows.  The last row is made up of "baskets" that roll.  The closest thing I can compare them to is an old-fashioned people-powered grass mower.