In the interest of being able to communicate the name of my blog quickly and memorably, I have requested that wordpress.com move my postings to a new site. I will be writing future posts at http://weisscentennialfarm.wordpress.com
The old posts on this page are also being transferred to that site. See you there!
Margie, Scott, and Lydia enjoy pie at lunch!
Wow, what a gorgeous weekend! Here in Frankenmuth beautiful fall weather means various things, depending who you talk to. I went to Bronner’s Christmas Store with my sister-in-law, Linda, and our daughters, Jamielynn and Lydia. The four of us were challenged to keep track of each other in the gigantic winter wonderland store among the thousands of people who were also there. I talked with a friend who works there yesterday after church, she said she was told by those employees who worked there more than a decade that it was the busiest day in the last ten years! I hope that gives hope for a prosperous season for the businesses that rely on tourism in our Bavarian town.
If one is a sports enthusiast, the weather was wonderfully pleasant for physical activities of all kinds. A little windy, perhaps, on Saturday for soccer, but I doubt if that stopped many kids from going outside and kicking the ball around! The Lions lost on Sunday in Seattle, so for fans it probably meant it would have been better to go play a little pickup football with family and friends than sit inside and watch the TV set.
For farmers, Indian summer is a golden opportunity to finish up fall harvest in pleasant conditions. The week prior had been good for drying out the fields, so equipment could move easily and not get stuck. We got the last 25 acres of soybeans off and stored in the granaries. Scott combined as much as he could, or fixed on combine so he could get back to work! That 25 acres yielded about 1500 bushels of soybeans, so Roger was really happy, too. We filled all our elevator grain contracts already, so we decided to store these beans on the farm in anticipation of a better price for the crop in late January or February. There is usually a rally after harvest is over, and then again when the New Year begins: we hope the past is a good predictor of the future…
Scott checks the combine bin for soybeans
Roger’s brother, Ernie and his son, Lucas, came out Saturday to work on the farm. They helped with lots of little jobs like setting up augers to the grain bins, fixing some of the dairy pens, and I think they even combined corn for awhile. Lucas got to drive the pickup around the farm, too, a big deal for an 11 year old. Roger’s best friend, Chuck, came over and helped for a while on Saturday and then came back yesterday afternoon and moldboard plowed in a hay field we are working under this fall. Linda’s husband, Jim, had started the plowing on Saturday afternoon.
Linda, Jamielynn, Lydia and I tackled the task of cleaning up the house yard. What started out as a simple plan to store five flower pots in the “little shop” ended up becoming a four hour work-a-thon to clean the shop enough to store two picnic tables, two lawn mowers and the flower pots. It looks great now. I think we shoveled out dirt and paper and junk left behind by three previous generations. We found no treasures, unless you count the rusty bins of steel gears, pulleys, and other stuff we moved to the sides so it can be hauled to the scrap yard this winter! I will have to remember the work that Linda and Jamielynn and Lydia did to help me clean up my yard and that shed and make sure I use the scrap money to buy them a pleasant surprise or two.
Linda and Rosie on the farm
Margie was available all day Saturday to help, too. She is our cow person. She cleaned out empty little hutches and moved some calves around. I think she did some vaccinations, too, as I saw her adding new entries in the cow records on the computer. Roger and Lydia dried up some of the dairy herd last week, so Margie added those notes into cow records. We are going to have a lot of cows calving again in January next year! On Saturday night Margie and her friend, Kendra, milked cows. Lydia went to a Christian concert with the relatives who had been helping all day, Scott had a Frankentrost Band annual banquet to attend. Roger and I were married 22 years ago Saturday, and we went to the theater in Midland with some dairy friends.
Jim is excited because Roger said he could go plow the hay field down!
Roger and I publicly thank each and every one of these wonderful family and friends who helped us get lots of the farm work done over the weekend. You may count yourself blessed by us for all the support and volunteer hours you gave to us. This is a family farm, and that was proven once again this past weekend by all the help we enjoyed. Saturday lunch was a wonderfully raucus affair with twelve hungry “farmers” gathered around for chop suey and fellowship. I hope the exhaustion you all felt Saturday (and the inevitable aches on Sunday) was a satisfying reminder of all you contributed to the successful weekend we had here on Weiss Farm. THANK YOU!
Roger and I worked in the beet field Tuesday night/Wednesday morning until 1 am! The last truck full was half full, and delivered to the piling grounds yesterday afternoon. The weather report for Wednesday and later this week is rain, rain, rain. So, to avoid mud it was imperative that we finish ahead of the rain. Yesterday it did not rain much, but the sky is grey every day.
The yield in beets wasn’t so high this year as last. We averaged about 18 tons to the acre, significantly below the 32 tons of the 2008 crop. Costs were up, so overall the profit will be marginal this year. The factory is aware of this reduced tonnage among its growers, so this year they are going to pay us $2.00 per ton for a crop from several years ago that was lost when the factory was sold to a new operator. After that sale, it was sold once again to us, the farmers. Now, it is a cooperative venture. So, in reality I think we are just paying ourselves!
Weiss Farm is pretty small by today’s ag standards. We will probably get a check for about $1000, but for some of the large beet farmers, the check will be much larger. Of course, so are their bills. It all averages out.
I am praying that we see some warmer, brighter days soon. We have not had Indian Summer yet, and I really am looking forward to that brief warm interlude before we head into winter.
This week we concentrated on harvesting our soybean crop. We rely on two Massey Ferguson 550 combines to get the job done. These are late model combines from the early 1980′s with thousands of hours on them! We bought both of them used at auctions within the past three years. Roger and Scott are great mechanics, and will become better as they keep this equipment running.
Soybean harvest earlier this week 10/19/09
So far, we have taken off 50 acres of soybeans and our yield has been about 43 bushels to the acre. We had most of our crop contracted in the early spring already for fall delivery. We will get between $9.00 and $9.83 for beans we deliver at the elevator in the next few weeks.
These beans are providing the income to catch up on feed bill and seed purchases from the spring and summer months. Milk prices, as low as they have been this year, do not generate enough income to pay monthly bills. In most years, soybean and sugar beet income is used to purchase seed and fertilizer inputs for next year’s crops. This year we will most likely be using an operating loan to make those purchases for next year.
Scott has decided that he is going to go to the local two year college and learn more about diesel mechanics, welding and related skilled vocations that will be useful on our farm, other farms or at a local farm equipment dealer. Roger is happy that he will be around next fall to help with harvest. I am disappointed that he is not going to follow Margie to MSU for an ag degree or attend WMU or another university for music. Scott has a wonderful talent for playing clarinet and enjoys many kinds of music. His iPod has more than 1000 songs downloaded from iTunes, I think! Country, classical, rock, Christian, jazz, he likes them all! Still, I know it is best to stand aside and let him make his own decisions right now.
Scott is a senior at Frankenmuth High School and will be eighteen soon. He also is a boy at heart sometimes! He has a room in the basement FULL of lego pieces from a lifetime of collecting them! He has been building all kinds of aircraft and fighter planes the past year or two. I noticed at the end of the soybean picture file he had some photos of a helicopter he finished last night…what do you think!?
Boys and their toys! Scott is a lifelong lego lover!
Monday morning, bright and beautiful here in Frankenmuth! It was a whirlwind weekend of farming activities.
Last Friday Michigan Sugar opened up for regular delivery of sugarbeets. We put it into high gear here on the farm. Friday and Saturday we dug our first field of beets, about 30 acres in total. We haul beets with a 1980′s tandem that can be loaded with about 12.5 tons of beets at a time. No line ups at the piling grounds due to the fact that it was also the first decent weather to take off soybeans and get winter wheat planted in mid-Michigan. Scott or Roger dug beets out of the ground, Roger or his brother, Russell, drove them to Blumfield piling grounds. A good friend, Chuck, who considers tractor driving to have some therapeutic value for his soul, topped the beets. Friday we took out ten tandems and in three loads in a rented semi that hauls about 25 tons. Saturday we took out another ten tandem loads and two semis. Do the math, if you want. 30 acres, twenty tandems, eight semi loads, divided by….equals…or wait and the sugar company will send the yield results in an email!
That left Margie and Lydia to do the milking. They spent Saturday hauling manure and strawing pens, and also moved some steers around to new pens so they can be fed a more concentrated corn diet. Two heifers calved over the weekend, too, so the girls had to coax new cows into the stanchions at milking time twice each day. Sunday afternoon they tagged calves born in the last month and moved some out of little hutches. Margie hauled pit and pen manure on some fields that will be in corn next year so we can do our fall tillage later next week. It was good that Margie came home and could help us so much this weekend. Sometimes in the fall the cows are almost an afterthought with all the intense effort being put into harvesting crops. Margie’s heart is in the dairy barn, and she does a fantastic job, and Lydia was such a great helper!
On that note, Lydia had a cross country meet Saturday morning and ran a 24:20 5K before coming home to put in a eight hour day of
Harvest is waiting at Weiss Farm October2009
work on the farm yet!
My jobs are all in “human resources”, I think! I drive trucks in the field for loading beets if no one else is around. My most important task is to make sure all our help is comfortable: fed and watered. Saturday morning at 7am I made a big pot of spicy chili with 2 20 ounce cans of Brooks hot chili beans, 3 lbs of lean hamburger, a half gallon of tomato juice, and liberal amounts of chili powder and cayene pepper and homemade salsa. It was hot and spicy, and really fed the crew well at lunchtime. Supper was at Davinci’s in Frankenmuth around 9:30pm when we finally shut down for the night! Sunday we made it to church, which is always a good way to start the week.
Some tense moments arose because I had purchased tickets to see the musical ‘Ragtime’ in Midland several months ago. Everyone was so into farm work…but Roger, Lydia and I did go see the show. Really excellent entertainment and such talent to be found in mid-Michigan! One ticket was not used as Scott stayed home to help combine soybeans and do his government homework for school.
This week will be just as busy if the weather stays favorable.
Today I went to Okemos for United Dairy Industry of Michigan’s Dairy Diplomat meeting. For three years I’ve had the great fortune to share ideas and work with 16 dairy farm women on this committee. Our purpose is to share with the public the life we know as a dairy farmer and communicate how healthy and wholesome dairy products are in a daily diet.
This year, we hosted a ‘Milk-The Ultimate Sports Drink’ booth for runners at Frankenmuth’s Volkslaufe Race on July 4. Twenty five hundred runners and their families were encouraged to add chocolate milk and flavored yogurts to their post-exercise sessions. In one neat drink, milk adds carbohydrates, proteins, essential vitamins and minerals back into a body following strenuous workouts. Runners appreciated the cold milk following a 5, 10 or 20 K run. Some of the runners already knew about the benefits of milk after exercise. A few indicated high school coaches in their school districts have been including milk in post-game sessions in the locker room for a while now.
Athletes know how beneficial a healthy, balanced diet is to their well-being. Our youngest daughter, Lydia, is running cross country for Frankenmuth High School this fall. She has always loved running. This is serious running though, and every day there is after school training. I’ve observed her making better food choices the last two months. She is learning what specific foods are good fuel for an upcoming race. She has always consumed three to five servings of milk each day, but now she does so with an added sparkle in her eye. She has a firm belief that strong leg bones are essential to her success and she loves a glass of chocolate milk anytime, including after the completion of a race. So far, her personal best for the 5K run is 23 minutes, 52 seconds. Go, Lydia!
At the Saginaw County Cross Country Invitational hosted by Frankenmuth High School on October 24, our Michigan Milk Producers Frankenmuth Local and Saginaw County Farm Bureau will team up to share this message with 300 runners. It should be a fun day, hopefully it is also a gorgeous fall day in mid-Michigan. Come on out and see the kids run and enjoy a glass of chocolate milk!
The weekend was quite wonderful. Roger’s youngest cousin was married this past weekend at St. Lorenz Church in Frankenmuth. She was a radiant bride, and the bridesmaids were in my favorite color: fuschia pink! One of the first reasons I love going to church on Sunday mornings is to look at the wedding flowers on the altar from Saturday weddings… These were gorgeous shades of lilac, purple, and many verdant greens! (sorry, no photos, but I do have one of the table bouquets to enjoy in my kitchen this week!)
Roger and I were able to go to the ceremony and then keep up with the rest of the wedding guests on our way to the reception at Frankenmuth’s Bavarian Inn. We ordered the world famous chicken dinner and I thoroughly (and I do mean thoroughly) enjoyed the red currant wine! By 9:30 pm I knew enough to stop drinking the wine and switched to water so that Sunday would not be a complete disaster with huge headache and unsettled stomach.
Roger’s mom’s side of the family, Bergdolts and Maurers, really are friendly. When I think of his family, they are the ones I think of first. Like the Taylors, on my own mom’s side of the family, they are so friendly and welcoming. We were seated with Roger’s Dad, and two of his brothers and wives, but all night long, it was a wonderful procession of cousins visiting each other at various tables.
Roger and I even danced a polka! That brings back such wonderful memories of our own wedding, we had Tenbush brothers play, and they were awesome. This weekend, the bride and groom went with a DJ so there would be more variety… I see the logic in the choice, but I’ve yet to meet a party DJ with a really fantastic selection of polka music. Now days we have to dance to the very worst version of Beer Barrel Polka…You know the one, too fast, too much vocals, these DJ’s should really check into the polka bands that play the Chicago circuit these days and get some modern polka music. (Enough said) It was just heavenly to twirl around the floor with Roger, our feet in perfect step with each other and exhaustion forgotten in an alcoholic buzz! I do love to dance with my huband.
At the reception many people wondered who was milking cows that night? God bless our children, they were! Margie was home from college and I think she did most of the actual milking while Scott mixed feed for cows, and Lydia fed calves and made dinner for the cousins who were over (dropped off by parents at the wedding). Then, we provided funds so that they could all go see Toy Story in 3-D. From what I hear, the kids had a great weekend too.
(This is a memory photo, Roger and I dance a polka at our fifth anniversary. 1992 I still fit in my wedding dress at that time, 17 years ago! And Roger wore a tux for the evening.)
Today we dug beets. After morning chores. Until evening chores. Roger made the comment that he could not drive the truck to Bay City load after load all day long, and he is grateful for the cows and the milking routine!
I get to drive the tandem in the field. It is one place where I really shine on the farm. Roger and the truck driver (usually me) have to be in perfect sync or the beets end up on the ground instead of in the truck! This fall when I got in the truck for the first time I was amazed to realize that my brain remembered the shifting pattern for the transmission. I did not have to look at the diagram to figure out how to go ahead or reverse or speed up and slow down. That is a good thing….I think. Or maybe it just means that Roger now will rely on my services all the time in the beet field.
I guess that is why I never try too hard to learn the whole milking routine!!!
The weather in Frankenmuth is certainly becoming more like fall with each passing day. On the first day of autumn it was 80 and very humid. Four days later, we are experiencing temps in the 60s range and it drizzled all day long. I suppose it is good for the grass and alfalfa we planted last weekend, but I wish it would either truly rain and get it over with, or the sun can come back out!
The corn chopper broke down a few times this week, it is just getting old and worn out. With milk prices where they are, we don’t have the ability to go and buy something newer. So, Roger keeps fixing. He is amazing with wrenches and a torch. He always jokes that with a pair of good Vice-Grips he can fix anything. This week has certainly tested his skills and patience.
There is still one more bag of silage to fill. I hope that is done without much more ado! We also dug beets on Tuesday, and the tonnage went up with only a little rain on Sunday. So, maybe this bit of moisture will likewise be beneficial.
I started a part time job helping teach history classes at the Frankenmuth History Museum this week. I will have to work around the farm schedule through October as I am Roger’s right hand driver in the fields in the fall. Well, at least until Scott gets home from school each day.
Elmer came out and picked the grapes this week. Today he ground them up, Ernie helped. Roger has to stir the juice on the even numbered days this coming week. We will have about 100 gallons of wine, what are we to do with that much wine, I wonder!?
Yesterday Roger started cleaning out cow pens. He put the “organic fertilizer” or “liquid gold” or manure (take your pick!), on a five year old alfalfa field that will be worked under this fall. Next year we will not be able to see many of the tourists who drive into Frankenmuth because that same field will be growing corn for the dairy cows.
Spreading "liquid gold" on our fields, 2008
Most of our daily work requires advance planning on our farm. Last year at this time of year we were in conversations with Brookside Soil Consultants and our oldest daughter, Margie, who was a freshman at MSU in dairy herd management courses about the next three years crop rotation. Together all the interested parties deiliberated where to plant our four major crops in 2009, 2010, and 2011: corn, alfalfa, soybeans and sugarbeets. When making plans, we take into consideration manure application, pest and weed threats from prior and successive crops, herbicides and their carryover for sensitive crops, ease of planting and of harvesting.
We re-evaluate this long-term plan each year, adjusting when necessary. For instance, if we experience a drought year then we know the succeeding year more corn must be planted so that there is about an 18 month supply on hand into the future. In the drought year, we may use up all existing supply just to make it through to the succeeding year. Did you ever imagine there could be so much to plan on a farm? Some Americans think farmers have a simple job (and simple minds), but I beg to differ. We want to leave this rich heritage of Frankenmuth farmland to our own kids, so we have to be constantly aware and flexible in our plans, and we better understand and keep a close eye on the bottom line!
In October of 2008 we already determined that our 2009 fall application of manure would be put on this particular field in anticipation of the 2010 corn crop! Next year’s seeds will find an adequate supply of nitrogen from two sources: the green residue of alfalfa and the manure from the cows. Our long-range goals include the hope that when the field is tested next spring, there will be no need to buy expensive man-made nitrogen from the local supplier. It is a science project of immense proportions!
Immediately following the fall manure application, we start chisel plowing the field, putting the nutrients deep into the topsoil, so it does not evaporate or leach away over winter. If all goes well with the weather, by November the field should be ready to go through a winter rest period before being planted again next April to corn.
That takes care of one field for the year. Only about 125 acres more to work on… And we are really small farmers by today’s standards. Imagine doing this kind of work for a thousand or ten thousand acre farm or a 1000 cow dairy herd. Next time you meet a farmer, assume he or she is pretty smart. Ask your questions, and listen to the well-thought out answers. This conversation will take time, but it is great to really understand how the food you eat today was planned for months or even years ago!
Roger is the little farmer in the coveralls in this 1963 treasure photo!
Today is Roger’s 49th birthday, he has come in to ask me to google “restaurants that offer free birthday meals”, so I guess that means we will eat lunch out today!! Happy Birthday, Roger!
