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Monday, April 25th Today was a “large day” in the lives of alpaca farming. It was called “ Shearing Day”. Michael Banks sheared the alpacas again this year. He has been shearing for us for seven years. Michael’s home is in New Zealand and he works an alpaca shearing circuit in the U.S. each spring. His base of operations is in Colorado and he and two young American men crisscross the sta...
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Sunday, April 17 Chaos in the barn this morning! As I walked out to the barn I could hear the commotion. Normally the noise I hear is from hungry animals. This morning not only hungry animals…. I heard irritated animals. The gate between the goats and lambs pen was opened and they were running together. The ram (male sheep) was not happy about the goats being close to his ladies. Plus, one of the ...
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Monday April 18 This was a good day to get caught up with some tasks. I worked this morning, on the Public Policy Action Team’s portion of the Butler County Farm Bureau newsletter. I reported our meeting with the elected and appointed officials on local and state issues. Also, I enclosed a survey for our members to return to our office about increasing Butler County’s sales tax, elimination of...
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Monday, April 18th Dear Diary……Today is the start of week three reporting my whereabouts and thoughts. I trust it has been interesting reading and the thoughts not too provoking. This is the week that we will be preparing the farm stead for shearing the 18 alpacas. It will be a busy week as there will be a lot to do so there will not be any problems arise that will slow down the shearers. ...
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Monday, April 11 Spring planting is right around the corner. Time to get the tractors serviced and ready. A farm uses many kinds of machines to grow corn, soybeans and wheat. A tractor is the most important machine a farmer uses. Tractors are used to pull other machines that will plant, harvest or carries the crops to storage or the market. Big combines have important jobs to do, every summer they...
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Monday, April 11 Dear Diary……..Today is the start of another new week. I looked at the weather map on the television and it looked like we can expect rain all day. Did not do much today other than the “usual”. Mary, Sally and I did go to Hamilton and got a few errands accomplished. I don’t seem to handle rain like I did at one time. Tuesday, April 12 Today was a bit better than yesterday...
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Monday April 11 There are many old sayings, and many come from farmers’ observation of the weather. One of my favorites is “ If it rains on Monday it will rain three days that week”. If you look at this from just the percentages, you might want to bet on it. Since it rained on the first day of the week, it only needs to rain two more days of the six following days to win. If you live in Ohio in...
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Monday April 4 What a day, it rained almost the entire day. We don’ t have our rain gauge out, but if we didn’t get at least an inch, I would be very surprised. The first thing we did was to get the pictures and the information from last week into Cathy at Farm Bureau. It was a great day to catch up on farm expense and income accounts. We have not used Quicken or any other electronic accountin...
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Monday, April 4, 2011 Finally some warmer weather despite the sprinkles and possible passing thunderstorms it feels good outside. Spring fieldwork is right around the corner! The warm weather is just what we need to get ready for our farm tours. This is one way we have diversified our operation to generate funds to pay the bills, feed the animals and raise our family on the farm. Every year thousa...
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Monday, April 4, 2011 Hello folks, it is Monday and the start of a new week. In order for me to wake up each morning I set my clock radio and let it buzz for awhile. The weather was nasty with a lot of rain predicted for the day. Mary went off to teach school and left Sally and me to do the alpaca feeding. After being around them for ten minutes or so they tend to make you happy and glad you a...