Solvent Green

It’s hard to call it a dry lot when it rains every day. Now it’s a mud lot. Pity the cows of summer. I’ve been letting the herd out to graze during the mornings. They have started coming back into the lot to drink on their own. Two days ago the whole herd came in and all I had to do was shut the gate. Yesterday they congregated just outside the gate and a few came in to drink at a time. Some weren’t going to try it after being “caught” the day before by the gate. Once my oldest at home daughter and I ran the whole herd in they all drank heartily, since they were already caught. I’m running out of firm places in the yards to place the hay rings. I may have to move outside the yards into the loafing lane that we were running them down to drink in when we started this dry lot experience. I don’t know who will give up first, the rain or I.

The fence on the north farm is two thirds torn out. We would be pulling the rest of the “T” posts today had we not been rained out by 9:00 AM. With the rain came the chance to post this. It had been coming in the afternoons like the monsoons but today we are strait into the rain forest. Thank God for the new tile lines. They are running full time. Now if I can convince the absentee landlord to lay some tile on the five plus acres of his that amounts to nothing on these wet years. Even if it turns back dry like last year the damage is already done on those soaked and standing water acres. This spring when we laid the tile and I was saying to the contractors I’d be better able to point out where they needed to lay the line if it was still wet they said the stunted stalks and cobs would show them. Their the experts. The division of labor paying off Adam Smith style.

Speaking of the division of labor I’m still waiting on the truck to haul the corn out of the storage bins. I may have to divide that labor up into more than one trucking firm. If my older brother can’t get to it my other older brother has a son who started farming last year and he has bought his own truck. The boy went to college so his truck business card reads “Commodity Relocation Specialist”. Newspeak for trucker. College loans, where would we be without ’em. Oh that’s right, solvent. Out of the red and into the black. Making the green. Solvent green. Aka capital. Yes, that’s capital. Not loans. Debt is the opposite of capital. It leads to farmers working for the shit when it comes to hogs. I can remember when the shit was the by product and the farmers got the money for the hogs. Now they don’t even own the hogs. Some communist Chinese corporation does. The other white meat is now Red meat.

It’s still raining on the scarecrow.

See ya then see ya there …….

Cc

Advertisement

The Nice

Planters have been rolling in the neighborhood. The usual suspects. I suspect they were getting antsy to start. I rolled mine out of the barn over on the west farm after getting the 1440 with the home made six row corn head backed out of the way (remind me to tell you the 1440 story sometime) (maybe the corn head story too). And the two bush hog wagons. It’s getting it’s first washing of the season. April showers after all. All while waiting for the trucker to show up.

We had a good rain today. As in nice and easy. It was spotty showers and every drop soaked in. So did the semi. I wondered yesterday when he mentioned something like truck driver’s school. He suffers from pavementitus. Or is it a pavementality. Either way he needs to stay on a solid surface. The stay at gone mom gave him a ride in the rain back to the boss’s where he’d parked his ride to work. Stuck in the muck. What the truck.

I’m spotting it in. Just like the showers. The corn price not the semi truck. The local grain merchandisers give a spot price everyday at the close of the board of trade for all the bushels “spotted in”  or delivered without a sales contract that day. It’s more or less based on shipping costs and board of trade contracts for the nearest month. Each location determines their own.

We started hauling corn into the RR terminal at Council Bluffs yesterday afternoon. About the time the neighbors started to plant. Or restarted, some had run Saturday and Sunday. Right alongside the Easter Bunnie. Rain Sunday night shut em down. Looked plenty wet where they were planting the way it was. Reports are that the ground has warmed right on up into the sixties. I wonder if it will stay that way. They say it needs to be around that temp to get corn to germinate. The clearing seventy degree day they predicted today never did clear off or get  above the fifties. I think fifty is all the warmer the ground gets down deeper around here. Without sun keeping the top warm the 4 inch depth could cool right back down. Night temps chill right back down too.

Not much more to report. The cows are still burning hay though they go looking for greening grass to nip in the bud. I swear if they knock down the pasture fence one more time I may call the cattle truck. Let that pasture grow gol darn it. They don’t know how thin the ice their skating on is. Now that I mentioned it …….

I’m skating on outta here.

Cc

And of course …….