Betsy Freese is the editor-in-chief of Living the Country Life. She grew up on a small farm in Maryland where her family raises strawberries and raspberries. You can see all about that farm at www.strawberryfarm.com
Betsy left the strawberry fields of Maryland for the corn fields of Iowa where she got an agricultural journalism degree from Iowa State University. She and her husband, Bob, a veterinarian, have three children and live on 36 acres where they raise sheep, goats, pigs, and hay. Betsy’s ideal day is reading in her backyard when the lilacs and irises are in full bloom, while her kids load racks of hay in the pasture.
The hay season started yesterday at our place, weeks earlier than normal. The grass hay is perfect, the alfalfa way past prime. Bob is stacking small bales of grass for a neighbor with horses. The alfalfa will be round baled.
Make hay while the sun shines!
Our house is almost 100 years old and the front porch was showing its age. The bricks and concrete steps were cracked and crumbling, the floor rotting. We hadn't used it for two years and decided something had to be done. It won't be cheap. The new bricks arrived yesterday from a brickyard in Sioux City, Iowa. A local family is doing most of the construction work. I can't wait to see the final result! Stay posted...
Caroline took her 4-H goats to the fairgrounds to be weighed and entered into the system for the county fair. She entered five goats and they each weighed between 40 and 60 pounds. They screamed like kids when they were eartagged, and one tried to squeeze between the rungs of the pen and got stuck. The largest of the quads did a vertical leap from the floor of the scale to the desk where the women were filling out paperwork, knocking off papers and shocking them. "I've never had a goat in my lap," said one woman. Everyone had a good laugh. Goats.
Speaking of the quads, that doe is now milking 200 pounds of kids. They get supplemental grain and grass, but still. Amazing.
Just in time for Caroline’s graduation open house this weekend, the workers showed up to tear off and replace the front porch of our house. This was a project we planned last year, but the construction company was busy elsewhere. The job will take two weeks, so our guests will be able to admire the work as they eat cake.
And that’s not all. Two big hackberry trees near the shop died over the winter and needed to come down. Guess when the tree company could remove them? This week. I took both of these photos this morning.
If you are coming to the party, you can admire Caroline’s photos and displays…just don’t look too hard at my house or landscaping. And good luck with parking; it’s predicted to rain every day this week.
I grew up 30 miles south of New Holland, Pennsylvania, and would often ride with Dad to the town’s livestock auction market to sell our feeder pigs. My sister and I would hang out in the barns and watch the Amish children play.
This week I rode by that sale barn in an Amish wagon on my way to a New Holland Agriculture media event. The company has brought more than 15 new products to the market in the past two years and wants to tell farmers about the innovations. The products serve the entire range of agriculture, including large cash crop farmers, dairy and livestock producers, small farmers, and rural lifestyle enthusiasts.
Below are a series of photos from the event. For much more information on the products, visit www.newholland.com/na
Abe Hughes, II, VP North America, welcomes everyone to the original headquarters of the company. New Holland was founded in 1895 by Abe Zimmerman and is the leading company in the world for hay harvesting technology.
We enjoyed a ride to the company headquarters in an Amish wagon.
The massive T9 with tracks is targeted at the largest grain producers in North America and especially popular in Western Canada and the Dakotas.
I’m not going to buy one this year for our small farm, but it sure was fun to climb aboard.
Here is a classic workhorse for the company: The T6 pulling a round baler. New Holland has sold 200,000 round balers and 700,000 small square balers. That’s a lot of hay!
Speaking of hay, here is a stacker for small square bales. My husband would love one of these!
The Rustler is New Holland’s utility vehicle. It’s made to be both practical and fun to drive. I took it around the track and up and down a hill. Great ride! That’s Dan Valen in the seat next to me.
Meet the MegaCutter Triple Disc Mower-Conditioner. If you want to cut down more hay in less time — 29 feet of hay with each pass — this is the machine for you.
This tractor is not a toy! The popular Boomer series has expanded to include two new models: the 23 hp Boomer 20 and the 27 hp Boomer 25 . The line now includes six models ranging from 23 hp to 47 hp. “The new Boomer 20 and 25 compact tractors are the ultimate power tools for homeowners, landscapers, hobby farmers and others who live the rural lifestyle,” says Dan Valen, New Holland’s Residential/Commercial/Municipal/Utility Marketing Segment Leader. “And, like all Boomer tractors, these are real tractors for real people who have real work to do,” he says.
The TS6 and Powerstar tractors are perfect for livestock farms.
New Holland segment managers push for new ideas and alternative ways to deliver products and innovations that farmers can use every day to make their lives easier.
Prom was Saturday night and the girls had a great time with dates Cody and Josh. Here are a few photos.
Left to right: Lauren, Dalton, Michelle, Josh, Carrie, Joe, Caroline, and Cody.
The dance was held at Adventureland in Altoona, Iowa, home to this lovely carousel.
We have had four sets of quads this year. That is highly unusual, and not a good thing. One ewe died, along with three of her newborn lambs; the fourth lamb we grafted onto another ewe. Two ewes had two dead and two surviving lambs. And one ewe is nursing all four tiny lambs — now that is a miracle.
The key to successful quads is having all four lambs the same small size. That way they can compete with each other evenly for milk. Usually one lamb is big, one tiny, and two in the middle. Often that many lambs in one ewe depletes her and the babies of too many nutrients.
Here are some older lambs we moved to the back lot in the sunshine. (That’s our overgrown alfalfa behind them.)
I saw this stack of compost at the grocery store and started calculating how much our pile behind the barn is worth. Millions?
Bob had to add to the pile at 3 a.m last night. The sick ewe that had quads died. He was hoping nobody was watching LambCam when he had to drag her down the aisle of the barn. Livestock farming is not for the weak.
Our streaming LambCam video caught Bob and Caroline trimming hooves and tagging lambs last night. All the ewes in this photo were moved into larger pens on the east side of the barn, with more pregnant ewes taking their place.
We learned a lesson this year. One very pregnant, very swollen ewe started suffering from vaginal prolapses. After a few days of prolapses she stopped eating. A few days later, Bob performed a c-section and removed live triplets. But she wouldn’t eat or nurse. Two days later she delivered a fourth lamb, dead. Bob couldn’t believe he missed that last lamb, but quads are unusual. Lesson: If a ewe starts prolapsing it could mean lots of big lambs; put her in a pen and give her extra grain. Get those babies out early.
Michelle got her first ride on a lawn mower. Caroline doesn’t like to mow the east grove (“boring”), so she taught the foreign exchange student how to do it. Don’t worry, Caroline, we will have plenty of grass for you to mow all summer once Michelle goes back to Sweden.
Bob gets plenty of ride time, too. Here he is on the west side of the house. Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the roof of the garage with a camera and book. HA.
