The Farm

Newsletter, Late Summer 2010

The small grain (oats, rye, spelt....) has all been harvested and the last of the haying is almost done. (The corn, popcorn, soybeans and buckwheat are all harvested later in the fall.)  This year the rainfall every 2 or 3 days during haying was a mixed blessing.  It helped produce an abundant hay crop, but sometimes made it difficult to get the hay dry enough to bale.

     

    
If the hay is baled at too high a moisture and/or packed into the barn too soon, it can heat and even start on fire as one farmer found out. Thankfully, his barn was saved, but the hay...not so much.

                              
We do all this work to keep the beef cattle fed and happy in the winter. Right now out in the pasture the cows are having calves.  This particular one had trouble, but with some help had a nice strong calf.  It took the calf a while to get to his feet....he was so tired after his ordeal. 
 
               

Below are some pictures of our buckwheat field that is blooming now.  It's beautiful, but a bit of an oddity in this area of corn and soybeans.  Someone stopped and pulled a few plants and took it in to the greenhouse in a nearby town to ask what it was!  Surprisingly to me...(am I the only one who didn't know this?)... the scent of the flowers is the same as that of the buckwheat honey the bees are producing!  Jacob Tauer, a bee keeper from Sleepy Eye, set out some of his hives by our field again this year.  Last year he gave us some of the buckwheat honey that those amazing bees made and it was so delicious on our oatmeal and homemade whole wheat toast during the winter. 
                                     
If you would like a taste of summer sunshine and flowers, give the Tauer family a call at 507-794-2307.  So good!

Doug & Lin Hilgendorf