[OldKat]

Know what I would do with that axe head if I had it Mitch? I’d put a nice handle on it and show it all sorts of people. Then when they asked; “Why is there a hammer head built into the face of that axe?” … I’d grab it up and hold it up real menacing like and say; “It’s to bop people with who ask what it is there for!” 😀

Just kidding. Interesting looking head, never seen anything quite like it.

[OldKat]

@jac 21864 wrote:

OldKat we have a coalition government over here now .. the power is split with 2 of them.. our prime minister doesnt have it all his own way.. I dont like politics either. Its interesting that these quots came from the 20’s.. A programm on the wireless today was talking about the “modern” banking system of creating money out of nothing and how it actualy started back then.. Perhaps the politics and banking went to hell at around the same time ??
John

Oh, I didn’t say I don’t LIKE politics (I am fascinated by it); I just don’t TRUST politicians!

Interesting comment about banking. Our constitution made NO provision for a central or “government” bank. At one point a sort of de facto federal bank had been established, but one of our relatively early presidents (Andrew Jackson) put a stop to it … circa 1830’s. For about 80 or 90 years thereafter things went relatively smoothly without one, but in the teens or roughly the time period you are talking about our current system of the Federal Reserve was established. This is a quasi government system of so called regional non-commercial banks which was established to regulate currency in circulation. It has had a fairly mixed success, but one thing it has definetly done is move power away from the citizenry and to the government. Was watching a show this afternnoon about the possibility of it collapsing, sending the US and probably the world into economic chaos. Cheery stuff, huh?

[OldKat]

@dlskidmore 21880 wrote:

If you’re new with cattle, working with a difficult one is a way to train yourself. Get the mistakes out with this one that doesn’t matter, so the next one you train right.

Yep, she kinda tricked me. She started off talking about a deep freeze calf, but I noticed the calf now has a name. That is a pretty good sign that Jen won’t be eating any beef anytime soon, at least not from that heifer! 🙂

[OldKat]

@jac 21795 wrote:

So whats the general opinion among you guys on the results of your voting ? how will it impact farming/logging… seems you have a similar set up to us now…
John

Not that I wish to wade in too far on this subject, but your post intrigues me.
Not familiar with your system over there, but this comment makes me curious what you are saying. …”seems you have a similar set up to us now”… Care to expound?

John, are you at all familiar with the late Will Rogers? Here is a quote that is attributed to him during the 1928 presidential election that probably answers your question; “how will it impact farming/logging?”

Q: What does the farmer need? A: Obvious: “He needs a punch in the jaw if he believes that either of the parties cares a damn about him after the election” (August 23, 1928).

And finally, it seems as if cynicism about our electoral process is nothing new. These are also Will Rogers quotes, but I don’t know when he said them. Of course he died in the mid-thirties, so they aren’t recent … though you would think they were from this year. Hope you enjoy …

“The average citizen knows only too well that it makes no difference to him which side wins. He realizes that the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey have come to resemble each other so closely that it is practically impossible to tell them apart; both of them make the same braying noise, and neither of them ever says anything. The only perceptible difference is that the elephant is somewhat the larger of the two.”

“Every guy just looks in his own pocket and then votes. And the funny part of it is that it’s the last year of an administration that counts. [A president] can have three bad ones and then wind up with everybody having money in the fourth, and the incumbent will win so far he needn’t even stay up to hear the returns. Conditions win elections, not speeches.”

[OldKat]

@jenjudkins 21753 wrote:

Well, I’m not set up to ‘run’ cattle through shoots and such, so I kind of have to halter break her.

So what’s the best way to get a halter on a calf of this age? Just wrestle with her? Erika, you want to stop over on your way to LIF and show me how its done?:D

Jen,

Not knowing how you are set up kind of limits my response, but I use to put a rope (a lariat rope that is) around the calfs neck and pull it up snug. Dally off (take one or more wraps) around a post or other solid object that does not have sharp edges. The calf will usually try to run and act silly. Every time it gets closer to the post you are dallied to, take up the slack until she is right up close. This is usually a two person job BTW. When you have her snubbed up close get one person to hold the tail of the rope so she doesn’t get to pull away, while the other slips the halter on her.

I like a rope halter with a chain choker under the chin, but they are really hard to find now. A good second choice is a halter made of flat nylon, but get the one with the chain that goes under the chin if possible. Snap a long lead rope with a knot in the end of it onto it and let her drag it around for a few days. Just stepping on that lead rope helps her to get the idea to yield to the lead.

After a day or two of dragging the lead you can catch the knot that you tied into the end of the lead with a garden rake or some other tool (keeps you from getting kicked while you pick up the rope) and ease it around a STOUT post, fence rail etc and snub her up close. Leave her tied up for half a day or so, obviously in a protected place, and then untie her and hold the end of the rope as she goes to her feed / water. Do this for several days and soon you will be able to work you way up the lead until you are almost at her head as she goes to her water.

From there it is a matter of walking with them around their pen or other enclosed area while you work your way up the lead. For some calves it works to just let them go where they wish and you just sort of follow out to the side, holding onto the lead. As they get more and more use to you (and the feed that you are bringing everyday) you can start working your way up the lead. This works for MOST calves, not all. Try it and see what results you get. The tractor, pickup bumper, etc are other options, but I like to try this way first.

NOTE: Leave the halter on her while you are doing all of this. No point taking it off and putting it on everyday at this point.

Good luck, it is not as difficult as it sounds.

[OldKat]

@jenjudkins 21722 wrote:

Over the weekend I picked up a young (6 months or so) highlander heifer. I must say, I was surprised at how wild she is, and am wondering if I bit off more than I can chew. We got her successfully into the barn and a 12 x 12 foot stall. But she tries to ram me everytime I attempt to get into the stall to bring her food or water. I suppose she will settle over a few days.

My plan for her depends entirely on how easy she is to work with. Her final destination will be the freezer, but when that happens ….well, it just depends.

Any advice on how to tame the wild animal in her? Do cows respond positively to approach and retreat, like horses do? Desensitization? Or do I have to simply get in there and show her who’s boss? I’m a horse person. This is my first cow experience. Thanks.

Jen,

Not sure how much time you intend to spend taming your heifer that is headed for the deep freeze, but whatever works for you …

If you only mean to be able to work around her; clean her pen, feed and water her etc then the process that Erika described will work fine. If for some reason you decide to halter break her, the part where she said to tie the calf up is the way to start that process as well.

Never worked with any Highland cattle, in fact have only seen them one time. However they can’t be any wilder than the Brahman cross cattle that are common around here & I have “tamed” several of them, or at least calmed them down enough to get them on feed. Just take it slow and easy and she should do fine …

Good luck with her.

OldKat

[OldKat]

@Smalltown 21207 wrote:

Carl,
Thanks for the kind words. I’m reading Lynn Miller’s Work Horse Handbook 2nd ed. and saw a picture of you in there logging with horses, very cool. Maybe I’ll get to meet you at one of the field days sometime.

Bradley,

That sounds interesting, I may have to look him up sometime.

OldKat,

War Eagle!!! I didn’t go to school there but I’m a big Auburn football fan. I wish you could come up to my place, I’d love to be able to talk with you about working with horses and learn from you. It is a good 3.5 hour drive though.

I plan to use my horses for farm work mostly; plowing, planting, cultivating etc. I would also like to try a small logging project by pulling out the trees that fall into the creek. Their first real job is going to be powering a sorghum press and then pulling a disk over the sorghum field for a cover crop. The guy I bought them from trains draft animals as a hobby mostly and worked them about once a week. I worked the horses to a wagon, walking plow and sulky plow and disk two different weekends before buying them. Thanks for asking.

War Eagle! Gee Jordan, sounds like maybe I could learn a thing or two from you! I’d give anything to be there when you fire up that sorghum press.

Is the guy you bought them from relatively near to you? Are his horses the old, deep bodied farm type or are they the taller, leggier hitch type? I am sure looking for an old-time squatty bodied Perch stallion to breed one or both of my mares to.

BTW: I have a design in mind for a disk that could be pulled by a team and then modified for more horses if a guy had more horsepower available. I can’t get the parts locally, but there is a place in Tifton, Ga where I can get them so I will be making a side trip over there. Otherwise, I probably would try to slip by and see what you are doing. Maybe next trip we will have a liitle more time, sort of short trip this go ’round.

[OldKat]

@goodcompanion 21212 wrote:

Hi folks,

This year we did a pilot project of wet rice on my farm. Really excited about the results–we got a return on our seed investment of 500 to one by weight–and thinking expansion!

One of the steps usually performed in rice growing is a kind of plowing/harrowing in 6″-1′ of standing water. Called “puddling.” Right now I farm with horses and while great for haying and cultivating dryland crops, (and maybe even pulling the reaper-binder for the rice someday), there’s no way they will “puddle.”

Another issue is that while a team of horses is sufficient power for almost all jobs on this farm, I cannot pull a plow in this clay with two for more than an hour or two at best, and that with lots of rests. One old timer says that it takes four to go all day. I don’t want to have four horses. Except for plowing, pretty much, I wouldn’t have enough work for them all.

Bur maybe two horses and two oxen? What is the comparative draft of your average 1600 lb draft horse versus your average ox? And anybody play around with oxen in water like I’m describing?

On the other hand it’s taken me five years and a lot of punishment to achieve the modest competency I now have with drafts. I feel a little uneasy about a whole new learning curve. Just how different is it? Anyone else made the switch?

Wow, I had no idea rice would grow that far north. I suspect that you only will get one cutting rather than a first mid-summer and a bonus cut in the fall? Right? Be ready for geese to invade your fallow rice field if you are on a flyway. We use to have as many as 20,000 to 30,000 feeding on the fields behind our house. I miss those days.

The area where I grew up use to be a major rice producing area, and has been lost to suburban sprawl in the past 20 to 30 years. But I heard that the oldtimers used herds of cattle that they would drive back and forth in flooded fields to “puddle” the ground. I think this was in preparation of seeding, but I don’t know for sure.

Are you actually growing your rice in flooded fields or are you growing it dry land?

[OldKat]

Welcome Jordan. Wish you were an hour southeast of B’ham instead of an hour northeast. I am going to be in Alabama week after next visiting my daughter at Auburn & would drop by and visit with you, too. Alas, it would be about 3 to 3.5 hours up to where you are and I don’t have that much extra time in the schedule.

How are you going to use your team on your farm? Where did you get them? What kind of experience do they have?

[OldKat]

@Rivendell Farm 21172 wrote:

Hi,
Before introducing myself I want to thank Carl for getting me out of limbo where I couldn’t post or even see all your photos.
My name is Bob Kidwell and I’ve had a small farm here in southern Michigan since 1974. Over the years the farming has taken a lot of twists and turns, but today my wife, Linda, and I raise sheep and their feed (hay,barley, oats, and speltz) on 200 acres counting woods and swamp.
For 20 years draft horses have played a big part in the farm, but we never got to the point of getting rid of tractors altogether. For a while we hitched as many as five horses to pull the disc and drag, but today I seldom use more than three at a time, though I still seem to have four.
I look forward to getting to know the members of this forum. Bob

Welcome Bob. Sounds like you have some good experience. I think I speak for all in saying we welcome your perspective and input.

OldKat

[OldKat]

@dominiquer60 20989 wrote:

…
So far we have received a tenth of an inch here and a three tenths there with above average temps.

… Any ideas of what I did wrong or rather do you have a different approach that I could try in the future to conserve moisture in a less than ideal cover crop seeding season? …

Thanks in advance,

Erika

PS We are talking tractor farming here, cattle are slowly getting worked into the mix as they grow, change is slow sometimes.

Erika, welcome to my world.

I have had these exact same moisture issues nearly every year for the past 15 to 20 years. Minimal rainfall during the summer, especially late in the summer, coupled with very high temps turns the blackland into something that seems to be harder than asphalt, but not quite as hard as concrete!

The sandy land can be disked and a nice seed bed prepared, but unless we get rain early in the fall we see no germination on the fall wheat, oats or rye. Sometimes ryegrass will sprout, but unless we get enough moisture to keep it going it will burn up fairly quickly. Last year I didn’t get any rain to speak of until December. Got some minimal germination, by that time it was too cold to get any real growth. It was an ugly winter, at least by our standards. No winter grazing and hay was sky high because of the record breaking drought. That is why I am now down to less than 3 dozen cows.

Anyway, I don’t know that there is a good answer to this problem. Maybe move to somewhere that gets more timely rain? I am going next week to look at some property about 500 miles north of where I live & one of the main things I like about that area is that they seem to get more consistent rain in the summer and fall. That and the land up there sells for about 20% of what it does where I live. Not everybody has that option, up and move, but it was I am looking at for now.

Good luck, because what you are up against is tough.

[OldKat]

@Does’ Leap 20958 wrote:

I have always been a big proponent of making compost, but the latest issue of the Small Farmer’s Journal has me rethinking this. I like compost b/c it stabilizes many of the nutrients (particularly N) and it is easier to spread (we use hay as bedding and the end-product is very matted and clumpy).

My concern is the amount of Carbon lost in the process (just look at the size of the pile before and after composting!) not to mention N loss through volatilization (just smell that ammonia coming of the pile).

Where do you all stand on this important issue and why?
George

For me it is compost for growing crops to cut down on weeds that may have gone right through the producers gut & because it won’t burn the crop.*

Manure on open ground that will be disced later, for me.

*If any of you have rabbits; I have found that you can use their droppings directly on a growing crop without burning the plants. Try it, a wonderful source of N.

[OldKat]

@Carl Russell 20949 wrote:

…

The reason we started pasteurizing milk was because farms began to grow in urban areas where there was a good milk market, but little open land. Confined and fed food stuffs other than grass these animals got ill and the milk became contaminated. Rather than changing the farming model back to small herds on grass, we found pharmaceutical and technological solutions. Vaccinate the cows and cook the milk. …

This is all true. I think the primary concern for pasteurizing milk was because tuberculosis was so prevalent at that time and it was thought that raw milk was an ideal medium for culturing it and transmitting it. At least that is what I remember from a dairy science class that I took in college. That said, tuberculosis has been nearly entirely eliminated in people and in dairy cattle in the US.* There is an easy, inexpensive test that can be run to see if a cow is TB clean or not.

I think if I wanted to keep a milk cow I would get her tested annually, keep her in a clean pasture away from any cows that might come and go & not worry about it one bit. Of course SELLING raw milk is another story in most states, though I have been told that we now have a raw milk sales permit in my state.

*TB is said to be making a comeback in several states with a high illegal immigrant population (like mine), as it was never controlled in many parts of the world … especially Mexico, Central & South America. Still, if I owned a milk cow I wouldn’t think one thing about drinking the raw milk; which I use to do regularly when I did have access to it.

[OldKat]

@Tim Harrigan 20854 wrote:

One of the reasons oat/turnip are a nice mix is that the oats carry the turnip through the drill. Turnip alone is really hard to meter because it is so small. I used a drill and there was some separation on a small ledge in the grain box, but the stand looks great. I did not run it through a broadcast spreader. I think is is more likely that the seeds will throw at a different distance. So the suggestion to seed at right angles is good. It will probably turn out better than you think. You can always spread between a couple of tarps and see what hits and where.

That is how I was talking about planting it, with a broadcast seeder.

[OldKat]

@dlskidmore 20852 wrote:

I have his book on my list, heard about it through an online friend that knows him:

Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive

It is worth the time to read it. Surprisingly it would stand on its own merits as a “business book” even if the subject was not about the Amish.

I sent it to my daughter to read as well. She is starting to do her research for her dissertation and some of the material he covered fits right in with what she is working on.

[Author]

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