Farmerjan's journal - Weather

[farmerjan]

Thursday morning, chilly 30* again this morning, sun is up and will warm until later as clouds come in from the west and we get the next system. Still calling for it to start as snow/mix after say 4 a.m..... then cold rain, then clearing off.... He is still going to take the steers which is good... prices are good and he wants to get them sold while the big buyers are still buying (competing) for feeders. When they get their orders filled then it will slack off a bit, then people wanting some "grass cattle", the prices are usually pretty good in May....
I think the forecast is only for .2 total moisture, but might be some actual accumulation of snow early on.....
This is going to do a real job on the fruit trees... I see some peach trees are already showing some pink blossoms. The forsythia is in full bloom, the daffodils are all up and blooming.... tulips are coming up... this will hurt alot of the blossoms. Not much fruit this year I am afraid.

Clothes in the wash, I had to take and "scrub" them together to get the worst of the dirt caked on them, off... but will get them hung out soon. They are my flannel lined jeans and I want them to wear in the next cold snap.

Need to take the truck to the dumpster, still haven't gotten that done... don't really want it all to sit and get soaked again. No farms today or tomorrow...

This is the first weekend of the Maple Festival in Highland county to the west of us.... probably will wait and go next weekend one day... it's 2 weekends and I really don't like going over there in the real cold.... too many outside things you can't enjoy in the cold. Might see if Deb is coming in and see if she wants to go....
Any of the VA or surrounding areas here ever go to it????

Headed out to the bank and the clothes will have run the final rinse b y the time I get back.

 

[farmerjan]

I knew you were overly busy, was concerned since you had been feeling icky, on meds, etc. Emotionally there is a roller coaster going full blast there. Hard to hold to quiet when you know DS doesn't want/can't accept the truth -- makes everything screwed. DS can't think much beyond GF woes, you see clearly and want ... It's affecting things! At least some cattle were moved and sold. Geneva was a big, big help.. Some days, going to "work" is a method of running away even if we don't want a job. It is here, for me.

Almost called you but, you might have been laying in the mud then.....

Hope you have a couple days to be home.

Yeah, want to more than just slap him silly.....

 

[canesisters]

It's SOO HARD to watch a family member go through something like that.
I've watched someone I love dearly get involved with and then marry men who were not good for her - twice. Our relationship was nearly destroyed the first time around when I thought I could talk sense in to her. The second time I simply told her straight up that I didn't like the way he treated her or the person she became when she was around him. They've been together for years now and it makes me cringe to see the faint copy of herself that she is around him. But she claims that he makes her happy....
All that I can do is be available when/if she wants to talk, be totally honest, and NEVER directly criticize his lazy, selfish ways because that only makes her defend him & their relationship.

 

[farmerjan]

It's SOO HARD to watch a family member go through something like that.
I've watched someone I love dearly get involved with and then marry men who were not good for her - twice. Our relationship was nearly destroyed the first time around when I thought I could talk sense in to her. The second time I simply told her straight up that I didn't like the way he treated her or the person she became when she was around him. They've been together for years now and it makes me cringe to see the faint copy of herself that she is around him. But she claims that he makes her happy....
All that I can do is be available when/if she wants to talk, be totally honest, and NEVER directly criticize his lazy, selfish ways because that only makes her defend him & their relationship.

Exactly... so I really have to bite my tongue... too bad she doesn't just go away somewhere... then he could grieve and get over it in time and have the relationship with the kids KNOWING there was no hope for a possible future....
She is just a self centered, selfish, sorry B...........and she will never be happy with him.... she cannot commit to any one person....

 

[SageHill]

WOAH - you've been way more busy than your normal busy. Glad you're ok and just busy. Man - that's got to be sooo tough with DS. He needs to learn (but not the hard way -- though looks like sadly he is/will be) that you can't change people. You can make little changes, but even those won't stick unless that person wants to change and even then it's not easy. Hang in there.

 

[farmerjan]

Up at 3:30 a.m. to go to barn to load steers to take to town.

We went and got the ones at the pasture yesterday where he had to reset up the catch pen... got them to the barn, sorted through a few more that were there in with the group of weaned calves, and brought in the ones off the hill he had been feeding. Then he got a group of 36 put in the one side of the barn, bunk was full of silage, and they had access to water for the night.

Went to the barn at 4... and we got the group loaded in 2 trailers and off to town. They sorted them there according to size and how they matched... 23 in one group, 7 in another, 2 pairs, and a couple of singles that didn't match but needed to go. One is hard to get in, the other is just bigger than the rest. The ones in the groups were in the 550-600 wt size....good weights for selling....
Got back home about 6:45... DS went directly to work and I backed the trailer in at the barn and then realized DS hadn't opened the gate for the one group to come back into the barn because we had to shut it in order to run the calves out of the barn and up the loading alley. Of course, it is real muddy and like glue and practically couldn't get my boots out of the sucking clay like glue.....but I did get it opened and that group of calves and all could come in to eat in the barn.
It was dry when we went to town and started to sprinkle just as we got ready to leave to come home. It had been lightly raining the further south we came, not serious rain but enough to need the wipers on intermittent.

So, I came on home. Went out and put out some feed for the chickens in the feeder, then came in and made a cheese omelette and sat down here.

Ought to lay down and take a nap. Will go back to town before 2, in case DS can't get off work early... we never sell anything without one of us, being there. Have had to bid back a few on occasion, and then have been able to bring home and resell at a future time; sometimes matched with others, sometimes we will sell some odd ones at a different sale.... these should all sell today though... there are also about 400 more steers there already, so there will be a good number of buyers there as they will make sure buyers know that there is a good number of animals to bid on to fill orders. There were 2 more trailers there to unload when we were leaving. Hopefully it will be a good day. We have another 20-30 slightly smaller steers...that will probably get sold in 2-3 weeks... as soon as things warm a bit and people are looking for grass cattle.... Heard that heifers last week brought over $900 for 5 wts... so there might be a bunch of heifers going too. We might be way down in cattle numbers and that would mean spreading out the grazing cow calf pairs for the summer... which would not be all bad...

I did get all the laundry washed, hung, and brought back in yesterday afternoon so that was good. Made another gallon of tea while the sun was out good...

Last night I came in and made a hamburger and green beans for supper... then decided I wanted some ice cream and went in to the big freezer , where I had it... and the door was open partway.... seems that the washing machine was really vibrating when it was spinning... I had readjusted the wet clothes for one load... and it caused a couple of the chickens in this freezer, to shift and it caused the door to pop open.... There were some things that were a little soft around the edges... but I went and rearranged it and got it fixed so that it would shut.... THANK GOD I wanted ice cream... which I didn't get since it was kinda soupy, so I just let it refreeze.... or I would have lost the whole freezer full. Going to look for the keys and start locking them I guess... there are no kids in the house or anything so I can leave the keys in them or hang them on the door handle on a string....

Think I will lay down for a little bit since I didn't get more than about 4-5 hours when I had to get up to go this morning.

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

You could also get a child lock to hold the freezer closed as an alternative to locking it with the keys. Then you wouldn't have to worry about trying to access if the keys got misplaced.

 

[farmerjan]

Thanks @Larsen Poultry Ranch ... I will have to look into a child lock for it.... but at least I caught it and it is shut now. Might try for the ice cream tonight.

DS called me and he came and met me at the barn to go to town for the sale. The 23 in one group weighed nearly 13,000 lbs... avg 561... and they hit a homerun... we were hoping for $2.20 or 2.25... they brought $2.54 per lb..... like WOW, HOLY COW.


The group of 7 did not do as good because they put one calf in there that did not match and it hurt them as they only brought $1.83 and weighed around 590 ls.... So the smaller ones brought about $1400 EACH and the bigger ones "only" brought around $1080..... he almost didn't sell them but decided that it could have been worse... the others did decent except for the biggest one so he bought it back (no saled it) at $1.17.... it will be a good beef down the road and it isn't a bad calf... just didn't match, size wise, and wrong color, and was heavier than the "sweet weight" of 525-595 lbs.....
So DS is going to make some payments and we are looking at the rest of the calves... and the talk is that 5 wt calves (steers) this fall will hit over $3.00/lb..... but I am watching this economy and we will see...
The lighter weight group of steer calves still there at the farm are in the 425-475 range.... the ones at the sale were in the $2.40-2.70 range... so we will probably sell most in a couple weeks.... hold on to the smaller ones for fall. Also have heifers and we will be looking them over very closely... he needs 30+ for WV for the summer and 15+ to go to upper VT to the friend's place... he wants spayed heifers this year and we are going to get them done here shortly... he will take them up within a month by the looks of it.... so we need to get things gone over and see about what is going where... how many we have and then make a decision what we are keeping as replacements (very FEW ) and what is going where so we can sell the rest.
Make the money while we can now.... fewer to graze this summer and the grass will last the cow/calf pairs longer if there are less... and we will make more hay on one of the pastures that we made some last year.... we are losing another place ... it got sold..... so we will make it up with fewer head to graze and make more hay on places we can....

Has anyone heard about the bank that failed in CA and was closed down and taken over by whatever entity does that???? That is a BAD omen.... talk is that if this keeps up, that we could have a worse crash than 1929 when it crashed with runs on the banks and we went into that HORRENDOUS DEPRESSION......that is why getting these calves sold now is important... if we do have an implosion of sorts, and a crash.... we will wind up keeping the females and breeding them.... but to get them sold now is better... keep very few and less cows to graze so grass will go further/longer....

I'm tired, long day, so I am going to bed.... But it was a pretty good one....

 

[Baymule]

WOW! Is right! That’s an awesome price for the steers!

 

[Mike CHS]

That California bank going down is not a good omen. I saw a couple of articles about Wells Fargo and BOA today that shows it may be getting worse. SVB was heavily invested in government securities and they were losing money at a crazy rate. Supposedly, they had a very large number of people that had millions in the bank and the FDIC will only pay 250,000.