New addition to the family

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Before you start thinking that my husband and I have lost our marbles, our new addition is not of the human variety. In fact, it’s not of the living variety.

Thanks to the wonder of modern marvels and the amazing world of online auctions, we are the proud owners of a new combine. And by new, I mean antique, but we’ve never owned it before, so it’s new to us!

One of the ways that we keep costs down on our farm, or so my husband tells me, is that our equipment is pre-loved…or pre-swore at, however you want to look at it. This new beauty is probably a late-70’s, early-80’s Massey Ferguson model…and I’m pretty sure it’s an 860, but don’t quote me on that.

It’ll look something like this:

They're oldies, but goodies.

Now, we have newer heads for soybeans, but the same old corn heads for corn harvest. So, we get to mix old and new alike. The nice thing about sticking with these older models is that Boss Man is able to make all the repairs himself. In fact, I’m pretty sure he could take one apart and put it back together in the dark. Actually, he may have had to do that last fall, come to think of it! LOL! Just kidding, kinda…

I tease him about having to have a 6-pack of combines, just so that two are running, but it’s not so funny any more. The problem with having a vintage fleet, is that parts are getting harder and harder to come by…unless you buy a whole combine as a donor. Which is basically what we do. The plus side: the combines don’t cost much…as in we could buy them by the dozen, and not get close to touching what a new one would cost.

So, as long as there are old ones in the area that can be bought at auction, we’ll be sticking with what we know…and what Boss Man can fix.

They haven’t left a crop in the field yet!

Par for the course

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Winter reared its ugly head just in time for Thanksgiving. But that didn’t stop us from making the 2 1/2 hour trek to Fargo and spend the day with my sisters and their families, as well as shopping for a whopping 19 hours straight on Friday! I tell ya, having four boys does get me in training for some of the finer moments in life!

We came home Saturday and enjoyed a lazy day at home. Then I took my foster-Grandpa to bingo (his favorite thing to do) and enjoyed a quiet night without the kids at home. Woohoo! (They stayed at my Mom and Dad’s.)

On Sunday, we planned on being in church, which starts at 10. Boss Man left the house at 8-ish, thinking he would have “plenty” of time to feed the cows and get the chores done prior to having to leave by a little after 9 (remember, our boys are at my folks’).

Well, I should have known that things wouldn’t go as planned. The morning went in typical fashion. Boss Man pulled back into the yard with the tractor at 9:40. It’s a 15 minute drive to town and we don’t have our boys yet. Plus, I still have their church clothes with me at home. So, needless to say, the cows won that one and we weren’t able to go to church. But, I did get the boys to Sunday School! Yay for a small victory!

Then last night EJ managed to turn a pen and a plastic tube from a toy into a lethal weapon and punctured a hole above his tonsil. Yep, that’s how I roll.

Cheers to 2011!

Different kind of thanks…

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My second “thankful” post will give you a list of ten things that I am glad that my boys have taught me. Some more so than others, LOL!

1) Good things come in small packages. So, so true. I cherish every moment that I was able to spend rocking my sons, holding them close, knowing that they relied on me for everything. It was overwhelming at times to think about, but I never regretted a single second of it.

I so miss these days! *snuggles*

2) When something’s out of reach, keep climbing. Now, for the most part, this wasn’t a lesson that I enjoyed them learning. Mostly because it involved things like trying to hide candy on top of the refrigerator unsuccessfully…and finding out I was unsuccessful by catching a 2-year-old on top of the fridge, eating candy.

3) What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Well, if not, it at least teaches you some pretty valuable lessons. For instance, eating a wart off your foot doesn’t need a trip to the ER, even if you had wart remover on it. Although, the Ask-A-Nurse line and Poison Control Center will try their best not to gag and/or laugh at you for explaining, and re-explaining, and then explaining once more to whomever they can get near-by to listen in and give a “second opinion” on the situation. Scooter truly does have a stomach of steel, I swear.

4) Doctors don’t know everything. Yeah, I knew this before, but there’s something about the top medical clinic in the world telling you, “Hey, there’s something wrong with your son, but we haven’t a clue as to what it really is,” that makes you sit up and take notice. But I’ve quickly learned that the one True Physician knows all and can perform miracles when least expected. I truly thank God each and every day.

5) Life with boys is never-ending excitement. Well, let’s just say that the scenery is never the same, and the stuff they pull is ALWAYS amazing me. Really? Why would I ever think that a 2-year-old would hide in a dryer? Why would a 3-year-old fill the washing machine with milk replacer? In fact, life is so hectic at times, I’m adding 6) Life is never a dull moment.

Things like buckets of toads, being dropped on my floor.

7) Love for a child is immeasurable. There is nothing…I repeat, n o t h i n g, that I would not do to save my sons from pain or being hurt. I never understood what people were talking about until the day that I found out that we were expecting Big Bro.

8) Laugh. Every day if you can. Where would we be without enjoying the little things? I shudder to think.

Plus, you can take embarrassing pics of your kids before they're old enough to tell you no!

9) Sometimes the words “Thank You,” mean more than words can describe. When Big Bro told me “thank you” this week, for being a great mom, I will relive those moments for years to come. And so to you, my readers, I say “Thank you.” Thank you for following my crazy life, coming onto our farm, learning about our family and our industry, and being willing to share it with others. I do all of this to ensure that my sons have the same types of opportunities that my husband and I were blessed to have, but without you, I am nothing but a voice in a void. Thank you.

10) Tomorrow will not be today. I do not know what it will bring, but I know that it won’t be the same as today. And that’s OK. It has to be, because if I’m not OK with that, it doesn’t matter, it’ll happen anyway!

Ah, this life with boys is a crazy one, but I wouldn’t change a minute of it…well…

A Thankful Heart

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It’s the week of Thanksgiving, and I have so much to be thankful for, that I should have started last week! But I’ll get around to all the thanking I need to do, it’ll just take some time.

First off, I’m so very, very thankful for my boys, my husband and the rest of our family. Even when insanity is at its highest, there isn’t a moment that I don’t realize just how lucky I am. Last week one evening, Big Bro came home from school and as we were working on his homework he said to me, “You know Mom, I’m so glad that I have you. I’m a pretty lucky kid.” After wiping away the “dust” in my eyes, I told him that I was the lucky one. And I am.

Second, I’m thankful to be living in a country so great that we have the freedom to choose so many aspects of our lives. We can choose who we want to be, what we want to do, where we want to go and how we get there. (Even if it means the discomfort of an up-close-and-personal pat down!) These choices are ever-present and sometimes overwhelming, but I’m thankful for them none-the-less.

I’m thankful for my fellow farmers and fellow ag-related friends. The amount of time and dedication that goes into agriculture-related fields is amazing, and it truly becomes not just a job, but a way of life. To the point that trying to imagine your life outside agriculture is on level with trying to figure out which of your children is your favorite, it’s just not possible.

I’m thankful for the food that is produced by ALL of agriculture. Organic, no-till, conventional, cage-free, free-range, traditional, grass-fed, corn-fed, grain-fed, whatever the buzz word of the day is, whatever your production methods may be, the world needs it all. As long as people are going to bed hungry at night, as long as children wonder where there next meals come from, whatever it takes, we need to keep producing the safest, most cost-effective food source possible.

And I’d be really thankful if I had a tongue long-enough to lick the inside of my nose! (Just kidding, of course)

Don't you wish you could lick the inside of your nose with your tongue?

Ag in action

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It’s amazing to sit in the audience at the North Dakota Farm Bureau’s annual meeting and watch the delegates in action. Truly amazing.

How fortunate are we that we live in a country were like minds, like hearts, like industries can come together and discuss what we would like to see in our futures. Not only that, but we can discuss our diferences, bring them to a vote and make a collective decision as to where we would like to see our organization head.

If that isn’t grassroots at its finest, what is?

I strongly urge each person reading this to get involved. If Farm Bureau isn’t your thing, so be it. But get involved. Knowing that you have a hand on the wheel that is turning our country can give you a true feeling of empowerment. If your voice isn’t at the table, then who hears you?

Today is a good day. And tomorrow will be too. How do I know? Because I make it so.

Making it personal

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So, one of the big pushes now is local food. And I’m all for it. If you can buy your food locally, more power to you. Support your local farmers, support your local growers, support your local stockmen. But what about those who can’t?

I’ve wasted spent time this afternoon trying to get a figure on how this would work in North Dakota. And boy, can you find numbers for just about anything if you’re really looking! But I digress.

According to several studies, the average person consumes 67 pounds of beef per year (to make this easier on myself, I just included beef, but I could look into chicken/sheep/hogs/etc.). The average feeder (usually a steer (bull calf castrated))  produces roughly 350 pounds of meat for consumption. (Again, those numbers can jump all over the place, but this is a pretty good average.)  So, if we can agree on these numbers, that would mean that an average feeder would feed 5 people in one year. Are we on the same page still?

Well, let’s look into that. Let’s say this whole push for local food become mandated (don’t laugh, we’re heading that direction if not careful). I decided to look around North Dakota and see how we would fare.

Just for this scenario, I kept everything within county lines. As in, pretending that a law had passed that made it impossible to buy meat that wasn’t raised within your county. (I had to start somewhere, and it made the figuring a little easier…although still pretty time consuming!)

I started with Dickey County (where we live). And we would actually fare pretty well, although that’s not too surprising, since we only have a little over 5,000 residents in the whole county. We only need roughly 1,043 head of cattle (fit for consumption) to feed our county for a year. According to the 2007 USDA Census of Agriculture put together by the National Agriculture Statistics Service, Dickey County has 49,937 cattle. Now, that includes all cows, calves, bulls, etc. But no matter how you look at it, we could feed our own. Way to go Dickey County!!! Woohoo!

But let’s look a little more populated. Let’s check out Fargo. Guess what? Yeah, apparently we’re going to need to set up some sort of “food panel.” The Fargo metro area boasts approximately 200,102 people in 2009. Which means that it would take approximately 40,020 head of cattle to feed them for a year. Guess how many cows are in Cass County? According to the USDA, there are just over 12,000. So who isn’t going to eat?

Now, don’t go jumping to conclusions that going vegetarian is the answer. We don’t have enough land for that either. We currently raise cattle on land that, for the most part, isn’t suited to grow crops. So we’re already growing crops on whatever land is available to do so. And in spite of all of our efforts, people in our country are going hungry each and every day.

Buying local/growing your own is a great alternative for those that it works for, but it’s not for everyone. The numbers don’t work, no matter how you look at it. Agriculture as a whole is needed to feed not just the world, but our own country and our own neighborhoods. We need to work together and realize that one alone does not stand. It’ll take all types, all kinds, all methods to be able to feed our ever-growing population on our ever-shrinking acreages.

Do the math. It doesn’t figure any other way.

Fired up

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Sometimes I get a little hot under the collar. I know, a real big surprise to those of you that know me. (That’s sarcasm at it’s finest, by the way.)

This week I received a phone call from my mother-in-law (by the way, someday I will have to write a blog about that, because my MIL is wonderful! Truly!!!), who thought that I would be interested in an article that ran in our local paper.

It was a four-column article touting the wonders and great-deeds that “Meatless Monday’s” accomplish in the world. OK, so it wasn’t that flowery, but you get the point. Grrrrrrrrr…

Here’s the deal, if you don’t want to eat meat, fine, don’t…but please do not tell ME that I can’t enjoy my steak or burger. And to go into a school and demand that one day a week be meat-free??? Are you kidding me?

If a school wants to have a meal or two minus meat-based protein, and fill in that void with another protein, that’s fine. I LOVED grilled cheese and tomato soup day at school myself. But why do we need to restrict a school on their menu? Why should my children be forced to go without meat at least one day every week, when there is salad available for every meal?

Stay tuned for more on this subject…I’m just getting warmed up…

Slow on the draw

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Sorry about the slowness in my posting, but I’ve had a busy few weeks. But I’m working on a doozy of a blog post now, so hold on to your hats!

Life is going grand, and harvest has wrapped up, I was able to shoot my deer, the cows have been moved closer to home and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Where in the world did 2010 go??? I can’t be the only one who feels like the year has escaped, with hardly a ripple?

And here it is, nearing the end of November, and we still have no snow on the ground. This fall has been amazing! 🙂

All it takes…

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Today was a great day in church. Besides the normal feeling of well-being and all-is-right-with-the-world, today was extra special.

During the greeting part of our church service, a lady in our church came up to Big Bro and said to him, “You know, you are just a really great big brother.” I could hear his heart swelling as she said it. And it brought tears to my eyes.

In an era where people hardly take time to say hello to each other, let alone stop and visit, it was wonderful to have someone actually come and make such a warm and wonderful comment to our oldest son.

And to let you in on a little secret about Big Bro, he’s very, very sensitive. He doesn’t like to rock the boat, he wants to blend into the background and not draw attention to himself. He worries about things that 8-year-olds should never worry about. For instance, just this week he was having one of his “hard days.” He was concerned about making a plan for his future. He’s not sure what he wants to be when he grows up, and if he doesn’t get that figured out, how will he ever support a wife and kids! Yeah, deep thoughts for 8.

I’ve always said that Big Bro is an old soul in a young man’s body. He thinks about feelings, and is very, very respectful to anyone older than him. He struggles with wanting to play with his friends and be a young, wild boy or being responsible and making sure that no one gets out of hand.

I can only imagine how exhausting that would be.

On top of that, add a seizure disorder that limits his ability to be involved in certain activities. Medicine that is taken daily. And the constant wonder if “something is wrong with him?” I do what I can to appease his worries, but I’m just a mom, so what do I know?

But here’s the best part…days like today. That comment not only made his day, but it made mine as well. And we will relive it for days to come. And I agree, he is an AWESOME big brother!

Hoping for a good weekend

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This week has been a mixed bag of ups and downs, sickness and wellness, etc., etc. We were blessed with pink eye on Thursday, which means eye drops for all! Although things have cleared up remarkably well today.

I’ve been working on trying to tag my deer this year. And I will say that I did get two shots off this morning on a pretty nice buck, but I wasn’t expecting him to pop up and wasn’t prepared. My own fault, I’ll admit.

One of my problems seems to be someone who thinks I need to be babysat. No matter when I go or where I’m at, it appears as if a vehicle or two just happen along and stop and watch. It’s driving me nuts!

I get it, I know that my presence isn’t exactly wanted. No one on this farm has hunted in many, many years (if ever), and so the idea of someone who would like to shoot an animal in this area is daunting for some. But if I’m that intimidating, then I would gladly teach them a lesson or two on how I got to be the powerful sportswoman I am today! 🙂 Anything to get the high-powered binoculars off my back.

Just some background on my hunting: I have a gratis, which means that I can only hunt on land that we own or operate. That’s it. No more, no less.

Since I have a gratis, that does mean that I can shoot a buck or a doe. My choice. (Actually, more like the bullet’s, but that’s another story.)

I hunt because I like to have the meat. Although for some it’s the thrill of the chase, for me it’s the pleasure of knowing that I’m providing a meal for my family…and one that is mighty tasty! (We also process our own sausage, which is unbelievably nummy!) And it’s one less animal out there for my van to hit.

At the end of deer season, all I want is to have an animal in my freezer. Buck or doe, doesn’t really matter. In the last 5-6 years, I have only shot two bucks. One was not definable as a buck until you were up close and personal. The other is mounted on my wall. I am not a trophy hunter.

Although, I do have to say that with the attention I’ve been getting lately, I wouldn’t mind at all to shoot the buck that legends are made of…but that’s just a little dream of mine. As long as my tag is on something, I’ll be happy. It does me no good to have my tag at the end of the season.

I’m not real fond of the taste of paper.