Here's a little look into the plants and animals around our home and farmland.
My husband and I milk about 40 Guernsey cows, also raising the calves and heifers, in northern Indiana. Along with milking each cow twice a day, we also need to raise, care for, and harvest multiple crops, including wheat for feed and straw bedding, corn, soybeans, and alfalfa for hay. I also keep a dozen chickens for eggs.
Along with the animals we formally raise on the farm, there is also a variety of other wildlife that we share this property with: squirrels, multiple kinds of birds, raccoons, groundhogs, a few cats that have made the farm their home, and a fox that decided to make the farm its hotel for a few months while raising its kits.
Below are a number of random photos showing our lives on the farms, the animals that are also here, and some of the work we do. Enjoy!
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A happy, healthy squirrel |
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The milk truck that picks up the milk from our farm and delivers it to the processor. |
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Barn swallows, that make their nests in the rafters in our barns. We're often able to watch fairly closely as they raise their babies each spring. These are one of my favorite birds to have around the property. |
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A heifer ready to go to a show! |
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Chopping corn so be used as silage. |
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A wagon full of chopped corn to be used for silage, like a preserved corn stalk salad for the cows over winter. |
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Blowing snow off of the lane so that the milk truck and others can get to the farm |
4 comments:
Hi Gretchen! I am enjoying some blog hopping on a quiet Easter afternoon and found you through the Oh Scrap! Link up. Your farm pictures brought back many happy memories, and I just had to say hello! I was raised on a dairy farm (we milked between 40 and 60 Holstein, depending on the year and the price of milk) in Wisconsin. Your pictures could have been taken there in my childhood: the barn swallows, riding along on the corn picker, clearing out for the milk truck if the plow hadn't come yet...all of it feels so familiar. Makes me a bit homesick for those days. I look forward to following your blog and seeing your quilts and other projects. I try to blog, too, at sewmuchforfreetime.blogspot.com. I'm not very successful at keeping up with it, but I enjoy it when I can. Have a beautiful spring!
Tami
Ps. I am jealous of you pretty little Guernseys. I always wanted one. Just one, of my own. Dad said no. I did get to show one, one year, for a neighbor. Best summer ever, getting her ready for the fair!
I'm glad you enjoy the visit to our farm. Our daughter was a journalism major in college and she wrote the Around the Farm page. She my blog helper.
I don't post as much as I used to when I first started blogging. I used up most of the available space in the WordPress blog. Check out the link in the very first post of this blog. Blessings, Gretchen
Just looked at your farm pictures too. Lovely! My husband loved them. he films agriculture around here and was very interested in the chopper!
Hi Gretchen I have been wondering where the farm photo had got to I miss seeing them on your blog so I though may be they are on another blog you have and Ive just found them here LOL I do miss seeing them each week as you lead a similar life to what I did in NZ on our farm but still so different. What struck me was the photo of the corn cropper a monster it is too, then the photo next of every thing covered in snow, that really made you realise your extreme temperature up there?????? So lovely to see the cows they look so healthy and contented, my dad ran jersey cows which are similar, such soft gentle creatures with the biggest brown eyes and their long long eye lashes LOL All in all it was lovely to see the farm again. Cheers Glenda
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