Innholdsfortegnelse for February - March 2016 i Farm and Ranch Living

Our Max is a working pony. One of his jobs is to help clean pens in the sheds during calving season. Because he has to make such sharp turns, we hitch him to a midsize poly calf sled using traces and a singletree rather than shafts. This way he can step back over the tongue of the sled to turn. If he gets tangled up, we just pick up his hind feet and set them back inside the traces. He is broke to drive, but we lead him because it’s easier to get him to the right place. When we clean a pen, we tie him to a panel, and he stands there patiently eating his hay. Max is also really smart. Once he knows the routine, he’ll do it…

One morning we were surprised to find three roosters happily prancing around the horse paddock. When we opened the barn door, our small flock of free-range chickens was even more surprised—and somewhat offended, since they’d been an all-girls club for over a year. After several calls to neighbors, we finally determined that the bachelor three doors down the road had taken the roosters from a friend who’d convinced him they’d make a delicious stew. He didn’t have a barn or coop, and he thought they’d just hang around until he decided to cook them. The roosters clearly had other ideas. With some difficulty, we bagged up the roosters in separate grain bags at dusk and took them back to the neighbor’s house. He wasn’t there, but a visiting friend told…

My mother, Myra Lee Love, was born on Feb. 14, and she always referred to our family barn with its LOVE sign as her giant valentine. My grandparents Roy and Alice Love bought this farm in Coffey County, Kansas, in 1920. They built the barn for their sheep operation in 1945 during the last months of World War II. My father, Levern, who was serving in the Navy, recalled being pleasantly surprised by the farm’s new barn when he returned home from the war that November. The barn is built into a high hill with a 360-degree panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. The haymow, accessible from ground level on the uphill side, had two grain bins and a hammer mill for grinding feed. This efficient design allowed them to…

At my home, Christmas decorations stay up well after the holiday. Here in upstate New York we get occasional sunny, blue-sky winter days. But far more common are dreary overcast skies that seem to be Mother Nature’s way of reaffirming my appreciation of the couch, a comforter, a Hallmark movie and a warm cup of soup. The bright, cheerful Christmas decorations help get me through the winter doldrums. Then, one day, I’ll suddenly notice a hint of daylight creeping in as I dig the car out of the garage to start my morning commute to work. How much better it is to have natural light when I drive through the quaint villages on my way! Once I get that spring back in my step, I start anticipating the arrival of…

I owe my now-thriving goat business to a newspaper article, so I’m very happy to share my story and to encourage readers to try their own business ventures. In 2012, I was a wannabe farmer with no land and only four goats that I kept at Colchester Neighborhood Farm in Plympton, where I had a CSA vegetable share. One fall day I read an article in The Patriot Ledger about using goats to manage the “rough” areas of golf courses and to control brush. Inspired, I put down the newspaper and immediately called three local golf courses. Only Cohasset Golf Club, some 25 miles away, called me back, and the folks there hired me. I loaded my four goats in the back of my Toyota Highlander and put my solar-battery…

My father purchased this Farmall Super A new in 1952. I was really proud of that tractor and claimed it as my own. All through high school, I ran it more than anyone else on the farm and always kept it in good shape. After I graduated in 1958, I joined the U.S. Marine Corps and left the farm. But I never lost my affection for that little tractor. Dad gave me the Super A in 1998, and I happily left it at his house so he could continue to use it in his large garden and for other chores. When he passed away 10 years later, I restored the Farmall in his honor. Driving it reminds me of the good times I had as a boy farming with my…

One spring we were reaching the end of our hay supply, and the pastures were not yet fit for the cows to graze. But hay prices had nearly doubled over the winter, and we’d be losing money on our milk if we had to buy more hay. That’s when we discovered that the tarps covering the last of our hay had leaked. The hay didn’t look too bad, but it smelled stale and musty. Cows—unless they’re pregnant—can tolerate a little mold without harm, so my father gave me the job of finding the best of the hay to see if the cows would eat it. I put some in the manger, and they turned up their noses, so my father decided we’d have to bite the bullet and buy hay.…

More FarmHers Please! I enjoyed your article on FarmHers in the August/September issue. Please print more articles about women in agriculture, how they got started and what they do every day. Thanks! J.R. BOWMAN PENNINGTON, TEXAS Memories of Jenny I have taken Farm & Ranch Living for many years, and I enjoy every issue, reading them from cover to cover. But the story about the two little girls and their horse in the August/September issue (“The Flower of Compassion”) really took me back in time. I am 88 years old, and I still remember the morning in the spring of 1932 when I was told about a new arrival. I went down to the barn to see the new foal. We named her Jenny. We grew up together,…

Charlotte and I were born and raised in North Dakota, but we didn’t meet until high school, when I was on a boxing team with her brother, Darrel. When Charlotte and her parents went to see Darrel box, she noticed me. I learned that she worked at the Lake Theater in Devils Lake. One night, I asked if I could take her home, and that’s how it all began. We dated throughout our senior year, after which I moved to California to look for work. Charlotte came out a little later, and we were married in Oakland on Feb. 2, 1951. We’ve had 65 good years together since. I was drafted into the Army in 1952. When I returned from my time in the service, we moved back to Charlotte’s…

Karl Unnasch says his artistic talent took root under a pool table on the family dairy farm in Pilot Mound, Minnesota. When he was a boy, he crawled under the billiard table one day, looking for a little peace and quiet from his five siblings, and he noticed that the underside was nice, smooth slate. “I thought, That’s just like a chalkboard. So I got a piece of chalk and a wet rag, laid on my back and began drawing,” he recalls. “When I finished one drawing, I’d erase it and start another one.” About the same time, Karl began to appreciate relics of bygone days that he found on the farm. “They had history to them,” he recalls. “I dreamt about what some rusty part or broken shard was…

One evening last winter, I got out of my truck at the end of the driveway to pick up our mail and heard the horses whinnying and running around in their pasture. When I pulled the truck up to the gate, the headlights picked up Dandy and Strawberry, but Dandy’s mother, Shiplay, was nowhere in sight. My home sits atop a small knoll on the edge of the Sierra Nevada foothills. My parents bought this land in 1929 and raised their family here. My brother and I grew up working cattle with Dad. We share the hills with a wide range of wild animals, including bear and cougar. Neither prefers dining on livestock, but once in a while a fresh cow or calf carcass will attract a bear or cougar…

My father and mother, Paul and Louise Silloway, started a dairy farm and maple sugar operation on this land in the early 1940s. Back then, sap buckets were hung on a spout tapped into a hole drilled in each tree. A team of horses broke a road through the deep snow and pulled the collection tank on a wooden sled. In 1979, Dad was even featured in a Farm & Ranch Living farmer-to-farmer article, and we received wonderful letters from farmers all around the country. Today, Silloway Maple taps 6,200 trees, with tubing running from each tree into vacuum-powered collection systems. Some of the trees have been tapped every year since my dad started sugaring 75 years ago. Sugaring season lasts only a few short, intense weeks in the spring,…

My tractor story began on Jan. 1, 2000, when I bought Dad’s John Deere AR and promised to have it restored. The AR was the first tractor on Grandpa’s farm after my dad, Ken McKay, bought it new in 1947. When Dad heard that it had arrived at the dealership, he caught a ride into Duchess, assuming he’d be able to drive it right home. Unfortunately, they were still mounting the fenders and toolbox, so it was almost dark by the time he headed off on the 30-mile trip back to the farm. Dad used the AR to cut and stack hay; seed and swath grain; haul manure; and saw wood. When he sold his ranch in Cessford, Alberta, in 1972, the AR made the move to his new farm…

In 1959 my grandfather Ira Heinbockel bought a new Ford 961 Powermaster from our dealership, Davis Farm Supplies Inc. In November 1960, after plowing all day with the tractor, Grandpa died. His daughter and her husband bought the tractor, along with the other equipment he had on the farm. In 1966 they traded the 961 for a Ford 5000, and we lost track of the 961. When I acquired my first tractor, a Ford 860, in 1989, I caught the antique tractor-collector virus in a bad way. As I added more vintage Fords to our stable, I began looking for Grandpa’s 961. For nearly 20 years, I checked the serial number of every 961 I ran across—except one. In 2013, Dale Hoff, a local farmer, asked if I’d be interested…

My great-great-grandfather Kord Herman Schwarze came to the United States in 1856 from northwest Germany and married Louise Puls two years later. In 1865, they settled on this farm between Mayville and Horicon, Wisconsin, and built their homestead adjacent to the Horicon Marsh. At the time, the marsh had been flooded to create Lake Horicon, which was billed as the world’s largest man-made lake. The dam was removed in 1869, restoring the area as marshland. Then, in the early 1900s, the marsh was drained for farming. The dried peat made poor farmland, though, and sometimes caught fire! The marsh was restored again in the 1920s. My Grandma Lucy used to tell me stories about trading with Native Americans who resided near the marsh. The family grew wheat, rutabagas and other…

Every morning we gather eggs from about 25 laying hens. My two older brothers, Seth and Nathaniel, and I save our money to buy more chicks each spring. We used to sell the eggs to family and friends, but now we sell them to one customer who shares them with the people in his office. My brothers pay me 25 cents for each carton of eggs I wash, and we split the money from the eggs we sell. My favorite chickens are Fuzzy, Lovey, Mohawk, Dodger, Hungry Girl and Boots. Mohawk is our oldest and best rooster. He’s a beautiful bantam, and he’s really friendly. He’s small, but he’s the boss. My brothers rebuilt our fencing last July to keep out the predators. We like to call it Fort Chicken.…

It was a cold, icy February afternoon on our cattle ranch in the flat, scabrock and sagebrush country of east-central Washington. My husband, Kris, had gone to visit a friend, and I was determined to show him that I could handle the ranch while he was away. I had already fed the cows and busted the ice on our homemade 20x20-foot concrete water troughs once that day when I headed out with my 5-year-old daughter at about 2 p.m. to check them again. I tagged two new calves in the first herd, five in the second and four in the third. By that time, my daughter was sound asleep. So I slipped quietly out of the truck to break the ice in the water tank—and found a large black nose…

In 1948 my father and uncle bought a new Minneapolis–Moline U that they used for custom thrashing all around the county. It was the tractor I learned to drive on, and in 1970 my husband, John, and I used it to power the sawmill that cut the lumber we used to build our home. After my mother passed away in 1984, the homeplace was divided up and my cousin ended up with the U, which he has since restored. In the 1990s, John and I bought a 1938 Minneapolis-Moline Z from our neighbor, and we restored it to its original glory. We named it Ol’ Yeller, and we showed it off every chance we got. I did the driving; John did the loading, hauling and cranking. We enjoyed that so…

“While driving, we spotted a tiny brown puddle next to a mama llama. When we pulled over to look, this baby stood up,” write Don and Virginia Beach of Aurora, Colorado. Tama Baumgarten of Belfield, North Dakota, shared this heartwarming photo of a Hereford cow giving a gentle, encouraging nuzzle to her young calf. “A mother’s love is the best!” says Grace Knight of Carthage, Texas. “My mama donkey Mary Lou looks like she is protecting and bonding with her little one, Jo Jo.”…