Innholdsfortegnelse for February/March 2022 i Farm and Ranch Living

I was 10 when I found the nest. It was my birthday, and Dad said we could go looking for a horse when the weekend came. What better gift than an adventure with my father? We had two horses already—Dad’s Hackney, Stripe, and our old utility mare, Smokey. But we had room for another, maybe one I could teach to jump. That day I worked extra hard at my chores so Dad would see I was responsible. But as I pulled a bale of hay from the stack in the barn, I uncovered a nest of snakes. I ran outside shouting “Yuck!” as I tried to shake the thought that my hand had touched one of them. “Somethin’ wrong?” said Willard, a farmhand my dad had hired three years earlier.…

This 1948 Farmall Super A belongs to our good friend Ernest “Leigh” Portner of Lee, New York. Leigh’s father, Ernest Portner, bought it brand-new for use on and around the family farm and at the Ernest Portner Lumber Co., which was founded in 1916 and which Leigh and his wife, Doris, still own today. The tractor had many roles over the years, including a day job at the sawmill, where it moved resaws and other milling equipment. It was also used to plow and cultivate the garden in the spring and summer, draw wood in the fall and push snow off the Portners’ pond in winter so their employees, neighbors and friends could ice skate. While the pond was being cleared in the winter of 1957, the ice cracked and…

We found a quivering puppy under our euonymus bush and wondered how anyone could dump a dog so sweet—and as soft as dandelion fluff. The last dog we said we would ever own was named Thunder, so the elements prevailed. When we called, “Come, Lightning,” he wiggled his curly tail and came timidly forward. While we busied ourselves reading books about training strays, Lightning whimpered in his new doghouse as if calling to his lost littermates. We took turns at the end of his leash, zigging and zagging across the yard and up the drive. We guessed at his lineage. I thought maybe a yellow Lab, but my husband kept saying, “A Lab doesn’t have that tail.” Through May and June, our pup kept growing. When he tried dancing cheek…

Quilts in the Mail We’re loving all your notes and photos in response to our recent barn quilt feature. Keep ’em coming! —THE EDITORS I have two quilts on my barn—one at each end. The first is a Mariner’s Compass, which I thought was a good idea since I’m directionally challenged. As for the monarch butterfly, I raised and released more than 250 of them this past summer, so it seemed appropriate. KATHY THIEMKE ENDEAVOR, WISCONSIN As I read through the most recent issue, I came across the feature on barn quilts. It inspired me to share the barn quilt mural that belongs to my friends Don and Betty Hamman, who live in Waterloo, Indiana. DORIS GOINS KENDALLVILLE, INDIANA Dorald and Alva Robinson moved from Nebraska to Wisconsin in 1964.…

As far back as I can remember, the white kettle with red trim sat on our stove. I was in grade school when a friend asked me what was inside. “Sauerkraut, of course,” I said. That’s when I learned that not every family had a kettle for kraut on their stove all day, every day of the year. While cooking, Mom would tell one of us, “Turn the sauerkraut on.” Whoever did the job knew to check first that there was enough liquid in the kettle to heat the kraut. If the kettle was in the dish rack, you had to get a new jar of home-canned kraut, open it, dig out the kraut with a fork and add water. I always enjoyed sampling the raw kraut. I’m not sure…

Hello! My name is Cheryl Stunkel, and I farm with my husband, Glenn. Our farm has been in Glenn’s family since the 1800s, and he’s lived here his whole life. I’ve been here for 20 years. Our nephew Tom Geoffrion moved to the farm after graduating high school in Northborough, Massachusetts; he lives with us and helps us run things. We raise 300-some Polled Dorset sheep, mostly to show. The ones that don’t make it to shows are sold as meat or commercial breeding stock. We also have 20 head of cattle. On acreage that is not used for pasture, we grow corn, soybeans and hay. Our farm features multiple outbuildings, including two barns. The big barn is up on the hill, where there are many runs for the sheep.…

An article I read said that llamas make excellent pets and excel at protecting cattle. I told my brother Dean that I wanted one, and sometime later he came home with Moby. “You can have the pleasure of taming him,” Dean said. The next day I went to the barn to get acquainted with our new arrival, who apparently had not read the article about llamas being good pets. He repeatedly resisted my attempts to be friends. When I persisted, he began to clear his throat and chew. Beware, the magazine had warned, when a llama clears his throat and chews, it’s getting ready to spit. “Well,” Dean said, “if Moby doesn’t want to be a pet, I’ll turn him out at calving season to keep the coyotes away.” But…

With the loss of a third of the world’s arable land in the last four decades—and the Earth’s population expected to rise a whopping 2 billion, to 9.7 billion, by 2050—there are some real concerns about the ability of traditional farms to feed everyone. Enter vertical farming, a form of controlled-environment agriculture in which crops are produced, usually hydroponically, in vertically stacked layers indoors. A tremendous amount of capital has been poured into the vertical farming industry in the last five years, with large commercial operations in particular pulling in big money from investors. As of last year, California startup Plenty had raised more than $500 million from such notables as Driscoll’s (the berry farming heavyweight) and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. AeroFarms, another vertical farming startup, netted $238 million from backers…

“Truck ride, Grandpa!” Whenever my wife’s dad, Gary, was checking on cows or doing other farm chores, our son Matthew would ask to tag along. He loved to ride in Grandpa’s pickup truck. And when the chores were done, Gary and Matthew would drive around to see how the other farmers in our county were coming along with their own field work. Years later, Grandpa Gary retired, and his old pickup—a 1997 Ford F-250 Heavy Duty with four-wheel drive—was more than a little rusty. Since he wouldn’t be needing it for work anymore, Gary offered to give the truck to Matthew, then 14 years old. Gary was thinking it was too rusty for use and that Matthew would probably just take it to the scrapyard and keep the money. Instead,…