Feline vs. Amphibian

So, last night we had a snake in the back entry, and tonight when we came home, Dash, or "-", didn't greet us at the door as she normally does pleading to go outside.  We knew something was askew, and what we found challenged C's ethical code.  Note, that she loves our cat, but also loves frogs...a lot.

The dilemma: Allow Dash to continue playing with the trophy she discovered in the basement, a small toad, or save the poor things soul.  C rationalized that releasing the damaged toad out into the cold wouldn't save it's life anyway.  So, we allowed Dash to play with, and then eat her bed lunch.

Now I'm going to have to check my shoes!

We just returned from an evening spent frightening the youth of our church (no, not a hell house, just a scavenger hunt with us hiding and jumping out at opportune moments) when P noticed something slightly amiss in our entry.


Namely, there was a snake present.

Granted, it was a garter snake and it was trapped while trying to enter the space under the door jam and was thus quite helpless, but it was a little bit disconcerting.

The snake was clearly alive and wedged in and totally stuck.  A brief but fairly animated discussion took place as to whether - should be allowed to see/eat the live snake.  C held the pro-natural-order-of-things position, and P the anti-bloody-stub-of-a-snake-by-our-back-door position.



In the end P went to get a screwdriver to provide un-wedging support for the snake and C rounded up -.  The screwdriver was used, but the snake could not be backed up and eventually slithered under the door jam.  Meanwhile, once the snake slithered away, - became very interested in attacking the screwdriver, and quickly forgot about the snake.



End result, we know we do not sleep with a homicidal kitten at our feet, but we're left wondering that since the snake was trapped while trying to leave our home, where and how did it enter? And, perhaps most importantly, do snakes climb stairs?

A new addition to the family

It's been a while since we've posted and that's in part because we were busy preparing for a new addition to our family. This may come as a bit of a surprise, but we finally broke down and got a kitten. She's adorable and has already proven to be a lover of our laps. She has already been litter box trained and uses her scratching block accordingly, leaving our furniture alone (knock on wood).

Settling on a name for the little kitten has been a bit of a challenge for us. She has a sibling named "Ears" resulting from ear hair that is out of control, but in all other ways looks quite similar. P then thought it might be funny to call the her "Ne" (pronounced "knee") as both an acronym for "Not Ears" and in honor of Monty Python's "Knights Who Say Ni." This was deemed officially not funny by several people. Then, the name "-" (pronounced "dash") was found to be fairly funny by P. This comes from a name which we heard of while living in Elkhart county: "La-a" (pronounced "Ladasha"). Remember folks, don't let your - be silent. Other names we've considered is Acorn, Turtle, or Mousse. C thinks she looks like a delicious turtle cheesecake. Sadly, we're still using "kitten" as her primary name, alternate suggestions welcome.

Currently, we're hoping that she can be trained to herd sheep, but admittedly, that's coming along a bit slower than we had hoped.

These photos document early life on the parent's farm, then coming home with us on that fateful Sunday in September and a couple taken at home. Don't worry, this won't become yet another blog of adorable kitten photos, we promise. Let it be known, we also believe promises are meant to be broken.

Pied Piper

When you envision a cattle drive, you might not know exactly what we mean. Likely it envisions romantic visions of horseback riding, river crossings and lassos. Those visions are definitely romantic, but not accurate the Ortman farm. One of our little secrets is that our cows are trained (somewhat) to come when we call. While this isn't too unusual, we're a bit biased and think our cows are pretty awesome and generally respond very well to our calls of "Come Boss" which has been distorted to a non-word call of "Kah-boss"

The proof, as they say is in the pudding (apologies for the pretty rough/loud audio, this is the best I could do holding my own phone):

This video is a bit of lie. What's not shown is the group effort involved in the cattle drive. While the cows and calves are clearly following P when he calls and leads, C was also making sure the stragglers were coming along in a timely manor and P's dad was making sure the path ahead was ready for the cattle.

She's got the country thing down

Recently it was noted that C seems like she's a "real country girl." Coming from a real farmer, not me, that was intended, and understood I should mention, as a genuine compliment. I think this photo only adds credence to that statement.

C: As I am not one for the spot light, I have been using my editorial rights to not publish this entry-notice the comfortable cool weather spring attire. However, there has been a lull in new content....more to come soon.

Talk to the hand

… Or, rather, let the hand do the talking.

When I was a kid I was always amazed that my father's hands seemed to be in a constant state of healing. Now, I too, have hands that are looking a bit more experience tested and well worn. Perhaps C's theory of wearing leather gloves when working is a reasonable one. I'll have to consider that more in the future.

And they'll know we are farmers by our tans

P is becoming a Neapolitan farmer. While the photo perhaps doesn't show it well, you'll just have to trust us that there are three distinct shades of skin tone in the picture.

After reviewing the Neapolitan Klondike Bar commercial on Youtube, I realize now that the shades of color are not in the right order. I guess the reader will have to use even more of their imagination. While you're at it though, imagine nicer muscle tone and less upper arm hair – P would appreciate it.

Meanwhile, C is developing a great sock and sports-bra tan line and is really looking forward to evening things out this 4th of July while spending a little time on the wonderful beaches of Lake Michigan.

The roof is on fire

Actually, the house roof was not on fire, but you may have been able to cook an egg with reasonable efficiency.

The cute little house we live in has had a pretty horrible roof for some time now (leaving substantial numbers of shingle pieces in the yard after windy days) and P's aunt and uncle who own the place decided to replace the asphalt shingles with a steel roof. After a bit of consultation with us regarding color selection the process got under way.

In many ways the entire process is very much standard protocol for Ortman projects. Some perhaps unique aspects:

1. Start by consulting with each other and spit-balling various ideas about how to handle the trickier aspects of the project. During this time reflect on past, similar projects that involved metal sheeting or roofs in general.
2. Determine what pieces of farm machinery and supplies are best (ab)used when undertaking the project. In this case a manure spreader and loader tracker took center stage, though we also used part of an old automotive leaf spring.
3. Begin the project slowly with a few fits and starts as all people learn their role and grasp back in their memories a decade or so since the last time they helped a relative or MDS with working with metal sheeting/roofing.
4. Start each morning reviewing OSHA rules, checking safety equipment, and … just kidding, I can't even hold a straight face while typing.

Anyway, both of us have gotten into the work and have been helped out significantly by P's first cousin once removed and, of course, P's uncle whose taking charge of the project. We spent one day ripping off the dry, dead asphalt shingles, getting down to the cedar shakes below. Then, the next day, we started putting up the metal sheets over top the shakes attaching with screws. By the end of the day we had about half the roof recovered.

Truck

We've owned it now for a little while, but never posted a picture. The truck is not without its problems, but for right now it gets us around and provides one more measure of legitimacy to our lifestyle. Next step, gun, dog or horse....or cat.

Off the deep end

Digging up the root of a plant and eating it is not necessarily a crazy thing to do, need I point out our friends the carrot, or beet. However, today I embarked on a journey we'd like to keep on the down low, at least with regards to our community on the Great Plains.









Today, after destroying hundreds of Burdock plants on the edge of our woods (they're noxious weeds after all) P decided it was time for a new approach. Perhaps led by a quote from his youth, "If you can't beat 'em join 'em" or one from graduate school, "To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy" he decided to eat burdock, and tricked his wife into doing the same.






You have to understand that around here: people. don't. do. that. Yes, we eat, even things from the ground. But we don't eat random stuff. Stuff branded as noxious weeds. Stuff with weird, claimed medicinal or therapeutic attributes. We kill weeds. We grow corn and soybeans and eat things from the grocery store like God intended and the market demands. Thus, we're keeping this on the down low for the time being.

P labored digging out the root, scrubbed it very vigorously (with stainless steel wool), chopped it and included it in a meal of roasted root vegetables with baked walleye and a fresh green salad. The outcome was, well, underwhelming. The root tasted fine, but was too woody and tough. Not exactly a fine dining delicacy.  Lord knows, we've got plenty more juvenile Burdock plants to retry with, but this experiment ended with very nutritious and buttery burdock root tossed on the compost pile.  Oh well, just some sweat, time and enthusiasm lost.

We went toe to toe with South Dakota sensibility and we lost. Lesson learned.

Gone in 60 seconds

When P was a kid, there were many occasions where he longed to ride in dad's hod rod "Spra Coupe" [sic]. With it's sleek lines, aerodynamic design, 4-on-the-floor, and what seemed to be the basic skeleton of wings.  Additionally it had really cool controls that allowed the driver to pull a lever and lift a wing which led a small boy to dream of a delightful blend of race car and flapping winged aeroplane.

Today, P got the pleasure of driving this dream as the job was spraying the venerable herbicide, RoundUp, on a field of recently drilled soybeans.  The spraying went reasonably well, though a bit of the sheen of the boyhood dream wore off in the process.

The first thing to note is that this isn't the machine I sat in while day-dreaming in the machine shed.  The original was a (permanent) convertible, this one a sort of T-top coupe design – supposedly an improvement, but a whole lot goofier looking.

The second is that power steering really is quite nice.  These types of Spra Coupes are wrist breakers as that single front wheel catches on ruts, rocks and other things snapping and spinning the steering wheel hard and fast enough to make you think you're sticking your hands into a fan.  Luckily, P still has all 10  digits in working order.

These are but small nitpicks when you're truly living the dream.

From a distance

While working to "do alfalfa silage" we had reason to climb on top of the silo at P's parent's farm. The reason was because P messed up and plugged the tube through which the silage is blown up into the top of the silo. Long story short, we needed to climb to the top of the silo to unplug the tube and clean up some of the silage on the roof of the silo. As a result we saw a world blue and green. Later, we decided to climb the windmill at our farmyard and take a picture of our quaint, little home. Enjoy.

A run in the rain

So I finally decided to sign up for a road race. I haven't been running regularly (well, regularly about once a month), but I hoped that signing up for a race might inspire me to run more often. It inspired me to run about once a week. The race was a fundraiser for a local menno church camp: Swan Lake Christian Camp.

I did not sign up for the marathon nor the half-marathon, but instead opted for the 5.2 mile which is about the furthest I have run in MONTHS. I just wanted to finish under 50 minutes, and managed to pull off a 45:34, so I was satisfied and had fun doing it.

Gratuitous Sheep Shots

While we're a little bit frustrated with a pair of punk sheep that insist on leaving the electric fence confines we've defined for the herd, our hearts are generally melted when we spend any time with the sheep. To that end we thought that you too might wish to have a moment with our sheep.


We're starting to learn differences in our sheep, they seem to have individual personalities, but let's not get carried away, they're still sheep.

Currently the sheep are trimming the yard beside our house closest to the road so that we are quickly becoming known in the neighborhood as the crazy sheep people from out East. We embrace this notoriety.

Hauling

Recently, when we haven't been in the fields or doing regular chores around the farm, we've been hauling corn and soybeans to the elevator (huge storage unit/business that will store and then sell the corn/soy beans to a factory to be processed into your favorite food like substance). *see elevator pictures below

On P's parent's farm "hauling" involves emptying both steel grain bins as well as the more quaint grainery. Here's a helpful hint, if you ever get asked by P's dad which one you'd be willing to help empty, choose the steel bin.

When emptying the steel bin, we take advantage of the harnessed power from the dams of the Missouri River (electricity), to move the grain out of the bins through an auger and into the waiting truck. However, in the grainery, we harness the power of gravity for 90% of the work (letting the grain simply flow out of a hole in the floor into the truck bed waiting below), but those last couple feet don't flow quite as freely and require a bit of human effort, via shoveling. P tends to harness this last 10% from carbohydrates in the form of whole wheat bread and potatoes, while C has been fairly successful at finding garden work to do during this time.

Emptying the grainery is accompanied by a fair bit of dust which makes the job a little less fun, but it also makes for fairly dramatic pictures. This dark picture is P shoveling and sweeping an overhead bin of soybeans. The ray of light is coming from an overhead window, and the tiny circle of light on the floor is the chute where all the beans must flow out.

Using the truck, or wagons pulled by a tractor, we haul the grain to a large cooperative elevator, called Fremar (the combination of Freeman and Marion-the two nearest towns), that is simply massive in scale.

Every year in rural America you can read stories of farmers who die when they get trapped in a grain bin/grain avalanche. By and large grain bins aren't all that dangerous, but what generally happens in these tragedies is this:

1. Wet grain ( > 17% moisture in corn) is stored in a grain bin.
2. A farmer starts to remove the grain from the bin by using an auger to unload from the bottom of the bin. . . similar to a hourglass if it only had one end.
   
3. If the grain is too wet, it does not fall down past each other or flow evenly, instead it cakes up and makes clumps of grain or even bridges which creates a void below.
4. The victim errantly somehow, either intentionally or not, gets into the grain and under the additional weight, the grain finally collapses.
5. Unlike water, a person has no buoyancy in grain, and also unlike water when you breath out and your chest collapses, you cannot re-expand your chest to take in more air as the grain does not displace easily.
6. A human succumbs to the air constriction.

I've never even seen grain really start to cake up in a bin until today when I was unloading some corn. Here is a relatively bad photo from my phone camera demonstrating dangerous conditions in a grain bin. If the grain were dry you'd see a relatively even/smooth conical shape. In this picture there is large void in the center with ominous dark dust swirling around in it – a bad sign.

Tassels and Mortar Boards

First off, a poll of our readers: Raise your hand if you've attended the high school graduation of your first-cousin-once-removed.  Now look around the room.  At best, your the only one in the room with your hand raised, and more likely I suspect nobody in the room raised their hand.  We, however, had that pleasure and more as we attended the graduation ceremony of P's high-school alma mater Freeman Academy.

A few things probably distinguished this ceremony from the ones you may have attended.  It took nearly an hour and a half — for 10 graduates.  It involved what was basically a sermon, scripture readings, several prayers, two choir performances and a video of the senior class, starting from Elemetary school (baby pictures included).  In visual appearance, it was some mixture of prom, a wedding and traditional graduation.  All the graduates sat on the stage the entire time, except when they were performing in a 4 part choir, which sounded pretty good.  What makes this event even more unique, is that many in the audience aren't even related to the graduates, they just come to provide support to the students and families in the community (and because there are no other entertaining events scheduled in the area).

A significant percentage of the ceremony was spent on each individual graduate, providing insight on the personality of the individual and on the group as a whole. It was interesting to see how a rural population celebrates its youth, faith and community in general.

Our little lawn mowers!

Remember when your parents would say they didn't need to buy a dish washer because they already had three of them (or however many children they had)? Well, P and I now have 13 lawn mowers, and only one of them uses oil.

Since about the time the grass started to grow we have been considering the "green" option of sheep keeping our lawn trimmed, with the perk of some tasty locally grown meat in the fall. (Disclaimer: The lawn immediately around the house we mow in the modern manner, and it's the larger acreage which the sheep are encouraged to eat.)

The story that goes along with acquiring the sheep is considerably longer, at least if P is relaying the story (and perhaps embellishing the details a bit ;).  The short version is that within 2min of the picture where C is unloading the sheep from the trailer, they easily found a hole in the cattle proof fence and were mingling with P's uncle's cattle.  The cattle thought the sheep were really weird looking dogs and didn't know how to react, so they panicked.  This lead to some nifty figure eight patterns of cattle chasing sheep and vice-versa.  The sheep flock eventually got split into to groups, nine running around in the fields surrounding our home being chased/trailed by P and three less adventurous sheep chillin' with C in the cattle pen.  Eventually we managed to herd the two groups back together and merge them into a pen rapidly built from "cattle paneling."

We've since been training the sheep to respect electric wire, not using tall metal fences, and rotating them through large paddocks where the grass is often taller than they are.

A few lessons were learned in this short period of 15min:

1. Sheep are incredibly cute, but fast little buggers.
2. When one sheep crosses some sort of barrier (fence, creek, brushrow) all the rest are sure to follow even if you're standing in front of them yelling and making a scene, whereas cattle would likely turn around.
3. Sheep herd quite nicely when they are hungry and grazing.
4. Sheep like dandilions, cedar trees and forbs in general.
5. Not all sheep are electric fence trained.
6. It's awesome when your uncle keeps a number of cattle panels (12'x4' heavy gauge fence sections) around the yard for you to quickly create a sheep proof coral.
7. When/If you are anxious around sheep it's important to have a really good poker face, and a calm disposition.

Bull!

Perhaps you have already noticed the "problem" with this photo, but in case you missed it, there should be a fence between the large Charolais bull and me.

We received an SOS phone call from P's mother stating that one of the bulls had escaped from its pen and was attempting to pick a fight with some other bulls in a different pen.

With roughly 25 years of farm work experience between us, C and I made short work of showing the bull who was boss and got him back into the appropriate pen.  It should also be noted that despite being roughly 1/14th the weight of the bull, C decided she could handle moving the bull bare-handed while P needed a fiberglass stick to help backstop his confidence.

Ferrell Asparagus

On the same mile section of land as P's folks house there used to be a farmstead which apparently had an asparagus patch. The farmstead is gone (for at least 40 years) but the asparagus patch seems to live on in a fence line. That's almost got to qualify as a heirloom and micro climate adjusted variety. Perhaps this fall we'll transplant some to our own garden.

Turn, turn, turn

Let the rotating begin!  One of the things we're most interested in investigating this growing season is the introduction of management intensive grazing to P's parent's pastures.

We've done plenty of fencing in preparation, some of it in the wind, but this past week we started rotating the cows on the pasture.  We've now worked through 5 paddocks.  In that particular pasture of about 38ish acres, we have 33 cow-calf pairs of animals and we're planning on rotating the animals about 30 times to new grass before having them repeat over the same turf.  The idea is that this will force the cows to be less picky on a day by day basis, and not allow them to continually go back to their favorite grass in the larger pasture and re-graze it too soon.  Over time this should bring more diversity of plant life to the pasture and also allow for more tons of forage to be grown on the same amount of land.  All in all a pretty good thing we all think.

The cost to all of the above is management — that's where the chumps come in.  We move the cattle once per day and it currently takes us about 30-45 minutes every other day and 10-15 minutes on the other days.  This assumes we would just move the fence, look over the ladies and their calves, and move on.  The reality is that, at least for this first week, we're absolutely enamored with watching the cows and calves get super excited by the new grass.  Additionally, the other wildlife is fun to watch.  Swallows come out to swoop over the cows as they stir up insects from the grass and I think we also saw some finches and robins tonight.

Moving the cattle, at least in good weather, is really one of our favorite parts of the day.

Maggie

Every real farm needs a farm dog.  Since we do not yet live on a real farm, we will live vicariously through P's parents farm, and their dog, Maggie.  She's an Australian Sheppard and she's incredibly lovable.  She's got some issues of knowing when we want her "help" and she's a firm believer in overwhelming farm intruders (and friends) with her love rather than her bite, but she's great for companionship.

In addition, despite the implications in the book, I think that she may actually poop flowers.

What meat did you have?

When I was visiting with P's grandma the other evening, we were talking about food and cooking while preparing our evening meal. During this conversation she asked me, "What meat did you have for dinner?"

Now, to properly answer this question, you have to understand the order meals are eaten here. Breakfast is around 8am, Dinner is served near noon, occasionally there is a snack called "Lunch" in the late afternoon, Super is around 6:30pm, and "Bed Lunch" is bed-time snack. That's sitting down to eat 5 times a day! P and I have been fairly successful at eating something for all of these meals, and meanwhile, loosing a couple pounds...or 15lbs if your name starts with the letter P. But I digress. Meat for dinner, meaning....What meat did I have for lunch?

The question also clearly communicates that you cannot have a meal without a proper serving of meat when on the Great Plains; meat is what makes the meal. And we're definitely getting our portion of protein out here (which brings up the topic of meat consumption, but I'll save that for some other entry). Well, to answer the question, we had Indiana Swiss Steak, which P's mom made. It was delicious, and then we finished with cookies and tea.

Wind

If you want to know what life was like today outside in SD while fencing:

1. Find a pickup truck and two friends and a mess of electrified string.
2. Have one friend drive the pickup truck at 30mph while you and the other friend attempt to untangle the ball of string while standing up in the back of the pickup.

You'll quickly find a few things:

1. You have to yell to communicate even if you're pretty close.
2. Being yelled at all the time, even when it's nice words, has a tendency to anger a person.
3. Trying to collaborate on untangling the ball of string while being yelled at all day is stressful and exhausting.

Our marriage is stronger now.

*The upside to this day is that we were preparing movable fences for management intensive grazing....soon the cows will have new grass.

A farmer's sense of direction...

... is clearly being aided in the modern era by GPS.

Many people have heard that on the modern farm, tractors drive themselves by GPS. I guess on fancier farms that may be true, but on our farm GPS just provides a helpful reminder when your eyes deceive you or your mind wanders. I thought I would show what a tractor GPS receiver looks like. Namely, here is a picture where I'm tilling right on the mark and headed in the correct direction. It's really not that impressive, but I'm doing good work and have all five orange lights lit up.

The GPS device is programmed with the width of our equipment and is able to determine parallel "passes" through a field given a starting heading. This allows us to most efficiently work through a field without doubling up excessively or skipping certain areas. It's most helpful when you can't really tell where you've been as with spraying or spreading fertilizer. However, here I'm using it when cultivating the field. The second picture is when the device is trying to tell me that I'm too far to the left and need to adjust slightly to the right to get back on the correct heading. Clearly attempting phone photography while working is not the way to directional perfection.

The future of grass fed beef is looking good

This past weekend C and I had my wonderful sister and nephews visit us for a couple of days and we had a grand time with all of them.

The photo highlights of their stay happened when we (C and I-with the nephews) went on "an adventure" around the farm. We toured some old machinery, hiked and ran through the shelter belt (the trees on the north side of the house), climbed on some alfalfa bales and fed the feedlot cattle some grass.

The cattle really liked when Caleb came up with the idea to pull up some grass and feed it to them. They liked it so much that they were willing to come up and eat it out of his hand. Clearly Caleb believes cattle like grass... or else he was bored. Or perhaps cattle will overcome great fear to eat grass... or else cattle are so bored in a feedlot they'll eat grass much like they'll munch on a hydraulic hose if given a chance. You make the call.


Either way, lots of cuteness and good times were had by all, even if it meant I clearly wasn't the apple of my mother's eye for the weekend.