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.

Keep on the sunny side

Farm lifestyle isn't always as glamorous as you likely have in mind. Sometimes it really is kinda nasty outside, but duty still calls. Granted, today duty called about an hour later than usual and also allowed for a slightly extended lunch hour, but still, I had to go outside.

We're currently feeding some cows silage out in the pasture as the pastures just aren't quite ready for grazing. That process is entirely mechanical, but it still requires someone to drive the tractor out in the elements. Here you can see how my face looked after about 40min on the tractor with the tires kicking up mud, sand and a fair bit of water to combine with the light rain constantly falling. The face was washable, but the jacket and pants will take longer to clean. In case you were wondering, I had my hood up and a cap on, thus the mostly clean ears and forehead.

Ah, the sheen of the glamor almost makes a person blind.

BBQ

A few days ago we were doing a little cleanup around the farm yard. Here in the country, that means FIRE. For a couple of little pyros like ourselves, this was really a job we couldn't turn down.

The burning actually took place out in one of the pastures where a pile of brush had accumulated. The day was about right, relatively quiet, recent rain but a predictable breeze. The title of the post comes from the fact that this was also the preferred way to eliminate a number of animal carcasses. Believe it or not, but sometimes an animal or two dies. Anyway, a good hot fire makes for a sanitary disposal and also eliminates the feeding of coyotes and other scavengers.

P misjudged the direction of the breeze a bit which meant that he got to play with the fire with the loader tractor and condense the burning embers to be sure we achieved complete combustion. Anyway, a somewhat gross job was made really quite fun and exciting in the presence of 15' flames.

SD gun show

As long as I have C by my side, I suppose I really should be joining the NRA, since I won't give up these guns except from my cold, dead hands.

Glad Easter tidings

C and I were graced by a good friend from Milwaukee over the Easter weekend who greeted us with a delicious cheese cake. We had a great time relaxing and enjoying her company. A few of the activities of the weekend were captured for posterity's sake.

We decorated Easter eggs with crayon. I haven't done that in many years, and this year we followed C's family tradition of hollowing out eggs and filling them with Jello. The decorating and slurping blue Jello was just about as fun as I could imagine.

The second, was that we engaged in a local custom of eating chislic, at a local dining option "Papa's" in Freeman. The Wikipedia article should give the necessary background, but more specifically, we enjoyed the BBQ, garlic and marinated variety along with saltines and curly fries. Our sodium intake was certainly adequate... for the month.

We also visited Falls Park in downtown Sioux Falls and walked the bike path.  It was nice to see a new variety of scenery and Falls Park is really a nice area resource.

Home on the range

At long last some of our (and I use the term "our" in the least financially indicative way possible) cows and calves made it out of the muds of spring and into the pastures where we had repaired fence. It was a long day of work sorting, giving shots and shuttling the cows and calves to the pasture.

Due to the complications of moving cow-calf pairs it is safer for us to move the cows (mothers) at one time (actually four trips with the moving trailer) and then make a fifth trip to the pasture with all of the calves. This makes for a wee bit of separation anxiety, and in the end for some endearing moments of cow-calf reuniting. The cows would greet us at the pasture gate waiting for their young each time we arrived with another load.  With the first four loads containing only cows the awaiting mothers' hopes were dashed when they did not find their calves. On the last trip, with calves in tow, the mothers could finally smell their young and got very excited to the point of trying to rush into the trailer to rescue their calves (not exactly helpful or all that safe).  In the end the cow-calf pairs trotted off into green fields happy and content.

On guard!

While I suspect she's not too bad with a saber, recently C and I have been spending a fair bit of time fencing. C's footwork is impeccable, but it's her work with a plier that makes me love her.

C and I have been mending the wires of various pasture fences that were brought down by the weight of snow and winter. Various wooden posts have been replaced, an easy job in the spring when the ground is soft. We're able to simply push the posts into the ground with the help of a front loader tractor.

C was a little amazed by how well worn my father's leather fencing gloves are able to get. Dad shared the secret with us. As usual, the secret is staples and duck tape.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that good fences are being made and hopefully also good neighbors.