Well, it's been a long time since our last post! Sorry about that, what can we say... we've been busy!
The last post was about corn picking, garlic planting, and catching the cockerels and young turkeys so they would be ready for that trip to the processor.
So to update a couple of those things, first the corn. We were pretty happy with the quantity of corn this year and it has been dried, shelled, cleaned and some of it ground. We have had good response from our customers and next year will be increasing the amount planted.
The Winnow Wizard made our cleaning process so much faster and better!
The cockerels and turkeys were delivered to the processor and in due course were ready to be picked up. It turned out that the evening in question was snowy and although we should have delayed, we headed out after chores to collect them with trailer in tow. The trailer was needed to bring home some much needed gates that we planned to pick up at Fleet Farm in Brainerd, just a bit further than our original destination.
It was a long, long drive back to the farm but we made it safely. The next morning was sunny and revealed all the snow that was packed into the wheel wells!
The pigs were unfazed by the 7 inches of new snow.
This is the last you will see of these particular porkers. All six of them attained a nice weight and have moved on to various freezers.
The weather has been so up and down! After that storm, we had some very warm weather (just in time for hunting season, more on that later) and it's now back to cold and snowy. Quite the roller coaster.
About those gates. Birch our new buck was more that ready to move in with Poppy and Echo shortly after Halloween. Vinca (recently dried up so I did not have to milk her) was moved out to the man-goat pen to hang out with Tamarack for the duration. Well, to say that she was unhappy is an understatement. She voiced her dis-satisfaction with this arrangement any time one of us was within sight and quite a bit when we were not. This went on and on and on. She just was not getting over it. We decided to divide the goat quarters in the pole barn so she could be next to the others, hence the need for more gates. Long story short, this has been successful and she has been quite content ever since.
And now for a few words and photos from deer hunting season:
I (Kevin now) will begin with a picture that Kurt took from his stand - a young deer checking out some turkeys. Kurt reports that when the deer got too close, the turkeys rushed it and chased it away! I will draw your attention to the remains of a deer stand in the tree behind the deer. That is how we used to hunt - now things are a little more high tech.
This is an example of one of our platform stands. We put a pop-up blind on top and are pretty comfortable, comparatively speaking.
Kurt's picture is from open weekend, and mine are from the 2nd weekend. Debby does views from the milking stand so I thought I would do views from the deer stand
Same view, different time and day:
We had a very successful deer season this year, especially from what we hear from other hunters. Our hunting party was limited by COVID so the whole crew was not able to make it opening weekend. I am not including any photos of harvested deer this year so don't worry, they just were not very good. Kent and nephew Kellen were able to make opening weekend, and Kellen shot his first BUCK, a 7 pointer. It was so great for him, its been a long time in coming, shooting your own gun makes a big difference. The rest of opening weekend we shot 3 other antlerless deer and then pretty much saw nothing after that. Part of the crew were able to make it the last weekend after getting out of quarantine and did see one deer, but it was moving way fast. Overall, the number of deer seen this year was way down, to levels not seen for over 10 years, Kurt and Kori have never seen so few deer. Not sure the reason, we did see quite a few this spring and summer, but this fall they just seem to disappear. We will see what next year brings.
And that is the update from Ole Lake Farm. Sorry we have taken so long! Until next time, be well friends!