Ben & Jeannette are home on Easter break from Cincinnati and have been tremendous help in working the cattle and getting the tractors and equipment ready for planting. We are expecting to hit the fields strongly at the first of the week now depending on how much rain we end up with. Ben and I took a long tour through the pastures this evening and I posted several new photographs of the herd on the recent pics page. I am hoping to add a few more pages later in the week as well.

I practiced for about an hour an a half on my F tuba this afternoon to work on a solo that I will playing as the Prelude for Mother's Day worship services next week at church. I am really becoming more pleased with my sound each time I sit to play. I have a music file of the solo I am working as well as a duet I did back in February online. Turn on your speakers and you can hear the Euphonium/Tuba duet here or my Tuba solo here. Both will take a few moments to load.

Koenig Equipment delivered my new rotary disc hay mower conditioner last Friday afternoon. It is a model 926 with a 9' 9" (298 cm) cutting area and heavy rubber rolls for faster curing. My old Haybine was past the point of retirement and this new unit will greatly improve the cutting and speed which we tackle the hay harvest now.

We had a huge rain last night while I was town last evening for church choir practice. Although there was only a drizzle in town, we received right at 1.52 inch (3.86 cm) of rain in just under an hour or so here at the farm. We had been starting to get on the dry side but this came a bit faster than I would have preferred. The ground really soaked it up well and the wheat and pastures really perked up overnight. The temperatures are cooler too 48° F (8.8° C) here at at 9:00am. It is to get up to 62° F (16.7° C) later today though and this range is about normal for this time of year.

We took advantage of the very warm, windy and dry conditions this past week and finished corn planting on this past Monday morning. The high winds and days near 80° F (26.6° C) all last week really allowed us to get a jump on field work and let us get into wet areas from last years floods that we did not think we would be able to for some time. I spent Monday and Tuesday seeding two pastures with all new grass and legumes to keep my renovation and restoration on track. Although a new grass type called Festulolium ( a cross between Italian & Perennial Ryegrass with Meadow Fescue) that I planted last Fall was hit very hard with the ice storms in March, the Barenbrug BG-34 Ryegrass blend held up very well. Actually until the ice, both grasses and the Alice white clover I had blended had looked fantastic.

To bring things up to date a bit I will be posting some new photo pages of events around the farm from the past couple years to fill in gaps from the last time I seriously kept this journal active. As many in this part of Ohio know, the past two years have been "different" and more than a bit stressful for anyone in farming or agriculture in general. Two years ago we suffered our worst drought since the 1930s followed by 2003 sending us the worst flooding in 100+ years. As an example, my hay equipment has made two passes through the fields in the past two years instead of a typical 7 or 8. I have seen more semi trucks of hay being delivered to the farm in the past 15 months than I ever wish to for the rest of my life.

As I mentioned above, one good thing that will come of these trials is that I will be upgrading the pastures and fences over the next couple of years which will allow me to get them just the way I want for another long haul. Between no rain and then flood waters lapping over them 23 times last year, very little of the original pasture survived into last Fall. My current plans are to switch my wood fence posts over to the new white poly line posts made from recycled chemical jugs and such. These look very attractive, almost like painted wood posts,  would be natural insulators and should last the rest of my lifetime. We also started to replace some section of wood board fencing with poly-vinyl rail fence for the same reason. It is expensive up front but is very attractive and should be cheaper in the long run. Keep checking the photo pages for updates in the coming week for more photographs from the great floods and other events. I will be back here with more on a much more regular basis.

I took some photos of our sale consignments for this years Circle A Customer Sale this afternoon before the rain hit. The sale is once again at the fantastic Circle A Ranch facilities near Iberia Missouri and the catalogue looks great. Information on our three lots including a very special offering of VDAR LUCY 5156-400 and two super cow/calf pairs is here. Here is a chance to see them out working in the pasture and dry lots before we get them clipped and shined for the sale.

We rotated the cattle to the #2 North pasture on Saturday and they are loving the grazing timothy, alfalfa and clover that is there. They had been on the main pasture for 2 weeks and with continued warmth it should be ready for them again at the end of May.

I will be taking another recipient to Moulton Embryos this afternoon with 2 more scheduled for tomorrow and another 2 on Saturday as the warmer temperatures have assisted providing a jump start for our Spring ET program.

Four additional recipients are also synchronized to use when we take the  Shady Brook Miss 138F donor to Moulton Embryos to be flushed Monday morning. She was mated to B/R New Design 323 and I am excited about this mating.

Miss 138F was our pick as top selling cow from the Circle A Sale last Spring. She is a daughter of the Pathfinder sire Ideal 692 of 9J9 3134 from the respected Finks Miss cow family. Her 2001 son was a member of the extremely successful Denver Pens of bulls for Circle A Ranch and also was the 2nd top selling bull at their 2002 Bull Sale.  More impressively, her 1999 son by 216 recorded a 132 ratio for marbling and 70 ratio for both back and rump fat against 33 contemporaries at Circle A.

I took my Shady Brook Miss 138F donor to Moulton Embryos this morning having good news in that we will be beginning shots on the "Miss" Cow mid week for a flush to B/R New Design 323. I am extremely pleased with the daughters we have by her in her 2002 heifer calves by JLB Exacto and Circle A MJ.

We also thawed frozen eggs from our flush of Rockn D Ambush 1531 and Circle A Miss Wix 9450 for two recipients as well. That mating already has produced a super attractive heifer calf in 9450s 2002 natural calf, PSA Miss Wix 434P.

We have been trying a product from Miller Brewing Company of Trenton, Ohio this Winter called Wet Brewers Grains and I am very pleased with its fit for us. The Trenton plant is Miller Brewing company's newest and largest facility in North America and produces approx. 130-140 tons of wet brewers grains each day as a bi-product of the brewing process. This wet grain is a mix of rice, barley, oat, corn grits, hops etc.. that is just the right fit for ruminant animals. Most of the starch is removed and the remaining grains have approx. a 27% protein and 10% fat content on a dry basis with almost 78%TDN. It works out to be about half the cost of corn for us even though we are at the outer limit for delivery from the plant. The cows love it and it really works well when we are able to chop corn stalks from the fields to feed with it.

We flushed Circle A Miss Wix 9450 "Maxine" at Moulton Embryos this morning yielding 25 embryos having froze 21 and put 4 fresh embryos in recipients we had with us. This was her second 22+ yield for us with the first by B/R New Design 323 providing us with a very stout and uniform group of heifer calves back in January. Today's flush was a mating with Rockn D Ambush 1531 which also produced a super nice natural calf by "Maxine" earlier this Spring. (9450 is an own granddaughter of Miss Wix 918 of McCumber.

Our offering was very well accepted with the PSA Miss Sapphire from Finks 5522-6148 and her B/R New Design 036 heifer selling to M&K Angus at Robertsville, MO. Our PSA Miss Sapphire out of VDAR New Trend 933 and her February Rockn D Ambush heifer also stayed in Missouri going to Ferguson Ranch at Wildwood, MO. PSA Heiress by JR Juice and her BSS Road Builder bull calf got a lot of attention before being purchased by new registered Angus breeders but long time commercial cattlemen, Deepwater Creek Ranch of Montrose, Missouri.

The rains have finally stopped a bit here and dad was able to get 70 acres of soybeans in the ground yesterday. With a bit of luck and more sun we will be able to get caught up by the end of the week.