Spring work

The month of March we got a grand total of .11" of rain.  So far in the month of April we got .15" of rain.  I have chiseled, which is ripping the ground to break up the compacted soil so it will take in more water when we get some.  Then you go over the ground with a disc, which smoothes the soil for planting seeds.  Today I started planting some oats.  We grow oats to harvest for grain or we can cut it for hay.  How the year goes for moisture will dictated what we do with the oats. 

The wind blew strong most every day last week.  Some days the wind blew 60 MPH.  Tammy has hired a young man from Union Center to help lamb, but we haven't started lambing so she and he  are fixing fence.  The wind has dried out every thing so far.. Tonight the weather radio said the relative humidity was 20%.  Pretty dry.

This a dam in the first pasture north of the house.  Note all of the white alkali around the edge of the water.  If we would do a TDS (total dissolvable solids) test the water would hardly be drinkable.  After the drought of 2001 to 2008 we have a water tester to test TDS. 

Ryan is calving the cows at the other place.  The weather has been sooo good for this project.  No scours, no wet weather, no mud to fight...  Tammy and I went over to help him sort off the cows left to calve so we could turn out the cows and calves into the pasture.  He has had (the cows have had) about four sets of twins.  This helps the calving percent as it seem you alway lose some calves no matter how vigilent you are.  The cows are thinking it is time to go out and graze.  There is not much green for as warm as it has been.  Hopefully the next time I write we will have had some rain!!