Tag: Crops

Harvest harvest harvest

We have been rolling along over here in St. Paul. We started harvest early this year, we didn’t get much to any rain since early April so that really sped up the maturing of our crops.

We are on a pretty good stride of the middle of harvest right now. Most days are the same, combine, fill trucks with seed, feed the people, try to stay cool, haul the trucks to the cleaner, rinse and repeat.

The beginning of harvest was a little insane I’ll be honest. We started combining crimson clover at the same time that we started cutting our tall fescue which happened to be at the same time as the good old St. Paul rodeo.

So our days started at 2am with cutting grass, moving on to 11am combining, 7:30pm rodeo volunteering or watching and finishing off that long day around 11pm.

With of course the inevitable crying family member because there weren’t enough games played (Auggie), not enough carnival rides ridden (Millie), too much food eaten (Hoot), ready to be home (Matt) or just plain damn tired (me!). Don’t get me wrong though, we do a good job of having a lot of fun too!

Not sure when we slept that first week but I know I am not the only one to be happy to be in the middle stride of harvest!!

We will finish tall fescue this week and then get the combines all cleaned out for perennial ryegrass. A week or so of that will finish our grass seed harvest for this year. Next up green beans, wheat, radish & filberts!

Summer Workers

School is out for the summer, and while we have camps and a few fun outings planned, most of our summer is full of work on the farm.

This week was a juggle of childcare so I got to take the boys out for a few hours to work with me. We checked a few (very tall) tall fescue fields and headed out to a newly planted orchard to count trees. We planted a number of new baby hazelnut trees this past winter, and most are looking great, but there are a few dead ones that will need to be replanted.

So Hoot, Auggie and I headed out to do some tallying. A skill Auggie was very proud to have learned this year in kindergarten.

This spring and moving now into summer has been a struggle with the weather and rising costs. It’s a very uneasy time to be a farmer with all that has hit us this year that is out of our control. But it’s also just really amazing to get to be outside, teaching your kids all about what you love to do and seeing how much they love it also!

Someday these summer workers will be full time around here….probably (as I’m told often) before I know it!

FRED Talk in the Field

Oregon Farm Bureau has been reaching out to members to do FRED talks. FRED stands for Farming and Ranching Every Day.

I had the opportunity to chat with Anne Marie Moss with the Oregon Farm Bureau about all sorts of things ranging from Covid 19, to grass seed, to blogging all while out in a grass seed field on a beautiful sunny Oregon day!

Click here to watch my FRED talk!

Personally my biggest takeaway is, when choosing a “tripod” for your phone while on zoom, a spray boom that slowly goes down while you’re talking is not recommended. Mostly because by the end of the conversation you will basically be doing a squat and your legs will be sore. 😂 #hindsight2020

But seriously, I really appreciate all the work that Oregon Farm Bureau has done to be creative and help still keep us farming and rolling along. You can see all their other FRED Talks here. And also Like them on Facebook to stay up to date about farming and ranching in Oregon.