Mother's Day Is A Soft Holiday

So, it's Mother's Day weekend, and the marketing on TV has been truly laughable, to us (and maybe just to us, so there you go). Joe has spent a lot of time rolling his eyes and explaining to the girls why Mommy doesn't need a $500 necklace to know that she is loved on Mother's Day.

Now, while I would never turn down a lovely necklace from my children, he's right, I don't need it. I don't even really want it. I know...shocker! Mother's Day since we have been farming has ranged from time spent together with a lovely steak lunch prepared entirely by my husband to a lovely poem written about how although he "is still very charming, he couldn't get a card because he was busy farming." as well as last year, while Joe was in the field, I took the girls to Target and Jimmy John's all just days from giving birth to Jack.

So, Mother's Day isn't a huge deal at our house...as Joe would add, "Every day is Mother's Day!

Not that Joe isn't doing a good job at recognizing me as a mother on the actual Hallmark Holiday, I just have learned that as a farm wife, any spring or fall holiday is celebrated if the weather is not fit to be working.

I understand this.

I realize this.

So why do I still wonder what it's like to get breakfast in bed, spend the day at the nail salon and shopping, all the while sporting my new $500 necklace? Never gonna happen around this joint.

And that's okay.

My point is, we have been bombarded with marketing saying that in order to recognize Mom on Mother's Day, you have to spend a lot of money and let her do nothing, on May 13th. "Get your orders in now!" "Celebrate Mom on Sunday!"

Mother's Day around here is what we call a "soft holiday." The date is fluid. I feel like I have already had a Mother's Day, as we have been able to get away here and there...even though this week our date was to the dentist.

Maybe some day I'll be able to do nothing...right now, doing nothing on Mother's Day is not in the cards, as bean planting is getting close to done, hay needs to be mowed, and cattle, although a lot of them are new mamas, are celebrated by the joy of work.

I will be recognized with a lovely gift, and we have become "that couple..." you know, the couple who leave blaring, obvious hints about gifts. I left the home screen on Joe's computer to the exact color and style of running watch I wanted. I am assured it will be here soon.

Whoo-hoo!

So whether your Mother's Day is a soft or a hard and fast date on your calendar, and whether you celebrate it with a lovely Zales diamond or a meal on the go in between loading bulk beans, remember your mom, and hug a mom who is toting around her kids, alone on this special day...she might just be a farm wife!

Little Plants, Big Promise

If you’re a Facebook fan of mine, this post may seem a bit redundant.

However, I love redundancy.

Love it. Love it. Love IT!!

Anyway, we’re embarking on a photographic journey with our corn crop. We’ve learned our lesson about how to not document our life’s happenings (see the complete gut remodel of our house…no pictures… and don’t even get me started on Jack’s scrapbook, because literally, it’s not even started and he’ll be one in two weeks. Sigh.). So, with a big photographic leap, and the ease of the upload, thank you, iPad!!, we are going to take you on the journey of our corn crop and its life as it comes up behind our house.

So, we took a picture last week, when it was hot and humid thanks to a fresh thundershower, and my kids were a hot mess thanks to leaping into the puddles of aforementioned rain showers.

While you’re probably wondering how we got so lucky to have such cute kids (superior genetics, Amelia will say), and why those kids are NOT wearing pants (don’t need ‘em, Amelia will also say), you’ll note that the corn plants are barely visible. Their little green leaves are just barely cracking through the surface of the soil.

So that leads us to this week, when the greenhouse affect of the humidity allowed the plants to truly shoot through the ground and now you can “row” the corn from the upstairs windows (which means, see the plants in a (hopefully) perfectly straight line).

Farmer Joe explains it like this:

This plant is about 3" tall at its tallest point and just sprouted out of the ground 5 days earlier.

 We would technically call this plant to be in the "V1" stage, which stands for vegetative stage, 1 collar. If you look at the bottom leaf, the part that attaches to the stalk forms a "collar" around the stalk. As more and more leaves emerge from the center of the stalk, the lower leaves "collar" to provide themselves with a mechanism to stay supported by the plant. These leaves become the solar panels by which the plant turns sunlight into sugar for the plant to live and grow from.

In this 160 acre field, there are 5.6 million plants just like this one.

Isn’t that a crazy fun fact? 5.6 million plants, exactly alike, vying for the sunlight, soaking up the good rain and nutrients from the soil.

Cool, huh?

This is amazing to me. I am excited to share the growth and promise of this corn crop with you via pictures.

However, what is not documented through these smiling, goofy, and sometimes pant-less children and their corn crop pictures is the worry, the planning, the prayers, the time, the walking through the fields, the rain dances, the cease-rain dances, etc., etc. that accompany this growing season.

But, I'll take the time to document that through this blog, don't you worry!

A Grandma's Level of Trust

My grandma is 97 years old. She is amazing, not just because she's 97 and still with us, but also because she's still lovely, loving, kind, caring, and offers opinions on everything from politics to education to agriculture. She's a life long farm kid/wife, living in the same house she was born and raised in still to this day.

I love her.

One of the things I love the most about her is considering all she has seen in her life time. She rode a horse to her one-room grade school. She taught school in a one room schoolhouse in between times that she needed money to go to college. In a time of the Depression, she went to (and finished) college. She was a WWII bride, sending her beloved to Europe only after marrying him in Tennessee, far from home. He came back, and they raised kids during the 50s, and in the 70s, watched her daughter (my mom) send her new husband (my dad) overseas to another war in Vietnam. She fought for her community, trying to keep a landfill out of the area, when it was coming to town. She gardened and canned and "did corn" when it wasn't cool and hip. She still makes one heck of a pie. She has purged her house of unnecessary things, and has written on the backs of photographs so we won't forget our family.

Can you tell she's amazing?

Anyway, I fear that this time in which she is currently living, although she has lived through a lot of changes and tragedy, is upsetting to her. We live in a fast world, as we all know, full of folks giving opinions and suggestions about things they know not a lot about. My grandma reads up on this through her US News and World Report and Time Magazine subscriptions, and is generally horrified at what the text on the page has to say.

Lately, I have tended to agree.

While I love my iPad, my Facebook friends, and my cell phone, these things have made me lazy, opinionated about folks and their lifestyles when I have no idea what it's really like, as well as allowing myself become more informed about things that I don't understand. I find myself googling things on a daily basis, trying to WebMD myself when I should just go to a doctor. I think (note the word, think) I know a lot about the world around me, but I tend to just gloss over the headlines that Yahoo! offers me. I think myself informed, but am not, really.

In a world where information is at our fingertips, we have taken advantage of this and become opinionated and so open minded that our brains have fallen out. I myself need to simmer down, take a step back, and learn a lesson from my wise grandmother. While she is educated, opinionated and knowledgeable, she is trusting of the world around her.

Trusting.

Not blissfully ignorant, trusting.

This is a big problem that is hurting American agriculture, particularly livestock farming. No one is trusting of ranchers and growers such as my husband. No one cares that although we were able to get away for less than 24 hours last weekend, we were only gone 24 hours, having to get back in order for the cows, calves, bulls and steers to be checked and fed. Why is it okay to attack our livelihood from a talk show or newspaper or blog when the writer/producer/star (who most likely is advocating "natural" methods all the while smiling a Botox enhanced smile) has never walked a pasture in our shoes.

In the wake of Burger King authorizing purchases of chickens and pigs who are raised only cage free, and a, thankfully, contained case of BSE (Mad Cow) in California, farmers and ranchers are taking a hit from the media blitz that has caused markets to go down and poultry and pig farmers to heave another big sigh as they watch their industry take yet another hit below the belt. Why are these folks having an opinion that makes such a crazy impact on people's lives?

So what do we do? I don't want to ride a horse to school, nor do I want to live without my husband...or my iPad for that matter! However, shouldn't there be a balance? Shouldn't we be informed, entitled to our own opinion, but trusting of those who are the most qualified to make the decisions? Grandma didn't win her battle against the landfill, and it came to the area. Instead of making stink after stink after stink, Grandma (although she doesn't like it), noted that they did put up lovely fences around the property.

She trusted that they knew what they were doing, and hoped for the best.

I guess I am not being like Grandma still, offering my opinion to tell the people who have no idea about agriculture to shut the heck up. My hope, however, is that through opinions like this, you, dear reader, will know that we're trying our best, some times to the sacrifice of our own fun, comfort, and bottom line to produce quality products for you to enjoy.

Trust is not ignorance. Trust is faith. Trust is respect. Trust is allowing us to do what we know is right so you can enjoy a steak dinner.

Trust us, life on the farm is fun and hard and rewarding and labor intensive, but trust me, not everyone can do it, every day...I hardly can!

Recognizing a Good Thing

Please excuse my lack of postings. It's not that nothing has been going on, in fact, Phase One of planting (aka, corn) is nearly complete. Calves are nearly all birthed. A half marathon has been trained for and is getting ready to run. Kids are literally crawling all over the house, and the weather has been great to allow them to take it all outside.

So, it's not just my "busy-ness" that has caused a lack of posting. I feel as if I have turned a corner. I feel as if I am starting to understand. I even have had more "Mmm-hmm" moments than "Aha!" moments lately.

I am not an agriculture expert, by any means, but the day to day that has been going on has become less of a source of strife in our marriage, less of a "what the heck?" minute for me, and more of a "oh yeah...I remember, but might have blocked it out" moment.
 
Just the other day, Joe needed me to do a chore, like an actual cattle chore. He prefaced this chore with the remark, "Now, you need to do something for me, but you don't even have to change your shoes."

Now that's a chore that screams my name!

We had just made it home from church, the kids and I, and were getting ready to head back to town to my mom's so I could go to the other, bigger town for a get-together, sans kids. Joe's purebred cattle, however, hadn't been watered that day, and although there is a good spring running through their pasture, he likes to have a big tub of water for them just in case they don't meander their way down to the spring. He and Anna generally take care of this duty on the weekends, and I knew where the cattle were, but that was pretty much it. So, when Joe was explaining what I needed to do, he added, "And Anna will know what to do, too."

Yes, even though I have my moments of "oh yeah, I know that!," my seven year old is still way more wise in the ways of cattle than me.

Sigh.

Anyway, we packed into the car, after rearranging a few plans (as the pasture where these cows are is the opposite direction we were intended), we piled in the car and headed east.

We were indeed able to do the chore sans a shoe change, and as Anna stood back from the fence, counting eight babies and eight mama cows and one bull, which, thankfully was the correct total, I took a good look at the cattle.

The scene was picturesque: Deep red Simmental purebreds set against a foreground of lush pasture. The white barns seemed stark and crisp against the deep blue of the sky that day. The cattle were unfamiliar with me, so were up at the fence line, curiously looking at me, as I teetered around in wedge heels and skinny jeans (did I mention I had another thing to do, and I don't just traipse around in wedges...that much.). I don't know much about cattle, but I do know that Joe cares deeply for his herd, and it shows. They were all so tame, so clean, so healthy looking. I almost wanted to pet one! And don't get me started on the calves! Holy smokes are they cute!

I guess I haven't really had any time to step back and enjoy our herd. This particular group of cattle is not en route to anywhere for me, and the cows and calves across the road from our house are, frankly, white noise. I am too interested in keeping the kids in line or remembering what I need at the store to have really noticed what a great group of animals we have. I found myself last Sunday enjoying the colors, the inquisitive eyes and the serenity of the pasture. It was so relaxing. While I have generally stayed away because I know I would probably make the cattle nervous, they're so tame and calm and just curious, I think I might need to get to know them better.

So I guess I need to do chores more, huh?

Well, maybe not chore chores, but more that don't require a shoe change!

Parking Wars

Well, it's time. It's not technically the 20th of April, but the guys are ready. The planter is hooked up, filled up, fertilizer tank is ready, and they're all buzzing around the driveway like a bunch of bees.

It's exciting.

However, as I backed out of the drive to meet a friend for a run this morning, I found myself wondering what it would be like if I could just back out and pull out of the drive without having to navigate around a 24 row planter that was unfurled and ready to roll in the middle of the driveway.

Literally, the middle.

Now, I am terrible at backing out, which, as a farmer's wife especially, is not a good thing. I have to back out of all sorts of weird spots, but in the early morning light, a planter, the one that "needs to get going" (according to my grandpa yesterday in the same driveway...thus the earlier start time, perhaps?) shouldn't be run over by a mom, still bleary eyed and her SUV.

There's always something in my driveway: a semi, a chore truck, the chore tractor, a mower, a sprayer, the gas man, the pest guy, the sprayer...something. But, there are usually always little people in my driveway too, on scooters, bikes with and without training wheels, pushing dolly strollers, or pushing Jack in a stroller. While I have a hard and fast rule that my kids are to NOT be anywhere but our concrete pad when something is running in the driveway, it only takes a second for something to go awry.

However, one has to be able to retrieve the bouncy ball that rolled under the tire of the tractor, right? Kids have to be able to ride and run and play and chuck balls here and there, right? But, this is the home base for the farm. This is the place where all service calls are made by more trucks, where the guys come in to refuel, where the semis are parked.

So, what's a mother of toddlers and kids to do?

There's a lovely homestead we oooh and ahhh over as we drive to my in-laws. It is the same type of set up....gravel drive to the lovely landscaped machine shed, and the house directly in front of it. However, we noticed that there is now not only a lovely white rock driveway for the big equipment, but not also an even lovelier blacktop drive leading to the even lovelier landscaped and cute as a button house.

That lady, I assume, had had enough of fighting with the farmers in her driveway and stomped her foot and poured some asphalt.

Atta, girl!

Maybe I need to stomp my foot a little louder...

Nah, I'll continue to wage the parking war, and be the envy of all little boys of our friends as I get to look at the big tractors all day, every day.

Lucky me.

We're Waiting

That's the answer to the question that everyone has been asking me in regards to our planting schedule.

So, have you started yet? (guy at the gas station who evidently knows who I am despite my lovely post-run attire)
(me) We're waiting.

Hey! It's hot...isn't it time to get out there and get started? (lady at the gym upon finding out I am a farmer's wife)
(me) Yes, I know, it's 85 degrees. We're waiting.

Well, you never know what will happen in May...might just want to get some crop in the ground (guy at the gas station again, another post-run donut purchase)
(me)Thanks for the advice, I'll pass it along...(to myself, I'm certain they won't listen to me!!), but we're waiting.

Upon finally asking Joe what the heck the deal is with us not starting:
(Joe) We go by the date on the calendar, not the degrees on the thermometer.

We're all tired of answering these similar questions, because to the guys and now to me, it seems kind of obvious to me that we wouldn't plant until after the 20th of April.
The reasons being, but not limited to:

1)It's Illinois. The weather is fickle.
2) We're superstitious (read about it here).
3) We're not in a hurry.
4) Need I mention again that we live in Illinois...where some times there's snow in April??

Anyway, as much as the past few weeks of warmer weather has made me start to think about flowers and window washing, and all the joys that come with spring home ownership, I am not jumping the gun, either. I'm hopeful that the decision the guys have made around here to not start just yet won't come back to bite us in the end.

But, that's just another one of the joys of this beloved occupation.

The Day a Grain Farmer Helped a Livestock Farmer

Today we had a "round up." Calves were vaccinated and little boy calves were castrated (you can uncross your legs now, guys). Each calf had to be rounded up, processed, retagged with a "fly tag" (they have a red identification tag, and now an orange tag that will help keep flies at bay...I was excited because red and orange, among other saturated colors are so "in" this spring.).

This is not an easy job. This is definitely not a one-man job. This is a hard day of physically and mentally taxing work.

So, along with the vet and the vet tech, Joe enlisted the help of our landlord (a lifelong cattle man), my cousin, Anna, and my dad.

Yes, my dad.

The dad who didn't let us keep our kittens because they walked on the cars and made footprints.

Yes, the dad who tries really hard to like our dog.

Yes, the dad whose gene pool I share, as we are organized, meticulous, neat, and find animals to be difficult to enjoy, as they work against all of the aforementioned qualities (sorry animal lovers).

Anyway, I was down to just one kid, with the other two at Grandma's and Anna helping, so I spent my morning running up and down the stairs desperate to get the house in order before the girls came home. In my third trip up the stairs to put away the last few loads of laundry, I noticed the calves and their mamas headed down the pasture hill, in a neat order at a pretty quick pace. Not a stampede by any stretch of the imagination, but a good clip...in running terms, they were doing a tempo run.

Anyway, guiding the calves and mamas was Joe, waving his arms in a calm but forceful way, making the cattle call sounds that the animals know so well. They were calm. They knew where to go. They trusted Joe.

Bringing up the rear was my dad! I was so proud of him! He was waving his arms a bit, but mostly he was just walking alongside them. Now, Dad is not unfamiliar with animals. He grew up with a few "fat calves," as he calls them, and some pigs. The guy was an agriculture teacher for over 30 years, so he has some know-how on the animal science end of it all, but livestock farmers are not successful because they were necessarily A students in Animal Science 101. Rather, livestock farming and the mannerisms associated with it are innate.

The cattle trust Joe.

They recognize his voice, turning their heads even when his truck goes by.

My dad is a grain farmer. He is more comfortable walking fields, testing soils, watching the radar and utilizing GPS monitors for maximum crop production. This livestock business is a whole different breed (pardon the pun). The crossover of grain farmers helping livestock farmers is not something super common around us. Generally when Joe needs help, he enlists other cattle men and women around here, but today was different.

Today was fun to watch from my warm view at the top of my stairs.

Today was not only an inter-generational experience, but an experience where livestock and grain farmers crossed the great divide that separates them and worked together.