Concrete, Grading, and Field Day

House changes are definitely more subtle now, the latest is getting the grading done around the house and putting in our concrete. It's very nice to have the use of our front door now and it's also helping a lot with the mud.

Here H is modeling one of our retaining walls, which was part of the grading work.

Here Z enjoys the freshly poured concrete ramp out front.

We've also been working on the trim in our house, here is trim with the quarter round we installed on it. 

We also are at the beginning of our production season, so here Ryan is rolling up some polyline in front of our chicken tractors. 

I was helping gather posts for him.

Z and H were out there "helping" too.

The other major event around here is that yesterday we hosted a Practical Farmers of Iowa field day on high tensile fence building. We had a little over twenty attendees come to learn about building fence and eat lunch at our new farm!

As you would expect, it was exciting and stressful and fun, and Ryan did a great job of teaching and facilitating discussion.

Ryan even managed to shock himself on a line during the workshop that shouldn't have been live. We met some people nearby, even a couple miles away, which was a great way to make connections in a new place.

The kids are doing well, here Z works with play-doh at the daycare he attends about one day every couple of weeks.

Here H found a farm kitty at the farm where we buy our feed, which was a highlight of her day. 

Lastly, we have found some pictures of Ryan from when he was just slightly younger than Z. See the resemblance?

PFI Conference & Mr. Fix-it

Last weekend was the annual PFI conference, at which they asked us to present! I love presenting. I know it's weird, but put me in front of a crowd of people and tell me to talk about something and I'm happy. 

I know, I really look happy in this picture, don't I?

There, that one's better. Hazel had a ball playing around and trying to steal the show.

We were presenting our business plan to a panel of experts, one of which was a small business financial expert in from Connecticut for the conference. 

We got some good feedback and people said our session was good. Hazel did not do well traveling, however. She just really didn't sleep on Friday night at all! It made for a long Saturday. 


One of the questions from the audience was something along the lines of asking if we were handy since we were doing things on a shoestring and I'm an engineer. Ha! I laughed out loud. It was very inappropriate. But when I recovered, I basically said that we either didn't do handyman type things, or we bartered product for them. Seriously, our tractor hasn't had an oil change since we got it. It's a miracle the thing runs. But then our dumb soft maple tree tangled its branches in our TV antenna on top of the garage.
This called for drastic measures.

So here's Mr. Fix-it on our garage roof, working it.

Go Ryan Go!

And now we have ABC back. I guess we can be handy when we have to be. 

Year End 2011: How are we doing? & Lamb Chops

I get this question all the time: How are you doing? And I don't mean psychologically or health-wise (although people are usually courteous enough to ask that too); I mean our business. So I feel close enough to all of you (and know most of you personally since that seems to be who reads this blog) that I'm going to share a little. 
It's been a rough year this year, as some of you know. We had 100% losses in our first two batches of broiler chickens and only about 5 layers survived from the 50 or so we started with. We also had TINY turkeys with an average weight of 8.2 lbs.

This is a picture of our milk crate hospital pen, there is a chicken in there in the middle of the shot, halfway into a cup holding feed. That's about as big as they got from that first batch. 
I know it sounds like I'm a little grim, sorry about that! I'm trying to be hopeful and look forward to this year when our brooder will be in our new chicken building!

This should help with the disease problems, which were a large portion of our losses. 


Ok, so now for some numbers. If numbers want to make you want to hurl, just scroll down a little for pictures of my first lamb chops and Hazel! 
2011 is the first year I was in charge of record-keeping and it's also the first year we're following the Schedule F form for taxes in our expense calculations. This is a HUGE improvement, so before this year's numbers I don't guarantee any of it (and I'm not really guaranteeing this year's either).
In 2008, our first year on this farm, we had $7800 in sales and $6500 in direct expenses for those sales. Then there's a bunch of supplies and fencing and capital stuff and all that rot for a net loss of $820. 
In 2009 we had $10800 in sales and $8000 in direct expenses. After all the other stuff including a $9000 fencing and water system (of which about half was reimbursed by Uncle Sam) we had a net loss of $8000. Actually, that's not too bad considering the capital expense.
In 2010 we had $17000 in sales and $13700 in direct expenses. After all the miscellany including $1200 for a tractor swap and $3000 in cows we come to a net loss of $4200. 
In 2011 we had $13300 in sales and $9500 in direct expenses. After all the other stuff including $5000 for the new building we have a net loss of $3000. 


So how are we doing? I'm not sure. I've never done this new business thing before. I know you're not really supposed to make money until at least year 5 if not year 7 or 8, but I certainly would like to be closer to breaking even than we are. Of course, this is without taking out truck mileage or accounting for labor (that's free, right?). This year I think we would have made money even with the building expense if our turkeys had been "normal" and our chickens hadn't died in droves. In the spirit of the end-of-the-year wrap ups, I'm going to try to put 2011 behind us and look forward to 2012!


Are you interested in this info? Or is it just TMI and everyone scrolled past it?


Now, as promised, here is a picture of the lamb chops I cooked up!

They were rubbed with a mint sauce/rub, and served with some golden potatoes. Totally completely awesome. They practically melted in our mouths. Ryan suggested I cook some because until now we've just sold them without ever having made them! He's right, of course. Here's the whole rack, in a less presentation conscious arrangement:

We may not be making money yet with our business, but I tell you the perks are un-freaking-believable!

And now for the Hazel pics of the day. We were folding laundry and tossed a Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) T-shirt on her. Ryan wears these constantly and has 4 or 5 of them. So here's our future practical farmer:

We're going to the PFI conference in a couple of weeks, I'll try to remember to report in on it. 

I think you are probably aware we just had Christmas. Therefore, we need an obligatory opening presents pic of the munchkin. 

Lucky you, we even got Nermal in the shot!

Farmer's wife

Yesterday around midnight I posted on Facebook the following status:
I am officially a farmer's wife. I have now been crapped on by a chicken while trying to get a weak newborn lamb to nurse. 


One of my friends responded that she wasn't sure what the bar was for the title of "Farmer's Wife," but that one seemed like a good one. This made me reflect on the question: when did I really feel like a farmer's wife? So here is my list, in the order I thought of them, of times I felt like a farmer's wife. 


1. My first Thanksgiving, cooking a turkey we raised for 14 people
There's just something about cooking the Thanksgiving turkey and hosting everyone at my house that always makes me feel like a matriarch, in the nicest possible way.

2. Building a storage tower for my quilting projects out of milk crates
I can't take a picture of this one for you because my daughter is asleep upstairs where this is. But trust me, I built it from milk crates and ny-ties, and it's classy.


3. Helping a ewe give birth
My regular blog readers know about this one. It was an . . . interesting . . . evening. I won't repost the picture here because it's kinda gooey.


4. The day I went into labor and got to the hospital an hour late because a ewe was also in labor
Yep, this one is true. I called Ryan who was out in the pasture from the passenger seat and said, "I need you in here NOW!"


5. The afternoon I came home from work early because the cows were out
I blogged about this one too. There's a trend here.

6. When I patched my husband's Carhartts
I used a pair of jeans he wore out. Then he promptly ripped the Carhartts again, right above the patch.

 Also, I should have a sub-bullet here for the PFI patch. Ryan's Carhartts aren't complete without it. 

7. When I bought my rubber boots
I bet you can guess which ones are mine. I decided that even though I'd need rubber boots, they didn't have to be totally ugly. 

As I wrote this list, I realized I already blogged about quite a few of these. When I was pregnant, one of Ryan's friends told him that you don't become a dad right when the baby is born. You pretend to be a dad for a while and one day you wake up and realize you are one. 


I think this is the same way.

A Special Guest & It's still wet out here

Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time. This happened to us on July 30th, when we took Hazel to her first Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) field day.

Hazel's first PFI field day

So while we were standing around with some of the PFI staff, one of them mentioned that Temple Grandin was flying in a day early for her field day on Tuesday and they didn't know what do with her on Monday. Of course, I joked that she was welcome to visit our farm. Next thing I knew, she was coming to see our farm on Monday and I was feeding her dinner! Ryan's mother was reading her book at the time and came down, and so did a fellow farmer of ours who found out about it. We ended up having 8 people for dinner and a lovely time. Moral of the story: go to PFI field days!

Ryan, Temple, Janice, & Hazel

Have I mentioned before it's been a wet year here? 

Oh, I have? Well, it has. Very wet. We're just now starting to make the news, but I took some pictures even before Ames went under. 

Our yard. The "creek" was a path once

We have springs forming in our lawn.

By our old well housing

Note the flowing water. And the sand. 

Looking at the compost pile

If the picture looks "foggy," it's because the lens of the camera is fogging up due to the heat and humidity. Makes for a really quality picture doesn't it?

Our whole yard

This is the whole yard from the front porch. Again with the fogginess. Spot the cat says hello too. 

When I was looking through pictures the other day, I found one from 2008.

Yard in 2008

Yeah, remember 2008? Our other record flooding year? Someday, perhaps it will look this way again. In the meantime, watch out for the cattails.