Update

Alright, folks, so it has obviously been longer than a week since I last posted.  Overall, things have been going pretty well.  I have decided two very important things over the last ten days or so:  trying to study for the GRE further would result in diminishing returns and spending too much time in your head causes more stress than is necessary.  Both led me to the conclusion that I need to just relax and rejuvenate.  Not worry about things beyond my control.  Take some time for myself.   Be kind to myself.  Actually put myself in the forefront without too much reflection or analysis.  The last few days have been really great as a result of my doing these things.  I've been able to think about other things and I realized that I haven't given ya'll a farm update in a long while.  So, just for something a bit more light-hearted, here's what's been going on at Scattered Acres.

We have officially begun harvest.  All of the soybeans at the home place are cut and processed.  Our yields were so good that we had to sell two wagon loads because we didn't have the storage space in our corn crib.  We were lucky to have gotten rain when we did over the summer, especially in late August, when the beans were setting pods.  We have begun picking corn, and while the yields are lower than usual, that was expected given this year's drought.  We are much better off than many farmers in Illinois. Conditions were so bad by mid-July that many had to chop their entire crop into silage in an attempt to get any good from it at all.  We haven't been in the field over the last few days because of rain, but my dad is content with our pace for the harvest, which is all that matters.

We have also been thinking ahead to winter; moving equipment back into storage, shuffling animals around to more appropriate barns, selling as many animals as are fat enough to sell, etc.  After taking a cull cow and seven fat cattle to the sale barn on Wednesday, we combined the two pens of feeder cattle together, opening up one pen in preparation for weaning our homegrown calves and my mom's bucket calves.  The bucket calves have already been moved to their new home, but we will wait a few more weeks to wean our calves from the herd.  Once we finish picking corn in one field, we will graze the cow herd in that field, so the calves will have grow a bit more before having their diet changed exclusively to grain.  We have also moved the ten replacement ewe lambs back over to the sheep house with the fat market lambs.  We have to wait until the week of Thanksgiving before we can sell the market lambs, since they aren't fat enough yet due to lack of grass over the summer.  Once they sell, though, we will bring the bred ewes over to the sheep house.  My mom is also cutting back her chicken flock in preparation for winter.  Not only have her new hens begun laying, but the price of feed has risen a fair bit, making it financially unwise to winter all those birds.

In other news, we have purchased two new pieces of equipment which ought to make our lives much better in the coming years.  Over the summer we purchased new concrete feeding bunks for the south feeder yard, and the gentleman we bought those from had a friend who was selling out of livestock.  We ended up purchasing his silage chopper.  That will be great for next summer given how many problems our chopper gave dad this year.  We also just purchased another skid-steer loader, which will replace two our of loaders that are less-than-user-friendly.  As a result of these new implements, we will be selling the old pieces as well as a few other implements that have been taking up space in the shed but have not been used in years.  It will be very exciting to sort through these implements this winter and get rid of them.

Otherwise, things on the farm as the same as they usually are.  The seasons pass and we hope we can finish everything that needs to get done in a reasonable amount of time without too many mishaps.  It's hard to believe that it nearly the end of October, though.  Frost and snow will be here before we know it!