Harvest on the Farm
The air is crisp. The leaves have fallen. The beans and the corn are drying down. And we’re shifting into high gear to get everything in the bin before snow flies.
While we normally think of harvest in the fall, for us, harvest starts as early as May or June! Bringing any crop in from the field in whatever form is harvest! First, we harvest our hay in several cuttings. The first cutting of hay is ready around the end of May or beginning of June. We chop our first cutting for hay silage. We run it through our chopper wet and put it in a pile to ferment for the cattle to eat. Haylage is nutrient dense and great for our cattle and milk! We usually get 2-3 more cuttings of hay and those we often let dry and bale for our steers and young stock and heifers throughout the winter and when the grass isn’t as abundant in the summer. Alfalfa hay is great for the butter fat in our cow’s milk! It’s also rich in calcium. We do have to be careful how much alfalfa a pregnant cow eats though due to it’s calcium content. If a cow eats too much calcium rich foods like alfalfa, her body is more likely to dramatically slow it’s own production of calcium. When she goes into labor and starts making milk, her calcium needs skyrocket. If her body isn’t making it, she will fall into milk fever which is when her body has hit extremely low levels of calcium.
Around August, if we plant them, we combine oats. This is the first time our combine gets out in the field for the year. The oats give us two benefits. First, the fruit or the grain portion of the oat we use in our feed for our calves and young stock. Second, we bale the stalk for straw for bedding. Not every year we need to plant oats, but this year we did!
Next, in September or October, we chop corn silage! This is also nutrient dense for our cattle and they love it! The neat thing about corn silage versus combining corn is that the whole stalk and fruit is used in corn silage whereas combining leaves the stalk and only takes the corn. Besides the roots, the whole plant is put to use to make cattle feed. This also ferments before the cows eat it. We like corn silage for our pregnant heifers and cow too because they are less likely to get milk fever if given feed like a corn silage and ground corn mix. Corn silage doesn’t have the calcium content that alfalfa does therefore the cow’s body will continue to produce calcium on it’s own. Corn silage is carb heavy and gives both our pregnant cows and our lactating cows the energy they both need to give birth and produce milk.
Next we get into the crops we often think of when we think of harvest: soybeans and corn! And these tend to happen during the “normal” harvest times: October, November, and December. We combine beans first for a couple reasons. One, they’re ready first! Beans dry down faster than corn and often don’t need to be run through the dryer before being put in the bin. Second, if it snows on beans, it could ruin your crop and lower your yields. We sell most of the soybeans we grow. We do roast a some of them to add to our cattle feed. This adds protein and some fat to the cow’s diet and helps her overall be more heathy!
Lastly, we combine corn! Combining corn is more intense of a process than beans. The yield is significantly higher than beans making it a constant need to refresh the wagons in the field. We also dry our corn a bit so that it doesn’t mold in the bins. This keeps everyone very busy and somewhat sleep deprived while we do corn! Again, the majority of our corn gets sold as a commodity. But we do grind some for our milk cows’ and dry cows’ feed and put some into the grain mixture we give our steers, young stock, and claves. Corn gives them a good balance of protein and carbohydrates and essential fatty acids.
Harvest is crazy for any and all farmers. But it is especially tough on farmers with livestock! The crops have a time frame they need to be done it, but the animals needs are always so urgent. While the hustle of crops is the same for the farmers with livestock, the work is doubled as they not only need to be in the fields but also need to be tending to the needs of their animals.
Dairy and crop farmers like us are in pure survival mode during fall harvest especially. Going from one crop harvest to another basically from planting on is exhausting! Once we get to the long corn days and still having to milk twice a day, we’re living on a prayer as Bon Jovi has said.
But, man, it is the most rewarding tired you’ll ever feel as you slump into bed on that last day of harvest after the cows are all milked and everything is put away. You rest easy knowing that your cattle have food, you have crops in the bin, your family has been provided for, and you have slower days are ahead. Maybe we’re crazy for loving this exhausting life of livestock and crops. Maybe we’re just crazy in love with the land, the animals, and this way of life.
