Working Hard: Cutting Oats, Planting Corn
This time of the year is very busy for most dairy farmers, and our farm is no exception. We have been diligently harvesting our winter crop and planting corn.
During the winter, we grow oats and rye grass. Then summer is when we grow corn. So we have been very busy cutting the oats, and planting the corn.
You can actually read more about how we harvest our crop in my posting from last year about growing food for cows.
**Left: Harvesting the this years crop. Right: My sister working hard while checking the corn that’s coming up**
Strange Weather in California
It turned out to be a very interesting year this year weather wise. Like I mentioned in one of my previous postings this year, this year was unusually dry. We had very few storms here in California. We went through December, January, February, and March without seeing much rain. In fact, many farmers in our area had to irrigate their winter crop. Usually the rain does the work for us watering the fields, but not this year.
We had so little rain, that farmers in California were getting very concerned. If there wasn’t enough rain, many farmers would not get enough water to irrigate their crops in the summer. This would come on the heels of so many environmental regulations restricting water use for farming. Many environmental groups have been very successful at cutting water use for farming. Instead they would rather see water flowing out to the ocean instead of being used to grow food. This had many farmers worried about their future, and whether they would be able to grow a crop this year.
A Good Year
Thankfully, we had some very wet storms in April bringing much needed water. Many farmers breathed a sigh of relief. It rained so hard that our winter crop grew pretty significantly after the storms. So we had a pretty good crop this year.
I took some pictures of this years crop. I think they make good screensavers. If you like them, let your friends know!
