this old barn
It took a few days to clean out the barn floor that had compacted sheep manure in it that possibly dated back twenty years. The large barn on the farmstead was built in 1860 when the first farmers started to settle in Iowa. They built these huge two story barns with their bare hands and […]
natural fertilizer…poop
Animal poop contains nitrogen, the key nutrient that soils need to grow plants. We shovel the sheep manure up and spread it on a field nearby in areas that need the extra fertilizer. Many farmers use the manure from their cattle or hog facilities to spread on their fields, yet it is not enough for […]
the harvest process
The corn, and this goes for soybeans too, is picked by a combine that magically takes each ear of corn, strips it of its husks, shucks each ear of its kernels and collects them in a large bushel bin. When the bin is full, the combine dumps it in a wagon sitting at the end […]
corn, corn and more corn
We started harvesting corn soon after the soybeans were delivered or stored away. Again, the harvest of corn went very smoothly, with dry days and long full days to bring it all in for storage. More and more farmers are growing corn to keep up with the world demand. Some farmers have started to move […]
Harvest September 2010
We made it to Iowa just in time to prepare for the 2010 corn and soybean harvest. It was work that I had been used to because for the past seven or so Octobers, I had traveled back to Iowa for a month to help. But for Johnny, it was all new. This past fall […]
the beginning
I have to start from the beginning because there is a lot that has been missed since my boyfriend, Johnny and I moved to Iowa from our home in Southern California. So I’m backing up a few months, bear with me. We left the sandy beaches of SoCal the end of August 2010 and moved […]