Planning for the fall

Its hard to mention and in fact, I could lose my loyal readers, but the sad fact is that fall is coming.

While we applauded the coming of spring at its beginning (remember March - wasn't that terrific), signs are all around us that the seasons are in transition.

I know, I heard today's forecast and believe me, after fencing the past week, I know all about the heat, mosquitoes and other forest hazards.

Call it a hunch, a farmer's intuition or perhaps I'm just a little loony. I just feel that Mother Nature will have quite hot and then BOOM!, it will really cool down.

This will be of great relief to the cows. They can tolerate the heat, but only for so long. Moving them into a new paddock is critical for the fact that shade needs to exist. Sometimes I can get lucky and shade is in the paddock and sometimes they need to stay together.

The flies have been an issue. One of my purchases for next year will be humane fly traps that I hope will alleviate some of the discomfort for the cattle. I would pursue this now, but funding is being devoted to the house.

One of the plans for the fall will be the planting of winter wheat on top of ground that's been eroded due to the constant planting of corn (3+ years in a row). We'll speak more to that later.

For now, its off to chores, phone calls and oh yeah, fencing.