Octoberrrrrrrr.

The weather here is still a bit on the cold side. We had another frost on Sunday morning that took out a bunch of our tomato plants. Also the grass growth is pretty slow due to the cold days, low soil temperatures, and cloudy weather. The thing that helped our grass growth out this month though was a product sprayed on the pastures called Projib which basically is a cheap way to make the grass grow faster after it is grazed. We had a few warm days and it looks like the rest of this week is going to be really nice. We have gotten a lot of rain recently which is nice since it helped to put off irrigating on the farm for two more weeks. 

We have ONE MORE cow to calve yet out of the 800. So calving is pretty well officially over. We are all starting to take a bit of time off to recoup and get ready for mating season to start on the 25th. Brittany and I are going to take 6 days off next week to go to the Fiordlands to do some hiking, cruising and sight-seeing. It will be a great time and something to look forward to on the blog! 

The newest things we are doing now on the farm are getting our cows fed to be in the right condition for mating and also weed control. As many of you know I am very passionate about weed control so it is a fun one for me. Most of the weed control right now is for thistles that are popping up in the pastures. We use a nifty little tool that we carry on our motorbikes to cut them off below the ground and get the root out. Later on this season we will be using chemicals (should be more fun!) We are also spraying everything along the lanes with roundup to keep the farm looking tidy. One weed we will be focusing on eradicating is gorse. It is a woody, thorny brush type plant that is very invasive and grows everywhere, it also doesn't know how to die! I also have been learning about how to treat cows with lame hooves. We treated several cows that had stones in their feet and had white line disease. Most of the problems stem from pressuring the cows to much while getting them into the parlor to be milked and from oth

The next time I right I should have a lot more interesting topics but I hope this is enough for now.