FarmLife Tuesday Dec. 2

I have tried to come up with a better title for my Tuesday post about our farm life. I use the hashtag #FarmLife quite often and believe FarmLife Tuesday is a good fit. Now that it is getting colder, grabbing pictures on the farm may become a bit more challenging… We tend to work a bit faster. However, I can still share what we are up too. Maybe, since hubby is out on the farm more, I can get him to grab more pictures?

As I have blogged about before, our lives are centered around our farm. Therefore FarmLife Tuesday will really give you a look into the numerous things we work around to do the typical homeschool, house wife and childhood tasks.

We have all heard of wheat harvest, corn harvest and such. But, have you heard of cutting alfalfa for seed? We have spent the last two weeks bringing in alfalfa seed to be planted for new hay crops. Alfalfa is normally “harvested” or better said, swathed (mowing) into windrows and then baled into bales of hay. However, this type of harvesting does not allow for new seed to be planted, so sometimes when conditions are right farmers (who have the proper equipment) will take in their alfalfa for seed, rather than hay.

My husband is threshing Alfalfa seed. This is rather rare in our area. We are one of only two farmers in our community who are set up to thresh this tiny seed. Alfalfa seed is about the size of a mustard seed.

Our youngest daughter enjoying a rare 68 degree day in late November. She is sitting in a field of alfalfa that has already been through the machine.

Here you can see my husband in the combine. That header doesn’t look to be the normal header you think of when you think of a combine, does it? It is called a pick up head. It is used for crops that have been swathed and left to dry before being run through the combine. It has to pick the plants off the ground to thresh the seed out.

Due to some high winds the windrow that the swather had cut and laid blew all over the field. This made it impossible for the combine to pick it up and thresh the alfalfa seed. Our children used pitch forks and picked the hay back up and put it into the windrows, saving us hundreds of dollars in lost seed. This hard work has earned them a special day of fun… a Spring (or sooner if we have a very warm day) trip to the zoo.

One Sunday Afternoon we decided to try to get a quick family picture. Well, trying to get 9 people smiling and looking at the camera at the same time proved challenging. So, I resorted to fun… This is just taken with a 10 second delay. 😉

What would you like to see on FarmLife Tuesday? What picture above is your favorite?