Rain rain go away

Three years of rain, then three years of drought, and now back to nonstop rain. If there is such a thing as a “normal” year, we haven’t even had anything close to the middle of the climate bell curve lately. Minnesota may be considered a land of extremes but this is getting a bit too extreme for my liking.

We got almost all our first crop of hay put up with the exception of five acres a neighbor lets us cut twice a year that never was dry enough to cut. It took from the 25th of May to mid-June to get it up with all the rain delays. There was also a record amount of hay out in the fields, which adds time to harvesting. The quality of the feed was not stellar. Had we been able to put it up when we wanted to, not over a week past its prime, I think the quality would have been pretty good based on how the cows were milking from what they were eating out in the pastures. 

Every spring it’s so fun to watch the pounds of milk in the tank climb and climb as the pastures increase in quantity and quality. It’s not so much fun when the day arrives that the pastures have hit their peak and start to drop off in quality due to maturity. This year they really dropped off thanks to seeing so few days of sun and constantly saturated soils. We started cutting first crop a few days after the pasture milk yield had hit the peak but only managed to get 25% or so done before an extended rain delay. The rest was put up as the milk in the tank was sliding quickly back down to the average and then below average.

Last week I temporarily fenced in part of a hay field to graze because we are missing a number of days’ worth of pasture rotation thanks to flooding and stunted growth due to saturated soils even on sidehills. The cows responded well to grazing the hay field and went up a couple pounds per cow. I’m hopeful that means there will be some quality feed when we get a chance to cut second crop this week. There is the prediction of rain for the next three days but I think I’ll just take the chance and go knock down 30 acres today. The field I plan to start with is on sandy ground by Lakeville so even if it does downpour again, we should be able to bale and wrap the hay shortly afterwards. 

We’ll see if the opportunity presents itself to make some dry hay, but I won’t be surprised if that doesn’t happen. We usually try to put up a couple thousand small squares for feeding calves and it gets hard to do later in the year as the days get shorter. Many of our neighbors have small horse farms and put up two crops of grassy dry hay per year. I don’t think any of them have gotten a chance to do even their first cutting yet. There’s going to be some unhappy horses around our area this winter if it doesn’t quit raining for a bit so they can get that stuff put up. 

I’m no longer concerned about how dry the subsoil is anymore. It can quit raining for a couple weeks. I don’t see that happening with the current weather pattern, but a person can dream, can’t they? Best of luck to everyone on getting second crop put away with the minimum number of times you have to break out chains or a strap because that spot that looked OK wasn’t. Until next time, keep living the dream and make sure you know when to stop spinning the tires before being a little stuck turns into really, really stuck.

Tim Zweber farms with his wife, Emily, their three children and his parents, Jon and Lisa, near Elko, Minnesota.