Farm Winter Recap

by | May 20, 2016 | Winter | 0 comments

Now that spring is well underway, I thought it was time to do a farm winter recap. Winter is by far our slowest season. Our crops are all harvested and the ground is frozen. We won’t be able to get back into the fields until the very end of winter, or the beginning of spring some years. While I look at winter as our time to re-energize for next year, there are some things we like to get done in the winter.

Bee Prep

Our biggest project this winter was building new bee huts. We are adding more acres of alfalfa seed in the spring, which requires more bees and more bee huts.

We also take all of our bee blocks to our bee incubation guy who pokes the bee larvae out and gets them ready to be incubated for our alfalfa seed crop this coming year. Once they are poked out, they are x-rayed. This tells us how many live bees we have, so we know how many more new bees we need to get for the upcoming year. Our bee incubator guy will put our bees in trays and incubate them. We tell him when the crop is ready for them, and he adjusts the temperature accordingly for them to hatch at that time. To read about the bee’s journey last year, check out alfalfa seed pollination.

Shop Work

The winter is also a great time to do maintenance on our equipment. We make sure the tractors and combine are serviced and do any repairs they may need. This winter we installed some specialty parts on our combine that will help it perform better in alfalfa seed harvest. We also get equipment ready for planting, so once it warms up we are ready to hit the fields.

Book Work

winter 4Call me a nerd, but this is one of my favorite things to do! Although, I do have to say that I enjoy this a lot more on the good years. I am very specific when I do my books throughout the year, so I know exactly how much every field made for that year. This also makes it easier for me when I do the projected cash flow for the next crop year. A few things I do at the end of every year are the balance sheet, actual income & expenses for the year, and projected cash flow for the upcoming year. This is also the time we figure out our crop plan for the upcoming year.

Family Vacation

Last, but certainly not least, vacation!! Of course this is probably my favorite. 🙂 This year was really nice because we went to Florida and the weather was perfect!!

Here are some fun pictures from our vacation:

winter-5


winter-9

Our winter seemed really short this year, and it warmed up pretty early.  We were able to get back into the fields in February.  I will be doing a post soon on what we have been up to since then. Thanks for reading and hope your winter was great!

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