Busier than normal Fall

The past few weeks have been a blur. We are still basically setting up our business all the while operating it, and farming, and fathering. It is a Fall worth remembering for what we've accomplished, but it has been stressful and busy beyond belief.

Our milling building is nearing completion as far as being ready to accept new bagging equipment. We are also planning to renovate our mills for increased efficiency. Right now we are having to re-load the mills 40lbs at a time and I would like it if we could simply pour the amount of wheat that we need to mill and walk away. New hoppers on top of the stone mills will solve that problem. We've achieved our Food Safety grant, that was good news. Now we have a little help purchasing new bagging, mixing equipment along with some new bins and other infrastructure.

A view of the yard from our brand new grain bin

The harvest for 2012 is one I'd as soon forget. This past summer was simply too much rain, too much wind and too much hail. Yields were down as much as 80% in some fields due to flooding and then a late August hail storm. What wheat we did harvest appears to be very good quality. The protein is great and the appearance is as beautiful as ever. Looking forward to baking with it for sure. Still to harvest, after a killing frost, is the oats and the flax. We need the frost to kill the underseeded Red Clover. Once that happens, we'll have the ability to straight cut the crops with the combine and then use the grain drier before we store the crops. Again, the weather has been great, but we usually have a good frost in early to mid September. What a year we've had!

combining wheat

Looking back on mistakes made, some small successes, some advances made and hope that what we've accomplished this year will pay dividends in 2013.