Tic, Tac, Toe anyone?

It's been a few weeks since we completed this massive tic-tac-toe board.  What a relief it was to finally finish. But doesn't it look pretty?  I am all about making things look nice.  This is a nice 'nine-patch' with some of Dayna's outdoor twister discs used instead of x's and o's for the game.  Don't worry, no-one won the game.  Besides, I was just playing against myself!  This is what the close up is like...then a view from farther away...and farther... and farther!

 In my naivety I had looked forward to the corn silage harvest thinking that since we needed two less people (no one needed to cut or invert as we do with haylage) things would run quickly and smoothly.  On the whole things ran quite smoothly.  Long and smoothly.  Like, really long and smoothly.  Which after a while doesn't really feel so smooth anymore. Acres and acres of corn hauled home to fill up these 'bunks' for winter feed.  Notice how we are making bigger bunks all the time?  Maybe we are getting better at it.  Besides these four bunkers we have several 'piles' that we made out on the ground.  And there is another bunker of haylage and two large upright harvestore silos that are full now too!  A milking herd of 190 plus all their 'followers' means lots of food put up into storage for the winter!  I won't be as naive next fall.  I was able to put in a lot of milking shifts.  I was ok with that.  It was cooler out.  This farmer isn't into working in 30+ degree weather.  I will let you know about working in -30 degrees after the winter. 

After the corn silage was done, we had a couple days off and Dave went out in the combine to finish off our last acres of corn for high moisture corn.  And that took a few days and then WE WERE DONE HARVEST for the WHOLE year!  Yippeee. And we finished off the new 'up close/calving barn' so we can use that too.  Now the jobs are to spread the manure, work the fields and clean out the pens!  But this is good.  The guys stop to come in for meals and do the milking with our hired milkers and even have naps once in a while to catch up on something called sleep.  They don't do a whole lot of that...more next year, I am hoping!