This weekend in the kingdom

Cold weekend for the king with freezing temps every night. Goin to freeze again tonight then warm up finally. Started by cleaning the hog pens. There are definitely going to be some improvements in the cleaning process before the next batch. Lol. Wasn't much, half a dozen wheel borrow loads, but I will get the gutters filled and the door enlarged so I can use the tractor or maybe a skid loader. Kings don't really care for manual labor. Lol.




Hogs are looking good, took the first three in on Sunday to become bacon. Hence today's funny. Lol





Found out all the butcher shops are now booked til next year. That is going to be a problem for my plans. Especially since I told my guys I was going to be a regular customer and had steers coming in the fall and was going to keep doing hogs. If I get pushed out now by all the Johnny come latelys I'll be a bit upset. Oh well, I'm sure life will go on either way.

Worked on my heavy disc that needed work. It had a broken blade and some bad bearings and it also had an issue with ridging on the sides I couldn't adjust out. So I pulled the front gangs and replaced the blade and cut down the last three blades to 22, 20, and 18" and put in 4 new bearings because that's all I could get







Works good now. Used it on some corn stalk ground.







With 24" blades and solid frame it really cuts. I went over that field twice and then once with the light disc and had a nice seed bed. Was a FULL load for the 1030 tho, it's 15' wide.

Tried to get the rest of the corn planted but snow put an end to that with a few rounds left.




Didn't get much moisture, maybe a quarter of an inch, so hopefully get the rest done tonight or tomorrow.

Once that's done I'll be after finishing the cattle fence, manure spreader, and getting hay equipment ready. Will need to spray weeds too. If there is no rest for the wicked I must be really wicked.

Lotta work Jon, you need Minions!

great pictures!The hogs grew really well!! I like your dump truck in the first picture,,I have a license to drive one of those,,wish I Could come help you

Same boat as you concerning slaughter, can't get any steers in until next February at the earliest.

Well you can always hoist them up with the loader and butcher them yourself ?

I've been making my appointments a year ahead for my beef as I was instructed by my processor to do so. I'll be going in their next week and will make my appointments for next summer, the calves I'll be taking were just born a couple months ago. I made appointments for a couple extra steers this year and glad I did. I brought a couple extra market steers to fill my orders and could sell more if I could get them processed.

Things are a little crazy right given the current situation we are in. Your not alone, all the packing houses around me are booked for the year. I don't expect them to tell someone they can't process their animal after they made an appointment because a regular customer calls and wants some animals processed.

Really good looking hogs and that disc is getting down and dirty!

I really enjoy these posts, looking good.

I heard on the news that the govt is going to buy up surplus livestock
in order to keep the prices up. I assume they will be trucked out to
some desert military base and disposed of.

Beautiful homestead!

No rest for the wicked and The righteous don?t need any .

My beef customers are picking their beef up at the butcher shop right now, and the new load of calves arrived yesterday. I'll call the butcher today or tomorrow to schedule these for next March, hopefully. We had a shop close up about 60 miles away and that has swamped my guy.

As far as on-farm butchering, when compared to the job my guy does, I could never recreate that here. I don't have the clean facilities nor tools. No cooler for dry aging, no freezer and vacuum packing. These are things today's customer expects, and they are willing to pay the price. Plus, it is really hard work. He earns about $400 per animal on my herd, and that seems cheap to me considering the facilities and labor force.

]I wish he could upgrade the office staff to more computer-oriented. One site in Minnesota near where my wife is from, has online farmer customer lists and customer cutting instructions performed online. Plus, their meat market is HUGE!

I've been at the shop on "kill day", and that's a lot to dispose of, even one cow's stuff much less 16 (in my case).

Yes, it would be possible. Would I plan to do it that way, not a chance.