We rounded out spring with an amazing plant sale, 12 bouncing lambs and 4 healthy calves. Unfortunately, we never really received "spring showers". Thankfully, we got .11" of rain last week, but that's all we've gotten since the snow melted (when we had flooding.) Add in unseasonably hot temperatures, smoke from Canadian wildfires, and a bumper crop of mosquitoes, we're struggling here.
We're irrigating our pastures as much as we can, balancing those with the pumpkin fields and vegetables, but it's just not enough. We are grazing the animals in our woods, which gives them a bit of relief from the heat and lots of opportunities to scratch and rub mosquitoes off. We have learned a lot, coming off of two summers of drought, but this started immediately after the flood levels receded this spring, and we didn't have a chance to get everything up and running before summer hit.
With no rain in the forecast for the next two weeks, just yesterday, we made the decision to feed the livestock hay for the summer. We will still continue to graze the animals in the woods, but hoping that the irrigation efforts will pay off for later summer. With this decision, comes the price tag of having to pay twice as much for feeding each animal. We more than likely will have some hard decisions to make over the next few weeks, and be possibly selling lambs/calves that we would normally retain, and selling our herd and flock sizes down.
We also decided to only raise turkeys for sale for this fall, as we can't put chickens on the pasture (and don't know when we'll be able to). We will be taking deposits on those shortly.
It feels like if we just hold on a bit longer, we'll make it through this, (after all, we've made it this far!) but, we still have to pay bills, and our hay supplier needs to get paid. It's heartbreaking. We've worked so hard. We've strategically grown so that we have happy, healthy, and friendly animals that thrive in our harsh environments. We love these animals deeply and have deep bonds with them, so to have to decide who moves to a new farm is hard. Please be praying for us, and that things turn around soon. ~Katie
