From the Barns: All in the timing

Having just returned from two weeks of R & R in Gulf Shores, Alabama, I can’t help but share a few thoughts I have about that time spent. These have no scientific basis, nor is there data to substantiate them.

• After a time away, no matter how long or for what purpose, I am always happier to get my boots back on the ground in western Illinois.

• This is really a big country, so as one travels, things change a lot.

• The folks in the South work different and eat different and talk different than we do here in the Midwest.

• The highway departments in Mississippi apparently have no snow equipment or salt for roads or streets or parking lots. This became reality as we drove from Memphis to Grenada in a two track, with the passing lane on I-55, three inches of packed snow.

• There is a lot of commerce going on in the South. Is everyone moving there for warmer temperatures?

• The trucks in this country haul everything to everyone. They fill the interstate system at times, but they drive carefully and skillfully.

• Some of the soils in the South are really red. I guess there is not really much composing organic matter to change that? Our black dirt is not as pretty, but we will prefer it always.

• The grazers of Mississippi are usually surrounded by acres and acres of pine forests that seem to be harvested for the poles and posts.

• The seafood of the Gulf Coast is always very satisfying.

• The locals in the South are very tolerant of snowbirds clogging up their streets, restaurants and stores.

The winter grazing season here at River Oak ended rather abruptly this year, with wet snow, followed by the deep freeze crusting everything. We were just a handful of days from a really good season when all that came. Carson needed to get his prime group of February-calving cows moved back to the new calving barn anyway and the 70 head left here have settled in just fine to the lots and sacrifice area and are also beginning to calve.

We are thinking very seriously about starting frost seeding early this year, like in the next week or two. All the long-range forecasts seem to say that we are in for warmer, drier conditions going forward toward spring. If this is what we have, it is important to get that clover seed down and hope for moisture enough, along with freezing and thawing temperatures to get enough soil contact for germination.

At the same time, I am holding out hope to have the conditions to cut brush and also get the dead ash trees cut and either delivered for harvest or burned. We know everything in agriculture is about timing, just can’t get too stressed about these tasks being dependent on weather and availability of equipment and labor.

February and March are always great months to take in beef cattle and grazing events:

• Feb. 17 — Southern Iowa Grazing Conference in Bloomfield. One of our Grazing Group Leaders in the Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition, Dan Dietrich, will be one of the speakers.

• Feb. 22-25 — Illinois Beef Expo!

• March 12-13 — The Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition Inaugural Grazing Conference: The Hidden Benefits and Profitability of Illinois Grazing Operations, at the Northfield Inn in Springfield, with featured speaker Dr. Allen Williams. For more information and to register, go to www.illinoisgrazingconference.com no later than March 1. The conference is a must-attend event for grazers, farmers, lenders, landowners, extension and government personnel, agriculture educators, conservationists, processors and others interested in the economics and profitability of land use in the next generation.

See you at these events, be sure and say hello. In the meantime, stay safe and sane.