High Grove Farm Journal – Oct. 2022

Nov 08, 2022 (Westby, WI)

By Jessica Rogers

Autumn on the farm – one of my favorite times of the year! With it brings the culmination of a whole spring and summer’s worth of hard work growing and tending crops at our beloved High Grove Farm. Harvest is a labor intensive, and sometimes stressful, time on a farm but we are thankful that ours went well. Although, we’re happy to be finished with it! We’re also thankful for friends and family that were able to lend us some farm equipment. And we were blessed with help from a few other farmers and the chopping crew to move things along. Now that the farm is stocked up for the long winter months, we are feeling prepared for the cold season ahead, which requires feeding all our animals extra well.

We wrapped up our last harvest of the season this month.

Drew finished no-till seeding the ground with cover crops, and the remaining fields of corn stalks were chopped and baled into fodder bales that we will use for bedding. That was the last of harvesting at our place. However, our list of priorities is still long. We have a lot of preparing to do to the facilities and some fence repairs before the real cold comes. Also, now that all the equipment is being used less with harvest complete, we need to do maintenance and oil changes on them. I say “we,” but I mean Drew.

Nature has so many lessons in it and when I saw this, I ran to get out my big camera and zoom lenses to capture these guys busy storing away nuts for the winter in this cozy hole in the oak tree. They waste no time storing up for winter. Every single day they’re out there working efficiently and with purpose! I could learn a lot from them.

This week Drew worked on splitting more firewood and throwing it down into the basement by the wood stove for us to use soon. I’ve been catching up on housework, putting away outside furniture and all of the garden things. While we work, the road past our place has been busy with all the neighboring farms harvesting their crops and the grain trucks whizzing back and forth with loads all day. It is a busy but fulfilling time of year in the countryside.

Drew hard at work so we can have a warm house all winter.

All our older heifers that we had on rented pasture for the summer are home now, and we are so happy to have the girls back. They look so big and have grown so much! We spent an afternoon spreading out fresh screenings in the cow yard and then fenced it off to let it harden and set to prepare it for a long winter of daily use. Drew moved equipment under shelter and put away as much as he could to keep things safe and out of the weather. I’m sure there are a ton of other things that will need to be done for winter that I am forgetting – but like everything on a farm – they will get done eventually.

The girls out sunbathing any chance they can get.

We are still letting the cows out onto pasture during the day but there isn’t as much in them now for the girls to eat. So, they are let out for shorter amounts of time and only into certain ones. But they love it so much and run and jump, and when they get tired, they sprawl out in the sunshine just happy as can be.

Well, thank you for stopping by! I better go keep busy. There’s lots to do before that dreaded snow starts to fly.

-Jessica Rogers is a Westby Creamery farmer-owner who is sharing glimpses of farm life with us.

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