Twin Creeks Farms- Wesley Stephens and Bethany Stephens

We are thankful to report that we finally have a front-end loader on one of our tractors. As is the case with most of our equipment, the tractor was purchased about 40 years ago, but we have never had a loader. To make a long story short, we found a good deal on a used one that would fit and got it mounted and working with very little trouble by our standards. The method we have been using for handling silage has been effective but slow, and having this loader will make that chore much more efficient, not to mention the other uses for it that will inevitably appear. We have also made the decision to have 3 more hogs processed into sausage the week after Thanksgiving. We are going to give a lot away as Christmas presents to our friends and we will have some for sale, also. As Thanksgiving approaches and we look back on 2009, we can come to no other conclusion than that it has been a good year and the stage is set for a good 2010. We are looking forward to new ventures and projects in the for the rest of 2009 and into the new year, and we hope that the future continues to be bright for us and all of the other farmers out there.

This fall continues to be our busiest ever. Our winter pastures are turning green and looking very nice and we are taking the first 3 beeves of the fall to be processed tomorrow. Traditional country sausage is very popular in our area, especially around the holidays, and it is hard to find good quality home-style sausage. We will be taking some hogs to be made into sausage the week after Thanksgiving, and we are hoping for a good response from it. We are also getting some broiler chicks in the next few weeks and we will be selling them in early 2010. We have slaughtered small numbers of chickens on the farm in the past, but we are excited to be able to offer inspected and vacuum packed chicken either as whole birds or parts.

We were hoping for a little rain to make our winter wheat get off to a good start, but it's looking like the remnants of Ida are going to give us a good soaking. I won't complain, though. Two years ago the soil was like walking through flour when we planted our winter pastures. We have made better use of our WWII designed chick brooder for our current flock and have been very impressed. Instead of 1000 watts of electricity, we are able to brood the same number of chicks with 375 watts and they are thriving. For those of you who raise baby chicks, here is a link to the free plans.   http://www.plamondon.com/brooder.shtml  It is an inexpensive and very effective design. I built it for half of the cost of a 4 lamp brooder and it uses less than half of the energy. Another new development is the "resurrection" of our hammermill, which has not been used since the early 1960's. Getting the 40' flat belt that turns it lined up and tracking properly has been an interesting learning experience. We have it operational and have purchased a 5 cubic foot mixer, so we are now able to grind and blend our own feeds for the hogs and chickens. This will give us more control over our animals' diets and will provide a significant cost savings.

Wet weather has slowed our small grain planting down, but it looks like we will finally get it in the field soon. We have started feeding heirloom corn silage and the cows love it. Winter coats are showing up on the animals and we will be processing 5 or 6 beeves before long. Our expansion into pork production is going well and we are looking forward to some Christmas sausage. Our latest litter of pigs is almost 4 weeks old and they are beautiful. We have expanded our hog lot to include a shaded and protected natural area with a good many oak trees (in case you didn't know, acorns are a "delicacy" for hogs). The short days are coming sooner than I would like, so I guess that means more work by flashlight. This week's project will be preparing our brooder house for a shipment of baby chicks that will arrive late this week if there is no delay from the hatchery. Orders for beef have come fast, and we only have 2 cows ready to process that are not spoken for. We are thrilled at the response, and just wish we had more cows ready. We have more on the way, though.