Fall farming tends to be associated with glamorous and picturesque scenes of harvesting golden-colored crops with a pretty sunset creeping into the background. You can imagine the captivating view of a big combine crawling along rolling hills, harvesting row after row of corn as the trail of dust sparkles from the late afternoon sun. It’s quite a dreamy scene, really.
As far as most dairy farmers are concerned, a good portion of crop harvest is completed earlier in the season when filling the last of our bunker silos with various silages, such as sorghum, hay, and corn. Then, we usually plant winter cover crops so they can start growing prior to the first frost before harvesting what’s left over for dry corn. These golden harvest images are just a quick blip in our harvest journey.
While a lot of other farmers are currently wrapping up corn and soybean harvest, we’ve moved on to the less-charming side of fall fieldwork which includes endless days of hauling manure. I’m guessing most non-farming people don’t think about the manure management side of things in relation to the fall season on the farm — apart from when they catch a whiff of its fragrance out driving or when a nearby field gets covered with the farmer’s version of liquid gold.
Emptying all our brimming manure pits and storage areas is vital this time of year, so we have enough space to store manure throughout the winter. After storing manure all summer, we’re eager to have available land to spread it on. Once fields are cleared of crops and the many cornstalk bales we make for bedding, all spare tractors are hooked onto our different kinds of spreaders (some designated for very liquid loads, while others work better for solids). When we’re in full swing hauling manure, loads in and out of the farm are perfectly timed as spreader after spreader is loaded and emptied onto whichever field we’re working on covering at that time.
It’s a messy and stinky job for sure, but it’s one of the many wonderful and economical ways we’re able to recycle resources on the farm and put nutrients right back into the soil to help produce more food for our cows and consumers the next year.
The author dairy farms with her parents and brother near Hawkeye, Iowa. The family milks approximately 300 head of grade Holstein cows at Windsor Valley Dairy LLC — split half and half between a double-eight parallel milking parlor and four robotic milking units. In the spring of 2020, Molly decided to take a leap and fully embrace her love for the industry by returning full time to her family’s dairy.