Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Even through the busy holiday season, I haven't had much time to blog, but things on the farm haven't slowed down.  For the first time since April, we don't have anything that needs to go in the ground and we have one thing left to come out of the ground!  Dad finally finished shelling corn last week, and the combine is back in the barn until one day this week when he has to spend a couple of hours finishing up with the soybeans, which luckily shouldn't take long.  I am super glad that it has finally warmed up some, all that wind and cold air gets tiring after a while when you're outside in it all day!
Things on the farm change a little from January until April when things have to start being planted again.  Winter is our "catch up" time on the farm.  We do a lot of wood splitting, fixing tractors, making general repairs, and getting everything ready for April when it all starts up again.
We also work on bigger projects in the winter.  For example, we are going to work on building a lot for our cows that are in the field around our house to catch them.  When we do take cows to other farms or we take calves to market, it's much easier to have them in an open lot with fences and a chute to put them on a trailer than it is to ride out in the field and attempt to get them on the trailer on their own.  Doesn't work.  It is also nice to have the lot if any of the cows need some special attention, or they need their yearly vaccines.  We build "guard-rail lots."  Dad has some of the guardrail that goes on the side of the road, and we use it to go around our lots.  It works great.  We already have two other lots that are made out of guardrail.  The cows can't get out once they get in, and it holds up great in the weather conditions. 
The pigs are doing well in this weather.  Dad and I took one of our boars, Hokie Man, over to a neighbors house because he has two sows that need to be bred.  I want to go in the show pig business, selling show pigs to 4-Hers, so hopefully there will be some good gilts that I can use to start my show pig herd.
I was down at the barn this morning feeding and had quite the problem with the feed tank that we use to hold the feed for our breeding barn.  The metal around the opening at the bottom of the tank that we use to get in the tank to get clumps of feed out that get stuck, or to help clean the feed tank out, has broken.  Now the cover will not stay on!  It is very aggravating trying to keep it on long enough to get enough feed out so that I can finish feeding.  Dad doesn't know it yet, but that's going to be one of his jobs this afternoon to fix it!