Knolltop Farm Wife (Melissa Hart)

Welcome to my blog! I'm a wife, mother of four and a self-employed freelance writer. In addition to writing, I am involved in producing several dairy magazines and am the editor of Dairy Agenda Today where I have a blog there as well! This is a place where I can get what's in my head, down on paper (the internet). I hope you find encouragement and maybe a giggle or two!
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Skidsteers and Season openers

Is there anything better on the farm that a skidsteer?

It's a cloudy morning here on the Knolltop and getting cooler by the hour.

I just came in from witnessing one of the best inventions ever created for the farm: the skidsteer!

Cleaning a calf pen was an essential task this morning so we could take back control of pen maintenance! Bobby runs the skidsteer and I stand by and move gates, clean out the corners and help put the calves back where they belong. I'm really just the support crew. It was sheer delight as I watched him come in to the pen and leave with a big scoop of manure! And the best part was, I just stood there. I didn't have the back breaking task of pitching the whole thing out by hand like we used to do when we first moved on the farm!

And in a matter of minutes I had a clean pen with calves bouncing around on clean shavings! It is a glorious sight and a very good feeling knowing your livestock have a clean, dry place to live! And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about be glad, that means you have no calf pens to clean!

Over the weekend, Luke played in two 3 on 3 tournaments. An eighth grade tournament on Saturday and because they were feeling especially strong and competitive, they went back on Monday and played in the high school tournament. They got banged around a lot with those big boys, but loved every minute of it! They lost all but one game and had a great time doing it!

Tonight JW plays at home against Camden and Jake will have his season opener against Pittsford tonight. He is so excited!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't imagine farming without a skidsteer. It's our best hired person . We did't trade the old one in so we now have two.
Francis and Pat

threecollie said...

We love ours. This year the daughter who is coming back to farm is going to learn to run it so we women can have clean pens and fresh sand when WE want them. I tried a few years back, but I was chicken.

Anonymous said...

yep, when the skidsteer goes down, everything else goes to! We want to get a 2nd too! They are not hard to run, easy, just takes practice. ph