It’s been a week since I last made a post to my blog. Last weekend the temperature was a few degree’s higher than freezing and our crew made the most of the opportunity. On both Saturday and on Sunday we had over 20 employees beating snow off the pens and getting the pens “up”. Then on Monday, in addition to all crews (food product crew, breeder crew, etc.) working on the pens, Chris Theisen (our production manager) brought in 9 workers from a local temp agency. By the end of Monday – the crews had about 70% of our farm up.

Tuesday through today (Friday) the temps were back as low as single digits – but with the pens up, the employees concentrated on rounding up the thousands of birds that had escaped the pens. In addition to working on the pens and catching “escapee’s” life went on – i.e. we took 5000+ birds to the processing plant, caught thousands of ringnecks for preserve customers – and had to get caught up on all the chores (e.g. feeding) that got put aside last week with the storm.

Certainly we feel better today than we did a week ago. But we have 25+ acres of netting that now needs to be replaced this summer – and a massive amount of reconstruction of the foundation of the pens – the perimeter posts. .\

At this same time, we have been preparing for the year end – getting inventories counted, etc., etc. It has been an incredibly hectic 10 days!

I think the main lesson I learned through all this is how loyal our employees are to the farm. This past week so many of the employees worked without a single day off – and the work they accomplished was back breaking work – knocking snow off acres of pens and then lifting the nets. I am truly blessed.