Knee deep in planting

Its been a busy couple of weeks and at the beginning of May we had snow and now we are having some hot days yet relatively cool nights (had frost on the 13th). This time of year we are crazy busy trying to get everything in the ground, trying to judge the weather, and to top it off its grant writing season (a side line not related to the farm) so there isn't much slack time. I also finally finished the Emergency Medical Responder course and am officially certified....and about all schooled out for awhile if you know what I mean.

This has been a period of reflection for me and I think that because I am spending lots of time on one tractor or another I have time to contemplate things. The world seems to be spiraling out of control (is it really or have we just fallen victim to media manipulation?) but for reasons I truly don't understand myself we embarked on this journey exactly at the right time for us to feel largely removed from all of the chaos. I also realise that this is part of aging, if you haven't reached that point in life you will eventually wake up one day and look in the mirror and go.."wow, what the heck happened?". But with age comes a certain amount of wisdom that was lacking in younger years, wisdom to know when to pull back, wisdom to resist certain urges and most importantly for me, wisdom to recognise when something special is happening at the moment it happens. How many of us look back and think "man, I wish I could have just one more conversation with my grandparents or parents", or "I wish I had recognised how great some of the simple pleasures were when they were being enjoyed"? As an example, last night after dinner my beautiful wife and I and my Mother in Law Judy all played a dice game called 10,000. We played for a couple of hours at the kitchen table til it was time for bed and just enjoyed the easy company and natural competitiveness we all share. It was one of those times and I recognised it.....I'm thinking that's worth a head full of white hair and a few liver spots.

So enough rambling:

May 5th ...

May 15th...two days after getting a fairly heavy frost! Old man winter just doesn't want to go quietly but overall the weather has been pretty mild and enjoyable.

 

This is just a picture of some work on the market garden but the old Dodge is the main focus here. I have had a lot of vehicles over the years but nothing gives me pleasure like an old truck. Its dents, rust spots and wear are strangely pleasing to me like the wrinkles and scars on a favorite uncle.

We paid $1200 for this old truck and originally thought of it as a parts truck but its become my daily driver. All it took was a little minor wrenching and it now runs like a Swiss watch, the AC blows cold, the heater blows hot, and everything works on it. With new trucks starting at 25K and up, the pleasure index of this rig just goes higher every time I drive it! 

I have mentioned before how much we enjoy flowers and this time of year we have lots of colour. We have plantings so that we pretty much get blooms spring through fall but late spring is the most prolific. We now have knockout roses and our vine roses blooming, the Iris' are thriving, and we even have various brilliantly coloured Poppies in full flower.

We have white Iris, dark purple, salmon, yellow, and some variegated colours but the blue are my favorite and I like them planted en-mass like this.

This will be the third year for the orchard we planted and its starting to pay off. Lots of new growth this year and we already have little pears, peaches, plums, and apples forming. We still have plans to double the size of this this year.

Yesterday I spent 6 hours on the Kubota spraying the pasture we are trying to reclaim from the horse damage. You basically just idle along at a very slow pace when doing this so its not too onerous and it was a beautiful day. I saw hawks, wild turkeys, rabbits, a falcon, squirrels, a large yet to be identified brown snake that was coiled on a tree growing in the back pond (its more swamp than pond really), and there were a tonne of deer tracks on a small dirt pile I had left from setting some corner posts. For some reason they seemed to like to stand on that dirt pile. In addition, the slow pace of spraying gives you the opportunity to really observe things and I saw some interesting insect activity and discovered a couple of the places our cows like to bed down under the trees.

 

The sprayer has an 80" boom with 4 spray nozzles (if you look close in this picture you can see the spray pattern) and the 40 gallon tank has a Sure Flow pump attached that runs off the tractor 12 volt battery. You can use the spray nozzles on the boom or a hand wand and it works great though its a bit small for this amount of land ... it works for us. The horses had eaten all the grass (they pull it out by the roots) and had left about 2 acres of nothing but weeds. There is some grass slowly coming back but we need to get rid of the weeds for it to make it back as viable pasture. In this application I use about a quart and a half (in 40 gallons of water) of 2-4-D Amine and it kills the broad leaf and woody weeds without harming the grass. You don't need a license in this state to apply it but you do have to follow federal law (not that anyone would know out here if you weren't) and most of the regulations are just common sense anyway. I know some are against any pasture spraying and I respect that, we carefully examine each alternative and for us we found spraying makes economic sense and we don't fell bad about it at all.

 

The next post we will have more of a focus on how the gardens are going...the corn, peas, tomatoes, beets etc. are all coming up!

 

Spring is in Full Bloom

Just a few shots from around the farm of the glory of spring.

Judy had planted several things when we first moved here in her yard that this year have just taken off. She has Lillies, Dogwood, fruit trees, Wisteria, Mimosas, Clematis, lots of Roses and a host of other plants that have filled her garden. Rose the Farm Dog likes it too.

So many projects!!

Spring in full bloom  and the smell of the flowers is great this year. Holly and Judy have put a lot of effort into making this look like this.

We have a lot of fruit in the orchard like these peaches...but we are still within the frost danger zone so????

We probably have 30 or 40 grape vines and they are all loaded with grapes like this one on the arbor...might be a good wine making season.

We have lots of Peonies around the farm and buds like this beget...

Flowers like this. We have several colours and most havent bloomed yet but when they do its a rich display of colour and fragrance.

We have many Iris beds but this one on the front of the house is the most impressive. We have the traditional blue, blue and white, pure white, salmon, purple and ......

Yellow Iris'...eve see one of these? I have to admit I have always liked flowers and we grow copious amounts here on the farm. Currently the poppies are blooming, the Clematis are blooming, the Dianthus, and many more flowers. Sorry if you live in snow country...

Pullets, Cockerels and Spring

Last Thusday we made the pilgrimage to the Cackle hatchery in Lebanon for our chicks and they are now happy in the brooder in our basement. They are funny little creatures and though this is something Holly and Judy are in charge of, I admit I am enjoying having them around. The weather has been so warm it feels like summer (70s and 80s) and the grass is now green, the trees have leafed out, and we have birds, butterflys, snakes and insects everywhere...its a great time of year. We have been blessed with this great weather and have really taken advantage of it; we are outside from morning until dusk and have done some painting, harvested wild onions, planted, plowed, and every afternoon we take  break and play yard darts. And...if you havent tried it....we take time to just sit in quiet solitude and listen to the breeze and the wildlife on our farm...I highly recommend that. Particularly in spring, I like to sit in an Adirondak chair with my eyes closed and feel the sun and breeze on my face, hear the birds singing, the insects buzzing around, the ocasional moo of a cow or crowing of a rooster in the distance and smell the freshness, the honeysuckle, and newly cut grass. This usually develops into a 30 minute nap which I also highly recommend.

I must confess that at times I feel guilty or less than ambitious. I am in the last month of my job with the Sheriff's Dept and folks around here dont understand why I am giving up a good job like that, I have been offered fairly high paying positions (for around here) if I am willing to commute a long ways, and some would add that I have taken a fine education and wasted it by preferring to be down on the farm. But you know, I just dont care to be part of the rat race anymore and I dont miss the constant grind. I have tonnes to do here and if I get to them today or next week or next year it really doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things and the best advice I can give if your feeling less than fulfilled or happy is - S  L  O  W  D  O  W  N, stop doing what you dont enjoy, and dont look to others to validate your success or self worth. It sounds a lot easier than it is especially if your a type A+++ personality like me but I literally wake every day happy and looking forward to whatever happens...even if I dont know what will happen. Remember the days of inspections, deadlines, outside expectations, missed birthdays, holidays and family events because of work? Look back 5 years and do you really remember the details of any of that or just that you missed your anniversary or a birthday of a child? To heck with that stuff....I would rather spend my afternoon helping Holly make butter than attend some meeting about something I dont really care about....ahhh must be the spring air that stirs my slacker passion!!! Maybe Timothy Leary had something going  after all with his turn on, tune in, drop out mantra back in the mid 60s eh?

Question for the day: I have been reading a lot of Shakespear lately and in particular his personal history...does it strike anyone else that his writing doesnt match the man or his station in life? So little is known about him personally but he wasnt part of the upper crust so how did he know about the inner workings of royalty and the social elite in such intricate detail? Seriously, something doesnt add up...but then I'm just a small-time dirt farmer with a vivid imagination and a penchant for reading.

The Cackle hatchery is about 25 miles from our farm...how handy eh? They ship chicks all over the country and its amazing that they just ship them in the mail in cardboard boxes. We were happy to just go pick up our one day old chicks.

Judy's peach tree...all the fruit trees this spring are blooming like crazy. Last year almost all the blooms were wiped out as soon as they popped from the cold.

Yea...thats right, I like poetry and flowers.....got an issue with that?

Visions of a good fruit harvest danced in our heads...

And on about 15 March it was so hot the cattle waded into the mid pond to cool off..

We have 5 Forsythia bushes discovered so far....I remember Forsythia from being stationed in North Carolina all those years. The first sign of spring usually and such a burst of colour..

My beloved Holly and I have a track along the south fence line that goes behind the mid pond that we recently cleared so we dont get hung up in the tangle bush and brambles. We have another pasture to the right here that we still need to fence (and are in the process of fencing) so this little pond is quite secluded.

We decided to put the pullets and the cockerel in the basement since it doesnt have drafts and is safe and secure from predators.

They are so small and vulnerable

We have 5 Barred Rock's (black and white) and 5 Brown Leghorns with 1 Brown leghorn Rooster.

They seem to be happy ...Holly and Judy are happy....and....of course so am I.

So there you have it. We now have a couple dogs, a bunch (pride, gaggle, plethora, cornicopia, herd, myriad) of cats, 3 cows, and 11 chickens. Soon to come...goats, a couple ducks, and two pigs. Old Mac Donald will have nothing on us!!!

Survived the Big Storm Last Night

We had very high winds, heavy rain, and large hail last night that left a swath of devastation and death across several states including Missouri. Locally, there was damage to several residences and shopping areas in Lebanon, some damage in Conway, Branson was hit hard, and Buffalo was smacked hard. Even our little berg had some damage but we came out of it pretty lightly and I mostly slept through it.

We were lucky....this was the extent of our damage. I am not making light of what some have had to go through, just trying to put some family members at ease and make them hopefully understand that its a real crap shoot. A mile away from us a trailer was seriously damaged while we didnt really even notice the storm until morning.

So spring is here, at least for now. Tornados, hail, thinderstorms, unstable air....it will be 73 degrees tomorrow. And the early spring flowers are blooming...

Daffodils are up, the crocus' are up, the Iris' have their leaves in full march towards the sun and even the Hollyhocks are leafing out.

These little guys are Autumn crocus' which around here are called Naked Ladies. They have these green leaves that sort of look like Iris' and they sprout up for a couple months then litterally disappear all summer. Come fall a stem will shoot up overnight (no leaves) with a delicate pink and white flower.

We continue to get the new chicken coop ready and thankfully we didnt put stuff off. We anchored it to the ground with 4 three foot ground augers that were through bolted to the runners and we nailed heavy hardware cloth all around the bottom (to help keep out predators) that was then filled with a cubic yard of #1 gravel. Needless to say it held up to the 71mph max gust we got last night rather well. We (Holly and Judy) have also begun painting the roosts and nest boxes to make cleaning easier.

The ground anchor you see in the background (black square) has a 3 foot auger that is burrowed into the rocky ground and then bolted through the side runner of the coop...and we have 4 of them. These are the same type of augers they use for mobile homes so we feel pretty secure that its not going to fly away. Best advice I can give here is to not delay these projects.....our storm last night would likely have destroyed this coop if we handt taken these precautions. The hardware cloth is nailed all along the perimeter pressure treated wood we added to deter burrowing predators.

We then took a cubic yard of gravel to put on top of the hardware cloth. Chris is currently going to truck driving school and still working his old job but he got pressed into service here and we got the job done in short order.

In the coop itself, we will top this gravel with dirt and then a layer of wood shavings and in the outside run the gravel will be covered with sand.

Mother and daughter hard at work painting their coop...their enthusiasm and participation in this grand adventure is very very satisfying to me and the fact that we can all share this is just..perfect.

I just had to include this picture of my best friend and beautiful wife. After all these years she still makes my heart sing.

While the gals were busy with the coop I had some projects of my own to tackle. I decided to stick close to the house and put off more fencing because I wasnt feeling very good (and may want to wuss out) and for the fact we have been called out multiple times a day lately for brush fires (low humidity, very dry). So on to the well house renovation project that has been put off for far too long.

The windows were completely gone and I had to do some mortar work and add some wood framing to get the new windows in.

I am one of these people who seems disorganized but I have a method to my chaos. Here is a tool bucket, water bucket and mortar bucket along with the new window and an old folding chair marked for an Army National Guard Unit that was disbanded during the Viet Nam war.

Once you get the window framed in you have to put the new window in then trim it out inside and out. In this case, because this is an old stone building with no straight lines or right angles it was a bit of a challenge and I ended up chiseling out a lot more stone and mortar than contemplated to make everything fit.

Looks better than a gaping hole ne'?

I am still in the process of re-tuck pointing the mortar in this building and once that is done it will be sealed and the color will all blend into the house ad look nice. The windows will remain white but the wood and the mortar bed I redid around the window will be hunter green. 

And the other side of the building is complete (as far as the window anyway) as well. All of the mortar between the stones will be redone, then sealed and painted to match the house. The roof doesnt leak and I am debating whether to just recoat it and paint it or replace it. The front (towards the right in this picture has a door I am repairing and it will be painted hunter green as well and the back (to the left) has a 4 light paned window that I am repairing and it will be white mullions with the hunter green trim like the side windows. All the door and the paned window neds is a little repair and some glazing compound...too easy.

Tools of the trade. If you are going to own a stone house or do much concrete work (and we do a lot) get some basic tools. For re-tuck pointing and jobs like this these are my basics. And if you get to a point where you are tempted by the cheap tool bins at Lowes or Home Depot or anywhere else run away. You will note my mortar point and trowel are Kobalt which I find makes a good product even though its sold at Lowes but for the most part I purchase top quality tools because they last.

And at the end of today (it got up to 63 degrees) we BBQ'd some ribs. Start with a dry rub and smoke over a smoldering fire that you have loaded with wet oak chunks you cut yourself...

About an hour or an hour and a half later take the ribs and put them in tin foil and add some of your favorite BBQ sauce (this is ours) and wrap them up and return to smoke heavily for another hour...

And...perfection. A fitting end to a productive and enjoyable spring day. I can hardly wait to tackle the things we have planned for tomorrow!!!!