We had quite bit of snow last week and although we're thankful for the moisture, it has made winter just seem so long especially right when it was warming up and we were thinking maybe real soon the jackets could all be put away. I am tired of the cold and the wind and the lack of sunshine. I am tired of frozen buckets and frozen hoses and frozen soil. I am tired of dressing up and dressing down and if I have to look at my coveralls, gloves and hat much longer I really a seriously contemplate crawling under the covers and not come out.
Have you ever seen the movie/musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? After the girls from town are "kidnapped" by their would be assailants (who are forced to live in the barn for a time), they were all in the attic of this old house singing "June Bride" - which is actually about being a June Bride- and I can't help but sing the lyrics over and over and over because some days it just seems like spring will never comes and while the snow usually does not last but a few days, the cold and wind gets to be very old:
...In November the snow starts to fly, piling up, ankle high.
Come December it's up to your knee, still a bride's a bride to be.
January it's higher still, up to the parlor window sill.
February finds a drift, and the storm seems never to lift.
March come in like a lion, what else? Still the snow, never melts.
April showers will come so they say. But they don't, and it's May.
You're about to forget the whole thing, all at once one day it's spring.
I can't help but think one day soon, the trees will pop, the grass will green up and one day we'll wake up and will be like everyone waking up in The Wizard of Oz...another comparison to a movie/musical. How odd.
Anyway, We're only about half way trough kidding season. We're ahead on the doe count by just one. Some of the buck kids have found new homes already and we're keeping on the doe kids, at least for now or until most of the does kid and we know what we're "working with". We had to put one of our older goats, Iris, down a couple of weeks ago. Surprisingly the kids took it rather well. It's never an easy decision, of course, but such is the nature of the farm.
The puppies are about ready to go on to their new homes, they will be 7 weeks old tomorrow.
Jeremiah and the kids are on Spring Break this week, 4 days officially in and I am so sore and tired! It's been nothing but go go go since day one. This time 2 years ago we were (overly-optimistically) installing new perimeter fencing (and expecting to get it done in a week!). We finished one pasture in that week, the weather was a lot nicer than it is this week and that was after (what I considered) a hard winter. Blech! This year we're planting seeds and let me tell you, this farming/home ownership/livestock "business" is for the birds. At least, that's what I think some days. It's obvious I am tired, things are not looking so optimistic right now.
We do not own a seed drill, as I mentioned in my last post. What we've finally decided to do is hook up the spring tooth harrow. I mentioned recently in a Facebook post:
"We're going to get this brome in if it kills us! Saturday we planted in the snow/rain/hail/sleet freezing cold to get the seeds into the ground before the moisture fell. We did oats too in one pasture. The oats are more of a fun experiment and if they fail, I won't feel too badly. I think our neighbors think we're crazy. We probably are. Not because we're planting oats and brome (or rather, this Los Angeles native has convinced her country raised husband it's a good idea to plant counting on (maybe in vein?) lots of moisture this spring for a good start), it may be because we "braved" the weather to get it in. I think they may think we're crazy mostly because of HOW we're doing it.
Honestly, I don't even know if I should come out and say this as I know a lot of (real professional) farmers might die of embarrassment for us with all their high tech seed drills and super wazoo GPS driven combines. Our "seed drill" and "GPS driven combine" consisted of me, sitting in the bucket of our open air no cab tractor (though it does have a roof over cab) with a hand driven seed spreader and my husband at the helm dragging a spring tooth harrow (that we were the lucky recipients of when we moved in)!
If you Google "spring tooth harrow" I think the first thing it says is "A mostly outdated implement", couple that with me sitting in the bucket with a manual seed spreader and Jeremiah using the scratched surface of the pasture as a guide of where to go next and you've got one sophisticated operation around here! Ingenuity is our middle names! My apologies if we're making a pigs ear of it, but necessity is the mother of all invention. I'll wait to tell you about fertilizing everything, I think it may just be ingenuity overload."
To be honest, I think it worked rather well. And, for this girl who is not really much of a fan of roller coasters any more, yesterday was (admittedly) kinda fun! I had to look back every now and again to be sure Jeremiah wasn't having as much as I was because there were times where I was about thrown out of the bucket and I thought he may have been driving like a maniac on purpose. In actuality the harrow's springs were getting jammed with the damned (hell sent) yucca plant leaves and he'd have to do some lifting of the harrow to get them loose. Climbing some of the hills and keep a steady pace also meant going a bit faster up the hills so as it was not too hard on the axles. Anyway, it was a good afternoon and the kids were over a friends house all day so it was just he and I out there. All in all my body was jolted from side to side and my muscles are telling me not to climb back in the bucket. My brain, however, is telling them to shut up!
In total we have about an acre planted in oats and 4 now in brome. I'll tell you about our fertilization method later. FOr now, we're headed out to lunch and to pick up lumber for the kid's new playhouse.
