A huge storm system is on it's way to Minnesota. Severe thunderstorms, hail, potential tornados. It's warm out there in the rain right now--I enjoy it quite a bit. Wet jeans and all. The ducks are standing still in the rain, unknown pleasure centers of their bizarre little brains quite tickled no doubt. The Flan crew are hiding under a spruce tree. Have no idea why they don't retreat to their coop, but they don't seem too bothered, so I'm not shooing them in.
There's an oriole feeding on some grapefruit I left for him out on our deck. I heard bobolink vocals from the 3000 acres across the road from us. I'd love to head over and search for them, but the lightning was getting a little bit daunting. Still waiting for the full force of this storm to hit. It's in fits and starts right now. What a tease!
The new swales in the sheep pasture will likely fill up again. I just realized I didn't post any photos of how well they worked during the monsoons of a few weeks ago!
This is how it started:
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| Party on, ducks |
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| Looking more like a dock than a bridge. |
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| This is some serious rain!! all coursing down the fields and flooding middle field. |
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| Willow paddock filling up! |
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| Runoff from the hay field and the neighbour's property. We had no idea about all the drainage in the area. |
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| Swales doin' their thing! |
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| THE LAND BRIDGE ALMOST FLOODED! |
So we have high hopes for the pastures with the modifications with swales, changing of fencing and therefore how it will be grazed.
The other thing we had high hopes for was bees, even though we said 'no new animals this year!'. With my newfound interest in making natural cosmetics (primarily hand creams/salves, first aid ointments) of my own it just naturally just led back to wanting bees, and beeswax. The best product I've found to deal with our destroyed hands from all of the work we do is beeswax based, and made right here in MN. I'm confident that I can figure out a formula of our own. Maybe even to sell at some point. But alas I set my sights on this too late, and bees have already been ordered and spoken for. We learned from a long time keeper here that top bar hives don't seem to work here--there will be a 0% survival rate. So there you go-another case of 'don't believe everything you read'. I respect real experience very much.
The good news is that there are some fantastic courses at U of MN I can take, and a club we can join in Stillwater, which is only 15 minutes from here.
So, moving on then. The big deal of today is that G set his sights on something, and was very disappointed. He finally decided that he'd like to take the permaculture course in Vermont, held in early August. He emailed me this morning and said the course was full...and as an extra kick in the teeth, the sickle mower we were thinking of buying (Craigslist) was sold. Not surprising, it was only $450 and perfect for us. Expletives.
I felt pretty bad for G over this whole deal. He rarely does anything for himself off the farm, and he isn't into buying 'stuff'. I'm the one that gets to go and do photography workshops and fun adventures like that. So the fact that he made the decision for himself, that and it's a very expensive course, was a big deal. A lot of justification had to happen in his brain. It's a big year, as he's turning 40 next week!! What the?? I can't believe I met him 10 years ago...Really not sure where the time goes.
So I suggested via text that we do pizza tonight, as a balm for disappointment. I can't believe it that it's not even summer already, and we are still only getting to dinner by 10pm.
This is also a balm for disappointment:
It's amazing that I didn't come home with Australorp chicks from the farm store today....I've definitely been missing our wonderful Lorpie, who started us down this path.
I'm going to enjoy eating my pizza now (with fresh spinach, arugula, kale, and some dandelions G snuck in--he's always trying to get me to eat WEEDS)
The season of fresh food is here!
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