It's just after 9pm on a Thursday night. I've just gotten inside after evening lockup, and there's an amazing pasta sauce bubbling on the stove, made from our own tomatoes that we froze after harvest last summer. I could smell it outside as I chased the two naughtiest ducks into their safe lockup. I interrupted them in a private moment under the apple trees, but they will most certainly be back at it tomorrow morning, so I didn't feel too badly about it.
Good news, our fly predators arrived today! Yes, I get excited about pupae in the mail. The flies have already started to do their thing, and the horses get their fly masks on every morning to spare them the annoyance (and potential eye infections) as well as sun protection. It's already transitioned into the blinding white and bluish spectrum that keeps us west coasters squinting and skulking from shade tree to shade tree for the next four to five months. I have to cover many of the new seedlings in the green house with frost blanket so they don't shrivel up in the UV onslaught.
Some new equipment on the farm has us a little giddy. I'll have to post photos soon. G was pretty stoked about his new Hoss wheel hoe. (http://www.easydigging.com/) I wripped open our new Meadow Creature People's broadfork package as soon as the UPS guy dropped it off. It really works!
On the east side of the house I've been battling some sedges that spread through deep tough rhizomes, and it's not such a pleasant task. The Creature was fun to use, a good workout, and got it done. A few minutes of clearing the sedges out and the bed is almost ready for our echinacea transplants.
We've also been lucky enough to borrow our neighbour's manure spreader, which our Wheelhorse tractor pulls just fine. G got most of pastures covered over the past week or so. We'd love to have one of these, or maybe one bigger, but at a cost of around $2200 it makes much more sense to borrow it when we can.
We'd both rather spend that sort of money on experiences. And that brings me to my other good news. I'm signed up for the farm scale permaculture course in Iowa this October! Very excited. It will be quite different than the full design course that G took in the beautiful mountains of Vermont, but I know I will enjoy it and get a lot out of it. Maybe if I can find a farm sitter by then G can come with me.
A few other notes. It's already tick season. I groomed Winston twice today, and it was only when I was petting him and removing his halter tonight that I found a lump on his neck, and I dug through the hair to find a tick lodged in him.
I had a few biopsies done, and got a call from the lab today that I have to go back so they can take more, just to be safe. That won't be so fun, but it's for the best.
But all's well in general, it's just pretty lonely here five days a week while G is at work. Or worse, when he's travelling. He'll be away all week next week. So this weekend he gets to muck out the sheep pen since the daily temperatures are getting too warm, and the barn is starting to smell like ammonia. He really has to organize his weekends so he gets to all of his tasks.
But they aren't always 'tasks'. They are definitely labours of love.
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