Day 179

1. Jacob driving Andrew in the tractor. 

2. We visited Scott and Juli for the evening. The flowerbed that Juli and I planted together is looking fabulous!

3. Waiting for dinner to be ready. I know this looks lame, but everyone had just gotten kicked out of bugging the girls in the minuscule kitchen! It was a delicious spaghetti dinner.

4. We took a walk after dinner and this was an adorable house that Juli pointed out.

Day 175

Well, apparently it's time to fix the fence between the home paddock and the back pasture. It's obviously sagged low enough that Mooser (the holstein steer) got over it easily enough to feed off of the pigs grain this morning. I had banished him and the other two cows into the back pasture, as I'm tired of feeding extra grain to the pigs and they've basically been having a hissy fit ever since. The moo and mope all day long. Silly cows.

The sheep in the orchard got moved to a fresh pasture today. Now we can finish mowing the orchard!

 Also, the turkeys are now finally ensconced in their pen and hopefully they'll stay there. I'm tired of going out to put turkeys away at 11 pm! Just as I'm ready to head to bed, it's ooops, I forgot about the turkeys. Sigh. I've lost two this week thanks to problems with the electric fence and one night I think I got out there too late. Which meant that after coming home from volunteering at Champoeg for 6 hours, I got to slit a turkeys throat by moonlight. How romantic, right? The poor turkey had a dislocated projecting coracoid (wing) bone, which looked rather painful and the only solution seemed to put it out of it's misery. Daniel trooped out with me to the processing trailer to supervise, since he's a pro, but I did the actual dirty work.

Reading, lately, Weeds

Weeds are the name of the game lately. Until the last few years, we've been at a standstill with the ongoing weed battle between the thistles and us. However, the last few years have seen the emergence of weeds that we had not battled before, namely, foxtail. Oh, you are my nemesis. And I'm noticing creeping buttercup where the pigs where last winter. So. In an effort to win the war, I've been doing some reading, mostly on the fabulous site, On Pasture, and I'm slowly putting together a battle plan.

Several things I've realized -

First of all, the weeds accumulating ties in nicely with when we started haying 3 pastures regularly and 2 not at all. I think I'll start alternating between the 3 haying pastures so that the 2 aren't so burdened. It will mean less hay, in a way, but then again, if we don't do anything weedy hay isn't worth anything!

I also want to up my game in terms of keeping track of grass growth. Perhaps with a big fancy chart!

And have more permanent subdivisions in the non haying (ie, rocky) pastures. This may, or may not, happen this year.

So far, I've found the following links useful and hope to find more.

http://onpasture.com/2013/05/13/the-abcs-of-soil-science/

http://onpasture.com/2013/05/07/plant-growth-under-rotational-grazing/

http://onpasture.com/2013/05/20/the-grass-whispering-journal-or-wwgwd-what-would-the-grass-whisperer-do/

http://onpasture.com/2013/04/09/maximizing-spring-green-up-without-destroying-summer-pastures/

Day 168

1. Lovely sunset

2. Strawberry Shortcake to celebrate Mom and Dad's 34th Anniversary!

What else? Recovering from family camp!

Day 167

1. Lovely sunset

2. Discovering the word "sitzmark" while playing scrabble with Aunt Susan and Tyler

What else? Church! And visiting with my new friend, Elisabeth.

Day 156

1. A beautiful church in Portland

2. Lunch with Dad, Daniel and Jacob

3. Panther helping me set up portable fencing in the orchard

4. The sheep enjoying their new pasture

5. What else? Strawberry shortcake for dessert!, visiting with Emily and meeting Ronan (5 weeks old), doing school with Jacob at the Chinese Medicine place, taking Dad to the airport for a quick business trip, a leisurely nap!

Day 155

1. & 2. Getting feed at the feed mill with Tyler

3. Touring a friends almost-new home! So excited for them.

4. Turkeys. Roaming. Around.

5. A very blurry last minute picture of my new hair cut (and semi-new glasses). I took nicer photos outside, but they aren't uploading right. Grr.

6. What else? Drove the large trailer all by myself to get compost today! Very exicitng.

Mostly today was one of those fly by the seat of the pants day. Yesterday's plans mostly changed. But it's all good.