Day 222

1. Moving a ton of hog feed around with the tractor.

The feed gets placed into eight barrels which each weigh around 250lbs. I then manhandle two at a time onto the tractors bucket, drive the tractor inside the barn and then unload them onto pallets. Let's just say it's a really good workout.

Day 221

1.-3. From my morning walk  with Juli after toastmasters. I love the caravan!

4. Got the pigs settled in a new pasture.

Day 220

1. God totally made my day when, as we were looking for a parking spot in LO so we could picnic by the lake, we passed a Salt & Straw ice cream truck. Oh yum. Mom and Jacob had never had their ice cream before, so I treated them. :)

2. After a day full of errands, came home and made two blue berry pies. One of which got consumed immediately as Scott and Juli came over to visit. This one is now waiting for tomorrow (breakfast?). Or possibly for Andrew and Daniel once they get home. (Pam Forster's recipe)

3. I also made two peach pies! This one, that I'm too impatient to wait until it's baked to take a picture of, is for John, the owner of our local fruit stand. He gave me two boxes of peaches in exchange for a homemade peach pie. I hope it lives up to his expectations! I, of course, made one for us to eat tomorrow. The recipe came from The Pie and Pastry Bible.

Now it's off to bed once the peach pie is done cooking. 

Day 219

Picked up Jacob from gymnastics camp today (Andrew's teaching camp this week) and here's some pictures!

Day 197

1. This evening Mom and I went to a PEO meeting. I hadn't been in ages and it was lovely to catch up with people again. About half of the ladies have known me since I was 8! They are all real sweethearts. Afterwards, we enjoyed cruising around Lake Oswego (the lake, not the town), with the windows down, admiring the beautiful homes.

What else? Homeschooling, Piano lessons, and not much else!

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.