Sorry your DH had a bed spell but I'm glad it was no worse. Humans do tend to push the limits when we get down. I wonder why that is?
Scary about the wolves. Do they know where this pair originated from? They are beautiful animals but I would rather see them praying on wild game. A sheep must be easy pickings for them.
Yesterday after church we discovered a paper bag on our counter with a note written on it. Our neighbor had brought us 2 quarts of goat milk and put it in the referigerator for us. It is very good milk. He is the same neighbor who borrows greenhouse space from me, so he is glad to be able to give something in return.
Our veterans and police officers were honored at the service yesterday morning. The crowd was quite small for a Sunday morning service, most likely due to the holiday weekend and beautiful weather. A family in the church lost a 6 month old baby last week, so sad. I don't know what happened, but God knows, and we can pray for their comfort.
This morning I packed hubby a small ice chest with juice, water, crackers, string cheese, and an apple, to take with him when he goes down the fenceline to pick up posts that have no wire on them now. He takes our old pickup, and when he is tired he can drive back and bring back the posts which are being piled up to be made into firewood. He is working within sight of the house which is a comfort to me.
One of our neighbors said that fence has been there for at least 50 years. He remembers a fellow who lived on a homestead that he (neighbor) now owns, who built fences for everybody in the area. The wire on ours has been stretched so many times that now it just breaks and has been patched so many times that we've been patching the patches.
When the sun gets to the west side of the house I need to take a picture of the beauty spot I made last fall after I cleaned out the messy flower bed, added soil, planted and mulched. The panseys I bought for 10 cents each look healthy and happy, but the daffys have finished and I cut off the stems. Remember, I promised you a picture.
Cajun, the wolves came from the reintroduction program in Idaho. There have been a few that came over the border which is the Snake River in recent years, but this is the first that have killed livestock that we know of. One of the others was hit and killed on the freeway, another was trapped and radio collared, transported back to Idaho and has apparently not returned. The biologists say this is a pair of youngsters, probably a year or so old, a male and a female. The male was caught and collared, then turned loose right where they caught him. Dumb if you ask me!
Being young explains why they are killing prey that is an easy target. It is not typical for a pair that young to be out on their own. It would seem the biologist would have taken them back to Idaho. That doesn't make any sense to me.
Glad your DH is able to keep busy with a "safe" project. My DH is taking it easy for a change. I think this bout took more out of him than he is willing to admit.
Is the old fence wire barbed wire? If so, you might be able to make a few crafts with it. Wreaths made of it are nice and rustic. The neatest Christmas tree I have ever seen was made from barbed wire. It was wrapped around an iron frame and sprayed brown. It had lights on it and the ornaments were horse shoes and stars. I have wanted to make me one ever since but haven't gotten around to it.
The goat's milk was a nice gift. I am still working on DH to let me get a pygmy goat to milk so I can make cheese. I think he is softening because he let me buy a little milk bucket that was on clearance sale at the TSC. It was sold as a grow kit for sweet peppers but I gave the seeds to my DDIL along with the little hand tools it came with. I only had eyes for the bucket. It's just the right size to milk a goat with.
I can't wait to see the pics of your pretty place. It seems I remember you posting about it when you first started cleaning the area. How is your garden coming?
Cheryl, I'm glad that your hubby is home. Will he require more surgery on his foot? Is he on antibiotics long term? Great find on the bucket, I hope you have a goat soon to go with it.
I was just down in the garden to get a tool I needed in the yard, but the "but firsts" got me and I watered my planted rows, then checked the potato patch and behold! I see them coming up. They are covered with barn cleaning straw, with a little stake by each one, and heavier straw between them for weed control, so it took close inspection to see the little clumps of green leaves. They got a drink too. We are eating volunteer lettuce, spinach and green onions. Some of the spinach is trying to go to seed. Oh yes, and my rhubarb plants are huge and making seed stalks which are now cut off and on the compost pile.
With God's grace he won't need any more surgery. He will be on cipro fro 6 months.
Good job on the taters! Mine are doing well. I only had room for 5 but I'll be happy with those. I hope they do well. The plants look a bit spindly but I'm not suprised. All they get is afternoon and evening sun.
My rhubarb has nor made any seed stalks. Does that come when they get older?
Cheryl, I'm glad your DH is doing well. As for the rhubarb flower stalks, I don't know. I think mine have always done that. I break them off as soon as I see them, they just waste the plant's energy. Recently I heard about making juice from rhubarb, so I'm going to try it, just as soon as I have time! It's supposed to be good mixed with orange juice. We mix my canned elderberry juice with apple juice, so rhubarb/orange would be another unusual mix. Most of the canned or frozen juice sold in the stores is too sweet anyhow.
I was thinking that when your rhubarb gets too large for the barrel, you could make a raised bed for it where it would have more room.
Today I'll be helping my neighbor brand the last few calves and vaccinate the cows. I'm up to my neck in weeds, have barrels to plant (got the plants to put in them already) and about 100 other things to do.
Hubby is doing well, getting a bit of work done around the place and feeling a bit stronger day by day. He's being really good about not cheating on the low fat diet. We are eating a lot of fresh fruit, and green salads. I have a lot of volunteer lettuce and spinach in the garden. Liking vegies is a very good thing!
I have tried to grow spinach but it bolts early. I saw something on an edible wild plant called lambs quarters. It is supposed to taste like spinach and can be prepared the same way. I have some growing in my yard so I'm going to give it a try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Glad your DH is getting back into the swing of things. Low fat can be very tasty with a bit of creativity. Did you try the crock pot beans with the broth yet?
Does your neighbor freeze brand?
I think you are right about the rhubarb outgrowing the barrell. It looks pretty tight in there now. I fertilized it yesterday because it is looking a bit yellow and puny.
Knock and I weeded and fertilized everything yesterday. Then I sprayed for bugs and of course it came a gully washer of a rain last night. I'll have to spray again. The roly poly bugs are eating my garden up. The trashy little nasties. There is also a striped beetle I am finding on my tomatoes and peppers. It's laying yellow waxy looking eggs. I hope the spray kills them. My tomatoes weren't looking too good but they seem to be coming out of their funk now. I think it was shock from being transplanted. I have a money maker with a small tomato on it. My cucumbers in the hanging pots are doing very well. They are covered with blooms and small fruit and they are just getting tall enough to lay over. My beans are starting to bloom.
My neighbor's plans changed so we haven't branded the last few calves yet. He is always behind, and his cousin came to help him with field work, so he needed to take advantage of that. His cousin is also a good mechanic, and works to keep the old machinery running.
We did move the yearlings out of our place and the cows and older calves in. There is a lot of grass this year, thanks to the rains we had in April and May, and the irrigation. The reason for the moves was to put the yearlings on a field he has that needs to be eaten down, and put them closer to the barn because one day soon they will have to go through the corrals and some of them will have to see the vet. Sometimes when we band the little boys they are too big to use an elastrator band to castrate them, so now there are a few that need attention because they are starting to act like bulls. The buyers don't want bulls, and they cause all kinds of trouble, fighting with each other and trying to breed the heifers instead of gaining weight. One more thing to take up a lot of the neighbor's time. After they heal up from that we will take them 5 miles up the road to another pasture.
He hot brands. Freeze branding is ok for dark animals, but most of his calves are too light for a freeze brand to show. Old fashioned method. I don't know anybody who freeze brands cattle. We also dehorn with a hot iron.
My battle with the weeds is showing some progress, but it seems that a lot of them regrow faster than I can get around the first time. I have to replant some of my vegies, again! My seeds must be too old. Darn, it is wasted time and effort.
A few days ago we counted 3 baby owls that our owl family hatched this year. Their feathers are still so soft the slightest breeze makes them look like they are shivering. More summer birds are showing up all the time, we have been seeing Orioles and the Kingbirds have started to arrive.
Taste those lambs quarters before you cook them. They get bitter when they are too old.
I haven't cooked the beans with broth yet. I never think to buy the broth when I am at the store. Yesterday we shopped without a list and still managed to spend over $60.
Yesterday was a busy and somewhat frustrating day, one of my horses is sick. He was way down in the pasture, 1/2 a mile from the house and the corral where he needed to be, so I spent most of the day getting him to it, a bit at a time. His problem is too much green grass for too long, and the result is laminitis, an inflamation in the hoof. I had to get him to the corral so he could be eating hay. First thing I did was give him a dose of an anti inflamatory, then lead him for as far as he was willing to walk. After dinner I finally got him to the corral and gave him another dose of the medicine, a bucket of water and some hay, and taped a funny looking pad to the sole of his foot to relieve the pressure.
In between trips to the pasture to move him closer to the corral, I did get some vegie starts planted, planted a couple dozen flowers, did some watering and pulled weeds, pressure cooked some chicken and made soup from it for dinner, and went to town to get the pads for the horse's feet. I had to move the other horses out of the top pasture so my neighbor could move his cows and calves through and try to sort out another neighbor's bull who isn't supposed to be visiting. I'm glad he had plenty of help for the job, because he ended up taking the whole works down the road to his corral, removing the bull and bringing the cows back. Then I moved Breezy and Patch back to their own pasture.
Today I hope to put a pad on Bullwinkle's other front foot, if he can stand to have weight on the most painful foot while I work. Last night I only did the worst front foot. I didn't have much daylight left, and had to wait for his foot to dry after the trip through the wet grass in the pasture because tape won't stick to anything wet. My farrier will be here in the morning to trim the excess hoof wall, which will be a painful job requiring patience, but after it is done the horse will be much more comfortable.
Hubby is doing well. We got the last of the old fence taken down and hubby went over the fenceline with the tractor and front end loader, using it like a blade, to take off the humps and remove the sagebrush. Some of that sagebrush had trunks 8 inches thick, so it has been there a long time, probably since the fence was built over 50 years ago. He hauled the old wire to the dump and had almost 800 pounds!
There's a little section of fenceline that will be dealt with later, after the new part is rebuilt. It is the east line of Breezy and Patch's pasture. I will have to move them elsewhere while it is being removed and rebuilt, but only for a couple of days. Now that Bullwinkle is occupying one corral I have only one other one to hold a horse, and can't put another in with him, nor can I put the two together in the other one, so I might have to farm one of them out somewhere, maybe borrow the neighbor's corral for a couple of days.
This morning I need to go to my neighbor's to see what chores I will be doing for him over the weekend while he goes to his sister's wedding. He has a goat to milk, and chickens, so I will get to keep the milk and eggs while he is gone. Last week he brought me some milk and it is very good.
We've had rain and more rain. So far, in about 10 days, only 1 or 2 days without at least a shower. Lots of lightning too. A couple of nights ago it rained over 2 inches and the postholes we had drilled the day before were full of water. Hubby and a friend were out there trying to set railroad ties for posts and get enough mud and rocks into the holes to hold the posts up straight. Our fence project has had many delays. We have had 3x the normal rainfall for June in just a few days!
My horse seems to be doing pretty well and is moving around more. Still slow, still on the anti inflamatory (bute). I think he might need more space to move around in, but I still want to keep him in the corral. One corral has lush grass on one side of it, so I will move a few of the pipe panels and enlarge the other one to keep him from eating the wrong thing. Another project just got added to my list! I think I can do that without help, handling just one end at a time and pivoting it around.
For the last couple of days I have been doing chores for a neighbor who has a goat to milk and about 20 hens. I get the milk and eggs, and he also said he would give me a day of garden work to pay me back! He borrows greenhouse space from me to start his vegies and gave me a few plants to thank me for that. He will be back home this afternoon. The goat gives very good milk, and I have collected about 3 dozen eggs. I think he needs a pig to take care of the excess milk. He clabbers it and gives it to his chickens when there is too much for human consumption. It will come in handy at lambing time, if he gets the doe bred to be fresh before bummer lambs need the milk.
My potatoes are almost all up and looking great under their strawy manure cover. Several weeks ago I brought home several tractor bucket loads of sheep pen cleanings from this year's lambing season. Now that they are up I need to add more, and that will clear space for planting the tomatoes, which are still in the greenhouse due to the cool rainy weather.
Neighbors who had newly planted fields now have gullys across their land, and are hoping there is still seed in most of the ground to germinate. One neighbor has 6 inch tall grain, another had just finished seeding alfalfa. He was delayed due to wet conditions earlier, and lack of help to get his irrigation going. It's always something. The storm that dumped over 2 inches on us also caused culverts to pulg and water to run across the road near us. Yesterday was dry, and today looks good so far, but the forecast says we will have thundershowers for the next few days, again. Next thing we know we will be hot and dry and wishing for rain, but first the hay needs to be cut and baled. With all this rain there will be a heavy hay crop.
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