Thistledog's Farm

I had hoped to be posting regularly by now but that habit is taking a little longer to reestablish, no surprise here.  I won’t give up though.  The truth is I’ve not yet built it into my routine; many things, much less enjoyable tasks, get done every week simply because I place them on the map of what I will do and remove any roadblocks to doing them.  And so it must be, will be, with blogging.

We are moving very quickly into Spring this year.  Seems like just last week I was bringing in firewood and starting to think about cutting more, now the stove stands cold in the sunny front room, although it may need to heat the house once or twice more before it’s all said and done.   There are cool mornings still expected.  But the daily dance with firewood is pretty much over for the season, and that’s a good thing.

Up on the hill, the pastures not used for winter feeding are greening, not really growing yet but the carpet of first clover leaves and grass tips starting to produce chlorophyll again make it look positively yummy.  It’ll be awhile before grazing season is officially open, at least on this farm – I let everything get pretty tall before starting the rotation, so the grazers tired of eating hay don’t get ahead of the growth curve.  So the cowherd is still in winter feeding mode, on small sections of pasture eating hay, moving toward the corral so the 2015 calves can be sorted out for their trailer ride to the vet, leaving a nice blanket of trampled hay and manure in their wake.

Just the other morning I accidentally ran over the chain harrow with the gator, which reminded me to hitch it up and drag the West Pasture before the rains hit.  The herd spent most of the winter on those three acres, moving slowly from back to front, adding tons of carbon and nutrients; dragging spreads all that out a little more evenly, fills in hoof prints a little and lifts any large chunks that would smother growth below.  The picture above shows the job about half done.  It’s a beautiful thing to see all the good stuff laid on top, ready to be eaten by the little creatures and incorporated into the soil, boosting vigor and growth of the sward all summer long.

It’s going to be a busy Spring, I have a lot planned this year and the snowstorms set me back a bit on some stuff.  The garden, for instance, still sits just like it did after I dug the sweet potatoes, last crop harvested – tomato stakes still up, nothing pulled out and burned, a mess.  Haven’t started seedlings yet either, which I hope to remedy this weekend.  Last year my veggie starts were early, this year they will be late.  Oh well.

It’s also time to plant a little orchard.  Bare-root trees arrive in April.

And bees, I’m starting a beehive this Spring.  Bees arrive in May.

Then there are the big red horses to train.  With any luck I’ll have one or more of them hooked to some kind of training sled this summer, perhaps a stick of firewood this Fall.  That project goes slowly but steadily, we make progress every day on manners and communication and connection, this is the year to build on that and get them thinking and acting more like workhorses.  No rush to pull anything heavy but lots of opportunity to build skills for both horse and human.

So here we go.  Winter is behind us, the farm is waking up, it’s a beautiful place to live and the work is hard but fun.  I will figure out how to wedge the storytelling into the story doing somehow, it is important and not as difficult as all that.  Just need to work it in like I do everything else.