Grey Days and Labor

Still cool and rainy here. A Tornado passed 20 miles south of us on Sunday, and today another one went south as well. The sky has been alternating with bright sun and dark rolling threats all day. This morning I got out on the first hill and finished putting in my juniper windbreak seedlings; 50 now all told. June may seem late for planting but the lows at night are still in the 40s here!

Yesterday hail threatened so I went out and put the month-old Barred Rocks in their coop. Rain they are starting to understand, but I didn't want a surprise hail to knock one of them out! We will have to switch from starter to mash, they are eating so much now that they are out of the brooder and running around! They come to the fence now inquiringly when I come out and sit on the cement block nearby. They want me to pull them some grass; it's like I am the Salad Bar caretaker at the buffet! I am watching them to determine which two roosters will get to be the breeding stock, and which will just be fattened for later. It's getting easier to tell them apart; the one that comes right up to the fence and cocks his eye up at me expectantly, the two who just hate each other and will not only chase each other around the pen but knock each other off of the top of the waterer and feeders. There are two hens that break up their little fights; like little moms or cops! Funny. I don't name them; it makes them easier to eat later.

So I went up on the first hill to put in my windbreak trees. I put them in the wheelbarrow with my SeaRich fertilizer in a lot of water. They were packed in shredded paper and so were stll green and damp. I put in the posthole digger, and a bag of sunflower seeds from the flowers last year - about 5 pounds of seed as well, and a bucket. I seem to take a bucket with me wherever I go now! The ones I planted before - about one-third were parched, windblown, and not doing so well. After I put in the remaining trees, I took the soaked-in-fertilizer shredded paper out of the bottom of the wheelbarrow, and padded the first trees with it, then covered that with the sandy soil. I threw handfuls of the sunflower seeds all over the hill around them. Sure enough, as I finished, the rains came up and started patting the seeds into the soil.

The clover and silage seed that I strewed all over the hill in February is coming up at last; bright green silage, cool green red clover, already with starting 'heads' on top. The 'honeybee' feed clover is already trying to bloom. Wild indigo is everywhere too, and some bright yellow flowers in clumps that I don't recognize, but the leaves are too flat and rounded for leafy spurge.

I don't get to get out in the pasture much; too much to do here down around the house with the garden and chickens starting. So today I wanted to look at an old tree that was laying down in the pasture. When we moved here with the overgrown pasture in the summer, I didn't see it, but with the winter die-off it was there, a grey-black length on the brown and yellowed grasses. So I went up to look at it. I pulled on the closest end, and it broke off. Red Cedar! What a heavenly smell! Not big enough to cut into boards any wider than 2 inches, and only as big around at the root as my two hands spread. I couldn't drag it back to the house today, but may tomorrow. Nothing rots here, just dries out, so the wood freed of the accumulated dirt and bark is just as sweet and fresh as it can be.

This afternoon was stormy and dark, thundery and gloomy. A neighbor dropped by with an old iron gopher trap for us to use. It springs up when tripped and drives two iron hooks into the gopher; doesn't even have to be baited. 'Way cool and 'way organic! LOL Look out you little furry demons...