Finally, an update.

I am finally able to set down for a little bit of catching up on indoor things! I have been working either one or another job in town as well as trying (unsuccessfully) to keep up with all of the things that need to be done here at home, and get the crop in at the other farm as well! Sleeping and eating have been some of the things that have been put off to the side for the time being, and the effects are really showing. It finally rained enough (thank God for that!) to shut down all of the field work and one of the jobs in town has been completed so I am finally having a day here at home. I really dislike being away from home, I was missing the plum trees blooming, the chokecherries blooming and I almost missed watching the flowering crab in the front yard start blooming, it’s my absolute favorite color (for a flowering crab), a very dark maroon, and I would hate to miss it. One of the major jobs that has been put on the back burner and has needed to be done badly is to get a pasture made for the cows so they could get out on the nice green grass that God has given us for yet another summer. Today I was able to finally get the posts in and the wire rolled out and the gate installed, tomorrow I hope to stretch the wire and it will be ready for the happy new occupants. I even started cutting a trail through the trees so I could start on the second pasture, which will be one of several paddocks in the trees that I want to rotate animals through. The branches are thick enough that I would never get a straight fence through there so I cut a path through, leaving truckload after truckload of firewood behind me. It’s mostly an excuse right now, I bought a new chainsaw and just had to try it out! My old 1974 model Stihl with a 12 inch bar was just not up to the task, the new one with a 20 inch bar is so much faster I can hardly believe my eyes when I look back and see how much has gotten done in so little time, it was worth every bit of the small fortune it cost to buy it! Another recent acquisition is a Farmall H tractor that I bought at an auction the other day. It’s an all fuel model with a brand new engine and I am planning on doing a few small modifications to the fuel system in order to make it even more versatile in the fuel department, it already has a heated dual fuel system so it will not take much for me to get it going on even more fuel combinations.

I have been going to lots of meetings lately, not that I have much time for that sort of thing, but it’s really needed in these cases so I find the time and go. We have finally gotten the last of the Cando Farmers Market loose ends tied up and have just about everything set for the first Cando Farmers Market! God willing I’ll be selling there all summer as well as the Leeds Farmers Market. I also attended the last public meeting dealing with the factory hog farm going in 1.5 miles from my Dad’s place. It was a fiasco and a waste of many people’s time, as I figured it would be. The county commissioners had their minds made up long before anyone got up and gave their passionate speeches begging them to not allow this new hog farm. Nobody in the neighborhood is excited about the hog operation and the smell, loss of land value and potential water pollution that comes with it, or maybe I should say they are very excited, to the point of yelling and shaking their fist at the guy who is putting this thing up and anyone who is sympathetic with his plans. They don’t like my point of view at all, which is that I would rather have a hog operation in my front yard than a bunch of zoning laws and restrictions and even more government intrusion into all of our lives, property and interests. They are all begging for laws that don’t allow such hog operations but I don’t want any more laws, even if they do make the countryside a little more eye appealing, or nose appealing. However, I am not a fan of these huge factory farms in any form they may come in either. The pro hog factory people are proclaiming that it doesn’t matter, this is the way of the future so we had better just put up with it. Yes, it may be the way of the future, but so was the Titanic in its day. As with the Titanic, I believe that these huge factory farms or livestock operations (corporate farms) will sink to oblivion in a matter of a few years. How many Centennial factory hog or chicken operations are there still operating? Most of the 20 year old factory livestock operations are a pile of tin and junk. I guess we will see what the future holds.

I’ve been working in Rugby most days, plowing for the organic farmer that I used to work full time for. He called and begged for some help, the money was tempting so I agreed to drive tractor for a while. In reality I should be paying him for the opportunity to drive his wonderful equipment, brand new John Deere tractor with a 9 bottom plow and a 300 acre field to keep me busy for a few days. I just sit in the $3,000 seat that adjusts so many different ways that I can’t figure them all out, plug in the CD I want to listen to, and keep an eye on the 7 different computer systems on the tractor. Probably the hardest thing about driving the tractor is climbing up the steps to get inside the climate controlled cab, though I do have to steer the thing and keep the plow in line. It does get tiring after a while because I sit in there all day, even through meals, and after three or four days of that it gets old.

I finally got the new strawberry field planted and my fingers are very glad to stop digging holes. 1,500 holes dug by hand tends to wear fingers down a bit. The field at the other farm is flat and needs pipe for irrigating, this field here is on a nice slope so I have been flood irrigating it and that is so nice! I have a 1500 gallon tank on the back of my truck that I drive over to the pond, fill up with a little gas powered pump and then I just drive over to the top of the berry rows and let the water run out into the little ditch that I dug for the purpose of irrigating. No pipe, no pumping, no sprinklers, no hoses, and no time wasted not watering thoroughly! I can empty the 12,000 pounds of water in no time at all and go for a second and third load in less time than it took us to water one row of berries last year.

Steve delivered the fruit trees and I had a wonderful day planting my new orchard! I love orchards but have never put one in because I knew I would be moving somewhere at some point and didn’t want to leave a nice orchard behind. Now I am somewhere that I expect to be for the next 50+ years so I can finally plant the orchard I have always wanted. With the apple trees I had here already I now have 33 fruit trees, not counting the native plum hedge that has so many trees that it would be impossible to count them all; one variety of apple that I wanted didn’t come in so I guess I’ll just have to plant more trees next year! I think as it is I’ll have more apples, plums, cherries and grapes than I’ll be able to use myself, but I’ll find some way to make a use of everything! Transplanting the ancient rhubarb row and planting a new row of asparagus finished off the orchard area for now, at least the planting part; now I just have to deal with the hordes of deer that walk through here every day. Between a scarecrow, complete with a fresh change of my most disgusting and sweaty clothes, a dog (which I haven’t gotten yet) a fence and a bit of lead thrown around I hope to keep them out of here. At some point this summer I want to build a fence around the yard and orchard besides the perimeter deer fence around the property, the problem is that I just have to have a white picket fence for the yard and orchard (which is actually a part of the yard) so it might take a while to get all of the pickets cut out and put up. I got the pattern I want, which happens to be more intricate than the usual plain point on most fences, so it will be a lot more time consuming to cut out. I guess I can start cutting pieces as I get time and all winter long I can work on it in the shop so that by next summer I might be ready to put it up!

I’ve got lots more going on but it’s getting late so I’ll save something for another post. Keep an eye out because I have been taking some pictures, which means that I should be posting some soon.