Thursday, April 29, 2010

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Monday, April 12, 2010

There Be Calves Here

I love the line from Star Trek IV: The Journey Home, when Scotty beams two humpbacks into the Enterprise's cargo bay and is overcome with joy: "Captain, there be whales here!"

As an experienced writer, I will steal this line and make it my own. "Captain, there be calves here!"

First, some early spring images:

The living footstools under our kitchen counter:





The tray our neighbors gave Melissa:





The neighbor's pasture burn, to the south of our driveway, done to stimulate the native grasses growing there. Amazing how they set two lines of fire which then burned toward each other. Magic.





The Farmer's handknit socks, both of them. (I'd knit one, but that apparently wasn't enough---she wanted another one.)





And then it was time to prepare for the arrive of two calves. First Melissa used our Farmall 706 to scrap up the manure and composted hay around the barn:







Then she borrowed the neighbor's little Farmall 300 and manure spreader (that's the thing groaning under a load of composted manure):






I don't have a photo of the manure being flung all about the pasture from the back of the manure spreader. I'm thinking everyone can live without that image.

I forgot to take a 'before' picture, but here's the scrapped up yard. We'll seed it and hope the chickens don't eat all the seeds:








Then our friend Emily, visiting from Madison, mucked out the inside of the barn (Poor Emily---bad timing to visit the weekend the barn needed mucking!) Another visiting friend--Mary---and I put down down lime and fresh straw and made two pens.

Then Mary and Melissa drove off in the pickup, and came back two hours later with these guys:












Got finger?





Ahh, life is good
. A full tummy and warm sunshine. It doesn't get much better than this.