Planting seeds and Transplanting Tomatoes

Warmer weather has enticed me to go ahead and get things in the ground.  Benjamin helped me start sowing seeds.  Below he's planting some Roma II Italian beans. These are really a favorite of our family.  Romas are a flat snap bean that are hard to beat as far as flavor goes.  Benjamin and I work as a team in planting to make it go quickly.  After the seedbed is prepared, I make holes at appropriate depths and distances and Benjamin drops the seeds in the holes and covers them.

There's something about planting seeds that is special.  The anticipation, the faith, the work.  It creates an excitement that I think is hard-wired into us.  Benjamin and I planted the following beans/peas so far:

• Contender Green Beans
• Roma II Italian Beans
• Dragon Tongue Beans
• Chinese Mosaic Long Beans
• Rattlesnake Pole Beans
• Peanuts
• Purple Hull Pinkeye cowpeas
• Razorback cowpeas
• Blackeyed Peas

A simple seed

In addition to seeds, it is now time to start getting our little plants that we've been nurturing since the very beginning of January into the ground.  I moved the tomatoes out to the cold frame and have been hardening them off.  In order to hedge my bets, I've been moving them out slowly, one or two varieties at a time.  That way, if we have a big storm or a late freeze, I won't lose the entire crop.

These are the varieties of heirloom tomatoes we have planted for the 2014 crop year:

• Thessaloniki
• Abu Rawan
• Valenciano 749 (saved from a previous year)
• Black Krim
• Arkansas Traveler
• Mortgage Lifter
• Money maker (saved from a previous year)
• Organic Beefsteak
• Reisentraube
• Gypsy
• Amish Paste
• Big Rainbow
• Black from Tula
• Pink Brandywine

Tomato plants in the cold frame wanting to get their roots into the garden soil.

Ready to spread their roots out and GROW!!

So one variety at a time, I bring them out and get ready to plant, ensuring that my spacing is good.  The LSU AgCenter planting guide says to plant them 16 - 24 inches apart.  I keep good records of transplant dates and the row I planted each variety on.   

You can see how i have a 20 foot tape measure anchored and stretched out.  I mark each 18 inch place at which I'll be planting the tomato plants.

Healthy Pink Brandywine Tomato Plants

You can tell that the plants are tall and slightly 'leggy.'  The nice thing about tomatoes is that you can plant them deep as the stem will create roots, so I dig a deep hole.  The ground is nice and soft though and not hard at all to dig with my knife.  The moisture in the soil was perfect.

Digging a hole

If your tomatoes are too tall and leggy and you don't plant them deep, you risk breakage in high winds and droopy, weak plants.  Setting them deep in the hole gives them some strength.

Planting the tomato

Now I simply fill in the hole with dirt, give the ground a pat and that right there is a happy tomato.  In 60 - 75 days (if the Good Lord's willing) we'll be picking our first tomatoes!

A healthy, happy tomato

Since planting we had some weather in the upper 30's along with winds and an inch of rain and so far all of the tomatoes have weathered the storms nicely and are still looking good.  I'll try to get the rest of them planted this week.  I heard a funny saying this week that goes like this:

I'm so excited it's Spring that I wet my Plants!

GOAT Knees

A popular saying with some young people these days is when something or someone is really good, they call it/them GOAT.  I had no idea what that meant until it someone explained to me that GOAT is the acronym for Greatest Of All Time.  So if anyone ever calls you GOAT, it is a good thing - be flattered, they are describing you as the greatest of all time!  If they call you an old goat, well, that's NOT a compliment.

We do have actual goats on the farm, though, two of them, both Nubian goats. Nubians have a heritage from the Middle East and Northern Africa, so they can withstand the hot climates of South Louisiana.  Nellie is our mama goat that we're currently milking and Annie is her little girl.  We'll probably get them bred again next month.  Goats are such interesting, quirky creatures with funny personalities.  Here's old Nellie, sitting by the gate.

Nellie the Nubian Goat

Nellie has quite a profile.  She has long ears and a long white beard.  You can see it hanging below her jaw. If you look closely in the photograph she has two three inch long waddles that hang from her neck.  No one knows what purpose they serve.  She is curious and has lately taken to jumping on top of the chicken coop, standing up on her hind legs and pulling down limbs of an oak tree to eat the new Spring leaf growth. The cows all use that opportunity to rush over and eat on the leaves while Nellie's holding the limb down.  The cows try to head-butt Nellie every chance they get.  They don't like her and I think the feeling is mutual.

Quite a profile

Nellie is very tame and is easily milked, providing us with goat milk with which we make kefir.  Goat kefir mixed with local honey and pureed fresh frozen fruit (figs, blueberries, peaches) is my breakfast on most mornings.

One other characteristic of Nellie is her knees.  Just look at them!  Not very pretty to look at.  They're rough, hardened and no hair grows on them due to Nellie staying on her knees a lot.  She'll kneel down on those knobby knees, push her head through the fence and eat weeds and grass growing on the other side. Over time, the friction of this process repeated time and again, has given her calloused, goat knees.

Calloused Goat Knees

When I observed this, I couldn't help but think about prayer.  Have you ever known someone who was a prayer warrior? People with great faith spend a lot of time on their knees in prayer, praising God for His Faithfulness, thanking Him for the blessings He bestows, interceding on behalf of others who are afflicted with illness or heartache, and pleading with God to answer their prayers.  Nellie is a goat and as far as I know, goats don't pray, but Nellie convicted me.  My knees aren't anything to look at, but they certainly aren't calloused like Nellie's.

Of course you don't have to kneel to pray.  You can pray in any position you wish. Looking at Nellie's Goat knees was a convicting reminder to me that my prayer life could use some improvement.

"God does nothing except in response to believing prayer." - John Wesley

GOAT knees

Wouldn't it be nice to be known as GOAT Prayer Warrior?  I need to be on my knees more, literally and figuratively.  Thanks for illustrating that perfectly, Nellie.

The Point at which you conclude that regulation has gone too far...

As I was quickly reading through the news headlines this morning, one headline caught my eye.  You can read about it by clicking the link below:  White House looks to regulate cow farts

I shook my head in disbelief.  This can't be real, can it?  Well, sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. Coincidentally, the blog post two days ago was about the 'emissions' of our cows and now, low and behold, our government is getting serious on reducing those emissions.  The current Administration is planning on making the Dairy industry reduce the methane emissions of its cows by 25% by 2020.  Here is a quote from that article from the Daily Caller:

“Statistics vary regarding how much methane the average dairy cow expels. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters a day… while others say it’s up to 500 liters… a day. In any case, that’s a lot of methane, an amount comparable to the pollution produced by a car in a day.”

The article did not go into specific detail about how you would supposedly go about capturing the flatulence of cows and a quick search turned up the image below from Argentina where methane gas emitted from Dairy Cows was being captured.

Image Credit

You gotta be kidding me, right?  So I went and asked Daisy what she thought about me outfitting her with a plastic tank to capture her flatulence.  The look she gave me needed no words for explanation.  As you might imagine, she's not overly enthusiastic about the idea.

"You'll not put a tank on my back to catch gas from when I 'break wind!'"

I honestly don't know what to say about this silliness.  God created cows to have large fermentation vats inside of them in order to aid in digestion, turning that green grass and clover into delicious milk. A process occurs in ruminants called enteric fermentation in which bacteria in the rumen produce methane gas as a by-product. This is nature.  This is what cows do.

When I"m forced to install tubes in uncomfortable places on my cows and burden them with tanks on their backs, it might be time to march somewhere with pitchforks and torches.

Cabbage Harvest 2014 - Making Sauerkraut

Our cabbage crop for 2014 was sub-par, late, and disappointing.  As with all things, we try to learn from our mistakes and adjust our processes to better things for the next year.  Next Fall/Winter crop, I'm going to start all my cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower in seed pots in the summer and transplant the seedlings once established.  I think that planting the seeds directly in the ground at the height of the summer heat and bug pressure puts strain on the plants and stunts them or slows them down.  From now on I intend on giving them a better head start.

That being said, the crop wasn't a total failure.  We made a great Cabbage Roll casserole the day before yesterday.  Tricia made cole slaw and homemade egg rolls with some of the rest.  She also shredded and blanched 4 quarts of shredded cabbage that we'll freeze and we have one of the crispers in the fridge full of cabbage heads for eating fresh.  I think we can better our crop, though, with a few changes.

Cabbage Patch

It is warming up in the 70's now and the worms and bugs will soon come out of their dormancy and discover a nice row of cabbage to snack on.  I like to share with family, friends and neighbors, but not worms and bugs, so this past weekend we went out and harvested all the cabbage in the 30 foot row.

A nice head of cabbage

As can always be expected, our Jersey Cows lined up at the garden fence and looked at me with those big, brown, liquid eyes and begged.  I couldn't resist.  Fortunately, cabbage is a crop made for this situation as it contains outer leaves that God probably designed specifically for cows since they serve as a protective 'wrapper' for the cabbage head and have some 'wear & tear' on them.  The cows gladly eat any cabbage I throw their way.

"How the Cow ate the Cabbage!"

In all we harvested a 30 gallon container of smaller heads of cabbage with a few nice ones mixed in.

2014 Cabbage Harvest 

We pulled out a few heads and determined that we were going to make some sauerkraut.  We always do this and to be perfectly honest with you, as a kid, I wouldn't have touched sauerkraut with a 20 foot pole.  I like it now.  Funny how that happens...  

In order to make sauerkraut the way we do it, you need some whey.  Tricia was making kefir and separated some whey from the curds by letting it drip from a bag. We make our sauerkraut using the lactofermentation process described in Nourishing Traditions, a publication put out by the Weston A. Price Foundation.  This unpasteurized sauerkraut aids in digestion and contains beneficial bacteria and nutrients that are great for your health.

Drip... Drip... Drip

We use a kitchen chopper to chop the head of cabbage up.  You can also use the shredding blade on a food processor.  To the chopped cabbage head you'll add 1 tablespoon of kosher salt.  

Salt

Then add 1/4 cup of whey:

Whey

Now here is a good chance to let of some steam.  We take the head off of a wooden mallet and use it to bruise the chopped cabbage.  Keep beating on the cabbage until you've crushed it all, mixing it with the whey and salt.  You'll see that the cabbage is all wet with the whey and cabbage juice released with the pounding.

Pounding on the Cabbage

Next we spoon it into jars, pushing it down and packing tightly until we see liquid.

The beginnings of sauerkraut

Now the waiting begins.  We put lids and rings on the jars and set them aside on the counter for 3 days.

3 days at room temperature

Once the 3 day period has passed, put the jars in the fridge.  We normally wait a few weeks before eating. When you open the jar and take a bite, you'll notice that the sauerkraut is crunchy and effervescent and tasty.  Not only is it good - but it is good for you!

Supper in the Back Yard

Nice Spring weather enticed Tricia, Benjamin and I to serve our bowls from the stove and eat supper on the back porch. Right after driving in from work, I moved the portable electric fence in the back yard.  Prior experience has taught me to be sure to position the fence away from the shrubs and trees.  Cows don't just like grass.  They'll eat the leaves off of most any plant.  Once I had the fence set up and the wire unrolled from the spool, I hooked up the solar charger, ensured it was "hot" and then went and retrieved the 3 lawnmowers so that they could mow down the back yard. As you might recall, they finished mowing the side yard last week.

These mowers don't emit the loud, obnoxious noises that a regular mower will give you.  You hear a "Crunch, Crunch, Crunch" as they stick out their tongues, wrap their tongues around the grass and pull.  It adds a nice pastoral, slow-paced atmosphere to supper time, hearkening back to a simpler time.  We need to try to do this more often.

Here's Rosie comin' around the corner now

We had harvested all of our cabbage and maybe I'll post about that tomorrow, but Tricia made a new dish for us to enjoy using some of the cabbage.  It is along the same lines of Cabbage Rolls, if you've ever had that, but these are not rolled up.  It is essentially rice, ground beef, cabbage and spices all cooked together into a delicious casserole.  When Tricia was recovering, this was one of the meals dropped off to us by some friends at church and we got the recipe.  To add some panache to the dish, we put some steamed fresh asparagus from the garden on top.  I know it may not look appetizing, some casseroles just don't, but this was a mighty fine meal!  It tastes good and sticks to your ribs.

Cabbage Rolls - Deconstructed

We ate and talked and enjoyed the nice view and weather.  Spring doesn't last long in our parts.  The amount of time that you can sit outdoors enjoying cool, dry, mosquito-free weather during the year is best measured in hours, not days, unfortunately.  We were soaking it up while we could.  We've found (through experience with teenagers) that if you ask yes or no questions, that's all you'll get.  As I've gotten older, I like meaningful conversations.  To spark conversation, we've begun asking open ended questions like:

• If money were no object, and you could go whereever you wanted to go on vacation, where would you go and why? or,
• If you could improve one thing about yourself, what would that be? or, 
• If you could wish for anything, what would you wish for and why?

It makes you think and you learn things about other family members in the process.

Daisy's comin' round the corner now

The cows were mowing down the grass in the backyard, the hens are foraging out in the pasture, and if you look closely, you can see Big Boy napping in the shadow that the chicken tractor is casting.  Daisy's tongue is out-stretched in the photo, exhibiting the process of eating I described above.

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

It doesn't take long for the lawnmowers to have the backyard manicured.  As we ate, they ate, and in three shakes of a Billy Goat's tail, we were all done eating supper.

The ambiance of a nice meal at Chez Sonnier 

There's only one drawback to our 3 "lawnmowers" in the back yard.  That would be their EMISSIONS!:

Watch your step

You must watch your step when walking in the back yard after the yard crew leaves. While mowers powered by the internal combustion engine have emissions, so do ours. Both are foul in their own way.

The Survivor

This afternoon we received a package.  It was in a simple brown box and was given to us by some friends. It was a hen - a very wild hen - a feral hen, they called it.  They had been trying to catch the bird for a while now and finally caught it.  We traded them one dozen eggs, one bunch of Swiss Chard, and a bag of dried Criolla Sella peppers in exchange for the feral chicken and both parties were happy with the trade.

The chicken had been living in their yard for a while, roosting up in an oak tree and sometimes, for a change of scenery, in a lemon tree.  A wily old bird indeed.  But that's not the half of it.  This bird is gutsy, scrappy, a bird that has cheated death a time or three.  You see this chicken survived Mardi Gras in Basile, Louisiana. Mardi Gras in the country is much different than in the cities.  People go from farm to farm and chase chickens around, catching them.  These chickens will become gumbo for everyone that night during the festivities.

Our friend's son caught and rescued this chicken before she became gumbo.  She was missing many feathers and looking rough, but they took her home and she lived to fight another day.  In time her feathers grew back and she survived several altercations with neighborhood dogs.  Always a wild bird, she made her nests in secret places in the flower beds and they never could find the eggs.  A bird that they wanted for a pet never lost the wild streak and never became tame and friendly, so the Survivor now has a new home at our place.

Unpacking the box

She squirmed and squawked as I removed her from the box.  I'm not sure what breed of chicken she is, perhaps someone can tell me.  We were told that she lays white eggs.  We don't have any white egg layers on the farm, so we'll know when she's laying eggs.

Checking out the new surroundings

Now before I set her free, I used my clippers to trim the feathers on one of her wings. This will keep her off-balance if she tries to fly as I don't want her to fly over the fence.

Clipping her wings

I admire the survivor, fending off Mardi Gras revelers and dogs, both of whom wanted to eat the poor old girl.  But she's an over-comer and has defied the odds.  I'm hoping that she finds Our Maker's Acres Family Farm to her liking.

A wily and crafty hen

I sat her down and she familiarized herself with her new surroundings, happy to be released from the box and enjoying her freedom.  She stretched out her wings and tail feathers.

Home Sweet Home!

Just as she was relishing her Freedom, ironically in front of the Stars & Stripes I have painted on the barn wall, along came the mean old, Cornish Cross rooster and chased The Survivor away.  It'll take a while before the 'pecking order' is established.

The Bully

I went to pick up the box and saw the feathers littering the ground.  If the Survivor was going to survive, she was going to have to do so using her shrewdness and speed as she wasn't going to be flying far without fully feathered wings on her left side.

Feathers

This evening I went to check on her.  She's still surviving, but she's being kind of anti-social, hanging out in the old goat barn in the corner by herself.  I can relate to that. Sometimes when I'm in a large crowd with people I don't know, I want to quietly position myself in a corner, being self-conscious about being the 'new guy.'

The new kid in town

She needs to go introduce herself to the other chickens.  The new bird has upset the apple cart, so to speak, in the barnyard pecking order, but things will settle out in a few days.  I'm not worried about the Survivor.  If she survived being the main course for the Mardi Gras and survived becoming the main course for a pack of dogs, she'll be fine on our farm.

Planting a New Crop in the Garden

Yesterday I told you about a brand new crop we were trying in our garden this year. Enough with the suspense.  Benjamin, who was given the nickname, "Peanut Man" by my Aunt Cheryl because he loves peanuts, was very excited about putting The Sonnier Family's very first crop of peanuts in the ground. We've never grown them before.  The sight below reminds me of something you might see on the ground at a football or baseball game.  The snap as you walk on them reminds me of being in an all-you-can-eat Catfish joint where they tell you that you can throw the peanut shells on the floor.

But the peanut shells you see below are on the ground in our garden after we've removed the peanuts to plant them.  Oh, these aren't your ordinary peanut either. Tricia picked these up at a Seed Exchange at the SSAWG Conference last year in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Seed exchanges are neat because everyone brings some seeds they grow and shares them.  You can always pick up something new and interesting to try. These peanuts are heirloom seeds and have a neat little history.  Now I really like interesting seeds that have a story.

Peanut Shells

The type of peanuts we're planting are called "Schronce's Deep Black Peanuts."  They are true to their name. Check a couple of them out that I have in my hand in the photo below.  To be honest, it was all Benjamin and I could do to keep from eating them right there in the garden.  But we didn't.

Schronce's Deep Black Peanuts

From the following link: Georgia Dept of Agriculture I found the following written by Arty Schronce:

It was in the fall of 1980 that Hunter Helderman (a neighbor and distant relation), gave my father, Gordon Schronce, three peanuts – three ordinary looking peanuts. Inside those shells were seven individual peanuts – seven peanuts that were not ordinary at all. Those seven peanuts had black skins instead of the more familiar red.

Daddy planted the peanuts that spring in the family garden in Iron Station, North Carolina. (He had been growing red-skinned peanuts for several years after purchasing a bushel from a local 4-H’er.) The black peanuts performed well and exhibited no particularly different traits from the red peanuts except that the plants were smaller overall. Over the years he built up his stock of black peanuts and began saving and planting only the largest peanuts with the darkest skins.

The peanuts came with no history and no promises of magic like the beans offered to Jack (and Daddy didn’t sell the family cow for them). They didn’t vine their way up to a giant’s castle or bring great riches, but they have performed magic of a sort. They have been a conversation starter, a source of pride, a teaching tool, and a delicious and nutrient-rich snack for almost three decades.

Pretty cool, huh?  I think so.  So I used my red-tape handled, 10 cent, Goodwill Store diggin' knife to dig holes at appropriate depths and Benjamin dropped the peanuts in the holes and I covered them.

Can you see the Black Peanut in the hole?

One of the peanuts we opened (sadly) had peanuts that were not black.  We're going to go ahead and plant these anyway and see what happens.  If you read the article linked above, the author tells how they are from Georgia and are big University of Georgia Bulldog fans.  They grow both red and black peanuts and mix them together for tailgate parties and Georgia Bulldog Football games since UGA's colors are red and black. Perhaps ol' Arty is trying to switch our loyalties from the Purple and Gold (LSU) or Maroon and White (Texas A&M).

Peanuts not black, but not red either...

One other interesting thing the article states about the Schronce's Deep Black Peanuts follows in this cut & paste from the same link posted above:

"Carolina Black Peanut – A rare heirloom, black-skinned peanut from North Carolina. According to food historian William Woys Weaver, the black peanut may have been used as a substitute for black bambarra. Black bambarra is important in African folk medicine as an aphrodisiac. (Whoa, now!) The North Carolina climate won't support black bambarra, but the black peanut grows there without difficulty. 'Carolina Black' produces sweet tasting, black-skinned peanuts that are slightly larger than 'Spanish' peanuts. Averages two peanuts per shell."

"I ordered some, and they closely resembled my father’s except for a slightly lighter color and smaller number of peanuts per shell. Thanks to my father’s selection process, his peanuts frequently have three or four per shell and are a deep violet-black.
I won’t speculate on how good an aphrodisiac either black bambarra or black peanuts are, but I will vouch that they have gotten a few conversations off and running. They also serve as an educational tool when my parents visit local schools and explain how peanuts grow and how George Washington Carver helped turn what was considered a minor crop into one of America’s most important foods.
I can’t detect much of a difference in flavor between red and black peanuts, except the black ones may be a tad sweeter. Daddy likes to mix red and black together and fry them in canola oil. They make an attractive as well as tasty mix. No, that is too modest. They are about the best-looking, best-tasting peanuts I have ever put in my mouth."

See what I mean about interesting crops?  As discussed earlier, Benjamin and I resisted the urge to eat the peanuts and instead planted them.  Hopefully our delayed gratification will work out and in 120 days we'll have a bountiful harvest of black peanuts - some of which we'll save for seed for next year!  But most of them, well, The Peanut Man and I will consume!

Saturday Planting Day

Once all the chores were done Saturday morning, my focus turned to the garden. There were things that I needed to get in the ground.  My sidekick and partner-in-crime, Benjamin was willing to assist, so we got busy.  I had to pull up a few rows first.  I have a little system that works for me and I'll explain what I do. Over the past several years I've moved to gardening using no tillage provided by machine.  Partially because I don't own a tiller and always have to borrow one, but more because I don't want to disturb the soil structure.

I now plant on the same rows every season, but using different dirt - if that makes any sense.  What I do is once I pull up my rows, I completely fill in the valley between rows with leaves and composted cow and chicken poop and then hay.  All this organic matter fills in the rows so that you can't even tell that there is a row.  It is all one level.  During the year, I'll pull back the organic matter between the rows and with a shovel, I'll bury coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, shredded paper, etc.  Fast forward one growing season.  All of the organic matter has decomposed and I take my big hoe and pull all of that rich, musty, damp, good smelling soil right up on top of the row and I'll plant seeds directly into it.  Then I start over again filling the valley with new compost. When I pull the rich compost up, it is teeming with small organisms and earthworms. As a co-worker told me, "You could probably drop a dog turd in that stuff and grow a dog!"

The photo below shows several things:

1. On the right you can see the 2014 potato crop growing nicely, surrounded by hay that keeps all weed pressure at bay.
2. In the pasture, you can see the hens scattered out foraging for bugs, worms, frogs, seeds, as far as the eye can see, and eating the fresh, new grass of Spring.
3. You can also see the sower sowing seed.  Benjamin is planting Chinese Mosaic Long beans and Rattlesnake Pole beans.  Both will attach themselves to the trellis and grow all the way to the top of it while yielding a nice crop.  Both of these seeds were some that we saved from last year, so we're interested to see how our germination percentage goes.

Ye Olde Bean Planter

One row behind Benjamin in the photo above, you can see a long, tall, green shoot. That is our asparagus. The rootstock is going on about five years old.  There are numerous little shoots of asparagus popping up that I normally snack on raw right out of the garden.  Here are a couple of asparagus shoots right here:

Looks like Junior from Veggie Tales!

And another one in the photo below.  If you don't break them off when they are this size, they grow very quickly, becoming 'woody' and too tough to eat.  Then they become a big, fern like plant that gobbles up a large space in the garden.

Can't forget to harvest this one when I get home today

When the dust cleared Saturday afternoon, Benjamin and I had planted the following:

• Chinese Mosaic Long Beans
• Rattlesnake Pole Beans
• Contender Green Beans
• Roma Italian Beans
• Purple Hull Pinkeye Peas
• Ozark Razorback Peas

Over the course of the next few days, we'll be getting lots of seed in the ground. Tomorrow I'd like to tell you about one more seed that we planted on Saturday - one that Benjamin is REALLY excited about, as am I.  It was planted on the row directly to the right of the turnips shown below.

A new crop for us

I want to show you something interesting and totally new (for us) that we planted in tomorrow's post.  Tune in tomorrow as we discuss it and show you the seeds.

So I fired up our 3 Lawn Mowers Today...

With the warmer Spring weather, the grass is really starting to grow in our yard. I heard the roar of the zero-turn radius lawnmower as my neighbor fired his up and quickly mowed his lawn to Country Club Golf Course-like specifications.  This only highlighted my unkempt, unruly winter weed/clover yard accented with live oak leaves strewn about as contrasted to his.  (You can see his yard in the upper right hand side of the photo below)  So I fired up my three lawnmowers as well...

3 Lawn Mowers/Weed eaters gettin' the job done

Our mowers don't need gas - they produce it.  In order to get them mowing down this portion of the yard, I set up a temporary paddock using some electric wire that I unrolled and place on some step-in posts.  I then went and got our solar power electric fence charger and hooked up the hot wire to the fence and the ground wire to a stake.  I then used a tester (hanging) to ensure that the fence was 'hot' and it was. Then I went and retrieved Daisy, Rosie and Maggie, our 3 lawnmowers who were all too happy to mow down the grass and clover in the paddock.

The Electric Fence set-up

Although Daisy doesn't smile as humans smile and actually always has a long face, I think she was happy to get in there and eat up the clover.  She was the first one in the paddock and ate the best, most succulent clover before I introduced Rosie and Maggie to the paddock.

Daisy in the clover patch

While they ate in the yard, the other animals left in the pasture bemoaned the fact that they were left behind, because the grass in the pasture is slower coming in.

Eating her fill

White Dutch Clover is a favorite of our cows and they'll pass up other items in the salad bar to go park themselves smack dab in the middle of a clover patch and eat.

Cleaning up the Clover

Now while they ate, I worked in the garden, BUT I kept a sharp eye on them.  I learned a lesson the hard way that when our cows finish eating all the grass and clover in a particular paddock, they'll start looking at the grass on the other side of the fence.  Whereas before, it was heads-down eating, now that they've eaten all the grass, they're ready to roam to find greener pastures and they will run right through that hot wire.  

When you see a scene like below, you want to quickly go retrieve the cows and put them back in the pasture or they'll be running down the road, being honked at by passing motorists as they seek out other grass to eat. If it sounds like I learned this lesson by experience, it is because I have. 

The 'After' Shot

Notice the difference between the first picture in this blog entry and the last.  Daisy, Rosie and Maggie have really done a good job mowing the yard.  Our yard crew is second to none!  Now I'll take down the fence, mow the leaves into a row, rake up the leaves and put them in the garden for mulch and to be composted.