Silver Linings



Every cloud has a silver lining

Every cloud has a silver lining...

Every bad situation has something good to it if you look hard enough. That saying is usually said to encourage a person who has some difficulty, is discouraged and is unable to see any way out.  As I was looking at the rain soaked garden and inability to get the Fall/Winter crop in the other day, I looked toward the western sky and saw some beautiful clouds that had silver linings and thought about that.  I think everyone who has breath in their lungs is dealing with something that burdens them.  Although hard when you are in the middle of the fray, it is good to try to look on the bright side and be optimistic.  Lots of times good things come out of difficulties or set-backs that we face.  Laughter is often good medicine during those times. 

Tomorrow will be the first day that we won't milk Rosie.  We're drying her off after milking her for a year.  We will miss her good milk but will still have Daisy's milk to drink as we'll be milking her twice a day now.  We will also save a little on our feed bill during this time.  We don't feed our cows much at all, prefering them to eat only grass.  We do give them a gallon of dairy ration each time we milk.  We have a rule that the cows don't get feed unless they're in milk.  That means Rosie will be on grass and hay for a few months until she calves in December.  I'll also give her some good stuff out of the garden as well.  The sweet potatoes will be ripe soon so they'll have a ton of sweet potato vines to keep them full.  They are fat and well conditioned right now.

You know, talking about feed for the animals,  it reminds me of a funny story my cousin told me one time.  My cousin is quite a character.  He lives out on the river in a town not far from here.  He pretty much lives off the land.  You'll drive up to his house and he'll be skinning a hog, or coming in from hunting wood ducks or squirrels or coming in from the river with a mess of catfish he just caught.  Chickens, peacocks, geese and turkeys roam around and my cousin's always got a smile and some humor.

One day he tells me, "Kyle, rice bran is awfully expensive to feed my old horse."  "Yep," I said, "it is."  He says, "I was sawing up some lumber and got to thinking that the sawdust looks an awful lot like rice bran.  So I had and idea."  "Oh, yeah?" I said.  "Yeah.  I began to substitute a little sawdust for a portion of his rice bran each day.  The first day I put one cup of sawdust in his rice bran and he ate it all.  The next day I replaced two cups of rice bran with two cups of saw dust and he ate it all.  Each day I put more and more sawdust and less and less rice bran and the horse ate it all.  Man, I was saving all kinds of money on feed. You know, Kyle, I had that horse eating almost 100% sawdust before he up and died on me!"

Don't worry, we're not going to be feeding Rosie any sawdust!

Tomorrow I think the ground is going to be dry enought to do some planting.  I am looking forward to that.  As I was checking out the soil, I took a few pictures that I'll share below.  This first one is of basil that has gone to seed an a lot of little sprouts that are coming up all over the garden.  Basil will give anyone confidence as it is so easy to grow. 

Young basil seedlings

Here is some ginger that is in bloom.

And finally, here is a persimmon from one of the trees in our yard.  The persimmons are small, and chock full of seeds, but they taste good.  Tricia makes a real good cake with them that is a favorite around our house.



Tomorrow is a big day as we'll try to work some soil and put some seeds in the ground.  Good night, everybody!