Hoo boy, it’s fun filling water troughs by hand! With six water troughs to keep up with, filling them has become a thrice weekly chore. Two of the troughs are several hundred feet from a water source. The short term solution is to load this 125 gallon trough onto a wagon, drive it to a hydrant, fill it to the brim, and then haul it to the 70 gallon troughs. Then I scoop water out one 5 gallon bucket at a time. It’s great fun! Fortunately, my water scooping days will soon be over. It looks like in March I’ll have enough time to dig my trenches and lay the water lines. Yahoo!

I love my JD MX-5 rotary cutter. This 5 acre field (recently acquired) was wall to wall reed grass and young trees w/ up to 3” trunks. It never bogged, and ate everything down to my height setting with no trouble at all.

Yesterday had me tilling this 2 acre field, our top pasture that we affectionately and creatively refer to as “Pasture #4”. Tilling sod on piedmont clay that has been pummeled by horses and cattle for 30 odd years is no small matter. Rather than zipping through the sod at 12mph I opted for a more leisurely 1mph so that my 55” JD tiller could really shred the clay clods and more evenly distribute the compost I had spread over the entire field. Traveling at 1mph meant tilling the 2 acre field took the better part of a day but it was well worth the effort.

Today I spent the morning rock picking. My tiller digs down 7” which lifted many loads of quartz and limestone from just below the surface. Picking rocks by hand is fun for about an hour and then it gets pretty tedious but I had NPR on my headset to keep me company so the rest of the morning passed by pleasantly enough. Luckily I had finished this chore before the wind picked up. It’s windy this afternoon. I swear some of the gusts are flirting with 60mph.

Well, to Franklin County, Virginia anyway  I can smell it; it’s time to get ready. We’ll be coming out of a cold snap this weekend and the temperature will be reaching the middle fifties. Not long after that, trees will be blooming. I predict that after three more weeks have passed, we’ll be up to our knees in spring blooms.

I’ve been backlogged with farm and business projects, not to mention I did my once-every-three-years complete computer upgrade. I’ll be getting back into my twice weekly posting pattern shortly.

Cheers,

Sean

I’m really happy with the run-in shed that we ordered from Pine Creek Structures. The quality of craftsmanship is superb and I’m looking forward to my next project with Pine Creek Structures (a site-built small animal barn).

My old home state of Vermont is getting hammered by 30mph winds and 30” of new snow is forecast today and tonight. That’s the sort of combination that can bury houses. My in-laws are in Orwell and it’s the worst they’ve seen in the 30+ years they’ve lived in Vermont. My in-laws board 500 replacement heifers for a 700 head dairy farm and tonight the dairy’s milking parlor barn roof collapsed from the snow load. I understand that no humans or cows were injured, but the details are sketchy and Paul is going to try and see if he can bring some of his own large equipment to help dig them out. That’s a potential disaster if they don’t get support. You can’t just stop milking 700 cows.

I’ve been remiss in posting updates to my blog thanks to an unpleasant head cold that opted to settle down into my sinuses and set up camp for a week. Since my last post, I’ve kept busy with Web and farm related projects so I’ve plenty to share. But for now, I’ll simply share some winter scenes captured during our first true snowfall of this season several days ago. I’ll be back with a vengeance come the Weekend.

Belle and Cory live in our “north pasture”, a +/- 4 acre field. It’s 1,000′ long w/ a substantial grade, particularly as you near the bottom. Later in the day, Nancy and the girls took some sled rides down this pasture and it got a huge Thumbs Up. It was so fun, we’re planning a school sledding party for the next snow day.

I love lens flares, especially when they’re genuine and not Photoshopped into an image.

I like to take artsy photos. About one out of a hundred turn out okay. This is one of them.

If horses could talk, Charlie would be saying put down the damn camera and drop my damn grain!