Every Day is Earth Day

If you live on a farm. Today, morning milking and chores are done. Cows are filling up on baled hay before some of them go to pasture. We are introducing them to the lush new grass a few at a time to avoid the fighting that usually takes place. When they go out for the summer, some of them take it upon themselves to settle old grievances and fight like crazy. They can really hurt each other. The "fresh", that is recently calved and heavily milking cows, just want to go out and eat. The dry cows and those that aren't working so hard would rather raise heck. If there is any sound I hate it is the scrambling and scraping of hooves on the concrete in the barnyard as somebody matches up heads with somebody else while they see who will get tossed on the ground and beaten up. Thus the dries will be the last ones to go outside for the summer.




Today the boss will probably plow way up in back. Then the men will disk and drag the ground and pick the stone and later plant. We are not growing corn this summer because it has become insanely expensive to do so. Going to go with sorghum instead. Much, much cheaper and needs a lot less commercial fertilizer. We are hearing talk of lower fertilizer prices this year and so far it has been dry-ish (our corn has been wiped out by excess rain two years running and fertilizer prices have been obscene) so maybe we will regret giving up corn. However, I am sick to death of paying through every body orifice to plant it, getting a paltry harvest, and then ending up buying feed anyhow. Might as well save the dollars we pour into the dirt and grow something cheaper...if we don't get a good crop at least we aren't out all that money.




Been planting garden...a little bit every day. The weather has been really nice and it is tempting to go all out and just put it in. However, the last two years our last frost date was Memorial Day weekend one year and the TENTH OFJUNE (!!!!) the next. I am just not that much of a gambler.

Anyhow, here at Northview every day is all about the earth. Feeding it, nurturing it, gathering its harvests for ourselves and our fellow humans. We may not have any ceremonies to celebrate it, but we are just as much a part of Earth Day as any urban environmental activist who goes to a rally in the park today and then forgets about it for the rest of the year.