Weather is Everything

Well, not really everything, but it really matters at planting and harvest time. If it rains you cannot reasonably plant anything or make hay. We are actually done planting except a little bit of the garden that I can't seem to find time for, but we have just begun to make hay...continuing with that will just have to wait for dry, sunny days, even if we switch over to chopping instead of baling.

Just in case, the guys are getting the bagger set up. They will probably chop everything that is already mowed....hardly worth baling it, but we will see. They have a lot of hay mowed right now, getting rained on every day and losing nutrients as it does. They will put it up anyhow one way or the other. You can balance out lesser quality hay by changing the grain ration or you can feed it to dry cows or heifers who need less in the way of high-quality forages.

Meanwhile, we have a steel man here picking up old machinery to sell it. We get part of the money and he gets the rest for gathering, cutting and hauling. Amishmen are giving us estimates on fixing the bad roof. They seem like nice fellows, very brisk and businesslike.

The birds in many cases are on their second broods. The phoebes are calling up a storm again and I am finally seeing a few wrens. I learned a new bird call from my iPod...put my bird call CD on there along with my music and have been listening to a random play list. That means the birds pop up between the likes of Jason Aldean and the Roosters.

The other day I heard a bird on there and thought, wow, I think I hear those all the time. A little research and sure enough, we are plumb surrounded by indigo buntings. Now that I know the call, I have been looking for them and there they were...where they had been all the time, singing to me even from the power line in front of the house and from all over the fields around the house.

The phoebes and the willow flycatchers come right to the living room windows to snatch wasps. It is so cool to sit right there in my chair and bird watch. I let a couple of sumacs grow up against one window and they form a perfect little canopy to shelter them as they hunt for stinging insects. The boss offered to cut them down (not knowing about my free entertainment) but I respectfully declined. I will get rid of them this winter when the fly catchers are gone. Meanwhile, I am working on learning the empidonax fly catchers by their calls. I am pretty near sure ours is a willow, but there is always the potential to mix them up with the alder.

Well, chore time beckons. It will be nice to get the darned roof repaired. Indoor rain showers leave something to be desired....like a way to milk cows while carrying an umbrella.