Suspended

Before the rain..sunset reflected

By the rain. Our spring plans that is. You probably can build fence under the pouring sluices of the cold, lonesome rain. Maybe you even should.

So far we haven't. Thoughts of throwing Bama and Moon out into this weather after long labors on our own part aren't all that appealing.

Lots of babysitting going on though. A minute here, half an hour there. It's well enough for now....but she is a real mommy and daddy's girl and the grandparents are pretty much chopped liver in her lexicon.

So we do a little book work and we do a little barn cleaning, and we wish the rain would stop. Soon.

We moved the last two little ones up into the "new" part of the barn night before last. Thor and Vigo now are housed where the better of the two stable cleaners can help keep them clean and warm and dry. The other barn cleaner was a factor in parting with the cows. It was worn so thin that a few extra hours of valuable organic dairy cow by-product would actually snap the big, formerly-thick, Patz links right in half. A new one would have cost six grand. And the drive unit is pretty tired too.

Now there is just one cow on that section, old Bama, and she doesn't stress it too badly.

It has rained a lot this week. The sump pump in the barn clicks and whirs every couple of minutes. I shudder to think how badly the barn would flood without it. The barn was always dry...those old timers knew how to site their structures and how to build them right....until the new road went in in the late nineties. Blasting must have disturbed a vein of water somewhere because it's been kind of soggy ever since. but then, we have also had a lot more rain since then...

If it ever dries out the boss is looking to start chopping hay as soon as the grass gets a little taller. We are still buying feed, and, although nineteen head are a lot easier to keep supplied that over three times that many, much larger critters, forage is scarce and expensive this year. We have been seeing cows and heifers out on pasture since mid-March....

Anyhow, if spring ever comes, you are going to see farmers flying to get ground worked and corn and seeding planted. Across the nation planting is lagging way behind

.