Gardening and My not-so-green thumb

This year, due to pretty obvious reasons (not the least of which is this belly o' mine), I'm unable to plant my garden.  Yet, I'm committed to raising healthy, nutritious food for my family and, despite my lack of success in the green thumb department, I honestly do like gardening. I just don't like the aching back, the dirt under my fingernails, the daily weeding and watering, etc.

Okay, so I don't like doing much of the hard work of gardening but I do enjoy the harvesting so I make it work.  I just can't overcome my tendency to over-water or under-water (or in some cases, both), or my habit of killing any living plant I'm actually trying to nurture.  (Weeds, I have great luck with. If I don't want it there, I can almost guarantee it'll absolutely THRIVE. If I want it to grow nice and big and tend it 8 times a day, it'll be dead in a week.)

But this year it'll be different. You see, I'm slightly restricted at the moment on what I can do gardening-wise but I have all these seeds just waiting to be put in the ground and all this NEED to garden.  So I did the next best thing...

I hired help.

I've got a soil prepper/seed planter coming tomorrow, the hubby is planting my sweet corn seed in the field as I type, and I've got more help lined up come weeding/mulching/early harvest time. 

I'm strictly managerial this time and we'll see how it goes.  I wish that it could be me digging in the dirt and planting those seeds and tending them because it makes the harvest that much sweeter when you know YOU did all that work but I physically can't do it.

But it might save my garden if I don't touch anything so that's got to be a plus, right?

Nitty Gritty

It's that time of year again. Nitty Gritty Dirty Time.  It's the month where L comes home looking like a dust bunny.

Just as it's hard not to get dirt under your nails if you spend time in the garden, it's very hard for my hardworking farmer husband not to come home after a very long day and oftentimes a later night covered it dust and dirt.  I dig in my garden. He digs the fields. I plant with a shovel and hoe. He plants with a grain drill and a corn planter.  And we both accumulate the dust and dirt. The nitty gritty proof that we were outside working the soil and seeding the crops that will nourish the body.

Nitty Gritty Dirty Time. Planting Time. Long hours, later nights, and dirty hands. But it's a price well worth being paid when a bountiful harvest is your goal.

Oh the things you'll see...

Today was a busy day. We've been up to our ears in Spring fieldwork (when Mother Nature isn't busy sprinkling us with raindrops, that is) and Moving Day dawned bright and early this morning so we've been busy fixing fences, cleaning barns, checking water lines, and all the assorted tasks that need to be done before the cows can come to their summer quarters. Between all this, there's been the usual household stuff too-laundry and dishes that pile up in an instant, floors that never seem to stay swept for more than 5 minutes, mail that needs to be sorted/entered/filed/etc., etc. etc. etc.  Throw in the usual dr visits, grocery shopping, and other errand running and there's my life. Since I decided I'm not nearly busy enough, I'm seeing a new chiropractor in a town a few hours south of us. (She's trained in a different style of chiropractic care and has done alot of work with pregnant women so I figured I'd see what it was all about.) I'm on bi-weekly appointments now-that is, I'm seeing her for 2 appointments a week, not every other week-so I get to see alot of scenery (and trains as my kids are oh-so-fond of pointing out) on my 2.5 hour trek.  But today I saw something I didn't expect to see.

An Amish buggy.

A real Amish buggy being pulled by a fast trotting horse.

Now this isn't an unusual sight in our area as we have a few Amish communities in the surrounding countryside but this was a very rare sighting indeed. Not because of WHAT it was but because of WHERE it was.

I saw this Amish buggy being driven along a rather busy section of an expressway.  A split highway with a speed limit of 65mph.

And here's this plain black boxy buggy and the quick stepping brown horse just dawdling along (or so it appeared when I drove by doing a rather un-sedate 65mph).

Just yesterday I was on the verge of a mini-(pregnancy hormone related) meltdown because of how hectic life has gotten all of a sudden and I was feeling very frustrated. Frustrated at the condition of my household, frustrated at the lack of time for myself, frustrated at the amount of work that needs to be done before this baby arrives, frustrated at the long hours I spend driving to appointments (chiro is 2.5 hours away, dr is 1 hour away, dentist is the same). And then I see this buggy. It made me giggle and wonder what brought this Amish person out on such a busy BUSY road with fast moving traffic.  And then it got me thinking.

It was a quirky and oddly timely sight because it (in a weird way) reminded me to appreciate the things around me even when I'm feeling rushed and out of sorts.  That it pays to slow down once in a while and actually look around.  Even if I can't literally slow down, I can still figuratively ease off on my frantic pace.

So today, after my buggy sighting, I started paying attention to the view on my lengthy drive.  And you know what? I noticed that the leaves on the trees popped out when I wasn't looking. I heard my kids giggling over some odd, made-up toddler joke that only they could understand.  Instead of thinking and worrying about how I was going to get everything done today, I just sat back in my seat and enjoyed my drive.

All because I saw a buggy on a freeway.

Moving Day Approaches

We've been busy this week. Appointments galore, fieldwork is (finally!) in full swing, and moving day approaches fast. Yes, we are bringing the cows to their summer home this week. So we've been busy getting everything ready. But we're making headway and come Thursday, the cows will be enjoying their summer home again.

And I'll be commuting by foot instead of vehicle. Always love that part. :)

Moving the Cows

Well, it's May 15th and we still haven't moved the cows from their winter quarters to their summer home.  It's been too cold and wet to do so but it hasn't stopped me from hoping we get this job crossed off on the Spring To-Do list soon.  And I'm not the only one wishing the cows were here already.

Our overgrown pup Bandit is wanting the move to be done too.

Why? Because then he gets to really R-U-N.

Bandit is a runner. He loves to run. Distances too. He regularly races the 4-wheeler when we go out to get cows. He'll come from wherever he is and leave whatever grand thing he's doing when he hears that machine turn on because he knows he's going to get a good workout. (If Bandit is flat out running, you need to be in 3rd gear in order to even think of catching up to the dog.) And he's showing some promise as a herding animal.  We'll see if he improved at all from last year.

I'm also hoping that if the cows are here and Bandit gets his daily runs in, it'll leave his jaws chicken-free. I don't appreciate his sudden urge to use my best laying hen as a chew toy...(No worries. The hen escaped relatively unscathed. She was minus a few feathers and went into hiding for a day to overcome her shock of being in a set of large, rather pointy teeth but she's since made a full recovery and is back to faithfully laying an egg every day or so.)

Honk and Peep and Yelp

Three sounds that signal Spring is here...

Honk-Geese sharing their happiness at finding something enjoyable out in the (slowly greening up) pasture.

Peep-Those wee little frogs that serenade us in the evening dusk.

Yelp-As in "Mom! I found a BUG!" when the little boy or girl finds yet another wood tick crawling on their clothing.

 Gotta love Spring.