Thursday, May 16, 2019

Hurrah for Spring!

Spring has finally, really sprung here at Calamity Acres. 


It's been a wet one, 
as evidenced when I cut the pasture this week. 


I have never had this much standing water in the pasture before, at least, that I remember, and I was always the one who mowed it. 

I would not normally mow when it is this wet, but we have had so few dry days, 
and now we are being told that there will be five days of storms next week. 


I left a patch in the middle high, for the bees (clover) but also for the ducks. 
I just looked out my office window, and that's where they are laying right now. 
As my hay was delivered last night, I pointed out to my friend T.J. to look 
down there and he laughed...One stuck his head up to check us out. 


I leave grape jelly out for the Baltimore Orioles, and several of the chickens have 
checked it out. 


My remaining seedlings are coming along well, and I hope to get them in 
the ground tomorrow morning, before the storms start. 


Sometimes it's hard to get in and out. 

I have to tell you, I am SICK of poop on my porch and deck. 
I put up a $4000.00 fence in March (yes, 4000.00). 
It worked for about ten minutes. 

I know where the gap is, but if I plug it.... the ducks will not have access to the pasture. 
I have one other option... to enclose the back of the old henyard again.... the sheep have torn the fence there and go in and out, and so do the chickens.  If I plug the gaps, they will all be banished to the south side of the two acre yard. 

Yes, I like my chickens. 
No, I do not like poop everywhere


I have had so many goldfinches this year, male and female, and lots of house finches. 
I have two Baltimore Orioles visiting daily. 


There's another visitor I have been seeing regularly. 





One hot day last week, I found all four sheep in the barn, out of the sun.  
Just so you know, there are numerous shade trees in the pasture.... but they prefer the barn. 


Of course, they all four had to follow me back outside to see what I was doing. 

As you can see, Cookie is almost as big as his mama, Flicka, at four months!
Niblet is a big girl, too, but still Fluffy's baby.  See the lambs' dirty knees? 
They have to kneel down on the ground to nurse now, but they still do. 
I was so lucky to have two very good mamas. 


My perennial garden is woefully overgrown at the moment, the worst ever.  I am still coping with my orthopedic boot, and will be, it now appears, until close to the end of June. 
I would show you pictures of the garden from my phone,  but I can't get them to load, so... we will look back at this date last year: 




One thing I hope to do this year is dig up those long beds and replant them. 

If you were to ask me why I am still blogging after ten years, I would have to tell you that 
it brings me such great pleasure to look back on the changes we made to this place, which was a lonely little house with some lonely little outbuildings in 2005 when we bought it, 
and is now a lovely home.  I could not have done it without Keith... and his heart and soul lives on here still.  It makes me so happy to look back at all the great times we had here with 
family and our animals.  It gives me pleasure to still live here and remember it all. 










6 comments:

  1. Wow, the iris's are amazing. You have some spectacular colors.
    We have standing water in the part of the property we call the yard.

    Hope you are doing well. Take care,

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  2. Hari om
    ...and that, my dear, is as perfect a reason to blog as any, bearing in mind that this was the true and original purpose of 'web logs' which grew out of university research requirements! There is the added bonus of sharing it around the world and having us visit your acres :-) YAM xx

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  3. i think keith is smiling all the time now!

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  4. I'm so glad that you have such warm memories there, and remembering all the work that you and Keith did together to make your place so nice.
    I'm sure he is happy that you are enjoying it so :)

    Oh, yep.. I'd get tired of the chicken poo too.
    I know you'll figure out a solution as you are clever like that!

    That snake would make my hair stand on end..yikes!
    You are a brave girl to see that and not freak out..LOL!

    Smiles :)
    ~K.

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  5. Mary Ann, that's one reason I'm not willing to give up blogging yet either. Even during my long blogging break I found myself going years back to see family and garden and pet pictures.

    Your little farm there is so pretty, I like everything there except for the snake! And my husband's taught me that most of them are good too. But those sheep! What sweeties they are.

    But what's this about you orthopedic boot? I guess I'll have to read further back to find that out. I've been going to PT now for over 2 months for a bad knee and shin bone problem and it has helped so much. Hoping another few weeks will take care of that, as long as I keep up the exercises at home.

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