The hay fever kicked in this year before I started mowing hay, the lateness mostly due to the rains. They originally said we were supposed to get six inches last Friday, then three inches, then two, and finally we got about 0.2 of drizzle, though I guess it did rain almost an inch as close [...]
I was reading National Geographic this morning and noticed an ad the featured something called Eco Grain. “What in tarnation is Eco Grain?” the headline said. Well, according to the ad, it is grown on special farms in Idaho “thanks to a more sustainable farming approach.” Sounds good to me, I thought, I might get [...]
I don’t follow the calendar very well, and since there aren’t any Lutheran churches in Anderson Valley I wasn’t aware that last Tuesday was actually Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras. All the same, as the temperature climbed up to 70° in the afternoon, with barely a trace of breeze, I couldn’t help feeling that groping [...]
Maybe a ton of carrots are still soaking in the moist soil. The water on the higher part of the field has abated, but the next wave of heavy rain will probably do the carrots in, turning them to something like carrot juice that has been on the shelf for years. When you pull the [...]
As I was milking the cows Friday evening, meditating and watching udders deflate while the pulsator clicked a rhythm on the floor tank, it occurred to me that things are going really well at the farm. My boys are more or less home schooling half the time, and we’d spent most of the afternoon cutting [...]
Friday morning was balmy with the southwestern air flow, the kind of weather that makes you feel like you ought to be getting something done at the time of year when maybe you actually ought to be visiting somebody that you don’t see as often as you’d like. Or maybe just enjoying what you already [...]
The promises of rain have been mostly hopeful as forecasters see abundant moisture in the El Niño conditions of the Pacific headed our way, but fizzling at the first contact with land. Evidently the snow covering most of the Great Plains is creating this vast trough, they call it, with low pressure there, causing a [...]
On Tuesday we had some business involving transporting a young bull to service a couple of Jersey half-breeds at the Frey ranch in Redwood Valley. The bull calf is the third son of my favorite cow, the one with the udder that never needs trimming and the calm temper who lets me handle her newborn [...]
The matsutakes are emerging along the ridges. If you know where they are you are finding them. If you don’t, you probably won’t. A person with deeper local roots than I have has been schooling me on the subtle art of spotting the slightest puffs of fir down on tan oak leaves, pouncing on them [...]
Dr. Chaulk stopped by the farm in the rain last Saturday afternoon to vaccinate the four remaining pups against parvo. He must know what he’s doing. None of the pups noticed the needle in the flesh. Part of the reason I was happy to have the vet over to vaccinate the pups was that it [...]
