Two Days of Visits

Our dear friends Tim and Cathy Marcy arrived Monday evening. They return to northern Wisconsin tomorrow (what a drive!), but we've had a happy couple of days visiting with them. They are hardy homesteaders, and have happily camped out and shared our life. We hiked to the far side of the land yesterday morning, the first time I've been there since last November.

In the afternoon, they helped us plant six more apple trees in the huge holes, but due to heavy rainfall, the remainder of the holes were quite full of water, impractical to continue. Instead, we laid out the cherry orchard, and spray painted the spots where we need to dig. That took several hours, and it was such a help to have them, measuring, marking, tying.

Phil went to feed the animals some hay. He found an egg. In the hay outside the pen. A hen likes to escape, and wander the farm. Apparently, she's productive.



As he kept feeding hay, he almost forked another egg. He hadn't looked at the hay in that spot for a day, so she must have laid one a day the last two days.

Then a third egg rolled against his shoe. A real egg hunt! And maybe really TWO hens are getting out to lay in the (tarp covered) hay. So silly!

Breakfast today was eggs and bacon, all from our farm. We ate through 24 pullet eggs (they are smaller than average). It was a nice breakfast.

Then we planted cherries. I think the weather was bright sun, pushing 80. The cherry trees come with large roots, and, contrary to expectation, the Mazzard graft needs to be buried an inch below grade. This requires a hole several inches deeper than the apple trees (which need their graft several inches above grade). So we needed to dig deep and wide holes. (Where's the auger when you need it? Silly that we augered the holes for the smallest trees we're planting!)

We dug 20 holes, but only got 16 trees planted. The other four completely filled with perched water. We find it interesting: in a field of hundreds of tiny saplings, a huge tree sprung up. Now that it's cut down, the ground around it remains moist all the time. Perhaps we have a little spring there? Or a run-off spot?

In any case, we need to figure out what to do. it's a level of complexity that we had not anticipated. Perhaps we could put drainage tile in there, and have it siphon down between trees. Perhaps we just don't plant trees there. We just don't know. (And the clock is ticking. We have crabapples that are still heeled in that are not only leafing out but blooming!)

Phil had one tree left to cut down in the bottom of the cherry orchard. He cut it down today—and it fell heavily right across a section of our wonderful perimeter fence.

That's why we have sectional fence: if it was all high-tensile wire, that whole side would be gone. As it is, we can replace the damaged section, cut the damaged panel in half, and take an 8-foot loss. Not a big deal.

Cathy, incredibly patient with children, made play dough with them this afternoon. They made beads and experimented with colors. So fun!

And only one egg in the hay stack this afternoon.

This evening Phil talked to Doug Flack, where we're getting our cows. The bull we were hoping to get is not available, which, apparently, is just as well, because it would have been too closely related to the heifers we're getting.

At first I wondered if that means we're supposed to just do artificial insemination, but apparently Milking Devons are notoriously hard to track for estrus.

So now I pray that we get a bull. The right bull for our farm, at the right time to breed our new cow.