Transit of Venus

Today and tomorrow are bad for planting, biodynamically speaking. As one lecturer put it, "Some days, you accomplish the most by just staying home."

I'm guessing that's because of the Transit of Venus, "among of the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena" (as Wikipedia says). Venus crossed the sun eight years ago, and again right now; next time will be in 2117. Even if we had proper viewing glasses or apparatus, the gray storm clouds obscured the sun all afternoon, so I appreciate that it is happening, even if I can't see it myself.

I was ready for a rest day. I read to the boys more than usual, and did nothing more than a bit of spot weeding in the greenhouse comfrey as I checked for plants. Over 30 have come up, or about 5%. In the orchard, where we planted hardy year-olds, we've had a quarter of plants emerge already, only eleven days after planting, and without a good rainfall since.

As dusk fell, a gentle rain started. How we love the soaking rain. I look forward to watching the comfrey spring forth even more.

Phil has taken the last two days off from metal building work to do some system improvements on the grazing area next door. First, he laid out new water line almost all the way down the hill. He put little waterers at each paddock.

With the amazing quick connects that attach to a hose, he can move the empty watering trough, connect the hose, and rehook it into the trough in a few seconds. On that property, no more tractor pulling the water wagon!

Next, he used the tractor to cut a new road down the ridge, which will be both more safe and more easily accessible.

He had to dam off the swales on either side, and dig up any living chestnuts. Interestingly, there were few chestnuts that actually survived on the ridge.

After the new road was roughed in, he had the happy task of putting in semi-permanent electric line over the chestnuts. He had been using step-in pigtail posts (see the red handle), and moving them every day. Now, though, he's putting in small white posts that he won't have to move for some time (we hope). They are flexible, at the right height for cows, perfect for cross-fencing, and fairly inexpensive.

To make them functional, no drilling required: a pre-twisted metal clip slips over the top and holds the electric line in place. So cool!

He had to figure out how to manage movement. Clearly, with the road down the center, he needed to break the electric line along the road ... at each paddock change. And since we've used the lane on the side for a year now, he preferred not to permanently block that off, too. He thought about the various methods he could use for gates. Purchased tube gates would be prohibitively expensive. Homemade wire gates would still need some form of insulated hook on the end, so a person could open the gate without getting shocked. Plastic insulated hooks would require a trip to town, and though the total would probably be less than $100, then we'd have plastic all over. So he came up with the wood-and-wire insulated hook.

He said today, after using it for the first time, that the wood must not have been fully dry—he got a little shock when he handled it while the fence was hot. Hopefully it will dry over time. Or we'll always bring the fence remote to turn it off before touching it.

Another thing he did that I wouldn't have thought of was actually making each gate along the road really a gate. If he had just carried the electric line from paddock edge to the wood-and-wire hook, every time we would undo the hook, the rest of the wire would sag, useless. So he made each wire run up to the gate area, then tied it off tight. The wire gates are fully separate. (This is hard to explain, so if you didn't follow, just know that he had a problem to solve and did so well.)

Like all projects, this one is not near done. But we look forward to the day when it is finished, and moving the cows becomes a five minute task, rather than an hour or more. What a great day that will be!