Phil has continued to learn more about water management (which is good with multiple inches of rain at a time). Where to put ponds, where to put swales, which gully goes with which watershed. He feels like he's constantly gaining a better understanding of what this land is doing, and where we should place different structures. That's great.
The indoor space feels ever smaller. The little boys spent most of Thursday playing with a stuffed dog and a laundry basket. Abraham would position both stuffed dog and Joe just so, and cover them with blankets just so, then they would wait for me to snap a photo before they would adjust minutely and pose again.
Isaiah made a house of paper and tape, and it interested me to see how he populated the structure. House, yes, along with vegetable garden in back. Table with fork, spoon, bowl, and plate. Also shovel and pitchfork. And sled. Later he added a spring, creek, and pool. Quite a homestead, really.
I am fairly certain that when I was seven, pitchforks and springs, let alone vegetable gardens, were not on my radar.
Charity had a bit of calf scours yesterday, but she recovered quickly. Bethany had no visible placenta by Thursday morning. This morning, though, sometime between 8am and 10am, she must have strained her left front leg, as she was limping badly. Phil cleaned out the hoof and looked at it, but there was no sign of foot rot or laminitis. Watching her, he thinks she looks like she strained an ankle or knee. With the great amount of rain, the soil was certainly softer than normal, which could have caused a stumble. We gave her Apis and Rhus tox homeopathy for swelling, and left her alone to rest.
This morning, the family hiked down to the bottom of the finger to debate the benefits of a future structure. Is it better 20 feet upslope or down? Better nearer the trees or faraway? It was interesting that Isaiah had a feel for the site right away, and Jadon agreed as well, discussing the number of benefits for each respective site. It was good to get their feedback.
Isaiah is eager to plant more trees with the backhoe, so Phil went to cut swales for the revised peach orchard. The moisture in the soil proved too much, though, so on the final swale he cut, the tractor slid more than he preferred.
And so we planted bulbs.
I have been thinking about bulbs a good deal lately. I woke a few days ago and my first coherent thought was that the bulbs are a picture of our farm. They aren't much to look at yet: brown, onion-like, monochromatic. But we have hopes for the colors and diversity, the cheerfulness, in spring. And, so with the farm. Ugly right now, with piles of industrial stuff (fencing, building materials). But it won't always be like this. I like that.
And I liked planting today. Phil had Jadon come out for the stooping part of planting. I would lay out bulbs and then use the Badger if I had time. Phil, using the Radius planter, realized that he could plant a bulb and then plant the next one without emptying the dirt in between. As the second bulb's plug pushed up from the bottom, the first plug, like a pop-up toy, pushed out the top automatically. This cut the planting time in half (or maybe faster). And with the rain water to soften the earth, slightly less clay soils in places, and Jadon to help with the actual ground level work, we got 35 trees done in about three hours.
Counting by bags, we've got through 1700 bulbs in the last 11 days.
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