A few days ago my hubby called a neighbor who communicated with him for nearly an hour while going in cricles fertilizing a field. Nice to have a tractor with a cab! Maybe he needs a tv in there.

Stan's tractor with a cab has a radio/weather radio/CD player in it. Mostly, he listens to the weather radio. Farmers. He also has a cell phone that calls out, but doesn't ring in. I keep trying to convince him that he needs a new one, but I think he likes the fact that he can reach out, but cannot be reached. Hmmm

We did have a bit of a chat. He does plan on milking, some. We'll see how that goes, because Kelly would like to milk full-time over the summer and Jess said she'd like to work full-time, but that will be split between the yard/house and the farm.

Oh, according to the scuttlebut, we have sold EVERYTHING to Josh, and he bought Stan's brother's place, too. Still waiting to find out how much he paid us. Gotta love small towns.

And I just came in from planting peas in the raised bed behind the house. Technically, it's a flower bed. Peas are just flowers that turn into lovely little green bits of wonder.

As long as you're not trying to eat the sweet pea pods!

NO no no, garden peas in the flower bed. The sweet peas go in a bucket.

A bucket? Hmm, that's a new on on me. Annuals?

yep.

Lots of rain here during the night. Then "they" say maybe a few snow flurries on Thursday. And with that a load or 3 of salt on the road, I suppose.............Hoping things start to green up. Heck, even weeds would be better than brown mud and dirty snow that is left along the roads and fencerows, but after all this rain I bet there isn't much of either.

Yesterday, we had wind, rain, snow, wind, but there's no white stuff on the ground and the clouds appear to be breaking up. The robins are happily out murdering worms and yelling at each other.

Stan discovered that electricity and the stainless steel wire holding his sternum together make for an interesting sensation. The cattle trainers got plugged in by someone other than him and he brushed up against one. He will be careful to avoid a repeat performance.

I found a recipe for a violet-red dye made from dandelion roots - can't wait to start collecting!

Drove 50 miles north to help at a horse trials, passed a lot of cropland and I'm sure I could see the difference in the growth of the corn between the trip up and back 12 hours later. We have had nearly perfect growing conditions with the recent rain! Our area is still considered to be in severe drought, but at least things are green at the moment.

One summer when we were living in a trailer, there was corn field on two sides within 6 feet of the bedroom and we could hear it growing at night - very weird - so I have no trouble believing that. We are greening. this time of year even the snow makes the grass greener, but it looks like this week is going to be lovely and warm with a couple of sunny days.

Oh, I"ve heard it too..............it sorta "cracks". The SU always side-dressed nitrogen at planting; when the corn got bigger it was so deep green it looked almost like it had a blue-ish cast to it. My mom commented on that the couple years we put the crop in at my dad's.

Like tiny earthquakes.

Well, the sun is up as promised. Stan has gone up to Melissa and Adam's to fix fence and Melissa took the day off to help him. They'll have a good time. I've got errands to run and bread to make later. Scheduling is everything. The one place that I have to go to doesn't open until noon. time to load the dishwasher and clear away some of the junk mail that has been piling up.

Woke up to snow on the ground. When we were eating breakfast, a fast moving little band of really heavy snow went through and made the rest of the neighborhood disappear. Right now the sun is in and out of the clouds. The early tulips and daffs are holding their heads up bravely.

Stan was hoping to go up and finish the fence at Adam's and Melissa's this morning. Right now, he's taking a nap and hoping this clears out and the wind dies down.

I foolishly bought a flat of pansies Thursday when it was 78F. Guess I'll have to bring them in as it is supposed to get down into the 20s tonight.

We've been having weather in the 80s but this morning there is frost in places! It has consistently been too windy to spray the pastures for weeds; I guess I will have to use the wick system (home made and not very efficient.) Our county is very strict about the use of herbicides.

Happy Earth Day. The first Earth Day was in 1970 and I was a senior in high school. Our class adviser had gotten a packet of stuff about Earth Day and I was walking by just before First Period and he said, "Here, you're the only one in school that would be interested in this." I got some pamphlets and a cool button, which I still have somewhere along with my Pray for Peace, Work for Peace button and a Support Your Local Poet button. I was so wild and crazy back then, lol

Sunny and cool. No frost that I could see, but Saturday night we had a hard freeze. The daffs were all bowed down under it and it was so heavy on the cars it looked like snow. I hope to get at least some of the pansies in today and maybe some lettuce seed.

Shredded two of the paddocks beside the barn and the "yard" yesterday and hope to do two more today. I also need to cut some tree limbs off the roof of the hay shed if it's not too windy to climb up there. Oh, yes, and also patch one of those wretched Rubbermaid troughs again! Supposed to be warm and sunny, so should be a productive day.

Every day is Earth Day for farmers.

Windy here. 31 degrees at daylight, forecast says 22 for tomorrow. Weeds don't care, they just grow. Grass is growing farily well. Sun makes us think it might be warmer than it feels. Today I will be starting tomato and squash seeds to grow in the greenhouse until I can set them out about June 1. Yesterday we spent a few hours digging out some knapweed that wants to invade our pasture. No thanks, I have enough invasive weeds already. We don't use chemicals. Hubby pruned some of the old apple trees, varieties unknown, trees probably date to when the place was homesteaded. All have holes, most have dead limbs.

Tomorrow I'll be helping my neighbors brand calves again and vaccinate the cows, I think for rhino. The cows still haven't finished calving, but now we are down to a few heifers and the late cows. Another calf had to be pulled a few days ago. The cow was down, couldn't get up, so they had to work on her in the field.

Hope the cow is up now.

Did the cow get up?

I ended up shredding paddocks today as a neighbor stopped by yesterday to complain about another neighbor and talked, and, talked, and t a l k e d .. I did still have time to cut tree limbs off roofs. The loquat tree still had a lot of fruit on it so I hated to cut it, but it was brushing the barn roof and the chickens and pigs were delighted by the branches that I threw down in their back barnyard.