What a sight to greet us as we get ready to head to the barn this morning. The sky is ablaze with a bold red and outstanding purple. Perhaps those aren't the correct terms for the colors, but that's what they look like, so that's what they are! The sun is peeking out from under the clouds as they advance to the east. There is a slight chance of rain today, so it may all be for show and not come to fruition.
But that's OK! We have so much fieldwork to get done that if we get skipped this time around in the rain department, we won't be too upset. Farmer Rick and Farmer Came Home spent most of the day in the fields yesterday, plowing and disking a patch here, a patch there. Never could quite finish a field because of the standing water and low spots. I parked a tractor and walked home from one of the fields, leaving it there with a couple of chains on the three-point hitch, just in case they needed it to pull themselves out of the mud.
While those two were plugging away at the fieldwork, I spent a good deal of the day hauling manure from the cow yard. You know, it seems amazing that when you eyeball the cowyard and any manure pile for that matter, that you think - oh yeah - maybe 7 or 8 loads will do it. But when you start digging away at it, 20 loads later, you don't even think you made a dent in it! But the fields are thankful for the nutrients and build-up for the soils. We then in turn don't need to use as much starter fertilizer and the soil has many of the amandments to it to grow some nice healthy corn. The particular field that I was spreading manure on yesterday will be for sweetcorn. That'll be one of the last fields to be plowed, so I will probably get alot done on it again today.
After evening chores, it was nice to head out on a horse to check some fields. What an enjoyable way to end the day! Although we did manage to go through some really mucky stuff. When it was starting to get dark, we were heading along an edge of one of the fields when a car came up alongside us, traveling quite slowly. When they rolled their window down, I knew who it was. One of our neighbor's daughters had heard the dogs barking and when looking out the window and saw something big and black moving across the field by their house. They were kind of scared, so their dad jumped in the car to investigate. It turned out that the big black thing they saw moving across the field was me! My horse is black, so we were this big black murky shadow moving across the field. Hard for them to tell just what it was as the sun was completely down by then. Ooops! Didn't mean to scare anyone. So, we had a nice conversation on the side of the road, enjoying the first warm breezes of the season, chatting and catching up.
Then it was time to head home, brush down the horse, and bring everyone in for their evening grain and hay. What a nice way to end the day!
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