WORMS!!!!

We had quite the downpour yesterday ....

for the entire month really ....

our local Weather Bug (my daughter's old elementary school) says that we have gotten nearly 3inches of rain this month ....

this of course means we have standing water in the corn fields and can't get out into it to till in the clover ...

but it also means great fun for the kids!

The proper effect of the rain was to thaw out the ground ... of course the bad thing is that it has become saturated - so much so, that the worms - who have now waken up - can not live in the soggy soil ...

so the driveway was littered with great gobs of jiggly, wiggly, writhy worms ...

just laying there waiting for some kid to come along with a container of dirt to grab them up for fishing ...

which, of course, my son obliged them ... not wanting them to feel their message was unheard ... and plopped them into an old yogurt container with some potting soil/seed starter and leaves in it (you have to give them something to eat, he explained) ... I'm wondering if I shouldn't throw in some egg shells too ... maybe some used coffee grounds - food which I know they like.

Well the fun has ended - and hopefully his worms survived the night in the green house (they are NOT going into my food fridge, thank you) - because the temperature last night dropped to 34*F ... since the greenhouse isn't completed yet (it still has a long way to go, and it will take longer at this point) it gets REALLY cold during the night - in fact, there isn't that much difference from the temp outside & in, even with the tarps lowered over the doors.

and today - we are supposed to have a mix of rain & snow ...

Showing the Green

We had some wonderful warm weather this spring already ... on my regular spring check of the fields I saw this:

it might be kind of tough to see ... but that is GREEN down there at the end of March!  Not being sure if it was grass or weed I went for a closer look ...

turned out to be neither - its CLOVER.
Now for most people, and in most cases, this would be considered a weed ... but to a farmer - its known as Green Manure!
It enriches the soil ... let it grow, plow/till it in, and ~BOOM~ you get a nutrient release into the soil that is a farmers dream ...
okay not as much as say Rye grass, but still its a great load of nitrogen for crops.

This inspired a trip to our local seed supplier --no big box store for us-- I had already gotten some of my seeds from Territorial Seed Company, the seeds that I just need like one packet of ... but for the larger quantities, those ones that tend to go into the fields or need multiple sowings (like corn or peas/beans or pumpkin) those we got to Jordan Seeds in a neighboring town.

This year I decided that my girls should go with their dad to get the seed - for three reasons:

1. I tend to buy things that aren't on the list ... like the 12 1/2bushel baskets last year
2. there was going to be some heavy lifting that I wanted the FarmGirl to do instead of her dad
3. I thought it would be a good lesson if they found out just how expensive those seeds are and why we are so determined to get a sellable crop from them (we've had poor showings these last 3 yrs)

but instead I found they learned that if we had a bigger farm or moved to the other city we could have these:

Its probably tough to see but the photo contains what my children called "Walking Skeins of Yarn" ... yeah, sheep.
They think it would be the bees-knees to have them ...
until I explained that if we had sheep -- it would be their jobs to muck out after them, and bath them, and learn to shear them ... that its much harder than taking care of a Newfoundland

Addy wearing a regular persons hat, not a child/youth size

You know - once you explain things in a form of how they compare to something they don't do now ... it starts to sink in ...

now they want chickens ....
I might go for that one, after a bit of research

Farm and Gardens

Oh I need to have a blog just for my farming/gardening stuff ...

I used to have on online, but when the site changed they did away with member-ran/owned blogs ... so here I am...

I thought I could use my other blog, Ginger Gargoyle Gems, but that has become the big "general" and political blog ... so time to branch off for the growing season and giving myself a good place to make posts about what has worked and what has not over the years.

Posts can range from serious news that I find and just want to place in one spot where I can find it ... to the passions and disappointments of what is happening in the garden ... or (like this morning) just fun or interesting stuff that has caught my attention.

Enjoy ...
but for now I am going to disable comments