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