WOW! Look at this!!!
Gotta hurry and scarf this down
Maybe just pack the cheeks and take it home.
Later that day —
I smell FOOD!
I know I do
Where is the food? There are little chips all over the place.
Well, clean up the crumbs as fast as I can.
What?!
Gone?
Even the crumbs?!
Even the crumbs!
Your friend on a western Colorado farm,
Linda
Our fields are now full of green shoots
(Bird and shadow! I was delighted to get the two together)
The first cutting of alfalfa has occurred in all three fields
Finally, we having truly
Started summer here.
For us…here on the farm
Summer starts with the first cutting of alfalfa, usually around the first of June
Here is another bird shadow–only of the Northern Harrier Hawk
Then Fall begins with the harvest of pinto beans. (Which we don’t raise anymore)
So June, July, August—Summer.
That sweetest time of the year (for me)
Your friend on a western Colorado farm,
Linda
The Gloss of the blooms
Send out warm enticing scents
To gift the nose
The eye
And the little pollinators
By evening
The warmed up (to almost broiling air)
Sends fragrant wafts of scents
Throughout the opened windows
On the gentle night breeze.
From my world to your heart,
Linda
Terry is enlarging the pasture
Working at it steady so the grass will grow big and strong and healthy before the heat of the summer arrives
The other four pastures are really looking rich and green…Terry says it really nice to have the time and the energy to work on some of the other parts of the farm.
Which brings me to this post I’ve wanted to do for a little spell.
Our cows back in the day
A long time blog friend writes for the local paper in her New York area, the Amsterdam Recorder, she took a wee trip and wrote about it for all her readers to enjoy. I asked her if I could reprint a bit of it for my farming blog and she said yes.
The grandchildren watching the cows being moved years and years ago
“And speaking of being, as opposed to seeing, green, we encountered evidence of recent hot “green” issues along the way. While waging our own battles on the leg of the trip south through Pennsylvania, dodging potholes with varied success, and heaping language not befitting ladies and gentlemen upon some of the drivers with whom we narrowly avoided close encounters of the crashing kind, I noticed something interesting.
While all of America frets and stews about flatulence from cattle, most of which live in the relatively clean, green, rural countryside, a little air freshening around urban backdoors might be in order.
As we wound down the mountains of the Keystone State, sometimes mistaking the potholes on 81 for valleys, the actual valleys were filled wall-to-wall with cities; houses, factories, malls and parking lots.
And every single one of them was shadowed under its own smoggy mantle of flatulence. The kind that emanates from cars and trucks and heating systems and all the things associated with large collections of people. I have never seen a miasma such as that over a barn, pasture or even the most crowded of feedlots.
Alas, because there aren’t many farmers left, the people who eat what they grow and who wear the products of those cotton fields, don’t understand them anymore. They blame them for something they are.”
Amsterdam Recorder
Our cows out on the pasture on the Back Forty,
I know that each and every one of you, gentle readers, are not the people who condemn farmers or farming as a way of life, but huge supporters, for often times I get emails saying “Thank a Farmer”.
Our cows coming in for breakfast years and years ago
But for those who are new to my blog, or new to anyone’s blog about farming…I thought what Marianne wrote was well said. Often times it’s the very thing we are condemning others for, which we are (also) guilty.
So too not preach or make anyone uncomfortable I leave you now.
From my humble heart to your world,
Linda
“A true friend is someone who reaches for your hand and touches your heart.”—Unknown
Each one of you have touched my heart in some way, every day. From heartfelt comments, to joyful celebrations on your blog or through your comments on my blog.
For that I thank each and every one of you!
This came in the mail today! A glorious canvas photograph wall hanging. all the way from Canada. (If you would like– hop on over to Linda’s blog. She lives on a huge ranch in Alberta, Canada. Just click on the blue lines and you will be taken there. 🙂 )
I am so humbled by all of you!
From my heart to your world,
Linda
Yesterday was HOT, so hot that my towels dried on the clothes line in half-an-hour, flapped and snapped with the afternoon wind.
It made my laundry chores easy–wash, hang out, bring in, fold, and put away–load after load quickly ‘done’, no waiting about, finished!
The honey bees, the bumble bees and the hummingbirds all hummed and buzzed over the messy colorful flower beds as I washed windows and watered the flowers and the lawn.
It may have been hot, but it was peaceful.
The evening was still extremely warm as we sat the water in the top field of corn, then skirting the alfalfa field we changed the set in the pinto bean field.
People think of night falling…falling down around the land, closing off the day.
But really night doesn’t fall, the shadows of the land rise, filling first the hollows and the valleys, climbing up the slopes of the mesas as the sun sinks lower and lower toward the west. Gradually the shadows become darker creeping imperceptibly up fence posts and weeds.
The fields were so warm we could feel and smell the water as the earth and the plants sucked up the moisture. It was a joy to irrigate since the irrigation water has also warmed, no longer feeling like a fresh melted snowbank.
I stopped work to try and take a photo of the moon, which was gradually moving behind a pink cloud. I turned to smile at Terry I told him there is a huge joy of trying to capture what we see on a daily basis and share it with you.
By the time we were done, the sky had turned from pink to flaming gold. The sun was somewhere over Utah and the ground, the farm, was started to join the greater dark of the star and moon lite night above.
My cup of joy runneth over! I wish for each of you, my friends, the same.
Love,
Linda
We are getting closer and closer to the the first cutting of alfalfa…probably the end of this week of the first of next week. We like to wait for the alfalfa to just start to bloom
You can see the tiny purple dots on the stems right now…you can also see some dandelions. This is the field that will be plowed up next year…it’s starting to get old.
A hay field is old when you can see dandelions and/or other weeds in it. We don’t spray for weeds we take the field and plant something else to give it a rest from the 3-5 years of alfalfa. It’s called rotational farming, which we have always practiced.
The sunset last night was on the weird side — really yellow.
As I was watching the sun set I saw a
Sun dog!
Actually that is really strange as we just got through with cold windy weather of the last four days and the weather people are saying we are heading into two weeks of extremely hot weather.
Usually if you see a sun dog it means frigid weather is about to hit……… humm.
Odd don’t you think?
The pinto beans are up
We are planted as much as we are going to plant this year and the crops are all up. (We don’t need any type of freeze now…that is for sure!)
Rumors have it that soon, very soon, they will be around to cut us down two more holes on the head gate…I hope they don’t do it for a couple of weeks, maybe longer. I’m sure that is just “hope” on my part.
Enjoy your Sunday everyone, today at 4 p.m. my oldest granddaughter is coming to ‘spend the night with us and part of tomorrow. It should be lots of fun for her grandpa and myself!
Linda
Life on a Colorado Farm 