Seeding in the Rain

Yesterday evening when coming inside I was struck by the sight of our orchard’s first blooms. The prettiest was on what I believe is a plum. (Not all the tags remained in place.) The peach blossoms were so frail, small florets with tiny leaves and a shower of spikes (stamens and pistils, if my recollection of plant parts is correct). The blossoms provided a rush of happiness in the face of spring, even when the forecast was for a return of winter temperatures.

This morning I had to bundle up before heading out. After a couple of days in the mid-70’s and low 80’s, I’ve become a wimp in the face of temperatures just at freezing. When I brought hay to the boys, JoJo took it upon himself to attack each goat in turn, chasing it away from breakfast. Now that the guinea hens are acclimating in the short dog pen underneath the storage trailer—where JoJo & LaLa had occasionally begun to spend nights at my request—the geese have moved into the round pen with the male goats. At first I had let the boys out to roam during the day, but I planned to broadcast grass seed that morning and didn’t want their help. Instead I pulled up fifty feet of green three-foot fencing and fenced the geese into one end of the round pen to give the goats peace. Then I fetched the goose egg LaLa had left in the short pen and placed it to one side of the goose enclosure and hoped the geese would make a go of it in this new space.

After everyone had been fed and the girls turned out, I placed the empty water buckets underneath a corner of the storage trailer to catch the run off from the rain/freezing rain/ sleet mixture. Then I opened one of the fifty-pound sacks of kobe lespedeza seed I’d stored inside the trailer, filled a dry bucket with the little brown flecks, made a cover for the bucket from part of an old dog food bag, and set out for Lucy’s domain.

The clover planted a few days ago has begun to sprout, showing little two-leaved plants in most places. While broadcasting the kobe lespedeza seed (again by hand) I noted how much easier it had been to keep track of my progress using the lavender-coated clover seed. The weather made the ground ready for planting. Here and there I dragged a muck boot through blanketed leaves to reveal a new patch of soil. The importance of seed to soil contact has been drilled into us, the students of the current Wilson County Master Gardener class. The couple of acres I seeded this morning were mostly torn up by the logging done earlier in the winter, leaving much soil exposed. Elsewhere I followed the paths Lucy has made and broadcast seed onto her trails.

When the sleet switched to hail that began to accumulate, I decided to call it lunchtime, then spent the afternoon on indoor pursuits. I’ll go spread another bucket load in a few minutes when I go out to feed for the evening.

The hanging planters into which I planted pansies and alyssum over the weekend are still on the ground. I want to see the plants established before handing the baskets. On my way in this morning I spread a bit of fiber mulch over the leaves, to give the plants a fighting chance amid the accumulating hail. (When I say accumulating, I simply mean that the icing was visible and a very few layers deep, not anything measurable.)

Hopefully the kobe lespedeza seeds will fare well and the plants will be able to compete with the existing growth and the clover. When I’d seeded the clover, it was with the notion that goats shouldn’t have forage with more than 40% clover. Come to find out that the niggling in the back of my brain about alpacas and clover was justified. Alpacas do best with less than 10% clover in their pastures. I’ve already begun to reconfigure their first fencing arrangement in my head.

We’ve determined that the camelids will arrive just shy of tax day, after they’ve been shorn in Virginia. That gives me ample time to configure running areas for them that won’t be too high in clover. Although when the Natural Resources Conservation Service specialist was here recently, I’d discussed gifting them a relatively smooth rolling portion of the lot to the female alpacas. But I was reminded that I might not want to keep them so far from the house. Wherever they land, they’ll have the LGD’s to watch over them.

I’m about ready to set the dogs loose in the fully-fenced back acres. Luther seems to have learned that fences may be hot (electrified) so he won’t be challenging any fences. Molly is meek and mild and stays where she believes she ought to stay. And Heidi is just sensible. She stays near the animals, wherever that may be, because she’s on the job as senior Guardian of Livestock.

That’s enough for now. I must be off to feed and bed down the critters.