Sweltering Days

Saturday's new pasture has been grazed down pretty well already.

The heat this Memorial Day weekend is nothing short of brutal. I've been trying to pick the pastures, build garden beds, and plant daylilies, but the process is very slow. One cart of horse "muck" at a time is all I can manage. Every stage of the new garden beds saps my energy. At times the air feels too thick to even breathe properly. Today I hit upon a system that works pretty well.

First I gather a cart of muck or bedding or rocks--whichever step I happen to be on--then take a break to read until the sweat stops pouring off my body. Each time I step back itno the house I announce, "It's brutal out there," which is true but I still turn around and head right back out into it. After perusing another chapter of today's novel, I heave myself up off of the front porch rocker and head back to work.

By the time I planted three dozen daylilies in a little bed, I was ready to head in for a shower and a nap. This is some serious weather.

Today the hay is being rolled into round bales.

Just across the road, the neighbor farmer is engaged in his annual Memorial Day weekend activity: haying the fields. As I made my measly attempts at working about this farm, I marveled at the fortitude of traditional farmers. They work until the job gets done; no rest for the weary. It's a hard way to make a living.

Butterfly Precursors, part two

A chrysalis hanging on some fence wire.

After noting the caterpillar hanging in preparation for his metamorphasis into a buterfly, on May 10th, I told myself to check back the next day to photograph the chrysalis. When I forgot to do this, I assumed I had missed the chrysalis stage--for some reason I thought the transformation was an overnight process. So, when I happened upon a chrysalis today (18 days later) I checked the spot where the first one had been forming, and Surprise! it is still a chrysalis.

When I was a girl we hatched out butterflies in jars in the house. I recalled thinking the transformation took forever, but I had thought the endless wait was because I had been young. Not so. Apparently making the transition from fat, striped caterpillar to beautiful tiger soallowtail butterfly does not happen overnight.

We shall have to check back to see when the butterfly emerges.

Recycling on the Farm

Welcome home!

Today was beautifully sunny and warm, well, edging towards hot, and I was glad to get home to the farm this afternoon. Lucy came to greet me as soon as I turned into our driveway, the dogs came down after I came in through the gate, and the recently-planted irises still sported a few bright blooms. We are truly blessed to live in this beautiful corner of the world.

After quickly exchanging work clothes for working garb, I headed down to pick the horse pasture. I had let it go a couple of days, so there's plenty of pickin' to be done. It took some minutes, but once the green SmartCart began filling up, filly Janet came by to investigate. Like her dam, Lucy, she understood that I was gathering manure and turned to help. Lifting her tail, she added to my treasure; I was glad to have it land directly on the tines of the muck rake so that tossing it onto the growing pile involved no scooping. Such thoughtful animals.

One little cart can only clear a small corner of this pasture, in one trip.

By the time a small corner of the pasture was clear, the cart was already piled high and I realized that I had better move it while I still could. Of course I had miscalculated and the cart was far more difficult to wangle up the hill and onto the drive than I had expected (although I nearly always make that mistake--you would think I'd learn?). So the brimming barrow that I had intended to haul uphill to the manure pile by the barn, instead formed the first layer of fertilizer on a new lasagna bed.

It appears that irises will line the drive just following the entry gate, and that those overcrowded irises that we planted recently will get thinned out a bit before they even take root. That way I will be able to leave them a couple of years before they begin to encroach upon one another.

Another bed begun.

The new bed began, as I like to begin, with feed bags. (Thanks, Tim Edwards!) The bags have a thin plastic layer between the paper layers which may help to retain moisture a bit and certainly should help to suppress weed growth. I know the plastic breaks down in time, because a bag left out holding trash will lose its base if left too long, but--at once--the plastic lingers for at least a couple of years when smothered in a garden bed. Atop the bags, then, a good double layer of cardboard. And finally the heavy load of manure. Yes, it's fresh, but it will be well down in the bed, not hurting anything--just helping.

That's one of the things I appreciate about this life--the ability to recycle so much right here at home. Feed bags line the gardens that grow grains to feed the animals that convert the feed to fertilizer for gardens. The cycles are continuous and can be counted on to reoccur with regularity.

Rambunctious Stew

Buckling Stew tries to clamber up onto the crate with little goat Lisa.

The other day, after I had moved the goats into the secure pasture behind the house, the younger goats immediately found ways to play. "King of the Mountain" is a goat favorite; goats of all ages seem to gravitate toward the highest spots in any given area.

Uuumph! This buckling needs a boost.

Although I had placed a dog crate into the pasture as a shelter, our buck, Midnight Hank, saw fit to turn the structure on its side. Since the sides are tapered in toward the top and bottom, the sideways crate provides an unstable surface for goats who jump up onto it.

When little Lisa, our last Nigerian Dwarf goat (She is scheduled to move soon.), jumped up onto the rocky surface and balanced perfectly, our largest buckling, Stew, scrambled to join her. Only, he was not yet tall or talented enough to surmount the obstacle. Determined, he worked and worked at the problem--even foregoing grain when it came to the pasture.

He's up!

I enjoyed watching him hook the front portion of his torso onto the crate, then try to figure out how to bring the rest of his body up there. Within the hour, he had accomplished his goal. He was up! Until he shifted his weight and the crate wobbled, tossing him off again.

... and right back down again.

Stew spent the rest of that afternoon and well into the evening launching himself up onto the crate, learning to balance, then leaping off only to repeat the process within minutes. The thudding of his little hooves on the crate resounded about the farm and continued to do so even after I went inside for the night.

I wonder how soon our littlest bucklings will tackle this new obstacle?

Grazing Patterns

The horses graze in a new enclosure while alpacas wander on as-yet-untouched grasses.

This year our front acreage is getting methodically trimmed as animals move about the space in a random assortment of ever-changing enclosures. Very soon it will all have been mowed at least once.

The horses are rough on pasture. Left too long in any one place, they will turn a pasture into close-trimmed earth, or even into a mud pit--as has happened with our recent rains.

The goats' browsing behavior is easier on a pasture overall, but they like to mow down plantings I want to keep. They have an uncanny ability to zero in on those few plants I would like them not to eat, and make the foliage--or the entire plant--disappear in short order. I need to set up something like those dog runs with overhead wires. This could make it easier to move these bigger goats to specified areas. (In past years we would tie out the little goats, anchoring them to stakes or logs or fence panels. The big goats manage to get into trouble much faster, though.)

The goats are browsing this spot for the third time already.

The alpacas are kindest to the earth. Except for the burned-out spots where they position collective toilets, the grasses and forbs recover most quickly after alpacas have grazed the area.

Ideally, we should rotate the different animals through various pastures, but with the different fencing requirements of each type of animal this can be labor intensive. While horses are easily contained with a few strands of electric fence, the alpacas would not feel a shock through their thick coats of fiber. Both horses are alpacas respond well to the five-foot tube panels, but the goats slip past these quite easily. The goats do best behind tight woven-wire fence or cattle panels reinforced by adequate t-posts. For the most part, time and energy dictate which animals go where when.

TN State Iris Garden

Entrance to a Tennessee State Iris Garden in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee.

The other day I stopped to visit the Tennessee State Iris Garden out on Central Pike. When I visited a year ago, I had spent some time exploring the plantings and chatting with the owner, Katie, who—in many ways—reminds me of my mother. Although it had been a year since I stopped, and although the spot gets a myriad of visitors, Katie remembered me and welcomed me back. I was glad to be back; delighted, in fact.

As the iris I bought from Katie last year all got distributed among friends, nary a one actually planted on our farm, I made a point to buy fewer than a dozen in hopes that I would be able to tuck them all into the earth before being tempted to share. Limiting myself was an exercise in restraint, well aided by a lack of available funds, and I had tagged my limit in short order.

This year Katie gave me a roll of fluorescent tape (not sticky), and the requisite notebook and pen. The plan was to tie a bit of the tape around stems of flowers I wanted, but since she only had one color of tape handy, I added my initials to the flags I set so as not to confuse them with plants marked by others. The notebook was to track the names & descriptions of the flowers I chose. (Once our beds get full enough to make sales from—daylilies coming soon, folks!—I shall have to adopt her idea of asking customers to tag plants to be dug. So clever!)

Some of Miss Katie's iris beds.

Thanks to our recent rains the rows between the beds were boggy in places, so I promptly removed my shoes and placed them on her electric cart to follow us. With pants rolled up, I was ready to work. 

Although last year I think I was focused on pinks, blues, and maroon-colored flowers, this year I was shopping for yellows and peachy-oranges to complement the brown and rust colored flowers we recently obtained from Dirt Dawg Nursery. Even so, I walked away with a purple or two, a highly-ruffled pink, and a delightful maroon.

The newest plants tucked into a bed.

Building the bed for these beauties took longer than the last, but was accomplished within a few days. The location is temporary; the plants will get moved within a few years to more permanent locations. For now, though, all of our showy, named irises are in one area, while those without names (often with few ruffles) are set around the yard for show. Those nameless plants either came with the farm or were acquired from Master Gardener friends. As they multiply, I will dig them to share with other Master Gardener friends.

Water Retention as a Lasagna Bed Layer

Engorged crystals demonstrate water-retaining abilities.

A few years back I heard about water-retaining crystals and found some online through a florist supply shop. Since then the idea has caught on and potting soil often comes with "moisture retention" properties. After we moved here I purchased a good quantity of the crystals that I package up in little jars and tote outside each time I start a new bed or pot. In years past we've mostly employed containers for gardening on this rocky bit of hillside, and these crystals have been invaluable in helping the potted plants to survive.

This spring I'm building lasagna beds with a vengeance. We have a grand store of winter bedding (a.k.a. fertilizer) to use, and I am taking advantage of it. When I remember, I'll sprinkle a layer of crystals near the base of a growing lasagne bed. I try to only do this step when I will be immediately following through with adding another layer to the bed; however, the photo above illustrates what can happen when one sprinkles crystals then walks away.

The photo shows a bed I'm building down towards the road--a location that is unlikely to ever get watered. (I generally rely on Nature to water, but during extreme dry spells I have been known to assist those plantings within reach of a hose. Anything outside the front gate is most definitely on its own.) We have had some heavy rains of late which is all the more reason that I ought not to have wandered away with this bed unfinished, especially not after having just liberally sprinkled a manure layer with the fine (dry) crystals. Yesterday as I went out the front gate, the bed adorned with freshly-moistened crystals greeted me, reminding me of yet another task needing attention.

Lest the crystals totally dry out--as they are wont to do in time if left without other moisture-absorbers to assist them--I shall have to finish layering this bed soon, perhaps this evening.

Put Those Boys Away!

The alpaca boys drifted into an enclosure before it was finished.

Although most of our animals are pastured in spots around the greenest, grassiest areas, we do tend to let groups loose to roam--enclosed by the perimeter fence, of course. Generally animals are loosed to roam when we need to move their pasture area, and often while the moving of various tube panels and/or cattle panels is in progress. Sometimes the wanderers are on their best behavior: grazing or browsing intently, without evidence of a need for mischief.

When the horses are loosed to roam, their version of mischief involves standing on the driveway, blocking traffic and leaving presents that simply will not fertilize the pavement. They are known to cluster along the neighbor's fence line when she's out in her yard. (Feed them once, and they will long remember.) Luckily, so far this year their mischief has not spread to the areas where grain is stored. (In years past Millie has been known to pound cans until they open and spill their contents of grain. The cans often don't recover. Given enough grain, the horses could be at risk, too.)

When the goats roam free, they can be perfect darlings--browsing down weeds and poison ivy. Or, they can make a bee-line for our few ornamental plantings. Day lilies, iris, roses (they love roses), forsythia, or other plants can rapidly be mowed down by hungry goats. Plus, Marcie likes to imitate Millie and wrench feed cans open for all to gorge.

When the alpacas roam free, especially the males, they often seek out mischief by chasing other animals. Cats, chickens, goats--it doesn't matter, so long as those being chased have the decency to play along by running or flying. Unlike pursuit by dogs--that may start as a game but evolve into a hunt--pursuit by alpacas seems notably tame; however, those being pursued by the long-legged, long-necked bouncing fuzzballs don't seem inclined to stop and ponder their relative safety. No, they run in terror, while fuzzy alpacas skip and bounce along in their wake.

When they've had enough time to roam, the goats generally flock to the gate leading up to the barn or into a pasture, while the alpacas often drift into their new enclosures. (The horses are content to roam continuously.) The photo, above, illustrates an afternoon when the alpaca boys understood where their pen was headed but the lazy humans had yet to complete the task, and the alpacas--ready to be re-pastured--gathered "inside" their three-sided "enclosure" loudly hinting their desire to be penned back into relative safety. When their intent was so clear, we had no choice but get out there and finish the job.

Butterfly Precursors

A milkweed plant.

Today I noticed a smattering of milkweed plants growing in a pasture. Ever since I was young, the sight of milkweed plants brings to mind tiger swallowtail butterflies because milkweed is a plant their caterpillars use for feed and onto which a butterfly-to-be will often attach its chrysalis. (Once I learned this about the plant, tiger swallowtails became my first mental association with it--and the bursting-open dried milkweed pods that release seeds floating on silky umbrellas became only a second association.)

A caterpillar-sculpted milkweed plant.

The next time I happened through that section of land, I looked more closely and noticed that one of the plants already had scoop-sculpted leaves--a telltale sign of the plant being used for food. Stepping closer, I spotted two fat and sassy caterpillars feeding voraciously upon the quickly-disappearing plant. Of course, my camera was not in my pocket--where in belonged--but somewhere else.

A caterpillar feasts on milkweed.

By the time I worked my way back to the plant with camera in hand, later in the day, I could only spot one caterpillar waiting to pose for photographs. And there he is! (Above: orange arrow points to caterpillar on the underside of a milkweed leaf.)

May 10th: Nine days later, this caterpillar prepares to metamorphose into a chrysalis.