Hi everyone.....
Just some of my thoughts today:
The farm seems very large when it's quiet, when no cars are zipping down the thoroughfare in front of the house, and everything is peaceful....pastoral is a good country-type word for it. With cars and trucks out there, it's just a bit noisy, but the main part of our property is still shielded from the view of the road by bushes, the house, and trees. I can pull weeds almost anywhere in the front yard, and am still not visible to the cars zipping by.
2 acres is a big area for us (our Palatine village lot was less than 1/4 of an acre, according to the listing), so we have 8 times what we lived on in Palatine. We were VERY surprised and almost shocked to notice just how SMALL the property feels when the tractor is on the other side of our fence, either plowing the field or planting seeds. One day a few weeks ago, we were in the kitchen, looking out the window above the sink, and the tractor in the field seemed to be RIGHT OUTSIDE THE WINDOW (although it was a good ways farther than that)
I'm curious to know who it is that farms those fields, since the owner of the 75 acres around us in addition to his own property of more than 100 acres (my guesstimate of the area) passed away over a year and a half ago and his beautiful house and barn are sitting empty just north of us by 1/4 mile or less. His family lived in that house since the late 1800's, and he was born and raised there. It's a shame that no-one lives there now, although the property is still maintained and landscaped, so someone still cares about it. I would have liked to meet him--to ask questions about what happened here during his lifetime and just to hear whatever stories he might have wanted to share.
Maybe veteran farmers will laugh at this: I try to be friendly and wave to the tractor driver. I have to remind myself not to feel slighted when he doesn't even look up. A couple of people have pointed out that they are probably piloting by GPS, and don't ever look up from the screen. Only once did he wave back, and that was last fall when he was plowing up the corn before winter set in. Seemed like a cheerful guy.
Anyway, we'll be surrounded by soybeans this year, since it was corn last year. I'm going to try to grow a little patch of corn--sweet corn for us, corn stalks for the cows--hoping that the hybrid feed corn is far enough away from ours this year that it can't cross-pollinate. No chance that I'm growing soybeans, so there's no need to worry about messing up the farmer's patented soybean crop or any law-suit inducing craziness like that.
Bessie: This will probably sound crude and a little shocking: I'm watching Bessie's udder for a sign that the delivery date is coming soon. I think that's all that's left to watch for at this point. Her belly is so big that I don't know how she could stretch much more (but having been pregnant myself in the long-distant past, I can attest to how amazing it can be that the impossible can be reached and passed up in that department!). Her udder will start to fill with milk for the calf before it's born, and that should be a pretty obvious sign. One other sign is that Bessie's tail will "lift" as the pelvis loosens in preparation for birth, but her physical make-up already has her tail held higher than I would have thought possible. I'm not sure I'll know what to look for there.
About Lucy: Jeff commented the other day that "Lucy is looking like a teenager". That keeps coming to mind as I brush her (all of her fuzzy winter baby fur is gone and replaced by sleek and shining, glossy fur), as I watch her (no more baby-face--she is looking much more mature--like when your kids lose their "baby-cheek" and it's just a little sad), when I stand next to her and realize that she's almost as tall as Bess, and as I see her "talking back" to Bossy Bessie. ;)
About saving hidden/overgrown gardens: I'm realizing that I can't reclaim all the gardens that are buried under mulberry/buckthorn/garlic mustard/dandelions. It would be crazy to try to keep up with animals AND all the landscaping that existed once upon a time on this property. So....I've decided that I'll concentrate on the gardens by the house, and the ones by the front of the barn, and rescue only plants that I have a space for from the overgrown areas. Then maybe I'll save myself from feeling totally dejected that the whole property can't look professionally landscaped (which would come at the expense of vegetable gardens, clean livestock areas in the barn, and much-needed grazing areas!) Time to prioritize, and enjoy SOME gardens without needing to rescue them all......
The photos below are of some of the flowers blooming now. I was fascinated by some of the buds this spring--texture, color, how they are furled before opening---so those photos are in with the other flowers.
Laura.
| | 2012 05 flowers May 5, 2012
by Laura |
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment