Busy Day

We’re moving into real spring now, and the to-dos are piling up.

The sheep were supposed to be shorn early this morning. When we woke it was cloudy and humid and weather.com said it was snowing here although it wasn’t. At 7 we got a call from Bruce Clement, the shearer, saying it was pouring rain at his place. No rain had been forecast, of course, but that’s how the season has gone. We agreed to regroup at noon since his afternoon was now free.

At 7:15 we looked out the kitchen window while starting a second pot of coffee. The good news was that a few of the ducks had decided that the pond is now safe. The bad news was that Pearl was out. Somehow a stick had gotten entangled in the magic white tape and pulled it down. Prince wasn’t even willing to step over it, and stayed in the paddock. Trying to get her in only got Prince out, so we went and got their halters. They immediately held still for us to put the halters on, and we could then lead them back to the paddock. As smart and flexible as a bean-counter and so much nicer.

I went out and checked the status of the still stuck in the mud new tractor, which was No Joy. While the water table has finally started going down, the surface is now muddy again, and that was before today’s rain. It may be July before we can get it out. Fortunately a new starter has the old tractor running again, albeit with a very sick engine.

Newly planted onions Miller’s sent us our onion plants last week. I think that I somehow double ordered because we have an awful lot of them. Lisa bought corn gluten, which prevents weed (or anything else) germination, yesterday so today was planting day. We set up a 25 foot raised bed and she started planting. It soon became clear that this was not enough space for all the onions we have. After agreeing that we would simply build more, I went in and called Bruce. We still had dry sheep. WMUR, The Weather Channel and Accuweather all agreed that there was no precipitation within 100 miles (150 km). He’d come out after lunch and shear.

Lily, newly shorn He did. We sheared. While were working on sheep number 11 of 15 it started to sprinkle. There was no real choice. We finished and cleaned up in a serious hurry to keep the wool from getting any wetter.

When we were in and the sheep fed, I went off to the post office. Jung sent us the perishable part of our order. We now have all of our root stuff to get planted. Some of it is very permanent like horseradish and rhubarb. We also have two plum trees. Albus and Minnie, those wands please. On the plus side, there are nowhere enough potatoes to match our onions. I know what we’re doing tomorrow.

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