Plan B Life

A storm came through and it's too muddy to till.  That's a constant problem in the spring.  When it's dry I'm busy and when I have time, it's muddy. 

So, we cleared another garden area.  Underneath a pile of leaves were some parsnips waiting for us.  Parsnips are a roasting root that taste like carrots but have a smooth, almost creamy texture. 

They are long rooted and not easy to dig.  Several broke off, but we have a good harvest here.  I think we'll have roasted vegetables tonight — cubed parsnips, potatoes, carrots, and turnips tossed in olive oil and seasoned.

With rain falling, we decided to get a load of wood.  We bought this from a forest products mill in town.  After we got it all home and stacked, I'm not sure we got a good deal.  This is green wood that will have to dry ("season") all summer and then be split in the fall.  It cost $150 for a cord.  We can buy seasoned, split wood for $175 a cord.  Hmpf.

Yesterday morning as we got ready to milk, we noticed some dancing activity in pasture.  Sure enough, Christina was in heat.  The breeding we did in January didn't take.  Dang.  We called the AI guy and he repeated the job.  When he arrived we were unloading wood and he jumped in and helped.  The girls said they hope Christina goes into heat every time we have to stack wood.

If this one takes, it gives Christina a Dec. 3rd due date.  That's later than we'd like, but I guess we deal with it.

The milking machine is going better.  We are now able to get it on Christina without significant emotional trauma.  It seems like we're getting the hang of it in the barn, but cleaning is still clumsy.  We're spending 10 minutes in the barn and 30 in the kitchen cleaning.  We've got to figure out how to clean faster. 

So much of living off the land is dealing with what the land presents and constantly changing our plans.  We wanted Christina to calve earlier, but we'll deal with this change.  We wanted to till today, but it's muddy so we figured out the next best thing to do.  We are living a Plan B life.  Perhaps this is a good Lenten discipline, learning that our Plan B may be God's Plan A, and then be thankful.

Winter Work

With the wood insert, we now have to split wood. We could have used the ax, but neither my husband nor I were excited about the work, and we were nervous about someone getting hurt.  We found this hand-powered hydraulic tool that makes splitting easy.

So far I've successfully avoided using it myself, but sooner or later my husband is going to wise up.

Our winter evenings are full of finishing up garden harvest.  I've read about people a century ago spending all winter by the fire working on nuts, corn, and beans. Now I get it.  One of us reads aloud while everybody else works.

Here we worked on the dry beans.  Even our three year old helped.  He kept saying, "I'm doing my work," while dropping beans into his bowl.

When the beans are done, we have three kinds of corn that still need to be popped off the cobs.