Back in the Saddle

Yesterday was day two at being back at home.  Weird!  I felt like a stranger.  My outdoors world felt much more intimate... more my own.  So I did my errands in the morning.  Recycled soda bottles.  Took excess grocery bags to the thrift shop so they could be used again.  I should have gone there first as I ended up spending my can money on odds and ends at the thrift shop.  Oh well, I'll forgive myself later in the day.  Then ran by the feed store and got some of my critter essentials and picked up the timothy grass seed that I had bought during the heat of the summer.

The afternoon was spent outdoors.  A little debris that had gotten blown around in the last storm was picked up.  Took a pan, purchased for $.25 at the thrift shop, out to the chicken coop , filled with grit.  Gave the horses a snack as they were begging terribly.  If they were women, they would be alfalfa pellet whores.  Where's your dignity, you, ponies, you!  But, I digress....

The highlight of my day was taking the fifty pound bag of timothy seed out to the hayfield in the back of the truck.  Opening the bag.  Marveling at what very tiny seed it was, then scooping it up in a plastic bowl, and walking through the hayfield looking for bare spots on the ground.  Where the grass was bare or thin, I broadcast the seed by hand.  It took a bit over two hours.  But it is the best tool to know your land is  to get out there and have your feet on the ground.  I can't stress that enough.  You miss a lot driving over it in the truck or on a tractor.  Walk it!

Things are looking better.  Last spring we hand sown a bag of orchard grass and also hand scattered five or six fifty pound bags of pelletized lime.  It's a bit shocking to see what a difference so little can make.  A year ago, I had big swaths of  bare ground with patches of moss.  A sure sign of acid soil.  This year I only spotted four or five chunks of moss, none of them bigger then the palm of my hand.  My hay guy told me that my efforts were in the right direction, but there was no way I had done enough to create a change.  He said it was probably the drought the year before that had caused nutrients to rise in the soil.  Maybe.  But I have to believe that small actions are capable of reaping great rewards.  Otherwise, we would all be helpless, and I can't be helpless.

And what's on for today?  Well, I should start by cleaning toilets.  Working towards a brighter, better world!

Louie