The Weekly Digs #104
Rain and Mud
The past couple weeks has alternated between raining for a day or two and then dry for a day or two. But it’s not quite warm enough for the soil to dry enough to be workable. The wet weather is throwing a wrench in my plans to plant. I just got a big box with literally hundreds of bare root strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries and I can’t even clear the soil enough to plant them because the soil is so sloshy.
I started to hand weed because my garden hoe wasn’t working in the wet soil. But it took so long to hand weed that I finally resorted to burning the weeds where my blueberries will go. Usually burning weeds down works but with the soil so wet I’m half wondering if the weeds will die like they normally would. Time will tell.
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The Cows Went Missing, AGAIN!
On rainy days, I don’t do much gardening and stay home for the most part. Cameron goes up to take care of animals. On Wednesday it was one of those days. Cam went up to our land after the kids went to bed at about 10pm. He was checking things out and noticed our cows were missing again.
This has happened so often lately that we are getting frustrated. They are masterful escape artists. We have 4 strands of electric wire around the perimeter now and instead of polywire we started switching it over to aluminum because it shocks enough to make the cows think twice.
It’s all run on solar though, and on rainy days I think the power of the fence is lower. That combined with the cows wanting to hit the road and head for cover any time it rains. It’s frustrating and I think we are going to build some portable shade and rain cover so they will stay put!
Anyway, Wednesday was an exhausting day already and when I got this text at 10:30pm that the cows were missing, it worried me so much. Lately everytime they got out we’ve found them further and further away.
Our perimeter fence is all barbed wire and we fixed the damaged fence near the road where they were escaping before. But with all the house contractors coming and going our gate is often left open and it allows an area for cows to leave if they do get out of the electric fence.
Cameron looked around our property for an hour. He searched every corner and finally started searching on the streets. I called him at almost midnight because I was having trouble sleeping worrying about our cows being on the run somewhere.
We talked through where he had looked already. I was tired and at the point of tears and asked if we could pray together over the phone. We did and prayed that we would be able to find the cows and that they would be safe.
Ten minutes later Cameron sends me a message along with the photo below.
It said, “Prayers are answered. Like magic, they appeared in the barn. I walked the barn and started the tractor. They were 100% not here before.”
Homesteading has a lot of benefits but if there is one thing I’ve really come to know it’s that it’s helped us rely on Heavenly Father and trust in him so much more. There is so much to learn and so much life to care for on a farm. We can’t do it by ourselves. The lifestyle humbles us and brings us to our knees in prayer often.
Sometimes prayers aren’t always answered like we want but it’s times like these when I remember that He does hear us.
In the Garden
Now for talking about what I did manage to get done in the garden this week despite all the rain.
- Planted Emerald Green Bell Peppers in soil blocks. I saved my own seed for these last year.
- Planted more Little Gem lettuce indoors.
- Planted three bare root rabbit eye blueberry plants.
- Covered walking paths with mulch
Pigs
We did get the pigs today! We’ve been working in the garden and with animals all day until 9pm.. I wrote the rest of the Weekly Digs #104 this morning when my brain was still fulling functioning. I’m so tired! I’ll share the whole story and some pictures with them next week. So far so good… they’ve made it a whole day in our care, haha!
