It's Heating Up

Rowdy cooling off in the beaver pond

It is mid-May and the forecast for today is for a high of about 90 degrees.  That's pretty darn warm.  At least the leaves are all out on the trees for the most part and the shade will help to keep things a little cooler on the farm.

As is usual for this time of year, there is a lot to do.  May usually means planting the garden, shearing alpacas, and starting the long summer job of keeping things mowed, which includes doing the first cutting of hay.  I will admit the mowing is usually mostly Sam's job.  A lot of our property is not flat and he is much better handling that mowing than I am.  I am happy to mow the flat pastures,  which I started on yesterday.  Due to a warm wet spring the grass was incredibly thick in these pastures.  And the two I have left to mow will be even worse.  And this photo reminds me that there is a lot of weed clearing to do as well.

Alpaca shearing and haymaking will have to wait until Sam returns from a fishing trip he is supposed to leave for in two days.  There has been a lot of haymaking going on in the area though, and this week would have been perfect for it.  Hot and dry the next 2 days and the past 2.

I have gotten most of the gardens planted.  Though I need to buy some corn.  It's on my list for today.  This is the tomato and pepper garden.  I am trying something new and using old broken down cardboard boxes as a weed barrier.  It should act like mulch and hold in the moisture as well.  And it uses up what would otherwise be garbage.  The large green plant is parsley that came back from last year.

 In this garden I have lettuce, arugula and romaine all coming up, as well as beets.  The romaine to the right was planted last fall and over-wintered under a hoop cover.  It did really well with the mild winter we had.  I set  out some cucumbers yesterday that I started in pots and also planted butternut squash.  Corn will be at the far end and I'd like to get some pumpkins, though I may put them somewhere else entirely.  All this planting took up a good part of the last two days.

 Here are the beehives from the swarm (swarms?) we caught almost 2 weeks ago.  The nearer one is the huge clump that was hanging from the barn ceiling and they are doing really well.  The farther one is the box of bees that was in the barn which we relocated in the hope that it was a swarm with a queen.  I think it may be queenless.  It still has bees in it and there is some coming and going, but it does not act like it should.  Tomorrow I will open it up and look more closely at what is going on (or isn't).

Me and the agility dogs!

Grover and I went to an agility trial in the Cleveland area this past weekend.  It was a three day trial and we got all three of our jumper's runs, but only one standard run.  So we have one more Double Q toward our goal of 20.  We are up to 6 now and we managed to score 45 MACH points over the weekend, bringing our current total to 243 out of 750 needed.  By my calculations, we are almost 1/3 of the way there.  One more Double Q and we will pass the 1/3 mark, as long as we score at least 7 points.  We were with my friend and instructor, Sharon, and her three papillons.  We took advantage of the wonderful weather on Saturday and went to the beach with the dogs.  We also went on Friday, but the weather was overcast and windy. If you look carefully you can see the Cleveland skyline in the central background.  Our next trial(s) will be the 16th, 17th & 18th of June and we will be a two different venues that weekend.

  Check this out!  Sam and I moved my loom from upstairs in Rowdy's room AKA the guest room last week.  It seems so small in that large space and I have had time to actually sit out there and weave only once, but it was wonderful.  Rowdy took up residence on the rug and Grover sat in the doorway and kept and eye on things.  I still need to put in some shelving and have plans to hit Ikea in a few weeks since there is one right by where I will be for an agility trial. 



 I may have only spent a couple hours at the loom in my new space, but my sewing machine is in there as well and I did spend some time out there sewing one of my hand-woven valances for the dining room  I will admit I have not yet had time to sew the second one, but now that I have done one the second should be easier.  That's the theory anyway.  I am so pleased with how this turned out.  I hung it late in the day and I was disappointed that the pattern did not show, but wise Sam said he thought it would show much better in daylight with the light coming through it.  And wouldn't you know he was right!