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Saturday morning I walked around with camera in hand just to try to illustrate why I love living here…again no particular order….just shots from my life….this first is the current view from the road looking in toward the barns….this area will be about 12 grazing paddocks for the horses if it ever dries out enough to graze….we have had over 2.1 inches of rain this week not counting the storm last night…I have not been out yet to check the gauge this morning….there is a drainage running across those fields and when it gets wet it stay wet for a while…..

I have switched the horses and the bulls and the horses are back in their normal place at least for the summer….they are also back to three and four day paddocks now.

The bulls went into the other cover crop field on Friday night…..it was so tall that I had to bush hog a lane to put up the division fences…the bulls had been in it for about 18 hours when I took these photos….now these are 18 month old bulls that weight 1400 to 1500 lbs and the rape is over five feet tall….they have simply walked down a lot of it…which is good….lot of clover and turnips and wheat as well as grass.

Below is a shot of my bale bean experiment….these are straw bales that have been setting out all winter. I planted butter beans in them a couple weeks ago. It is finally warm enough that they are beginning to sprout. The ones I put in the soil have not yet sprouted.

Here is a shot of the blackberries I planted two years ago….I love blackberries and decided that I wanted to have some….these have taken off this years and are putting up new canes all oveer…..

This time the bulls are eating the rape seed….when they last grazed rape they sort of ignored the rape all together….there is lots of rape seed out there….I suspect there will be rape on this farm for years now….

This is the strip I had to bush hog thru the cover to put up a portable grazing fence. I had to stand up on the tractor to see where I was going….I had to start grazing this becasue the boss was starting to fuss about a snake sanctuary right next to the house….similarly had to regraze the cover crop plot in front of the house where the horses now are….next I have to take the horses to the already grazed field behind the house again because of the snake sanctuary….she is messing up my grazing schedule…..

This is the field in the corner where I grazed the horses for 14 or 16 days in April in strips….it is already 18 inches tall again….It will be rank by the time we get back to it.

More Blackberries….these are the Kiowas that I planted last year….looking forward to a few berries from them….

Last fall I broadcast some seed on most paddocks immediately after the last grazing….I was still boradcasting seed after Christmas….This is one that I hit fairly early with Crimson clover….

this one was broadcast with Lana Vetch….

Perkins and Star Baby regrazing the cover crop lot that the bulls were in a few weeks ago….

Here is a paddock boradcast with Rye and Lana Vetch

Austrian Winter peas blooming are beautiful

Apache finally stood still long enough for me to get a shot of his new haircut…..

This is a part of the normal routine for Dee Dee and Apache….they run and wrestle and sleep and eat….Marie is always worried that Apache will hurt Dee Dee, but Dee Dee is actually the meaner and if she gets mad will eat him up, but Apache is the stronger and if he gets too rough Dee Dee will put him in his place….