The winter that was so difficult to endure has finally loosened its grip on my life….It did get down to 38 degrees one night this weekend.   But other than that this has been a beautiful spring weekend….

No small part of my jubilation is because my pain has been mitigated a good bit…

For a couple of months now everything has hurt…hands, elbows, shoulders and to a lesser degree the knees and ankles….For the last three months I have had a pain in my neck that practically prevented me from looking left.

I finally made an appointment with a chiropractor…I looked up a local one in my insurance plan and made an appointment…Went in Friday morning…She talked to me a while and asked about my ailments.  Then she did a few strength tests to see if I could move.

She felt my spine and shoulders….and then told me I had two vertebrae which were out of alignment…she prescribed a course of treatment involving heat and electrotherapy followed my mild machine manipulation.  The heat felt good…

When she turned on the electrodes it felt like the best massage ever.  She left it run for a few minutes and I was so relaxed that I almost went to sleep, until I realized that my hands were not hurting.  I was so excited that I almost jumped off the table…. That lasted all day Friday. Shoulder pain was reduced by fifty percent.  The neck still has a little pain but now I can look left.  The pain all weekend has been much less that what I had been dealing with.

Go back tomorrow morning for a follow up.  I have been a life long skeptic but I felt the pain just fall away from me as if it were dripping out of my relieved fingers.  No needles.  No Knives.  No drugs.

I got more work done this weekend than I would ever have imagined.  Mostly because it did not hurt just to move my arms.  I can raise my elbows over my head now.  The right thumb still demands that I be careful with it, but I can now take the cap off of a bottle of water again.  Been using pliers for that task.  Could be that I just Want to believe, but I don’t think my mind is that powerful to overcome the pain like that.

My accomplishments over the weekend.  Got the trailer inspected finally…In and out of Conwells in less than twenty minutes…made an appointment for brakes on the Van next week.

Cut the whole yard with the push mower…

Built two bale garden rows…one 24 feet long and another 30 feet long.  Manufactured and erected a panel fence along the short one and planted pole beans in the compost on top of the bales….shoveled and hauled a lot of compost with the wheel barrow.  My two year old compost is very good….deep rich brown and very friable.  The bales are part of the ones I used to insulate the north wall foundation of the house during the winter.  I used thirty four bales for that task.  I was able to salvage and few and fed them but over half were just too wet and moldy so I decided to try bale gardening again with them…had to haul them from the back of the house to the garden.  Mowed the cover crop in most of the garden.

Planted a dozen tomatoes, 6 early girl in the new raised bed and 6 super fantastic in the pallet garden.

Planted a pound of onion sets.  Serviced and cranked the rototiller and tilled in the cover crops in the two raised beds.  One of the plastic wheels broke so I pulled two larger wheels off of an old junk lawnmower and replaced both of the ones on the rototiller….Planted 8 green peppers and some more lettuce…put down paper bag mulch and weighted it down with horse manure….

Marie and I went to Breakfast Saturday at Cracker Barrel and then a trip through Walmart.  Trip to the waste transfer station to get some mulch.  Three trips to Montpelier feed and seed for odds and ends.

Put up two portable fences and rotated the horses to Hermans lot.  The horses are now in the eighth paddock since we started grazing this spring….two or maybe three days per paddock and then move and close off the just grazed area.  The first three grazed have almost caught up to the ungrazed paddocks.  Rest and recovery time is the key to grass management….that and not overgrazing to begin with…..the paddocks I used for Sacrifice areas this winter will not be useful for grazing until late may at the earliest…..We are about  a third of the way thru the horse paddocks in two weeks of grazing…so My first pass should last nearly six weeks…..They will get another new paddock tomorrow evening.  Moved the goats to the tank field…

Broadcast some cover crop seed in the cutover along my driveway just before it rained.  Quick hard Rain Friday night…

Moved the chicken tractor three times and sowed seed and mulched behind every move.   Wormed the goats.   Repaired the broken post in the fence in the second grape arbor.  Walked the early spring seeded fields for signs of new grass…saw enough to be encouraged.

Cooked my breakfast this morning and put together a casserole for supper and was still outside by 7 am.   Learning how to cook on the new cooktop stove….have to turn it up a little bit hotter than the old worn out electric stove.  Planning  for another 30 foot by 2 foot raised bed.  I have always enjoyed growing stuff, but have always hated hoeing and pulling weeds and my new found hatred of tilling and killing the soil has me eager to try new ways of producing food crops….That and the drought in California telling me that if I expect to be able to afford to eat, I better grow something.

Did not have time to cut any wood this weekend.  Did take a few photos with the new cell phone…yeah…I finally broke down and got a smart phone….but it is still smarter than me…