Opened the NE pasture

Today (Saturday) was an off-and-on rainy day. Just like last year, after I planted my garden it starts to rain after a dry spell.

After feeding hay to my "girls" I worked on readying the NE pasture for the cattle. I found over winter two wooden fence posts had broken at ground level. Between rain showers I went and put in two newer posts next to the bad ones.

I am trying to grow some pine trees along my northern fence line (and a few other varieties of trees and bushes). I find that cattle will nip the trees in order to taste what they are. Sometimes they will pull the entire tree out of the ground. To protect the trees I placed tomato and other cages around the about ten trees that look to be alive. As cattle will pull tomato cages out of the ground and step on them (every one last year!), I pounded some boards and metal rods inside the cages and into the ground to make it harder for the cattle to abuse the cages. This worked to protect the trees and shrubs in my yard; hopefully it will continue to work in the pasture.

I remember transplanting earlier this spring a small leafy tree or two I had found growing in my garden and elsewhere. I forgot all about it until I found a decent sized tree along the fence line. Wow! Is this a tree I transplanted? I wish all trees I transplant did this well.

I added some boards to the gate between the NE and north pastures so the gate will look more substantial and deter the cattle from trying to go through it.

Lastly I added some wire to the chain-link part of the fence between the NE pasture and the fruit tree/garden area. Most specifically the section where the raspberry plants are. Two years ago I found the cattle would put their head through the barb wire fence and eat the raspberry plants down. Last year I added a chain-link fence and found that at the end of summer the taller cattle would put their head over the top of the 4 ft fence and eat the tops of the raspberry plants down a foot or more that the cattle could reach.

Today I added boards to the fence posts to extend them a little over a foot higher. To these boards I nailed chicken wire that was a little over a foot in width. I knew the odds & ends of chicken wire I bought at auction last summer would come in handy!

Now we'll see if the cattle can get to my raspberry plants!! Maybe I'll get raspberries this year!

Then I let my "girls" into the pasture. Initially they missed seeing the open gate so I walked over, then through the gate. A couple heifers saw me and came through the gate. Quickly the herd instinct took over and the rest came into the NE pasture.

In the beginning they put their heads down and concentrated on eating as much grass as they could. Later after part of the herd drifted off to another end of the pasture the remaining herd would come running as fast as they could so as not to miss whatever goodies this group may be having. Ok, just don't get too excited and go through a fence.

To get my 8 hours sleep the past few days I have taken a catnap late afternoon. A 3 am to 9 am sleeping time just isn't enough. I guess there isn't anything wrong with this, as I can keep & sleep whatever hours I want. Still, it seems 'wrong' somehow. Taking a short nap during the day seems to be wasting time. Still it is hard for me to get out of a "night owl" way of life. At least today it rained when I took a nap - probably part of why I fell asleep as I couldn't work outside right then.

Since the sun came out to mostly dry the grass I went and checked my pocket gopher traps. 3 more. I could see a change in the river level since I last seen it 24 hours ago. The river is still rising rapidly. Checking the web site I see the flow increased 43 CFS since yesterday. An increase of over 6%. A cooler day today with the high temperature in the lows 70s. The cooler weather should slow the rise of the rivers.

With the warm weather this past week (and nights where the temperature stays above freezing), the grass has really perked up and started to grow. Which is good as my cattle need food to eat. The bad is the weeds also grow and the part of my garden that I haven't dug yet seems to have filled in with more weeds and bigger weeds.

The evening sun came out as I walked back from the river. The grass and pine trees seemed to be very, very green in the soft light. How is that blue and white rain clouds make the mountains so much prettier when the sun breaks through to light up the mountains?

The apple trees have really blossomed the past few days. Initially the trees were odd looking as the blossoms were out but the leaves were still in the process of coming out. I hadn't seen that before. Today the leaves were out so the trees look more normal. I seen bees flying around the blossoms before it turned rainy. Hopefully the bees will be busy and pollinate all the blossoms. Both trees have plenty of blossoms so it appears the "green/yellow" apple tree will have lots of apples also this year. My apricot trees never blossomed this year. Usually they are the first trees to have blossoms. Guess it was too cold earlier and now it is too late.

Before it got dark I transplanted my starter broccoli and cabbage plants into my garden. The stems are so fragile that I put some little metal rods in the ground to reduce the chance a wind could snap the plant off. Hopefully I get more of my starter plants into the garden tomorrow so I can get on with digging the rest of the garden.