19,044 Foot Steps

Good morning. I thought I would try a quote to start the day. I like quotes.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

 This woman walked the gentle footsteps yesterday. Alone. And down empty country roads.But that was OK.

John was on the tractor for the morning cleaning the concrete pads while I scooped, and once those were clean we shifted the feeders around.  I have one good hay feeder that he built me according to a design I drew up from a home made hay feeder I saw back in New Zealand. It is round and good for feeding a group of cows, they place their heads down between the high W’s of looped pipe onto a low bar which circles the entire feeder. He welded  hog panel around the base to keep the hay in,  this makes it much harder for a bully like Aunty Del to bash the smaller cows away from their food.

The design also encourages the lazy cows to keep their heads above the feeder as they chew and so, waste of hay (which makes me lose my mind) is eliminated.

It is easy enough to pick up with the tractor so it follows the largest group of cows, when they are penned up on the concrete pads,  moving three or four times a year. You will  have seen it sitting empty on the concrete pad by the Home barn for the summer – now it is over at the West barn.

Usually in the winter the hay is thrown onto the frozen fields helping spread their manure. The cows are only on the concrete pads when it is raining and wet. Cows hooves can destroy a little farms fields very fast. So as you can imagine we are spending a lot of time in the yards this winter.

John made me a new hay feeder this winter – I designed it like a gate  instead of a ’round’  the chin rests sitting slightly lower,  and we set this up for the calves. I can put this across just about any corner, it is very heavy, too heavy for me to move actually  (we use the tractor and chains) but can be used in many different areas. And the hay is dropped from outside the field into the shallow corner created by the gate. 

Above is the bigger feeder, now at the West barn for  Carlos the Tiny and the four cows who live with him at the moment.

The sun was out all day yesterday and it was glorious. Warm and generous. I opened all the doors and windows in the house and all the doors  and windows in the barns. I even hung the washing on the line. It didn’t exactly dry but it was a great feeling.  I could not stay inside, and spent the whole day working on the farms, and walking back and forth between them taking the long way as often as possible. It really was heavenly.

There is still a lot of water above ground.

But they have taken all the rain out of the forecast so with any luck it can dry a bit before the weather goes down below freezing again.

Though back to clouds and grimness today. It is densely foggy outside and the wind has swung back to the North. We are looking at a high of 46F/7C today.  Still above freezing though.  And yesterday was such a comfort, in many ways. Nothing works quite like sun after weeks of gloom!

Have a lovely day my lovelies.

Love celi

PS. Watched an incredible Polish/French movie on my computer last night. It is set in post war Poland. “The Innocents”. Amazing. Really stunning. Subtitles. I love subtitles.