The Loaves and the Fishes
Woke up to pouring rain this morning with its company the thunder and lightening. Yesterday we had 78f/25c and high winds which would have warmed the earth up. It certainly warmed me up! So the rain will encourage some grass growth. 
And I need that grass to grow. Because my hay pile is very low now. The cows are still on shut down on concrete or the sacrifice paddock, eating hay, waiting. Alex is not a quiet waiter. I think I am seeing changes in Alex’s udder too. Most of these changes are out of the corner of my eye but they are worth noting.
In the meantime I am going to scout about and see if I can buy some more hay. Though the loaves and the fishes come to mind every time I break one hay bale and dole it out. Though it should be the loaves and the fish. I don’t think fishes is proper English! I mean you don’t say “I am off out to buy some fishes for dinner”. However – luckily I am not feeding five thousand!
Above are the pictures of the tailings. Enough said there I think.
My summer workers are in short supply this year. There are large gaps in my diary. I understand – they work for free through the wwoofer program so maybe they are looking for bigger farms with woods and lakes to play in or mountains to climb on their days off. And I am careful not to set up a summer that depends on help. I am careful to only bite off as much as I can chew.
I think it is like teaching – some years you have an amazing group of rowdy involved kids and other years the students are quieter. I think I am looking at a quiet year. But this is life – it will work out.
The days will go past at the same speed. Though I often think that time itself is actually elastic. Maybe time really does pass slowly sometimes, then speed up at other times. It feels like it. How do we know this is not actually happening? What would that study be called. Quantum physics? There is a study of time within quantum physics.
(pause as Cecilia thinks) What is a quantum anyway?
OK, I looked it up. Wikipedia. I quite like this sentence.
In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction.
Have a lovely day.
celi
ps. High of 68f today with more rain on the way. Go grass!
51 Comments on “The Loaves and the Fishes”
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They do seem to have an, “I want grass,” look to them 🙂
Poor things – and now they have to wait! c
It will be worth it 😉
I can almost smell the aroma of that dirt. But hopefully the sun will sanitize and the wind will blow the smell away from you, not toward you! And wildflowers would look lovely there!
Yes – it is new ground to work with.. c
Your bunch of remote armchair farmers should get our collective asses into gear and sign up for a week or two to come help you – I wish 🙂 Shame about the mess but I am wondering if that silt will not be quite fertile and just great for a swathe of wildflowers and trees? Laura
I was thinking the same about the silt, Laura. What has been your experience Miss C? Fertile soil or wasteland sludge?
Once it has dried out and been tilled in then let sit for a while so the saltiness of chemicals dissipates I think it will be ok. There will be a lot of residue of chemical fertilisers and herbicides in there too – this is all run off from the mono culture fields after all – so i will give it time before committing expensive seeds to the area. In the end the earth below it will become the healer.. c
Ewww. I didn’t realize it contained chemical runoff. Bleck. No wonder you are hesitant to use that “soil”.
I know exactly how that stuff smells. It’s black and oily and rank, and it reeks of anerobic decomposition. Not one bit surprised you don’t want to walk there for a bit. I wish my hair had half as much body as Alex’s poll tufts. She’s such a beautiful girl…
Alex is rather a lovely creature – I wonder what her baby will look like – probably black like Carlos i imagine.. c
Kate. have had no internet for a week – thus limited. Have just read Mackay in direct line of the horror cyclone about to hit. My hopes and prayers are with you. Hope the house survives. Eha
She’s a big bad messy one, predicted to be Category 4 by the time she makes landfall. I’ve been following the BoM track mapping slavishly and it looks pretty obvious to me that she’s going to hit somewhere just north of Mackay. We have everything put away that can be, the windows are taped and shielded the best we can given the short notice, and we have our emergency supplies ready and the generator filled. Now we wait. It’ll be about 12-16 hours till she’s here in full strength. All thoughts and prayers gratefully received!
Time is elastic. I am certain of it from my experience anyway. 🙂 That is quite a mess they left you with there. I wonder if your animals can smell it? I’m sorry you are not getting as much help as usual. There is a shift in the air and I’m not sure it’s for the better.
life is full of such shifts –
We have gale force winds today. Just lost the top of another fir tree, just snapped right off and broke the roof on the wood pile shed!
Oh no! Lucky it did not hit the house! The winds must be fierce.. c
Just missed the pool house but quite a distance from main house luckily
It also rained for 40 days and 40 nights…fingers crossed….
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2017 at 2:04 PM
I lived in Vancouver for a short period and it DID rain there for 40 days and 40 nights – every day there was rain
No other way to describe the leftovers than sludge. Yuck ;(
yup – yuck- not a pretty sight at all. c
Gee whiz, that digger guy could have, at the very least, smoothed out what he left behind! What an awful mess! You know, I’ve read that tourism is way way down in the U.S. and that could possibly be an answer to your lack of wwoofers this year, at least the international ones, and that’s really unfortunate because, while you don’t depend on them for the most part, when it comes to your haying they play an important role. I’m envious of your warm temperatures there… not bad here but much cooler. It will be +4c for a high today (about 40f.). Hope you have a lovely day too ~ Mame 🙂
A bulldozer will come through when it is dry to smooth it out evidently – though there are miles and miles of this now as he works his way down the ditches so I am not so sure I want another big fat monster pushing everything about. I will do it myself then fence it so it is left to grow.
I have an idea for you that works for me. I offer an internship, which I charge a minimal amount for ($10/mo) and I get a commitment of 4 months. Here in Ga. at Hillside Gardens, my interns come in one day a week for 4 hour sessions, and I teach them specific things each session. I limit my program to 5 interns but they keep showing up anyway. That way they get a certificate at the end of the time, and I have predictability. Then they learn something concrete and go away with skills. Perhaps instead of just relying on Woofers, advertise for interns, work out what you would require (like commitment and other issues) and what you can offer, and see if you get more long lasting people as well as short term guys. It has kept me in interns for 6 years. And it isn’t just in spring thru fall. They also learn winter growing. But if you want peace in the winter, just offer what you really want. I thought this might be a different strategy so you get people who just don’t dabble but actually learn some real stuff. You have so much to teach!
You sound like you have a wonderful set up. I do prefer people to come and live here and lend a hand. You are very well educated in your field – i am a farmer, with no formal education in farming and prefer not to set myself up as a teacher. I don’t know that much really. if anything I am intuitive. It would be arrogant of me to give classes with my limited knowledge – I can give experience though. thank you for your ideas.. c
I am thinking good grass growing thoughts for you.
The best kind!! c
What a bunch of mud. Ick. I am throwing my grass prayers in with the lot. If the fellowship has anything to do with it, you’ll have green up to your armpits in no time. Odd about this summer…yes I wonder if it isn’t related to our lovely new government’s inviting smile (not) to those who would want to visit…
There is a massive downturn in people travelling out here from Europe – many are simply afraid. I have encountered a number of questions from international workers wondering how they will get through immigration. Most of it is confusion of course. Last time I traveled to and from Europe the planes were all half empty – though internal american travel is still jam packed. The ban on taking your lap top into a plane from certain ports is an interesting one though – is that affecting you? c
Well that man has left you with a right mess, but as others have said wild flowers sound good. You are warm there, lucky you.
it’s nice here today the sun has got his hat on! 😀
It looks warm in the thermometer but the wind is cold today – I hope we get some more warmth – for this pasture.. c
Celi, I have been thinking about those waterways and wondering why they don’t just let the trees grow along them. Around here they are left forested. This does two things: 1. It keeps the earth in place and 2. It provides a natural wind break. Makes no sense what they are doing.
My thoughts on the waste they have left for you to deal with… I love your idea of flowers and wild fruits planted into that muck but please be careful! The large monoculture farms use LOTS of chemicals and I am certain that the dredged soil is ‘radioactive’ with them.
Yes – I am sure the dirt is full of chemicals – this is why we are leaving it to sit for a while, then fluff it up with the tiller. Many of the herbicides are very long term so i just hope the flowers grow in there. As to trees, he has pulled hundreds of them out – all the way along. The reasoning is that the trees will be in the way of the digger. sigh. I don’t know why they hate trees so – all the old windbreaks have been smashed and burned. c
🙁
Hope more woofers show up- have a lovely day while the grass grows and grows!
These are good wishes! c
Time…it’s relative. ⏰
Somehow I just knew you would come up with the perfect line!! Have a relatively lovely day. c
Happy to oblige. The day is off to a good start.
I don’t understand that mess. Is that where they cleaned a ditch by the road? I can’t believe that! I would have a holy fit! A few years back, the county wanted to put snow fence along my hayfield, and since I am a nice person, I let them. The next spring, after they removed the fence, I found a broken-off metal fence post and other stuff. I told them that they were never to step foot in my field again! I told them to me, it is sacred land. I am located in Upstate Central NY, and even though it is certainly not ideal farmland (very acidic soil, kind of rocky, and hilly), I love it because I have no conventional farms near me, so I don’t have to worry about pesticide drift and things like that. I raise grass-fed cattle, grass-fed lamb, pasture poultry, and four Hereford pigs a year. If I was nearby, I would gladly help you clean up that mess!
There are miles and miles of drainage ditches that run right through the farm land, so this is literally going through the back of our property stretching for miles and miles either way. The mess is mammoth. Your farm sounds just like mine -have a great day.. c
How is it that you had such a warm day yesterday? It’s just slightly above freezing here but we have that rain system too and by the looks of it, it’ll be here until Monday.
It is cooler today but quite quite calm. You must be getting tired of winter if you still have snow and ice! c
Well, you promised the photos, and there they are in all their glory! To add on another topic, time is a man-made invention so the world can run on the same schedule; hence , time zones, etc. But in the universes, ‘our time’ is of no consequence whatsoever. Sorry, too many science lectures…!
Oh I don’t mind lectures at all! Have a lovely evening Sunny.. c
I mentioned to the G.O.that you have gaps…hint hint once again… He hasn’t taken the bait yet but I’m never giving up hope ☺
Now wouldn’t that be a fine thing!!! c
D > Quantum test: “Jonathan, are you awake?” … J > “Uuugh”
I just listened to a podcast recently about quantum physics and Carlo Rovelli mentions time throughout the interview: http://onbeing.org/programs/carlo-rovelli-all-reality-is-interaction/
in one part he says (with a heavy Italian accent, which is why the phrasing is a little odd): “What has happened is that we have learned that our direct intuition of time — we have a very good idea what time is, right? I mean, if you ask somebody who doesn’t know physics what time is, he knows what time is. But that idea of time is wrong.
It’s not wrong for us. I mean, we have, I don’t know, one hour for talking, and that’s one hour, and number of years for living, and so on and so forth. But it’s an approximation. It’s like the Earth being flat around us. The more you learn about nature, the more you discover that, at some fundamental level, time is not there. And in the basic equations of the theory in which I and many colleagues are working now in quantum gravity, time is just — there’s nothing like time.”
I too agree .. some days much faster than others 😃