Both Herbie and I had a bit of sun today. He plowed, disc-ed and raked my veggie garden, after raking the ditches out of the back yard from the truck and tractor, while I fixed fences to allow the girls to go down the back pasture, and the boys into the barbed wire pasture. Opened the gate into the channel, and shoo'd the girls down towards the back. Heard a thwack, turned around and saw 5 cattle in the barbed wire pasture. Damn, Saffron had burst through the electric fence, zinging both top and bottom electric strands around the centre strand of barbed wire ! Had to shout for Herbie to switch the fence off, and then realised that I needed a replacement post tack she broke, and tools to fix it. So after spending about 2 hours fixing the fence, had to put another hour in to it. Then couldn't get her back in with the girls. She was having a dandy time, racing around the pasture. I had to wait a few hours until she was milk-hungry, before chasing her back to the frantic Seasaidh.
Had 3 companies come quote for a replacement water pressure tank, water softener and whole house water filter. Wow !! It was shockingly expensive. Ranged from $2,500 to $3,975. Herbie doesn't want to do any installing, but my dad suggested I look on the internet for the items, and he'll help me install them when they come up early June. After all, it's not brain surgery. But looking on the internet gives sooo many options, I can't tell my arse from my elbow. Oy vey !!
Went to the other side of the State for Easter with Herbies' mum last weekend. She was lucky. She had her 3 remaining kids, all 5 grandkids and all 6 great grandkids visiting, plus various spouses and significant others. Unfortunately, I picked up a dreaded lurgey there so have been a little under the weather this past week.
The weather has been gorgeous. Nearly 70 today, and it's only April.
The fruit trees are flowering, but we have don't have any bees again. They were there in February, I put honey out for them as March and April are hard months before the nectar starts flowing, and although the honey is gone, seems so are the bees. I'll open the hive tomorrow to figure out if they just left, or had a problem.
The soil in the veggie garden is turning black and gorgeous in places. 7 years of cattle Wintering in the garden, with added chicken, horse, alpaca, sheep, duck and goose manure, leaves, sticks, plant matter, hay and straw is working ! Hopefully I find a fence solution to keep Maddie, as well as the poultry, out of the garden and we can have a fabulous 2017 garden.