Category: Farm

Edible Forest Garden – Practice Plot – Part 1

the original goal

The inspiration – Edible Forest Gardens Volume I and II.

These are tomes. TOMES! There is so much information packed into those two volumes that I will be reading and re-reading and referencing them for ages. Which also means I will need to buy them for myself and actually return the ones I have to the library before the fines get any bigger.

There are many ideas, options, inspirations, methods, etc. in the books but for the Lawns to Legumes grant I decided to go with a tree guild polyculture as a very first “nuclei that merge.”

The “nuclei that merge” option is a method for large spaces and/or limited budgets where you plant small nuclei of a tree with supporting plants and as those patches grow they merge with one another to eventually create your Edible Forest Garden. One of the books many recommendations is to start with a small plot to practice, well, everything, because they have suggestions from planning to prepping to planting and all of it can get very nuanced and detailed if you want it to. Though, the book is also very good about always reminding you to take and try what you want and not worry too much about the rest.

There are so very many cool plants to work with and I know so very little about them all that I was having a hard time narrowing it down on my own. Luckily, I found the Project Food Forest website and they have four starter polyculture tree-guilds listed as inspiration and the “native bounty” one seemed perfect, all native plants with edible or medicinal properties.

Here was the starting inspiration:

  • Wild Plum (Prunus americana) as the center tree, native to the U.S. with edible fruit
  • Silver Buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea) as the nitrogen fixing shrub, native with edible berries
  • Supporting plants:
    • Bee Balm (Monarda didyma) as native, edible, medicinal, insectary, and mulch maker
    • New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus) as native, medicinal, nitrogen-fixer, mulch maker, insectary, and soil improver
    • Wild Garlic (Allium canadense var. lavendulare) as native, edible, medicinal, pest confuser, and insectary
    • Winecup or Purple Poppy Mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) as native, edible, insectary, ground cover, and soil improver
    • Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) as native, edible, medicinal, mulch maker, and insectary
    • Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) as native, medicinal, insectary, and wildlife food
    • Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) as native, edible, medicinal, insectary, soil improver, and ground cover
    • Yarrow (Achille millefolium) as native, medicinal, edible, insectary, soil improver, and beneficial insect attractant

Though all those plants are native to North America, they are not all native to Minnesota and so they would not all work for the Lawns to Legumes grant. I also had to keep our limited budget in mind and couldn’t afford to get at least four, preferably eight, of each of the plants on the list.

I did a search on Minnesota Wildflower to determine which ones were native to Minnesota and to find possible substitutes for the rest. The updated list with only Minnesota native plants was this one:

  • Wild Plum (Prunus americana)
  • New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus) to replace Silver Buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea)
  • Supporting plants:
    • Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) to replace Bee Balm (Monarda didyma)
    • Wild Garlic (Allium canadense var. lavendulare)
    • Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum)
    • Narrow-leaved Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) to replace Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
    • Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana)
    • Yarrow (Achille millefolium)

Unfortunately, I didn’t plan ahead very well (okay I didn’t really plan ahead at all, kind of skipped that part of the process…) and by the time I got to the Prairie Restoration Garden Center they were sold out of some of the plants I wanted. They also reminded me that for the Lawns to Legumes grant I needed a fall blooming plant and none of the ones on my list were fall bloomers so we had to add something to cover that need. My first and second choice of the fall bloomers they normally carry were also sold out so the final list I came home with was this:

I did have a rough idea of how I wanted everything laid out: tree in the center, four paths leading out creating four quadrants, two of each plant in each quadrant. The reality changed a bit as we got the prices and adjusted for what was and wasn’t there, and the addition of the fall bloomer.

After I got home I laid out the following plan on paper:

Now I just had to get all those plants into the ground. Should be an easy Saturday morning project, right?

Where do we go from here?

Life keeps on moving

It has been a week and a half since Leeloo died. Though I’m still sad and I miss her greatly I’m doing much better. Writing this post helped a lot. Like, a lot. Prior to writing it out, that last hour of her life would just randomly start replaying in my head and would just take me right down with it. After writing it, the unwanted replays stopped. It is like I had a giant gaping wound that was gushing blood everywhere and writing about it was like putting stitches in and a band aid on. The wound is still there, but it isn’t randomly gushing proverbial blood everywhere and it has started to heal. It still hurts if I metaphorically bump it. Like walking out the door and seeing her halter, or cleaning up the mudroom and finding all the feed containers labeled “Leeloo,” but its down to a far more manageable dull ache. I don’t like throwing out the word trauma/traumatized, but I think that last hour was traumatizing and writing it out was a huge step in healing it. If you have experienced some sort of deep loss or trauma, I would encourage you to try writing it out. Whether you type it out and share it with the world, write it on paper and burn it in a little private ceremony of letting go, or something in between, it can be very helpful. Even if it doesn’t help as much, all you’ve lost is a little bit of time, and chances are it will make a difference.

That last week of Leeloo’s life was also a big deal for another reason, which you may have seen in the post. We put our first payment down on the barn! At the time it felt like the cruelest twist of fate that we signed the paper and cut the first check for the barn the day before Leeloo was diagnosed with cancer. If felt like the universe was rubbing salt into an already awful wound. But now that some time has passed, I’ve decided that Leeloo was waiting around here to make sure that I was able to fulfill this lifelong dream. Ever since the economy went to shambles in 2020, we have been searching, and searching, and searching, for a builder who was actually interested in working with us to figure out how to reconcile my dream, with our budget, and this messed up economy. Had Leeloo died this winter I don’t think I would have had the strength to keep searching. There have been so many setbacks and obstacles in this journey that I think her loss would have been the one I couldn’t get past. But we did find our builder, and they are great, and they were able to work with us to figure out how we could get this barn built and actually be able to pay for it.

So thank you Leeloo for staying with me long enough to make sure I found our builder and that this barn will be built! 

Hay Lids – FINISHED!

finally

After months we finally, FINALLY, got all six haybox lids finished and installed. Considering I figured out the haybox lid solution back in December it begs the question why did it take more than three months to get them done?! This is a question I ask myself about almost everything almost all of the time. In this case there were a series of setbacks in addition to my normal procrastination and inability to complete tasks.

Getting the materials took longer than planned because our first big snowstorm of the season hit and interrupted the delivery of everything to everywhere including LeVahn Brothers (still the best hardware store ever!). By the time they got the materials and got them cut down to size for us it was solidly into the holiday season which meant I wasn’t able to get everything until after Christmas. After getting the materials they sat around our living room for several weeks casting judgement upon me before I was able to make myself assemble a few of them. This used up much of my “being useful” energy so more time went by before I went out to actually put them on the boxes to make sure everything was okay, at which point I discovered that somewhere along the line a mistake was made in the measurements. The corner pieces we use for the frame are not neat squares but stick out a bit on both sides, plus there is the corner itself which adds its size to the overall length of each side. I had measured the boxes in the field but didn’t think about the extra space needed for the corner pieces until I was standing in line at LeVahn brothers about to tell them what I needed. For some reason this oversight caused me to panic and instead of stepping out of the nonexistent line to do some calculations I freaked out and tried to quickly account for the corners in my head. The result was that one of the dimensions was fine, but the other was off by 2.75 inches for every single box. Luckily they were all too long by 2.75 inches which meant I could cut them down instead of having to buy the materials all over again. However, this also meant I needed to find our pipe cutter and motivating myself to go look for it took even more time. When I finally got around to looking for it the search proved fruitless which meant another trip to LeVahn brothers to buy a new one. I can’t possibly leave the house for only one reason if that reason is for adulting purposes and not say, getting ice cream because we have decided to cheat on our diet, so I had to wait on that until there was some other adulting reason to leave the house and that reason was also in the same direction as the hardware store. Once the pipe cutter was acquired more time went by before I finally tried it out only to realize that I suck at using the pipe cutter only slightly less than Nate does, so the actual cutting of the pipe took several days because I had to rest my useless hand (surgery in May!) in between each one. I now have all the pipe pieces cut to length and re-assemble the first three lid frames along with the hay nets. After the mishap with the frames I though I should go test again now that the hay nets are on and find that my first attempts at measuring and cutting the hay nets was pretty terrible and two of the three are too small and I need to cut new ones out of the second giant piece of hay net I had purchased. At last the lid frames are finished and the correct size, the hay nets have been cut to the correct size, and everything has been assembled; now to install them! We just need a nice day where it isn’t snowing or raining or sleeting or blowing at 50 mph to get them put on. Normally in spring this would be no big deal, but haven’t gotten to spring yet, we’re still stuck in the winter that refuses to leave. We also needed both of us to be available because even though the actual installation is a one person job, it isn’t a one person job when you have the equivalent of a 1500 lb toddler trying to help you with every step.

Most horses would have been scared off by the plastic bag that was holding some of the materials because plastic bags are terrifying for many a horse, those that made it past that would normally have taken off at the first sound of the drill, but not Leeloo. Leeloo hung out with us the entire time we installed all the lids. Nate took a few videos for evidence of Leeloo’s “helping” before he moved into his “keep Leeloo occupied” role so I could get them done with slightly less help.

Though there is always time for head scritches, no matter how many other things need to get done.

But finally – after all the setbacks – the lids are DONE!

Challenge Accepted

okay spring, any day now

Mother nature apparently read my last post and decided to test my “snow is better than bugs” resolve. I still don’t mind the snow and lower temperatures, I am however done with the wind and the drifts that keep closing paths that were open just a few hours ago. I know we don’t live on the true great plains and that we only have a taste of the wind and drifts they have to deal with, but our location definitely tries its best to live up to the great plains wind standard.

We have managed to not blanket either Leeoo or Juniper at all this winter. However they are starting to shed because that process is dictated by the amount of light not the temperature, and we’re in for a week of below average temps, so I’m watching them closely again just in case. Hoping we can make it to spring without a blanket. It would help if they would bother to go in the f*ing shelters!

This photo was taken about 45 minutes after we had finished morning chores when the shelters were still clean (relatively) and fully stocked with hay. But no, apparently being reasonably warm and dry isn’t that important and they’d rather be out in the blowing snow. I do not understand.

While Leeloo and Juniper were out in the snow, Nate and I were finishing our taxes. We ended up having a much bigger refund coming than I would like. A big refund means we gave the government an interest free loan for the year and I hate that. If I owe them money I have to pay a fine, if they owe me money I’m just supposed to be happy about it. Ideally I’d like to get a refund of around $100; that amount wouldn’t have earned much interest anyway and it feels like a happy little surprise too much more than that annoys me. Regardless, getting money back in any amount is still better than the two years we owed a bunch and had to pay the aforementioned fines.

Having our taxes done takes one big thing off our to-do list but there are still so many more things on that list. My goal for this week is to try to get back to my previous levels of productivity. I have been really struggling with doing pretty much anything that is even in the neighborhood of adulting or being productive for the last few weeks. Or rather – I have a far more limited window of willingness than in the past, but my to-do list hasn’t gotten shorter, and I need to fix one of those things. Nate’s vote is less to-do list.

Now on to said list. Maybe today I’ll get an extra 30 minutes of productivity in – that would be a start at least.

Plans to Plant

plants to plan for

As I mentioned in this post, I finished Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway last weekend and it was a very good book, highly recommend. There were many great things in the book but the two big ideas that have really been rattling around in my head sparking ideas are polycultures or plant guilds and alternative garden layout arrangements.

Polycultures, aka plant communities, aka plant guilds are all about planting things in mixed together groups that benefit one another instead of in individual monoculture groups. Nature abhors monocultures and nature is the best gardener of all so it would behoove us to follow her lead. The right polycultures can help everything grow better if the correct plants are chosen that work with one another to create healthy communities both above and below ground for plants, insects, and animals. Hemenway’s book goes into great detail about these ideas so I will not; but if you garden at all I think it would be worth your time to read.

The alternative garden layout ideas extend in some ways from the polyculture ideas. If we aren’t planting single rows or groups of one type of plant that opens the door to a wide range of alternative layouts such as this one from his book:

Image from Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway

While trying to find that image I stumbled upon another article that discussed taking his ideas even farther to really maximize not only the amount of space used for growing things but to combine that with as much space that is within easy reach.

image is from https://www.interdependentweb.com/articles/rethinking-circular-keyhole-beds-and-mandala-gardens

I have much more to learn on this topic, but I am super excited and super inspired by what I have learned so far.

These two things combined with my ideas for what I’d like to do for the Lawns to Legumes grant we received and a rough draft of an idea is starting to take shape in my head.

I’m thinking of putting together a small fruit tree guild based on all edible native Minnesota plants. The basic idea is you have a fruit tree in the center surrounded by beneficial and edible plants all around it. The tree is possibly planted with a “nurse” plant of some sort to help offer shade and act as wind break for the young tree as it is growing. Ideally the nurse plant would also be a fruit producing shrub or a nitrogen fixing shrub so that it not only offers physical protection for the baby tree but either nutrition to the tree or nutrition to the human who planted it. Then surrounding them both with various other shrubs and plants, which are either edible foods like wild strawberries, ramps, wild ginger, etc, or offer benefits like breaking up heavy soil, fixing nitrogen in the soil, drawing up other nutrients, attracting pollinators, etc. I still have much research to do about exactly what plants will work in our soil and with our intense winds and of course consideration for the fact that in the beginning there will be full sun but as the tree matures there will be less sun. But many people have been planting fruit tree guilds and there are tons of examples online, such as the one below, so I know this is doable it is just a matter of figuring out which plants will work for our location.

image from theresiliencyinstitute.net 

One of the sticking points for me is that most of the fruit trees native to MN are also toxic to horses. I am still searching to see if I can find one that isn’t, but regardless I am not planting any of these things inside their current paddock or any future paddock so if I can’t find a fruit tree that isn’t toxic I think we’ll still be okay. Though it will mean being vigilant after any storm to pick up anything that may blow into the pasture and making sure they always have hay available so they are not tempted into poisoning themselves out of hunger or boredom.

One of the resources Hemenway recommended to learn more about polycultures/plant guilds are the Edible Forest Gardens Volumes I and II by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. I just got them from the library this week and started reading them but then anther book I had on hold came in that I need to read for a book club. The learning cirlce is hosted by the Land Stewardship Project and we are reading Building Community Food Webs by Ken Meter. Our first session is in two weeks so that book has moved to the top of my reading pile.

So many ideas and so much more to learn and so much excitement! I’m going to make this regenerative farm thing happen!

Lazy Weekend

sometimes you’re productive, sometimes you’re not

The weather was gorgeous this weekend and we could have gotten so much done. But everyone seemed to agree that it was a good weekend for lazing about doing not much of anything. I finished the book Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway (really good book, I liked it a lot and got some great ideas and inspiration from it) and Nate and I both played a lot of bit of Horizon: Forbidden West (I am enjoying it just as much as the first game – which I LOVED) and Leeloo and Juniper spent most of the weekend napping in the sun.

We did get the “barn” shelter all cleared out so that we can feed the girls in there. Everyone is still getting used to the new routine and the efficiencies haven’t materialized quite yet; but I’m hopeful that within a week or so this change in our routine will make a difference. Today they both realized that they needed to be by the big gate and that the hay and treat toy were still back by the water and they had to travel to them. Of course today it is also stupid and rainy and I have most of their hay in the shelters, but they’ll figure that out. Hopefully.

Snow-ver It

adrift

Say it with me: at least there are no bugs, at least there are no bugs, at least there are no bugs.

This was not a fun week for taking care of outside animals. Particularly since the wind was coming more from the east and the shelters are all aimed for our more common westerly wind; the end result being that the shelters didn’t do a whole lot of sheltering.

We did all survive, though Leeloo was mighty crabby for a while; okay we were all mighty crabby for a while. Leeloo at least can always be reliably cheered up with her toy no matter the weather.

Treat toy is life.

Because the wind came from a new direction we have drifts in fun new places. Like between me and where we have been dumping the poop.

I fought the drift, and the drift won.

I did find a slightly less formidable drift that I was able to make it up and over, though its harder to get to because I have to sneak behind the three compost bays. How I ever thought three small compost bays would be enough is beyond me. That’s okay though because every mistake is just an opportunity to learn. In this case what I have learned is that we need some sort of tractor or skid steer! I also learned that I prefer this weather a millions times more than 90 degree hot humid bug filled summer so I remind myself of that over and over. Say it with me: At least there are no bugs, at least there are no bugs, at least there are no bugs!

Reading Lists and Projects

some completed, some not so completed

This weekend was not as productive as I had hoped (shocker!). Juniper has been slowly getting pickier and pickier about eating. For most of the fall she would be standing by the gate to the round pen, ready and waiting to eat her breakfast; and she’d eat most of it, or rather, most of it made it into her mouth at some point though she lost a lot in the process. Side note – we’re hoping to find an equine dental specialist and have them out once it’s warmer to take another look at Juniper’s teeth. She is still having too hard of a time eating despite the dental float we had done this fall. Luckily Leeloo is always happy to eat up anything that Juniper drops. Anyway, as the weather has gotten colder we’ve had to add less water to Juniper’s food because even at her most excited Juniper is a slow eater, SLOW, and once the temperature really dropped her food would invariably start to freeze before she would finish it and then she didn’t want it anymore (Leeloo of course had no such compunctions). I have eased back the water to the point where it doesn’t freeze, but this also means Juniper is less interested in finishing it. She’s still super excited for that first bite, but sometimes we barely get much more than that. Some days she decides hay is better and stops eating if she thinks I’m about to come around with the hay sled and bites the bars of the round pen gate until we let her out. Some days she’s thirsty and wants to have a drink in the middle of breakfast. For a while I brought her, her very own small bucket of water for while she was eating breakfast and that worked for a little while, but it has stopped working. Some days she just wants us to hold it for her the way we hold it for Leeloo (I wish I was joking). My hope is that if we can feed Juniper (and Leeloo) in the “barn” shelter that I can throw a little hay in there, and her bucket of water, and then just leave her and Leeloo in there long enough for Juniper to finish eating. I’m also hoping that if we feed in a sheltered area instead of out in the open I can start adding a little more water to her food without it freezing. All of that combined with how much it sucks to stand outside in almost all weather feeding them has really motivated me to get that last “barn” shelter bay cleaned out so we can use it as the make-shift barn as I had planned. We ALMOST got there this weekend, almost but not quite. The stupid ice from last week has made getting in and out of that shelter very treacherous so Nate and I spent much of the weekend trying to rectify that situation instead of finishing the cleanout. The last thing I need is for the horses or for us to slip (again). Fingers crossed that by next weekend we are officially feeding in the “barn” shelter.

Though I didn’t make as much progress on the “barn” shelter as I had hoped, I did make a decent dent in my “I want to be a farmer” reading list. This urge to be some sort of farmer/food producer/livestock rancher is not a new thing for me, though it has never felt quite so urgent and immediate as it has now. Over the years I have done a variety of reading related to these farming dreams. Most of these were read back-to-back-to-back so I have a hard time remembering exactly which information I learned from which book, particularly since there is a lot of overlap. The exception being the book by Ruth Stout; that one I remember very well, and I highly recommend it – funny and informative!

books I read a while ago – I recommend all of them:

The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka – this is a book on many “must read” lists regarding sustainable, natural, regenerative, buzz word of your choice, agriculture.

The Soil Will Save Us. How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet. by Kristin Ohlson The subtitle tells you all you need to know, it was actually a pretty hopeful book. If you are feeling depressed about climate change then this book may help you feel better.

Teaming With Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis.

Building Soils Naturally: Innovative Methods for Organic Gardeners by Phil Nauta

Those last two had a lot of overlap being focused completely on soil, how it works, what makes it healthy, and ways to improve it. I learned a ton and if you are interested in soil I recommend them both (mostly because at this point they have merged into one book in my head).

Gardening Without Work. For the Aging, the Busy, and the Indolent by Ruth Stout – HIGHLY recommend. Not only was it informative but it was very entertaining. Her gardening method is extreme mulching and I had planned on trying it out last summer but then I randomly decided to bring Leeloo home and there went every free second.

books I have read in the past week –

The Complete Guide to No-Dig Gardening by Charlie Nardozzi. This one was good, but didn’t offer that much new information having read those previous books. He goes over many things a little bit but not any one thing in depth; mile wide, inch deep sort of thing. He did however give me a few things I want to learn even more about, in particular polycultures and keyhole beds. He also led to another book I’m currently reading, Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway.

The Ultimate Guide to Natural Farming and Sustainable Living by Nicole Faires. This book was meh and I didn’t finish it. Again, very mile wide and inch deep. Though if we’re comparing them it was more like 100 miles wide and a ¼ inch deep – except for the places where you fall in a trench. Perhaps it gets better if you read the whole thing but I have a pile of books I want to read and this one just wasn’t doing it for me so I moved on after only getting about 1/3 of the way through it.

Start Your Farm: The Authoritative Guide to Becoming a Sustainable 21st Century Farmer by Forrest Pritchard and Ellen Polishuk. This book was great! It both got me excited to start farming and also made me stop and think many times about whether I really want to do this. Again more on the mile wide, inch deep end of the spectrum but it was appropriate for the purpose of the book, laying out all the things a new farmer needs to think about and consider before starting a farm related business.

Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. This is the book I’m currently reading and I am really enjoying it so far.

I am also eagerly awaiting fall because I am hoping to take the Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings Class which is a year long program for new and prospective farmers and it starts again in September.

I’m also supposed to be doing reading for my two education-related classes, but it is much, MUCH, harder to motivate myself to read any of those books, even the ones I was mildly interested in a few months ago. My heart has without question moved on from teaching – now I just need everything else to catch up.

Ice Capades

for the love of drainage

This week has not been super fun in terms of weather. We got a string of unseasonably warm days where it got above freezing leading to a great deal of melting. Of course It didn’t melt all of the snow, it just created a fun layer of ice on everything. This was followed by a day of rain and the only thing that can make ice worse is a layer of water on top of it and the the ground itself is still frozen so the water can’t really go anywhere. Combine that with the location of our shelters on the flattest ground we could get that unfortunately also happens to be near the lowest point on that side of our house. With the ground frozen and a wall of snow that had turned into ice all around the outside of the shelters this meant all that water ran into the shelters and then had no way to get out. The water was ankle deep in the two shelter bays that don’t have mats and was almost as deep in several areas of the bay with mats, though that one still had a few dry spots. In a fit of guilt at making the girls stand in that much water which I knew was going to shortly freeze and turn into an ice rink I opted to sacrifice two bales of our cheapest “forage” hay (one of which was actually kind of moldy so I wasn’t going to feed it to them anyway) to spread out and hopefully soak up some of the water and if nothing else provide traction once all that water froze.

Was it the best idea I ever had? No. Did it help? Maybe? I was not a good scientist and did not leave one shelter bay alone as a control to test my results. What I can say is that the next morning there wasn’t nearly as much water in any of the shelter bays which is a good thing. More importantly, when the flash freeze happened that day we wound up with lots of places that are sheer ice but the shelters with all their hay didn’t freeze solid and the footing in there is fine. Picking poop out of all that semi frozen hay has been awful however, so I’m hoping to find a better solution before we have to deal with this again.

I know the best solution would involve some decent drainage built into the footing of the shelter area, but they are in temporary locations (I will get my barn built!) and I didn’t want to waste money on putting in drainage materials that I would not be able to take back out and repurpose easily. So far everything that we have, from the fences to the shelters, can be moved to their permanent home once the barn is built. That being said, I will be trying to find a way to put some sort of drainage in the shelter area for now because I do not want to deal with this again.

This still leaves the ice rinks in front of the shelters, near one set of hay boxes, and near the water. The University of Minnesota Equine Program had a Facebook post about horse-safe ways to deal with ice and using poultry grit was one of the options. I had a customer come through my lane at Fleet Farm who said the same thing, so I bought a bag (and now two more) and I think it works pretty well. It worked amazingly for me and my boots; once I put a little bit down I have had zero issues with traction. It hasn’t been quite as amazing for Leeloo, Juniper, or Nate all of whom are still slipping here and there, but I think overall it is helping. And I don’t feel bad about spreading small pieces of granite on my lawn the way I would if I were spreading salt everywhere.

Hopefully we won’t have any more random rainstorms in the middle of winter to flash freeze into sheer ice. Snow I don’t mind so much, but ice sucks! (though still better than bugs!)

Holding Pattern

Where do the days go?

I had a lot of goals for the week and somehow the week came and the week went and those goals did not happen. Well, some of them got worked on, but nothing got finished.

Goal One – Regenerative Farming Research

As I said in this post I have been unhappy with my job for a while and being on sabbatical and working on the Adult Education Certificate has really brough home the fact that I need a new career. Regenerative farming has sparked a lot of hope and excitement in me, and I wanted to do more digging to figure out how I can make this happen. I did find several books I want to read but haven’t gotten much farther than putting holds on them at the library.

Goal Two – Carpel Tunnel Surgery

I wasn’t going to have it done this week, obviously, but I had hoped to get it scheduled. I did meet with the surgeon and he agrees that surgery makes sense as our next step. Now I’m playing phone tag with his scheduler. The surgeon said I should only need 3-4 weeks of down time (in terms of not doing horse chores) but(!) that I can’t actually damage anything if I over do it, it will just hurt until it is done healing. This is great for many reasons, but the biggest is that it takes the pressure off of Nate to do EVERYTHING for the month. Nate and I are hoping that I can get the surgery scheduled for the very beginning of May (what a wonderful birthday gift that will be). I find that I can ignore the issues with my hand/wrist now that I know a solution is on the horizon.

Goal Three – Finish Hay Box Lids

I was so excited when we got our hay box lid solution figured out, as discussed in this post. However actually finishing the lids hasn’t happened yet because I messed up my measurements a bit. When I took the measurements to LeVahn Brothers to get the rest of the pipe for the lid frames I forgot to account for the corner pieces until I was standing at the register in the store. Instead of reasonably stepping out of the non-existent line to take my time to figure it out, I panicked and tried to calculate it quickly in my head. I did it correctly for one direction on all of the boxes but I was off by 2.75 inches in the other direction on all the boxes. Luckily they are too long and not too short so I can just cut them all down, I just haven’t gotten around to doing that. We are getting very sick of playing the fun game where Leeloo and Juniper shove all the hay out of the boxes and we put most the hay back in the boxes. Thankfully it isn’t muddy (yet) and they eat a lot of the hay back off the ground so they aren’t wasting that much but it will be muddy soon and mud or not it is very annoying so I really have to get these lids finished.

Goal Four – Make Progress on the Barn

One of the builders I had reached out to got back to me with some questions this week and we had a good conversation about the building but he still has more to do before he can give me a quote. I also started up another round of phone tag with another builder who I had been in contact with in fall but didn’t get final answers from – hoping I connect with him soon.

Then there were two new things that came up this week. Or rather two very old things that I had completely forgotten about that came back up.

First – Lawns to Legumes Grant

We received a Lawns to Legumes grant!! I had completely forgotten that I applied until the email showed up in my inbox saying we had been awarded one of the grants but I am super excited (and actually happy with past Sara for once)! Now I need to figure out what kind of project will satisfy the grant requirements, will make sense with our long-term goals, and will work with our current short-term setup (i.e. our front yard is now mostly horse paddock). There is a webinar for grantees that happens in two weeks and I am going to hold off on any planning until after that – but I will be staying super excited!

Second – Juniper’s Oral Medication Issues

When we brought Leeloo and Juniper home this fall we wormed them both before putting them in the trailer. I asked Juniper’s previous owner to do it since I didn’t know Juniper at all and some horses don’t like being wormed. It did not go well. In the end it took three people way too long, and with way too much rearing, to get it done. At the time I chalked it up to nerves; owner was sad about letting Juniper go but also had a time crunch that morning and Leeloo was having a meltdown in the trailer so I wasn’t exactly radiating calm. However the vet also had issues just trying to do a dental exam and I was unable to get oral banamine into Juniper using the tube. I knew then that this was something we would have to work on but at the time I was also giving her multiple eye medications 4-6 times a day and I could not afford to miss a dose because I had a pony unwilling to be caught or handled because she was feeling salty after trying to work on her oral issues. Then after weeks and weeks of eye meds followed by the onset of winter I forgot about it; until now. Leeloo is showing signs that she may be dealing with some parasites (coat condition isn’t great and she’s trying to itch her tail on everything – including the gate to the round pen which was NOT safe, thankfully I noticed her right away) and I want to worm her but it makes no sense to worm Leeloo and not Juniper at the same time. This has become priority number one and I am hoping that with some clicker training (positive reinforcement training) I can get Juniper over her oral issues this weekend, or at least over them enough that I can worm them both by Monday.

A mentor of mine once told me “Sometimes you have to be a glacier and wear the mountain down one inch at a time.” Inch by inch I am wearing these mountains down.