Raising Flowers and Horses
Looking at Weeds or Flowers?
Get flower farmers together and the conversation usually focuses on the Ws–weather and weeds. For me July has been a big dose of both. The heat and humidity coupled with infrequent and then torrential rain poses all the predictable problems.
Lots of Babies and a Fair Bit of Disquiet
May was a beautiful month here at the farm, day after day of cloudless skies and cool nights. There is new life everywhere–baby bluebirds, fawns, and, of course, new flowers are blooming. Most days I’m in awe of the beauty of it all. There’s magic when a fawn goes from wobbly- legged newborn to a frolicking deer in less than a week. I love watching the bluebirds progress from all mouths and no feathers, to tiny replicas of the full grown variety, after eating thousands of bugs
Bluebirds and Tulips
All three of my bluebird boxes have nests, and this year they all seem to be housing bluebirds. The arrival of the bluebirds is my favorite time of year. I love the electric blue of their bodies, an intense color that you can’t miss when they perch on the pasture fencing. I love how both the males and females are invested in brood-raising, and mostly, I love how many bugs they eat. Each bluebird eats upward of 2,000 bugs a day, and this year our farm is swarming with bluebirds.
Cheerful and Resilient: The Power of the Seasonal Landscape
There is nothing like going away to help me appreciate my home and my farm. It is always hard to get ready to leave, to make all the arrangements necessary to keep the farm going, but the time away only energizes for the season ahead. This trip was no different. Seeing the power of the seasonal landscape in a far different setting was a powerful reminder to look for its magic at home.
Small Problems Under a Big Sky
Sometimes I allow my small problems to feel like big problems. Lately I’ve found myself fretting over the small things. What will I do about my too wet field after all the rainy winter? Is it time for another fight with the insurance company about coverage for a minor, but expensive, medical procedure? Do I have enough help so that I can leave the farm for a couple of days? I know these are minor problems, even good problems to have. (It could be an insurance fight over a big medical procedure!) Yet, they take up too much of the space in my head, and they get stuck there.
Childhood Play
When I was a child, my sister and I would spend hours playing “Little House on the Prairie.” We would recreate scenes from the books that we loved and imagine what it was like to survive with only what we could grow or forage from the land. We imagined tending to our livestock (our dogs), and toted water from our well (our outdoor spigot) to our barn (a pile of sticks arranged in the footprint of a barn). Some of our favorite days were those rare Maryland snowstorms when we could put on our snow gear and tromp around imagining how hard we were working to save our farm animals from the extreme weather.