Finally spring has arrived!!

Well, spring has finally arrived.  The fields and yard literally went from brown to green in 48 hours.  It is looking like I will need to mow the lawn this weekend for the first time this year!

 

Looking south west across farm

 The shot above was on 4-7-13.  The shot below was today.  The change happened much quicker though and had I not been working midnights I would have taken a pic on the 9th or 10th to show how quickly it changed!

Looking south west across the farm

 Since I am working midnights doing mulching at work I am going to bed as soon as I get home each morning and then get up at 3:30 to get my daughter off the bus.  Then I head out to check the animals.  As soon as I stepped outside I noticed that the cows had let themselves out into one of the pastures across the creek.  So I headed over with Daisy to check fences and see how they got in there. 

We had some serious flooding in the bottom this past Thursday/Friday due to the heavy rains that went through.  Because of that where the fence crosses the creek it had captured a lot of debris, including a tree stump, and was drug down into the water and completely shorted out.  So, after some wrestling with the weeds, stump, and wire I finally was able to get fence out of water and hot again.  Since the fence was shorted the cows just walked through the wire gate and went out to eat the new green grass.  Since they were already there I decided to let them stay.

The cows enjoying the new spring grass

 I got a chance to take a picture of Princess.  This is 50's daughter and sister to Precious.  She is looking great and they are all growing so well.  The only small ones are from my two first Angus cows.  They are quite small themselves and seem to always have small calves.  This is not a bad thing as they don't eat as much as the others and it gives me smaller steers for some of my customers who want a smaller half.

Princess, 50's daughter.

 Due to the really nice weather I have started cleaning up the remaining debris left over from clearing the woods out of the corner of the field two years ago.  We have been whittling away at the piles that were left and they finally got small enough that it was time to burn a bunch of the limbs and stumps to clean up to give me access to the last of the good firewood.

On the way back to the house my daughter wanted to drive the tractor.  So I put it in low gear and let her have the wheel!  She actually did very well and after some more practice should pick it up pretty quickly.  My goal is to have her able to run tractor for me in a couple more years so she can ted the hay for rake when I need help.   Plus every guy likes a girl that can handle a tractor and trucks!

Lisa driving the tractor for the first time!

I have a video of her driving but it doesn't seem to want to upload right now.  If I can get it on later I will post it.  For now I just have a couple of pictures.  The last one is after we parked.  She was so excited!  I remember my first time driving a tractor.  I was two or three years old.  I couldn't reach the pedals, just the steering wheel.  Dad was trying to pull fence posts but couldn't get any help so he put me on to steer.  He put the tractor in the lowest gear at idle and then after letting out the clutch he got off and walked behind with the chain hooked to the back.  Then, as we passed each post he would quickly wrap the chain around the post and let the tractor pull the post.  Then he would quickly unwrap the chain and drop the post and get ready for the next.  We pulled a entire old fence row out that way.

I am really excited this year for the farm.  We are finally turning the corner into some really nice growth and it has been a rough journey filled with a lot of hard work but it is finally starting to pay off.  I can't wait to see where this year takes us!

Have a great day everyone,

Kenny