June 10

Hello folks,

It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I'd catch up.

It's been raining on and off for the past two weeks. Our area has gotten between 12 - 15 inches of rain. I think the farmers are done planting. There are lakes in the middle of fields everywhere. Some people have even drowned when their cars have been washed off the road. One old fella was found 17 miles away from where his car went off the road. My BIL had a close call the other day also. He swims like a rock, so he was very lucky. Most of the unplanted fields will probably go into "preventative planting".

I have been trying to catch up with the weeds. My machete and I fight with them every day. With all the rain, it's been quite a job. I even took the lawn mower and DH and I mowed a small pasture with lots of thistle in it. The spray obviously got washed off before it could do any good, so with all the forecasts for rain, we mowed them down before they could seed out. We will spray that field if it every stops raining. We have to be careful as the pasture is right by town so that we don't get any overspray on anyones garden. I got the curly dock weeded out of the asparagus and horseradish beds. The problem was that it looks almost like the horseradish and if it doesn't have a seed head on it, you really have to watch so that you don't dig up a horseradish plant by accident.

I mudded in all my veggie seeds. The green beans popped up after a couple of wet days. Hope the rain washed all the bugs away. I did pick some potato beetles the other day. You really need to take a jug of OFF with you as the mosquitoes are getting to be as big as helicopters lately. LOL

KathyJo, how is your fence coming?? And your new calf?? Friends of ours had half their fences wash away last week with all the rain. Lucky that they didn't have their cattle in those fields at the time. Hope they also had insurance to cover making the new fences.

We should be cutting alfalfa soon, but everyone is a little leary as they don't want to get it rained on. One farmer had half of the rows that were cut wash away. It's probably in the next county. Kathleen, hope you got all your hay done. DH usually hits a pheasant nest or two when he cuts hay.

The fishing has been good lately. All the runoff goes south towards the river, so the catfish are biting. We got our limits three days in a row and none of them weighed less than three pounds. DH also caught a 9 1/2 pound carp.

Welcome, MelissaL. It's always nice to see new people on the forum.

Leaflady, you sound busy like always. Hope that you are all recuperated from your accident.

DH found 4 young raccoons in the middle of the yard around dusk last night. I'm not going to tell my girlfriend about it as she loves raccoons and wouldn't like what he did with them. She's a real animal lover and would have come over and tried to take them home. They were old enough to growl and try to intimidate DH. One of them even bit the dog. No wonder I haven't been finding as many eggs lately.....

Well, I better get going and see where the dog is. She has started chasing chickens now. There were some deer tracks by one of the cattle yards so I'm wondering if that's what she's barking at in the middle of the night. It's either deer, coons, yotes, possum..... she's a busy dog, trying to figure out what these new smells belong to.

Take care everyone.
Ruth