Kentucky Weather. It’s either really wonderful or really terrible. There’s no in between.
Here’s some pictures I took at our homestead LAST WEEK:
There’s an old saying about Kentucky weather, “If you don’t like it, stick around. It’ll change.”
Literally, a week ago it was Siberia around here. Snow pants, gloves, hats, scarves, boots, and other random wintery gear have been decorating my living room for what seems like yearss. Boy, am I glad to see them go into hibernation.
Fast forward 3 days, the weather turned warm in a hurry. Everything got slushy.
The combination of over a foot of snow and 60+ degree weather equates to 3 things around here:
- Lots of mud
- Weird weather where it’s sunny, warm, and there’s snow all over the ground
- Odd pictures of shirtless children running around in the snow
Next came the rain, which took care of all the white stuff overnight, but didn’t help the mud problem.
Move forward 3 more days and this is what our place looked like:
For the first time in 3 weeks we could see the ground. For the first time in 4 weeks we could also see all the cow manure. It has been hiding under a foot of snow.
We don’t leave the manure in the fields at our homestead. If we had larger pastures, we could.
Our cows are rotated on 2 small fields. Cows never stop making manure. You will probably not believe the amount of manure one cow can produce until you see it. I am convinced the grass doubles in size somewhere inside the cow. I swear, twice as much comes out the back as went in the front.
Really, it’s amazing.
The manure must be scooped. If we left the manure sitting in the field, in a few short months, we would have a field of manure and cows, nothing else. It’s not such a big deal when you scoop the field each week. When you haven’t seen the ground in a month, that can make for a lot of manure to be moved.
We shoveled manure for about 2 hours. It was a beautiful day and exercise is always a good thing. We shoveled it into wagons so it could be relocated to its proper place where it will compost into beautiful, black soil for my garden.
The cows love it when we scoop the cow field. They think we are there to play with them. Crumple sniffs and head-butts everything.
Faith usually tries to sit in my lap……… not this day. This day, she decided to turn into, “Frisky the Wonder-Cow” and gallop, buck, and prance.
She is capable of launching her entire 800+ pound self completely in the air. Keep in mind that she is almost 5 months pregnant. I’m not sure what she is thinking.
Good grief, she’s going to kill someone – maybe herself or her unborn calf. It’s scary.
We locked Frisky in the second field so we didn’t get bounced on during her flight attempts.
Sorry Faith. I still love you.
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XO,
Candi
