Thursday, April 05, 2007

Don't put your winter clothes away too soon, if you live in Missouri


Cliff mowed the yard yesterday. With coveralls on. And a stocking hat. And winter gloves. It was that cold. I had just last week stored them away "for the summer".

In yesterday's Wordless Wednesday picture, you can see lush green alfalfa to the right of my horse, Blue. He's the one doing the rolling. That alfalfa gets mowed four times a year for hay. The first cutting usually yields 250 bales, and it goes down from there each cutting, as the year goes on... depending on rainfall. It was eight inches tall already. Yesterday morning on our walk in the pasture, we noticed the plants were all limp-looking from the freeze. Something tells me we won't be mowing hay as soon as I thought.

The weather is no big surprise to me. One year we had a hard freeze on May 10. I remember the day because that's my son's birthday, and I had a huge garden that year. But it's really hard to take the cold once you get used to 80-degree temperatures.

The furnace is sucking up propane like it's December. The poor horses are probably shivering, since they've pretty much shed their winter coats already.

Come back, springtime!