I have things up in the garden, but I am not saying a lot about it because I'm not sure I'll follow through this year. I let the weeds take over last summer, so of course baby weeds are already trying to take over. I don't know how long I will keep up the gardening. Things can change at the drop of a hat around here. The only thing that remains constant besides the cows is Cliff, and I don't think he wants me going into a lot of detail about his private life. Besides, my readers would get tired of seeing the details of his restoration of the Allis Chalmers D-17 Series IV.
So. Remember Penny, the cow I overpriced for Craigslist because I really didn't want to sell her?
I didn't sell her. And today I took the ad off Craigslist, because I STILL don't want to sell her. Look at that udder! And she still has almost a month until she calves. I had two calls about her... one from a trader in Iowa, and one from someone across the river near Polo or Norborne.
She is officially due on May 2, if I wrote it down correctly. She's a little on the pudgy side, but she'll probably milk off all the fat once she calves.
There's no extra fat on Grace. She puts all her energy into making milk. If I'm able to get two calves on her after Penny calves, I may use some pour-on Ivomec to worm her, just in case she needs it. I don't want to use wormer on her while we are using the milk. She has turned out to be such a great milk cow; during the winter her milk developed an unpleasant taste after a couple of days in the refrigerator, but that is all in the past now, and her milk tastes wonderful for days. Now that there is green grass for her to eat, her cream even has a golden color, whereas it was as white as her milk all winter. She should be due near the end of October.
That's all for now.
Last year I had the most successful sweet corn crop of my life. Somewhere on the Internet I read that you can pre-sprout seeds before you plant them, and I decided to give it a try. I've always had a terrible time with corn because moles discover them as soon as I've planted the seeds and burrow right up the row, sometimes devouring 90% or more of the seeds. Maybe it was coincidence last summer, but the moles never bothered my pre-sprouted seeds in any of the four plantings. I've already planted a few sprouted corn seeds this week, although it's early for corn and it wouldn't be unusual for us to get a frost or even a hard freeze at any time in April. That's why I didn't sprout too many for this first planting. But I always like to try for a few early things.
This year I'm experimenting with other seeds, just to see how it works with various kinds. Eggplant seeds are tiny, slow to come up, and easily mistaken for weeds when they do come up. So in the past I paid the price and bought a plant or two. This year I have some already in the process of sprouting, so once they are planted they should come up really fast. I'm even trying some flower seeds. It's so much cheaper to plant seeds rather than to buy started plants. I've always planted cabbage seeds directly in the soil without sprouting, and then transplanted them so they are the proper distance apart, and that works fine.
The pre-sprouting is pretty simple, really. Dampen a paper towel, put the seeds in it, and place the rolled or folded paper towel in a plastic baggie. Don't seal the bag shut. If you soak the paper towel to heavily, and/or seal up the baggie, there's a chance of mold growing on the seeds. I had this happen last year when I waited too long to plant one of my corn crops, and went ahead and planted the moldy, sprouted seeds anyway. They didn't come up; the mold had killed them.
We'll see if last year's good fortune with the corn was just a fluke.
There's a site HERE that might help you, if you want to try this for yourself. It gives various temperatures that are ideal for sprouting different kinds of seeds, but I'm not going to bother with that.
