I thought I would just peep in for a moment--honestly nothing exciting enough to write about has been happening. Mostly it's been raining when we are at the farm, making it difficult to bring the camera out. The rain is wonderful, and all the pastures are growing enormously well. The ones we fertilized this year are doing amazingly well. You can see the line of where the fertilizer/soil correctives stopped. We are making plans to lime and correct more of the grazing area. We are so pleased that this is the first year we have grazed all the grassy land on the 40 acres. We need to put in a few more semi-permanent lines to make moving the cows much, much easier, but that's it.
The rain has been making the mushrooms grow! We are collecting Lactarius mushrooms as much as we can. They are everywhere this year! They are such a treat. Mirin has gotten very interested in mushrooms again. Last year was so dry, we hardly had any, but we've been finding so many this summer. Check out the ginormous edible mushrooms my kids found with my dad. We ate some last night and they were extremely tasty.
One interesting thing: Ethan noticed that Mairie--our extremely spatially challenged cow ("Pet Rock"), was eating the Lactarius piperatus mushrooms like crazy. We think maybe this is what's wrong with her. She still has not figured out how to get to the milking paddock. It drives us crazy. So much of the fencing wire is taken up with what Ethan calls "Mairie's Brain Cage," a long, long unelectrified stretch of fence that goes all the way from where ever she is to the milking paddock. Even then, it's still a struggle for her. Oh, and she's always either drooling or she has grass or hay sticking out of her mouth. I told my friend we bought her from about Mairie's "issues," and she didn't think there was anything wrong with it. We guess maybe all mini-Jerseys are that dumb? Ethan's been calling her a "small yapper-type cow."
Otherwise, there's just the story about Nougat's foot, but I'll have to put that in a different post.
