A late spring day at the farm - Wednesday

For some reason today seemed like an especially characteristic day at the farm and I’m more aware than usual how different this is from the other places I’ve lived (suburban New Jersey, New York, New Haven, Austin, even Lawrence itself).  All the rain we've had has limited our ability to take care of the apple trees, especially clearing the grass away from them. I figured it was dry enough to weedwhack around 11 in the morning and I got about 20 trees done. It was cloudy and I did feel a few raindrops. Then I noticed that Thunder was hanging around, looking at me expectantly and it started to rain a little more. Thunder the dog is terrified of thunder and lightning, so I paid attention to his attention to me. In a pause of the weedwhacker ( which is very loud and I wear big ear plugs), I heard a bit of thunder, so we all three, Thunder, Rosie, and I, hurried toward the house. By the time we got there it was pouring.

 

This afternoon the new birdbath came. The old one has crumbled and is leaning against the side of the deck. The new one is colored glass on a metal stand and I like it a lot, but I’m afraid a good wind, or an eager raccoon, will topple it right over. So I’m figuring out ways to fix that.

 

After dinner, I suggested that we go out and check on the cherries, and Tom wanted me to take my pole saw and cut off some dead branches on the cherry tree. I did that, but a lot of the cherries were ripe, so we picked about 6 pounds of sour cherries, for jam and cobbler. I’ll need to be pitting them real soon. And there are hundreds of unripe and nearly ripe cherries. We also picked about 7 sweet cherries; that tree is new and taking a while to produce anything. But they are sweet cherries, which I love.

About four pounds of sour cherries

So for dessert I decided to have my ice cream on the deck. We sat out there and I was noticing how huge the sky is here and how the thin clouds are just calmly wafting by in it. But the hummingbirds were buzzing around and I realized that all three feeders were empty, so I had to make some nectar and fill the feeders. Earlier we saw a house finch feeding a juvenile house finch on the deck railing.

 

To end the day, I fed the dogs their treats just when the coyotes started to howl. I heard the high pitched ones coming from around the barn and the lower pitched, stronger ones, coming from just past the fence line of the back yard. They really seemed close, so maybe that’s why the raccoon doesn’t seem to have been around the past few days. They drive Rosie crazy with barking.

Since Wednesday we've picked, and I've pitted, enough cherries for four cobblers and made 5 jars of sour cherry jam. More to come.