#farm work

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Jakub Schikaneder (1855-1924) "Weeder" (1887)

[sayhowdycountrycritters]

The husband, @sayhelloanimalfriends , prepping the new garden plot for tilling. He broke his tool and found an old Red-Winged Blackbird’s nest.

[cowboyjen68]

Back on the farm. Wake up Uncle Festus. It's Time to blow out the cobwebs and shop vac the mice poop! One month to open!!

[ahedderick]

Thorny

When my father started requiring serious amounts of eldercare my kids were in the highschool phase of sports and activities, and the schedule for my husband and me got pretty tight. We ended up letting some things slide around our own farm, and we are now in catch-up mode. For example, the area to the right of those two close trees was basically one gigantic, solid thorn bush, anywhere from 4 to 8 feet tall. There were paths winding through it, but. Yeah. It was a lot. Because it was left unmowed by the tractor and brushhog for a few years. If Nutmeg Goat had fifty close friends, we would not have this problem. We'd have different problems, though.

I've spent over a year trying to manually clear this (and MUCH more up the hill to the right) a little at a time. Once cleared, we will be able to maintain most of it with the tractor. Today, though, my husband and I were planning on doing some herbicide spray in the worst spots and around the fenceline. I took the backpack sprayer (wearing a backpack of liquid is a very odd sensation) and went over some steep, inaccessible areas. He planned to get the bigger sprayer that attaches to the tractor and spray around the edges of a truly immense tangle of thorns and vines.

Well. He hadn't used the big sprayer for quite a while. We had to drag it (so heavy) out of the back of a shed. Remove the brushhog from the tractor hitch, and attach the sprayer*, and then . .

He spent the better part of an hour carefully tracing electric lines from the tractor to the sprayer, trying to figure out where the problem was. There ended up being a tiny little fuse inside a tiny little compartment that was blown. He actually HAD, among the hoard of tools and things he inherited from his father, another tiny little fuse. By the time he actually had the thing all hooked up and working it was NOON. And the "morning" task was still undone. It will get done, true, but this kind of frustration and hullaballoo is just typical of trying to get any darned thing done.

'* NONE of that was easy or painless, btw. I'm just glossing over the difficulties, pinched fingers, and salty oaths.

(the same scene as above, while I was working on it. With Baxter's help.)

[gospodarstwo]

[mbrainspaz]

guess who just wasted 2 hours drafting and deleting about a dozen text messages to their corporate boss who acted all sad and pitiable about being asked to pay them about $300 extra for two weeks worth of grueling overtime in the summer heat doing the full work of a barn manager while being paid like a teenage stable hand?

ya boy

[occultradio]

Random equine knowledge!~

Male donkeys, zebras, and mules have nipples! Male horses do not!

But hey, Radio equines have crotch boobs, where tf would male nipples be?

Hahaha hahaha!

On their sheath....they essentially have foreskin nipples.

Good byeeeeeee

[rmspeltzfarm]

Making the farm great again

Making the Farm great again

[ryuden2]

Rice field in Japan

田植え

[hecho-a-mano]

gently guiding my bad posts into the drafts the way an experienced shepherd guides his sheep.

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) "The Cotton Pickers" (1876) Oil on canvas Realism Located in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, United States

[sayhowdycountrycritters]

My husband says that a week of stacking up hay in the barn was a great workout for my arms and shoulders.

[cowboyjen68]

Heading into the farm. Gotta finish the pumpkin house and mums path by 10! I hope there is coffee on!!

[ahedderick]

Haymaking at Home Farm. If you're thinking, "I wouldn't want to drive a tractor with a baler and wagon hitched behind it on that hill!" you are RIGHT, it is very nerve-wracking. Neighbor J made some square bales and some round.

I had to drive on a similar hill as a teen, with my father and brother in the wagon catching the bales and stacking them. When I got to the last (steepest) circuit, the wagon tipped over sideways, despite the fact that I was creeping at a very slow pace and took the turn as carefully as I could. I can remember looking back in horror as it toppled sideways, bales and family members going helter-skelter. The tractor chose that moment to short-circuit the horn? Somehow? So it started blaring endlessly.

It was like a slow-motion scene from the Hulk. My father, who had been completely buried in hay, rose up out of it ROARING with rage. He stomped up to the tractor and smacked something on it Very Hard. The horn stopped instantly. I had the serene calm one feels when death is at hand.

Then he quelled himself somehow, and told me that it wasn't my fault; the slope was simply too steep for the top-heavy wagon. There was nothing I could have done differently. My brother, who would have been around 10 at the time, emerged from the hay somewhat less dramatically. I wanted to faint, but couldn't quite manage it.

Making hay. It's an experience. Have literally NO IDEA how that man lived to be 83 years old. He did stuff like that all the time.

[privatedarius]

The roving cattle-mustering queen of the outback 🤠🐮 | Landline ABC Raine Holcombe boss of a contract mustering team. This video provides an insight into the scale of cattle stations in the Top End - Northern Territory, Australia.