The month of May was wet for nearly the whole of Kansas, and we happened to be one of the wettest spots in the state with over 30 inches for the month. Spring rains make grass grow and the lambs are good and growing. Photography and blogging has taken a back seat in a year of heavy labor on every front, but I managed to take my camera with me a few times while I did my rounds on the farm.
sheep
There Is a Glory In the Soil
The Farm in Mid-Summer
celebrations of lucerne and other legumes, solar crescents, roots, and the husbandry of even toed-ungulates
sward of chicory, crimson, and white clovers
inquisitive crossbred pig in a paddock of rye and vetch
hampshire pig eating bolted chicory
improvised by a previous farmer, well worn window weight cover chains
nitrogen nodules formed on alfalfa (lucerne) roots
lucerne (alfalfa) roots and crown, pulled from the vegetable garden
garlic, un-earthed
root fire works
sonar malfunction (?) allowed us a daytime visit from a strange and fierce nocturnal beneficient
windrows in the alfalfa (Medicago sativa) meadow
the rusty old New Holland swather in contrast eating alfalfa
I read once that the Arabic word from which the name “alfalfa” came meant “best fodder”
Louis Bromfield justly brought attention to its role as a soil healer. It seems to live up to its names, feeding livestock, pollinators, humans, the soil and its inhabitants, and the atmosphere.
I feel grateful that I get to farm my own patch of lucerne. In the background is a mobile chicken coop with laying hens working the perimeter of the meadow. We’ve learned that alfalfa is a key ingredient in good eggs.
the angus bottle baby
bellows for milk
lambs in the illuminated profile of humid dawn
the young shepherd studies his flock
compact paddocks of soybeans and milo forage, bloody butcher field corn, and the Quonset barn looking at home in the landscape
the great blue heron disturbed from his breakfast, as we head across the creek to do the morning chores
sun in hand
interplay of lensing leaves and the light of 92% totality
solar shield
transfixed
the image of the solar eclipse projected through on half of pair of binoculars proved to be the most successful of viewing contraptions
photographing under the helmet, layers of eclipse and lense
contractions of the dry months
elevated mundane details; oxidations of copper and steel
a barn that is part celebration of geometry, part dog house
the colors of the barnyard hens grouped together over their dawn ration
wax goldenweed of the many cousins in the sunflower family
emergence of the inflorescence of Indian grass
dr. Seuss hairdo of thistle
snow-on-the-mountain
snouts and ears
coreopsis growing in a wheat field we are converting to perennial pasture
Living With Sheep
As the Greening Begins
Sky
Echo Water
Beautiful Industry
Various Light
Husbandry in Harvest
Sally In The Garden, traditional fiddle tune performed on banjo and fiddle
The School of the Transfer of Energy 