Sunday, September 23, 2007

New Photos Tomorrow!

Finally, I managed to get my act together and borrow a camera again, and I've been taking tons of pictures! So, hopefully by tomorrow afternoon I will have a bunch of them sorted out so I can post them. I am doing my best to get good clear pictures of the steps in training the Salute, MiKael. It's funny, I don't think I've ever done a photo tutorial before, so I hope it turns out well! I also have been taking pictures of the areas I want to try growing hay (and wheat) this winter. Wheat is the easiest people food of all to grow in this area. Everything else is very difficult to keep protected from the gophers, birds, deer, raccoons, etc. etc. And then the ground in this area is mostly decomposed granite, literally, so it requires LOTS of amendments and water... and water... and more water... which we don't have much of. It is most practical to grow stuff in the winter here, rather than trying to fight the summer heat and lack of rain for 6+ months at a time.

Growing wheat is super easy, though. I will tell more about that in another installment. :-) I am going to try to get lots of pictures of everything I do in preparing the ground and planting, and then photograph the growing plants every couple of weeks. Ditto with the hay - although I will probably use the native grasses for that. Not exactly great quality in them, but they will be decent supplemental forage.

Speaking of home-grown hay, our pond got really low again this summer. There was a lot of green grass growing on the bottom, and just for fun we harvested some and dried it to see if Mira would like it at all. Pond bottoms are typically FULL of nutrition of all sorts, (they can also contain bad residues, though) and so we were curious about it. I thought it smelled pretty sour, but I have never seen hay disappear as quickly or thoroughly as that hay did. I was quite surprised that she liked it that much!

OK, I'll stop rambling now. See you tomorrow!


L

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