This week was filled with a lot of ugly, some good and some bad. A typical week for most of us, I'm sure. Some of this eye candy is disgusting, some of it is cute, all of it is 100% real. The Good Anthony and I completed a two-day beekeeping course together. I think we both feel much more confident about our introduction to keeping bees in the spring. More on that later. This is some of the equipment we put together.
The girls are still very curious about each other. We have to keep Gigi away from the heifers most of the time since she is very jealous of any attention we give to them.
The Bad Lake Geneva hosted Winterfest this past week and this weekend's highlight was the snowcarving competition. Unfortunately it was almost 40 degrees this weekend, which doesn't make for a long-lasting display of snow sculptures. Yesterday was the judging, today everything was melting into the ground, creating giant muddy messes. So sad that all of that intricate and hard work is gone so quickly.
I'm sure you heard about the people who parked and subsequently fell through the ice on the lake yesterday. This was the scene of the catastrophe. You should have seen the people standing around today just looking at it; I heard two different mothers teaching their children about it and why you should never park on the ice.
The Ugly I am always posting photos of our beautiful farm, the gorgeous sunsets, the lovely heifers and our sweet Gigi. But the reality is it ain't always pretty. It's hard, it is monotonous sometimes, it's almost always scary and there's a lot of shit involved, figuratively AND literally. I would much rather show both sides of this coin rather than pretend it's lovely and delicious all of the time. Enjoy. Or scroll rather quickly. This is the main manure pile. Since the girls are in and out of the barn during the winter, we clean up their manure daily and put it in this pile. In the spring it will be spread on the fields as fertilizer. Once the weather warms up, they are out in the fields all day and night we won't have to do this.
These girls poop a lot. A LOT. A full-grown cow will poop about 15 times per day, about 65 pounds a day. So we've got it easy right now because they're only half-grown. But it's definitely not as gross or stinky as dog poop. So it's really not that bad. Really!
And more manure
We suited up and worked in the chicken coop again. We took a break immediately after day 1 because we had to order new filters for our respirators, they were absolutely disgusting. Hopefully only one more day of being suited up and we will be home free.
