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| Hubby swathing the alfalfa |
This week we spent a day and a half cutting the alfalfa in Princeton. We drove over Tuesday afternoon and while I cleaned and unpacked my hubby cut the outside rounds on the field. The dogs and I walked up on the hill and took some photos of him on the swather.
The next morning before hubby set out to cut the rest of the hay he instructed me on adding shut off valves to the sprinklers on the second pivot tower, so they could be turned off and the rest of the sprinklers could water the oats, peas, and corn we planted three weeks ago and not the newly cut hay wet.
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| Shut off valve |
Boots and Tink went with me. Six head of deer, two bucks in the bunch, ran out of the alfalfa as we walked to the pivot. I had to count how many shut off valves I needed then go down the pivot taking them from other towers and replacing the sprinklers. I needed thirteen and found nine that I could take. I shoved the valves in my shirt pocket and pants pockets and headed back to the second tower.
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| sprinkler with valve |
Once I'd put all the shut off valves on the dogs and I headed back to the cabin to write. On the walk back, Boots was walking beside me. She hopped funny, turned, and looked into the tall grass and weed in the center of the dirt road. I stopped and looked. It was a three foot bull snake. I'd walked right on by not even seeing it because I was watching Tink pouncing around in the cut alfalfa windrow. Since bull snakes eat small rodents and aren't venomous I left him alone and continued on my way. But the encounter reinforced my hubby's proclamation that I'm a snake magnet. He never sees them and I seem to find one almost every time I go to Princeton.
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| Tink and Boots waiting in the shade while I work |
5 comments:
Ah, new mown alfalfa. I love it. Ours is new seeding with a cover crop of oats. We'll cut just after the fourth of July.
Stephanie, That sounds like where we were last year on half of the field. All but a small pie shape is in full alfalfa. The small pie piece is my hubby's experiment quadrant.
It's great that Boots sees the snakes too. My dog Riley was bitten on the nose by a rattler, lying under the berry bushes when we lived in California. Two weeks later, my husband and Riley walked out to the green house and back. On the way back my husband spotted the rattler stretched out along side the path. Riley never saw it! He walked right by!
Diana, I always take the dogs with me when I walk around Princeton. Granted they don't always stay by me, but I feel like they are the first line of seeing a snake before me. Though they don't always. My first snake encounter(Which I wrote about on this blog)the dogs ran by the snake and I noticed it when it lifted its head.
And that first snake was a rattler too, wasn't it Paty! I guess you are a snake magnet...
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