November Hill farm journal, 186

 I haven’t taken any photos in the past 10 days so have nothing to share today, but sometimes no photos mean life is busier, or good things are happening and I just sink into them to the point that I don’t even think about documenting with my phone camera.

Mostly it’s been a busy week and a half. We continue to keep an eye on properties, I’m in the process of working with a land conservancy who are interested in conserving the mountain land we own, and working as usual on keeping up with farm stuff. 

The holly trees have been nicely weed-eated and fed with mature compost. I had been planning to do a bit of limbing up but they developed a few yellow leaves and I don’t like to stress a plant or tree when it’s reacting to something - in this case I think they just needed the compost and we’ve been dry for awhile so a good rain would be helpful. They’re past the year point of being transplanted so I’m not doing regular watering. If we don’t get rain in the next 4-5 days I’ll give them each a good soak. 

Our farm helper did a weed-eating pass down the path to Poplar Folly and also on the inside and outside of the fence down there, which has made walking up and down much easier! He also cut a perimeter path in Arcadia, leaving the center area to bloom on with forage for the insect pollinators, including the honey bees. All the hives are busy and working hard. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I have never yet leveled the empty hive box that lured its own swarm earlier in the spring, and for sure it will be a mess inside with bees building down as they do. At this point if I level it everything they’ve done will be crooked. This is not great beekeeping on my part! It will sort itself out at some point and mostly that means we will have a hard time accessing those frames without tearing things up. Live and learn. Or know and do in this case!

I have a lot of work to do in the larger pollinator plant bed near the house, and need to do some work in the bird haven area, plus in Poplar Folly. There are many native volunteers down there that I’d like to mark, and some invasive non-natives that need to be pulled. Also some buck-eyes that are native but there are far too many of them right now and we’re going to have to be thoughtful and cull 2/3 of them. 

What I have not yet done: washed/put away horse blankets, done a spring clean inside the barn, power washing porch, deck, camper, exterior areas on barn. I’m sure there are more things pending but at this moment I do not even want to remember more than what I just listed! 

This is writing weekend and I’ve also started my ongoing 6-week at a time writing class, so my mind is on that work and was also fueled by an acceptance of a piece of flash fiction. The horse folk who read here will enjoy it - I’ll link when it goes live which I think will be in August. 

I’m closing in on my first embroidery project’s completion, and I will tell you now that the blanket stitch has mostly defied mastery for me. I do the same thing and it looks awful, then suddenly I hit a streak where it looks good, and I cannot tell difference in what I’m doing to have such varied results! However, in this endeavor I am practicing the philosophy of “not letting perfect be the enemy of good enough.” I’m learning, I’m enjoying the process, and honestly, if I do not look too closely at the stitches I love the little needle book I’m almost done making. It will be a very cheerful way to store embroidery needles and every time I open it I’ll see the first project and can thus mark progress as I hopefully get more skillful at this work! I have another project that will let me continue learning and practicing stitches before I move on to some of the more traditional embroidery kits I have accumulated and am eager to complete. 

It’s amazing to me that it’s June already. The summer solstice will be here soon and around that time the horses will get their ACTH tests and I’ll see if they need an increase in Pergolide as we move into the seasonal rise. Right now all are well. Little Man looks truly fabulous - very handsome and somehow perpetually clean and groomed even though we are not doing it for him. I remain convinced he has a team of pony fairies who come and attend to him daily. Keil Bay is good, very happy with his meals, and moving well, and Cody is hanging in there. He got an abrasion on his upper right front leg and because of a couple of episodes over the past year or so where he’s developed cellulitis, we started antibiotics and avoided a repeat. I’ve been having dreams of galloping and keep thinking I need to get him back into light work. The donka boys are also looking good. Between the dry weather and us cutting back some on hay amounts they are a little sleeker than they were, and for Rafer especially this is a very good thing. 

There’s an endless accounting of all the things happening here but this is enough for today, I think!