Fetchin straw, Plantin tomatoes, Shootin guns

Good morning, Wilsall, Montana!

This rainbow greeted us over breakfast.

If there's anything you can say about Crazy View Farm, it's that you never know what to expect. The simple task of picking up loose straw from a nearby ranch can turn into an adventure.

Bright and early this morning - Saturday, we work Tuesday through Saturday - Dave and I took Gracie, the farm truck, over to Muddy Creek Ranch to fetch some straw for sheet mulching the aisles in the gardens. Alongside the road to the ranch, we saw a majestic eagle perched on a fence. Then a second further down the road. We slowed down to try to snap a picture but neither of us could get our cameras ready before he flew off. We figured we missed our chance.

So we grabbed the straw we needed - it's from a burn pile of straw they don't need - and we hauled it off in the bed of the truck. As we were pulling out, we got the camera ready in case the eagles might be back on the fence. Dave set his camera on burst so it would take a bunch of pictures and hopefully we'd get one good one. And we did:

Amazing, eh? An eagle just hangin out on the side of the road. No national park entrance fees or binoculars needed. He's in our neighborhood.

We returned to the farm and emptied the truck bed. After a trip each day for the past few days, we had a pretty big straw pile going that was just begging to be jumped in. Dave couldn't resist:

We put the straw straight to good use by continuing to sheet mulch garden 3. Laurie joined us and we planned to go as far as the remaining cardboard pieces would take us - about 25 feet by the end. We're working on the second aisle with many aisles in three gardens to go. A week or so ago, Laurie started the first aisle, Sara and I continued on it, then Dave and Sara finished the first and went on to the second - now we're nearly through the second aisle in about a week. Laurie says this will be our go-to task when we don't have anything else urgent happening. It could take a good chunk of the summer to finish.

1/2 way through aisle 2 in garden 3

After we ran out of cardboard (we're going to get cardboard from the Wilsall Cafe recycling every Friday), we got to plant tomatoes out in garden 1. This was the first time we were getting to transplant sizeable plants into the garden to really grow. We had already transplanted these tomatoes into the buckets they're in now from smaller containers where Laurie had seeded them back in early April and let them grow in the greenhouse. They were big and strong - good for surviving the Montana crosswinds - when we got them in the ground. It's a little tricky to get them out of the bucket without damaging the roots or leaves.

We took a break for lunch - did the usual, taking Boo for a walk, Dave napped, I read a little - and we got back to work building the chickens an enlarged enclosure outside the coop. Now that lettuce is growing, they can't be as free-range because they'll eat it all to shreds. Laurie said they'd walk a long way to chomp on those veggies (I don't blame them - they're awesome).

Billy, Laurie, Dave and I fenced in an area that was probably 20ft wide by 30 or 40 ft long for them to hangout during the day (they still need to be in the coop at night for protection from predators - foxes, racoons, coyotes, weasles, the neighbor's dogs. Laurie added a swimming pool too.

Our workday and workweek wrapped up there. Dave and I were beat from a long week so we vegged out on the couch and watched Netflix for a couple of hours - we started watching the Showtime series Weeds and can't stop watching it. Around 5pm, we got ants in our pants and had to do something with the decent weather remaining for the day. So we went shootin!

We grabbed Dave shotgun, his bandelier with shells (he was excited to wear it for the first time) and cardboard boxes for targets and took a walk to the valley about a 1/4 mile across the farm to shoot. 

I only got off two rounds - the recoil was hard on my shoulder - and I just barely skimmed the top of the target. Dave shot off about 20 rounds, destroying the boxes with birdshot.

As an aside, I can't imagine actually shooting a living thing but it was fun to practice. Dave said it would've cost us at least $18 or so to shoot at a range and we got to shoot just by taking a walk into the field. Montana is great.

After the long walk back, Dave cooked up some incredible elk meat for elk tacos. Sara joined the two of us for dinner (everyone else went out for the night), we enjoyed a lovely meal, and then hit the hay to watch movies and have an early night.