Sally Gerard

Everything is moving and breathing and having their being right now. Hawks are bountiful feasting on the massive amount of caterpillars. I spotted this amazing nest the other day; scared the hawk when I got close enough to take the photo, but I watched her come back. Trees are deciding maybe it’s safe to leaf out and flower. The cherry blossoms are sweet petite white flowers like little dollops of snow on the ends of the red branches. Chokecherries will be prolific again, which is good as the store of jelly is getting low. One of the apple trees has four or five blooms for the first time in the four years we’ve had those. The Earth is warming up and the roots are responding. And, if you wonder whether or not you like butter, the dandelions are plentiful enough to test yourself several times a day! The sunrise inspires me every day- I hope it does you too.

Wind and getting windier. We had to make a run to Kansas yesterday to pick up a piece of equipment we need to plow here in a couple weeks. We’ll be getting a team of eight or so antique tractors together with one-ways to plow a couple of fields together and get them ready to plant wheat. It is such a great day to gather as neighbors, work the land, share a meal and tell stories of old! We try to hold these kind of neighbor events a couple times a year to celebrate what farming was and to hear the stories of those who lived them and to just have an old-fashioned social time. This is a shot of the farm from a couple evenings ago when everything was glowing and spring was almost ready to bloom. Now, the pear and plum trees have bloomed, the wild plum bushes are in bloom and the chokecherries are ready to burst forth and provide the fruit that lands in my jelly jars onto my toast in the morning–such rich purple-red goodness!

Texas is cotton growing country. Passing along harvested fields, it still looked like snow had fallen at some point in the last week and was now a bit dirty, but it was cotton that hadn’t been picked up by the combine and was left in the field just like corn kernels or wheat. Reading about the history of cotton and how it was ginned was incredible as was the beauty of the cotton gins themselves. These are two photos of two gins showing the craftsmanship, beautiful.

So, what can you  make from a bale of cotton which weighs about 480 pounds? 1,217 men’s t-shirts, 313,600 $100 dollar bills, 249 bed sheets, 3,085 diapers, 215 jeans, 4,321 mid-calf socks, 765 men’s dress shirts, 690 terry bath towels, 21,960 women’s handkerchiefs! Or, you could mix and match.