Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate May the forth…be with you…(I know, I’m mixing Star Trek and Star Wars, but I just couldn’t help it!)
Hey Y’all!
Hello and happy Thursday from Air2Ground Farms! The weather was warmer today and the humidity is up. You can feel a change approaching. It should start raining tonight and then there is a chance of rain over the next two weeks, temps are up…close to 90 Saturday. The farm is great this morning. The second and third pics are the newest addition to the farm…our Boss Momma cow had her calf last night. It is a really good looking bull calf. When Shelley first walked up to him, he jumped up and went right under the barbed wire fence into the woods. We quickly got him to go back into the pasture, where he belongs. He is spunky and healthy. The last pic are the other two red calves born recently, the heifer is the bigger one. The piglets are good as are the beef chickens. Both are always hungry and then after eating, sleepy. We moved two more incubator chicks to the brooder this morning. I’m pretty sure I still hear peeping from the incubator, so we may have more hatch soon. Yesterday, we made some yogurt and worked on the computer. After the sun got a bit low, we transplanted our plant starts into the garden. The temps only dropped to about 45 last night and the plants are all still looking good. I think we made it past the last frost date! Today we shot some videos to use for our next YouTube. We’re making a quick trip to town to pick up mineral and protein supplements for the sheep and beef cows. We will also do some video editing and plan to plant some seeds. We sprouted tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, and broccoli. We are going to direct sow the green beans, squash, and zucchini. The warmer days are bringing about a change to our daily routine. I will be transitioning the daily blog to an afternoon event. This will allow me to work outside in the morning and then during the heat of the day, I’ll transition inside to write.
Time. When deciding whether or not to continue a career in the defense industry, one of the questions Shelley asked me was what would I buy with the extra money we would be making. Without hesitation, I replied “time.” 25 years in the USAF, much of that spent in a fighter squadron, led to a lot of time away from home. I was very fortunate to have only a few long deployments, but even without them, temporary duty assignments from a week to 8 weeks were common. When home, a 12-hour work day was my minimum. When I replied that I would buy time, I was thinking of the time I spent away from my family. I looked at the future and didn’t want to spend it the same way…gone on trips, or even gone to work. We made the decision to retire from the USAF and from defense in general. We decided to buy time. Time is expensive. For us it costs a Defense Contractor, Defense Civilian Employee, or Airline Pilot salary as those were the three most likely paths for my post-military-retirement career. Considering the cost of time, is it worth it? Emphatically, “Yes!” We share with everyone what we are doing, through social media and these blogs. We don’t always share our why, although I often try to pull back the curtain into our decision-making processes. For us, the cost of time, although very expensive, is well worth the ability to be together. It doesn’t make up for the time away with the 4 daughters whose dad was often gone, but the 1 that is still home has Dad around full-time. Blessing or curse?—You’d have to ask her!
Shelley made a quick YouTube Short of 10 steps to make yogurt.
She also made a Short of Missy trying to get comfortable in a plastic pool.
Local Farm Report for 4 May 2023:
Harvest:
32 Chicken eggs
19 Duck eggs
1 Goose eggs
6 3/4 Gallons of milk
Cheers! Psycho & Rich
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