Came in like a lion? Well, yeah, but I have nothing to add to all that has been said about our situation this March, so will simply go on to describe life at our farm.

I was walking up the driveway on Wednesday, noticed this truck backing up. We already had 5 new cow/calf pairs in the pasture, but apparently more were on the way and I was going to get to watch them unload.

I asked Jake, the driver, how old this baby is, thinking a couple of weeks. Nope, born yesterday. Seriously!

Here’s Momma, with another baby right behind. Mom’s a little behind on her hygiene, or maybe dirt happens when you’re riding in a cattle truck, but you’ll get an idea of how tiny the babies are.

They’re at home now in the pasture directly around the barn, where our wild daffodils are, at the moment, in bloom.

The weather is so gorgeous just now — low thirties at night, sixty in the afternoon. Too bad most of my chores take place inside. Yes, we did pay them anyway, but our cleaning ladies are on hold for awhile. I hope they’re enjoying this time off, despite everything.

But with all the fruit trees in bloom, the birds making nests, it’s clear that Mother Nature is simply ignoring the virus and bringing spring anyway. Thank you!

A story: our dear friends Ursel and Epi Scheffler, with whom we sailed the Baltic in 2018, sent us a note with a photo from Brazil where our same ship is touring South America. A later note informed us that the ship was experiencing the familiar cruise-line misfortune, at anchor outside Manaus, Brazil, with passengers unable to disembark. Even though no-one on board has tested positive for corona, the Brazilian government deemed them too dangerous to allow them to travel to the airport for their flights back to Germany. So they will now be sailing across the Atlantic, hoping to find a welcome harbor in Hamburg. Quite an adventure, one I’m amazingly grateful that I don’t share!

Another story, this one funny, has our friend Dick Edwards in his garden planting his onion sets. With his knee replacements, he was doing the job sitting on a bench or stool, tipped over backwards, twice, and reflected on how silly an old man can be. Our resident old man immediately took this as inspiration, and spent the day yesterday preparing the garden for his onion sets.

Today he’s similarly employed creating a screened planting bed for the cabbage and lettuce sets he acquired. This involves plastic tubing, some orchard netting, some boards and staples. This to keep the chickens from treating the new plants as their banquet. They’ve gotten very clever about flying over the gates we’d used last year. I’d show you a photo, but the time lapse between camera and computer mandates that it’s not possible. In any case, a good project to fend off the boredom of quarantine.

Tomorrow the folks from Benton County are supposed to come to add some 600 new trees and shrubs to the stream-side enclosures. The original planting of 6000 experienced a pretty big failure, so we’re hoping for better success with these. Also on the calendar for next week is the arrival of some bee hives, to be managed by Allen, who, you may remember, worked on the landscape. Should be fun.

A note from a vesper-sparrow research team asked if we’d allow them to set up a station on our property with the goal of establishing a colony here. This involves a play-back recording to lure the birds here, and periodic visits from the team to check. As the song of this bird is lovely, hence its name, we of course agreed.

This day has somehow slipped into lunch time. I’ll go check on the garden project, wish you all well, harboring at place in your homes. I hope you can find a way to enjoy this glorious sunshine, though it probably doesn’t include baby calves and intransigent chickens 🙂