Across the Road Close-up

I just wrote a post using photos that I took Across the Road from our mailbox. I started that to document the changes in the field that we see from our house everyday. The photos themselves are kind of boring and not all that attractive. Here is some of what I see when I walk Across the Road. (And here is Rusty's version.) Last year the main crop was sunflowers but there is a corner of land owned by someone else. Last summer's crop on that parcel was corn. Hot dog. Irrigating the sunflower field. Pollenating the sunflowers. Stickers in someone's fur. Sometimes our road seems like an alfalfa highway. Swarm of bugs. Another hot dog.  Irrigation water. This sure looks appealing when it is 100+ degrees.  Signs that I'm not the only one Across the Road.   Hope of the next harvest.

Last Year's View Across the Road

We don't have very much acreage, but across the road is a much larger parcel. We appreciate living here and being able to walk, run the dogs, and just a enjoy the view across the road. In 2013 I planned to take photos from the same location, of the same view, and at the same time each week to document the changes through the year. You probably don't mind that it didn't work because who would want to see 52 photos of the same thing? This field has been planted to alfalfa for several years but in 2013 there were sunflowers. Here is the year Across the Road:  January 10 January 25 January 31 March 7 March 26 April 4 April 11 May 5 May 21 May 28 June 13 July 4July 12 August 8 September 30October 10October 18 November 24December 31

There you have it. I stood at the mailbox for each photo. But the photos are obviously now always the same view or even using the same camera.

The most striking thing in my mind is how dry it was last year. The Central Valley of CA enjoys a Mediterranean climate which means hot dry summers and cool wet winters. We rely on winter rainfall to replenish aquifers and reservoirs to provide the water that keeps the valley from being a desert in the summer. This link shows graphs of the average precipitation and temperature for our area. According to accuweather.com the average annual rainfall for Sacramento is 18.5". We have had only 30% of that (5" in all of 2013). The hills (and the field across the road) should be green right now with the growth of the annual grasses that germinate from fall rains. Grass started to grow with each of the two (only 2) rainy days that we had but has mostly dried up.

On the bright side, I'm not slogging through calf-deep mud when doing chores and we don't have to run the sump pump to keep the the water heater in the basement from flooding.

Hoping for a wet 2014!

Fall Grazing

Hendrix and his group of ewes have been in the back pasture since breeding season started and they have been at the north end of that pasture for a couple of weeks. Since hardly anything is growing (start the rain dance please) I figured that they couldn't do too much damage leaving them that long. I thought that maybe that could take down the dallisgrass and they actually did a pretty good job of it in most of the pasture. It is still a challenge however along the ditch and the fence-line. (If you search dallis  in the blog search you'll see several posts about my attempts to conquer it.) This is the north end of the property. Notice the blackberries on the north fence. I cut these away in the spring to uncover the electric fence wire on the inside of the field fence. The sheep could help in that job except that this time of year the dallis grass growing in and around the ditch keeps them from going over there. It may seem hard to believe that a grass keeps sheep from something, but this stuff is so coarse and strong it's like hacking your way through a jungle. And it's very sticky now from a fungus that grows on the seed head. Several years ago I found a ewe whose horns were so tangled in it that she was stuck upside down in this ditch. The only reason that I knew she was there was that she was baaing.  The sheep in the photo above are in the ditch because I trampled some of the grass and put alfalfa there.  This photo shows that they are making progress. Now I can actually see a ditch and the sheep can get through it to the side with the blackberries. They are finding the hay in the blackberries and it makes it worth their while to work their way through the grass.

After about a week we have worked our way through the ditch and I'm putting the hay near the fence.     Then I moved beyond the blackberries and had them trample the dallisgrass along the rest of the fenceline.This is the east fence and it looked almost as full of grass before I started this project. It is more overrun with blackberries. The sheep have eaten some of the leaves off. I think I have to get in there with clippers now though. There is an electric fence hiding in there somewhere.

Across the Road

There are sunflowers growing across the road from us. Here is what we saw last week.   You would think that Rusty would be afraid here......since he is so afraid of these, but the helicopter doesn't bother him.