Our wonderful farmer/neighbor came by and told us about planting time in the Ozarks. In the spring we should be getting the ground clear and the soil amended to grow our crops. He used to raise goats and he had "black gold" where his goat barn used to be. Old dark composted manure all we wanted if we came over before the rains started. So we drove our trailer to his barn and started shoveling. Then my dog Hickory showed up, he had followed us to the farm. The farmer owns two large dogs that would eat my city dog in a second; so I tossed Hick into the trailer for his own protection. Now we are ready for growing season with our share of black gold full of fat red worms.
Since we have some ponds on our property we wanted to have some fish in them. A next door neighbor offered us some blue gill from his pond to feed the larger fish. He let us borrow his fish trap and he placed it for us. We checked the trap two times but each time it was empty. We discovered his blue gill were too large to fit in his trap. So we are going to use fishing poles and worms and catch them that way. In the meantime we saw a clutch of bull frog eggs in the shallows. Very healthy ponds around here in the Ozarks!
This weekend we went rifle shopping. If you live in the country you need a rifle. Coyotes, wild dogs, and other predators are some of the things you have protect your livestock from. We ended up buying a used a 243 WIN rifle from the local gun store.We needed to practice using this new gun safely and our town has a very nice Conservation shooting range free to the public. They provide the paper targets and 25, 50 and 100 foot earth berm ranges. These were well used ranges with a lot of spent shells to study. With bullets costing over $1.00 each we practiced with discretion. It was cold, overcast and the rifle was very loud! I am glad we wore ear plugs.
