Last night I made the first fire of the season in the wood stove. It’s been cold and raining all day. This morning the donkeys refused to leave the barn, but by the afternoon they were grazing the back pasture with the sheep.
There’s still plenty to eat back there and now that Ted bush hogged the animals are feasting on the cuttings. I won’t have to feed them hay again for a while, maybe until the first frost. I hadn’t let them into the back pasture because they grasses and wildflowers were so high, they’d get caught in the sheep’s wool.
There were few flowers still blooming yesterday before the pastures were mowed. Now the bees are gathering pollen from the ones growing close to the ground. And they followed me back to the farm house when I picked a bouquet of wildflowers for Jon and placed them in a jar on the back porch.
It’s important to mow the pastures. It keep the more hardy plants from taking over and keeps bushes and trees from growing so there’s good grass for the sheep and donkeys.
