Keep your Lady in check!

Thursday was Allium day. We transplanted onions, leeks and scallions into the ground. But it was not without a bit of drama.

Dana and I were on the hill picking out rocks and turning over sod when Lady, the bottle baby, comes running and mehhhing up the hill to greet us. She is small enough to escape the pen and has been growing braver everyday. She often greets me at my car in the morning as I park by the barn.

We thought it was kind of cute until she started towards our trays of onions and leeks on the ground. Dave started shouting for us to get her out of there, I made a mad dash towards her and scooped her up in my arms. I brought her down to the barn only find to find her running back up the hill. This time Dave started chasing her down the hill, only for her to turn around and run back up the hill again towards us. Dave picked her up and brought her into the barn and put her in the vacant horse pen where she couldn't get out.

With our plants saved from foraging we focused our attention of preparing the beds. We had already put down compost on Wednesday, all that was needed was to mark the rows and holes with the dibbler. Yes, that is a real farm tool, or at least I think it is. Anyways we basically drag the contraption over the soil as it make holes and lines in the soil. It gives us a guideline of where to place the plants.

We started transplanting leeks, over 800 of them, and then transplanted 3000 onions. We put in Red Wing, Mustang, Cortland, and one other variety. In another section of the garden we put in 800 scallions. It took us the whole day to transplant and I felt pretty stiff from the awkward position I had been in all day. I was sitting on my knees in the aisle parallel to the beds and then leaning over to place plants in the holes and bury them. I couldn't sit perpendicular because I could potentially compact the soil in the next bed.

Lady and Donald

On Friday Lady grew even bolder and followed me down to the place we have our morning meeting. When Donald and I went to feed the pigs, Lady followed us. We rolled with it. As we walked through the barn we heard sporadic mehhhhs as she obediently followed behind us. We fed the pigs, she sniffed around, and then she followed us back out the building. Donald said we should bring her back to the barn, so I put her in the truck with us. I guess now I understand why people dislike bottle babies so much, they become really attached to humans. But we also have become attached to her. She is our mascot and our wing man.