Farm report

Sweet cherries are ripe. Raspberries and mulberries are starting. Juneberries are tiny but they are starting to ripen, too. The Romaine and leaf-lettuce is thinking of bolting (i.e. going to seed and becoming bitter).

Local fields are dry. Most corn is about 5" high but some of the taller stuff has that waxy, rolled-up-leaf look of drought stressed corn.

Some wheat is changing color. The wheat that is changing color is on slopes, presumably where the layer of top soil is thin due to erosion.

The patches of bluegrass-white clover in my pasture are burned out.

On the up-side, are are almost no mosquitoes this year.

Using the MSU Integrated Pest Management tool, Charlotte, Michigan is recorded as having received 1.65 inches of rain since April 15, 2023 while experiencing an evaporation-potential of 10.3 inches.

It is not too hard to keep up with the garden watering because the plants are small and not transpiring that much water...except for the potatoes. That will change over the next two weeks.

Pictures

Chicken feeder. It holds 25 pounds of chicken feed.

The physical evidence suggests I lost a chick last night. I put the trail cam up to see if I can figure out how it happened.

Sprite has Brome Grass in her pasture. She graciously let me run my cows onto it.

I added about 5' to the end of each flour-corn row to plant some Hickory King. That is why the corn plants on the right are shorter. They were planted later.