Our saga with hay continued this week. Our hay guy was not able to harvest and bale at the end of last week. It rained for three days in a row, so there just wasn’t an opportunity. Luckily, his brother had some alfalfa he was able to sell us, so we got twenty bales of gourmet hay. Our goats didn’t even respond to our offers of peanuts with the new flakes in their food tubs. It was like ambrosia to them.
This is a photo of our neighbors’ hay - cut and baled, ready to be picked up.
We’re hoping that our regular hay guy can harvest soon, but the alfalfa his brother supplied was so rich it’ll tide us over for another week, at least.
Meanwhile, the beans my cousin planted began to bloom. We expected white blossoms, but look at this:
These beans are called scarlet runners. They are native to the mountains of Mexico and Central America, and were given to us by one of Jan’s friends, whose family has maintained this lineage of beans for years and years. I mean, they grow the plants, dry some of the seeds, and plant the seeds the following year.
Look at the seeds, I think they’re amazing:
They’re nearly as large as lima beans, but so much more beautiful! I’ve read that you can just cook them, straight out of the seed pods, or you can dry them and cook them the way you’d cook any type of dried legume.
Legumes were first cultivated in the Middle East about ten thousand years ago. The first five legumes cultivated were lentils, peas, chickpeas, bitter vetch (which is just another type of pea), and broad beans (also known as fava beans). Soybeans were first cultivated in China about five thousand years ago, and alfalfa is native to Iran, and was first cultivated three to four thousand years ago. I have to remind myself that alfalfa is also a legume. But, that’s why alfalfa hay is so much more nutritious than grass type hays.
But, the super power of legumes is their ability to take nitrogen from the air and “fix it” into the soil. Once it’s in the soil, it can be used by animals for nutrition. Also by other plants, after the death of the legume plants. Plants and animals (other than legumes) cannot use atmospheric nitrogen - nitrogen gas - directly.
Nitrogen fixing can occur in three ways: the first is through the legumes’ super powers. The second is through lightning - seriously, the lightning makes the nitrogen gas react with the oxygen in our atmosphere, creating nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide. Those can enter our soil via rain or snow. The third is through an industrial process which combines nitrogen gas with hydrogen creating ammonia, which can be turned into ammonium nitrate, which is used as fertilizer.
Nitrogen is a building block of DNA, RNA, and proteins, and makes up about 78% of our atmosphere. The nitrogen cycle is crucial to life on this planet. So, without legumes, lightning, or industrial fertilizer, all life on this planet would come to a screeching halt.
So, long live the scarlet runners! And their cousins.
But, back to our hay situation. Our regular hay guy knows that our dogs have got to be closed in to our immediate back yard before he opens the big gate that goes from the road to our hay barn. Normally, the dogs patrol the area around the hay barn, and adjacent to most of the goat pens. But, at milking time, at feeding time, and at hay delivery time the dogs have to be confined to our yard.
Like I said, our regular hay guy knows this. His brother, however, does not.
His brother arrived early this week, opened the gate, got in his truck to back the hay trailer up to the barn, and out of the corner of his eye saw two big dogs streaking towards freedom. He slammed on the brakes and called the dogs, who ignored him. So, he summoned my cousin, who texted me.
All I knew was that “the dogs are out”. I had just gotten out of the shower, and ran out into the road. The dogs had headed west, toward our neighbor who helped us during kidding season. We were so lucky! Those neighbors have four dogs, and were dog-sitting a fifth, and they quickly confined their dogs, and lured our dogs into their yard with doggie treats. Once they got them into their yard they shut the gate, and Jan was over there nearly instantly.
So, everything was good with Vera, the older of the two dogs. We put a collar and leash on her, and she was happy to walk back home with us. But, Clark? Not so much. These are Great Pyrenees, and they are our herd guardians. You don’t want herd guardians to be too socialized. They’re not companion animals, they're working dogs. They have a job, they love their job, and they naturally know how to do their job. You don’t want to interfere with them too much. Jan has trained Clark to sit. And, he'll do other things we ask him to do. But he is not leash-trained.
We put a collar on him, but when we attached the leash, he was terrified. Jan walked home and brought her van to the neighbors, and we tried luring him into the van with doggie treats, thinking he might prefer a ride home, but he was having none of that. Finally, with a lot of patience and love, we convinced him that where he wanted to go was back to our farm. Whew!
But, you know, those two dogs spent the rest of that day reminiscing about their short flirtation with freedom. And we spent the rest of that day talking about leashing-training Clark.
