5:00 alarm goes off and I lie there for a while in the dark and then I reach for my book.

6:10 wake up girls, waffles for breakfast.

6:51 bus.

7:10 make a bottle for lamb, fill water for sheep, check on chickens and fill their water too.

7:45 put water on for coffee. Billy arrives home looking very tired. He has been taking care of cows all night at the Jersey auction. I ask if he has any deliveries (not the pregnancy kind) and he says no. Which should mean that he can sleep until the afternoon but he reminds me he has to catch the “crazy cow”. We have one heifer who is not right. She gets upset very easily and crashes through buildings, gates, fences. In the past month she has probably done close to $1000 worth of damage. She was born here and has always been like this,  only it seems to be getting worse. Her mother is a little jumpy but nothing like her daughter. Seems to be a gene that has been passed down though.

I work on the dishes, he eats a hard boil egg and a waffle then goes up for a nap.

8:25 phone, lining up neighbors to help catch cow later.

9:35 last of trash and recycling is by the side of the road, just in time.

10:20 finished planting a few shallots, a bed of spinach, and planted buckwheat where we had potatoes last year. It is supposed to be warm for a few days. This early is a bit risky perhaps for buckwheat. I can cover the whole bed in old storm windows if I have to. In the middle of all that I stop to give four bales of hay to a friend who has stopped by, then back to raking. In the kitchen I germinate some of last year’s sugar snap pea seeds on wet paper towels to make sure they still have some life in them before I plant them too.

10:50 collect eggs, wash them, look with a bit of dismay at the shelves full of eggs in the fridge, then close the door. Make more coffee.

11:15 Billy gets up and I realize I’ve lost my coffee  somewhere. For lunch in a bit there will be egg salad.

1:20 put down my book. Reading the Peaceable Kingdom by Jan de Hartog, which is a tearjerker. Vivid descriptions of English prison in the 1600’s…. Heading out to take care of the pigs- time to do some cleaning in their area. Someone said farmer is a fancy name for janitor. Moving manure around is a big part of the job. First another bottle for the lamb.

4:20 Billy leaves to pick the girls up from their piano lessons. All the animals have been checked. The heifers are where they need to be. Broccoli rows watered. I’m hot and tired and thinking about ice water and shower before I cook dinner. But since I’m dirty I think I better get a few more trees planted first.