With most of our garden planted, the warm rain falling today is a welcome sight. The pond was drying up and the soil was powdery dry. Our hay will also get enough water to continue to grow, awaiting our next cutting, hopefully in the next week or so. I've started cutting the small back field, a little each day, and I feed in green to the goats and lambs. The goats give more milk when they are eating the best green feeds.
For those who might carry clippings and brush to their goats or other livestock, caution is important. Any black cherry (and possibly other fruit trees with pitted fruits) leaves, whether fresh or wilted must not be fed to livestock. At best you'll have a very sick herd, but more likely you'll have dead animals. I buried one goat and three nice lambs a few years ago from black cherry poisoning. You can read in any good livestock book about this problem. But I'm always surprised how few people have heard about this hidden toxin in our pastures. We also take the time to walk the pastures after a summer wind storm, in case a cherry limb may have broken off a fence line tree. My dad lost a real nice riding horse back in the 70's, killed by black cherry leaves, so we are evermore careful.
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