What’s Up at Dogpound North

Folks in the blogging world seem to be settling into their summer routines, some are traveling to cooler places and others are back home visiting with friends and family. Us we are here at Dogpound North enjoying the early spring weather. That’s right I said early spring. Although the summer solstice is right around the corner it appears that the weather Gods have not got the message yet. We are still in the middle of those April showers. The leaves are starting to make an appearance now but I am thinking we may skip right over the May flowers and go straight to our June rains. Now Alberta can be a pretty dry place so it seems almost sacrilegious to speak badly about a little moisture but it would be nice to get our crop seeded sometime before harvest time.

On the good side we do have half the place seeded down to hay so that is ready to start growing just as soon as the weather warms up a little. But we are still getting frosts on most nights and that is not conducive to a lot of growing taking place.

Enough on the weather, the last week has been consumed with getting our grass under control and waving goodbye to Matt as he heads for Albania on a work assignment. You can catch his adventures over there on his new blog here. As for the grass well apparently it isn’t affected by the lack of sunshine or heat and the moisture is driving it to over achievement. I think I have mowed three times the past week, and those who have been here know that mowing is an all day job around Dogpound North. We have a fleet of mowers here that rivals many golf courses and during a day of mowing we will use them all. For the lawn around the house we use a John Deere 525, on the left, complete with a grass bagging system. This mower does a great job of that manicured lawn and although it is pretty finicky I find it well worth the extra time it takes to get it done nicely.

For some of the edging and close in work Brenda uses her Craftsman push mower, in the centre and for everything outside of the house yard we bring out the Diesel John Deere F935. It is a great mower for the wide open spaces and sure helps keep the grass along the road and around the barn yard under control. It also has a hydraulic deck lift so it is a lot handier for the rough country and places that are less manicured. And for those days when a summer flurry comes in unexpectedly it has a heater and windshield wipers.

Start to finish it takes about 6 hours of steady mowing and probably $40.00 worth of fuel to keep the grass from taking over the place and in the heavy growing season of June and early July it is a semi-weekly job. Good thing I am retired.

And just for good measure we rotate the horses through a lot of the outside yard to help with both grass control and fertilization .