Mud Season

Does it seem fair that mud season follows winter? Well, the world is full examples of one trial following another. Child birth follows pregnancy, that seems like piling on to me. In a better balanced universe, after a woman's nine months of pregnancy, the man responsible would undergo child birth. Birth control would pretty much take care of itself.

So, mud season follows winter and is our version of spring. That doesn't seem quite right either. Mild southern winters should get followed by a mud season. We should go instantly to green grass, flowers and cookouts. The much ballyhooed "balance of nature" seems to be romantic fiction. Nature is much more prone to imbalances that test your endurance.

With certain reservations, mud season is one of our favorites at Missed Skeet Farm. It cuts way down on the traffic on our road since we block it off. Without that blockade, we would have to pull hapless sightseers out of the mud several times a week. With the blockade, we will only have to help a few people get out. I have mixed emotions about pulling these people out. Most are four wheel drive owners with an attitude. They rut up the road that I'll have to fix. The ruts allow water to run down the road instead of off the road, so they cause erosian and since the water stays in the road, mud season lasts longer.

This causes another imbalance in nature. No, not the erosian, this one: I get to pay for the repairs and do the work of fixing the road after a brilliant four wheel drive owner moves the barricade and heads on in for some "fun in the mud". Perhaps natural selection needs to do a bit more work in this area.

Anyway, we walk in for about 6 weeks and it is kind of fun. You feel intrepid when you overcome this bit of inconvenience. Most people walk for recreation and physical benefit. We walk out of necessity, but the recreation and physical benefits are still there, along with the satisfaction from overcoming adversity.
Mud makes wonderful adversity. It is transient, not particularly dangerous and can be shaped and molded into bricks. (We haven't tried the bricks, but it is tempting.)

One shortcoming of mud season I haven't solved yet is riding the horsses while it's going on. These ultimate four wheelers will go anywhere, but they dig up the road and make pockets in the mud that fill with water. This prolongs mud season and really damages the road. So yesterday, we saddled up the horses, mounted up and just sat on them. Riding without motion- safe, environmentally friendly, relaxing (for you and the horse) and the best part, our road is no worse for wear.
Another week or two will empty the woods of snow and our trails out back will be passable. We may be able to add motion to our riding skills.

Today, while the ground is still frosty, I will move horse manure with the tractor. This is another activity that mud season makes interesting. Winter piles up loads of manure. 13poops/day x 160days x 2horses= two trillion poops. As it thaws, you try to scrape it off the paddock before the animal welfare people arrive and take your horses. This means that every few days you need to get out there and scrape. This makes a mountain of future fertilizer that next years garden will appreciate.

So while mud season oozes with ooze, Kris and I will make the best of it by cooking and eating our way through it. Today, I am making sourdough pancakes. If you haven't tried these, they are delicious and not at all like regular pancakes. They have a beer bread flavor. The texture is different too. They are our new favorite weekend treat.