Caught with Our Pants Down

I guess I could say that we gave been "caught with our pants down", at the farm.  Typically spring doesn't officially arrive in our part of MN until early May.  This year we have been treated with some awesome temperatures (in the 70's) for more than a couple days!  These warm days have really pushed the plants along.  Our alfalfa fields are currently on track to need harvesting almost 2 weeks earlier than scheduled.  Our neighbors have been planting corn all week.  Last year (2009) we would have been laughing at them, since we still had snow in some fields at this time!  (last spring was abnormally cold and wet)  Today I had to start mowing the lawn around the dairy barn~which I normally don't do until May 1st, but the grass REALLY needed.  I love the smell of cut grass though, it was amazing!  Since it appears that we have lost 2 weeks of time we are "caught with our pants down". 

We would have used those 2 weeks to do some many other tasks.  I have so much trash to pick up in the ditch that goes past our farm...apparently people have yet to learn NOT to litter!  Makes me so mad, when we work so hard to have a nice farm site and take care of our environment and others just throw their trash in our ditches.  Oh well...I will get to trash later in the coming weeks.  I need to pick up the AgBag (plastic that we use to store our silages) plastic that blew away during the winter storms and hid in the snow drifts.  We need to finish up last minute touches in the parlor before the milk inspector comes~I am almost there but not quite.  I have also been working on doing some much needed fixing in the parlor on the milking equipment.  It works just fine, but there are some parts that need to be replaced.  New works just a little bit better than used.  We have a couple of lots with manure in that need to be hauled out quick before the corn and beans go into the soil...and  FINALLY we have fields to work also to get started planting our own corn....phew I am getting tired just thinking about it.  So...here we go, trying to fit in 2 extra weeks of work into as few of days as possible....one thing you learn on the farm is to always be "flexible"!!!!