Fourteen years back this farmer was in Lowe's store in the fall and saw they had daffodil bulbs on sale..it was late in the year and they were trying to clear them out to make room for maybe Christmas stuff maybe. Anyway an idea hit me to buy maybe 200 of these things and plant them on the back side of the dam that I had just finished building. Maybe in the spring if it was covered with yellow flowers I used to refer to as "Easter lillies", but know better now they are daffodils. So harvest was over I had the time to plant them I figured. And I did just that but I think maybe I planted them about 6 inches deep or more and it must have been a little to much. They came up OK the next spring but not one bloom, just the spiky tops.
Well 14 years have passed and each year they come up but never a bloom. A couple times I thought what I should do is did them up and plant them more shallow...Well you know how that goes its easy to know what you should do but doing it is sometimes another matter. Much to my surprise last week as I walked around the pond spraying a little chemical to control algae I noticed some large yellow blooms. I thought well how about that finally one daffodil has decided to bloom. As I walked a little farther I then noticed maybe 20 or more clumps of blooming flowers...
The only think I can figure is time has done it for me maybe. I know as these bulbs grow they do produce other bulbs and maybe just maybe as they did that each year they moved up toward the surface and were shallower than the older ones. And finally this year the new bulbs must be shallow enough to do what daffodils are supposed to do this time of year...It was a nice surprise as you can imagine...
So if you click on the Picasso of pictures to the right and look closely you will see some of the Daffodils blooming right now on Daffodil Dam...And if you click on the picture it will bring up a larger version of them that reveals the pretty flowers I am trying to write about here.
The sign was a gift from a painter friend named John Getz who has passed away. Susan added fresh paint this year but the work and the words were John Getz who was an artist...I remember when we named the dam a lot of people kind of got a kick out of our choice of what to name the dam if it even needed named...Well we thought it did as we named about everything around here, the grain trucks the tractors they all had character and so they had names to maybe try and match that character....Daffodil Dam seemed to fit well what else after planting 200 daffodils that then never bloomed, until 2010, this year....
Farming season has started here. Many of my neighbors are out doing "recreational farming" I call it...they pull large equipment across the fields tearing it up leaving a trail behind them of freshly worked black soils..it does look nice and gives one a real sense of accomplishment...and it is not without merit its just that the cost of the machinery and fuel for some additional yield potential in my eyes is just not worth it...I love the "no tillage" system of farming that I and a few others are engaged in these days. I know for sure that the bottom line is about the same, some years it may be more so one way or the other one never knows...but I do know also that the soils need to be protected from erosion and with no tillage the residue from last years crop does hold the soil from eroding and being wind blown. I like the system and it allows me to do other things as I wait for the right weather and soil temperatures that will allow my seeds to get off to a good start....
So when you see these farmers recreating out there wave to them...there hearts are in the right place, they are as convinced that the system they are using is the right one as I am that it is not...
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