Knocked out in the First Round

It’s spinach planting time again. Growing spinach in the fall is ideal. Spinach doesn’t like it hot and the trend is cooler. I even just read that spinach germinates faster at lower temps than at higher summer ones. Weeds are less competitive in the fall. 

I plant six feet or so of row about every week to ten days. The ones that are planted real late will overwinter like wheat or rye if they get 2 or 3 inches tall before winter. Actually, last winter was our first one when the spinach didn’t grow back in the spring. 

I think we had a warm spell late last winter that caused the spinach to break dormancy. Then the following cold spell killed it. 

When harvesting, just break off the biggest leaves. Young plants stay tender up to eight inches leaves. Bloomsdale long standing is an old, dependable variety with meaty leaves that make great salads. We don’t even cook it. Maybe we would for company. I don’t know why they’d want it, though. 

Fry up some bacon to crumble over the salad after you toss it in some good seasoning and Italian dressing. My mom couldn’t cook worth a damn but she could make spinach salad. Sometimes she would add a chopped hand-boiled egg. Yum! 

Anyway, I got the six feet of row planted and went to fill the watering can. Even if it’s already moist, the water settles the soil around the seed. 

I filled the watering can and grabbed the handle on the hydrant to turn it off. I woke up on my back with my knees bent further than they have been since they were installed two years ago. The elbow that was on the concrete hurt but the rest of me landed on the grass. 

The water was overflowing out of the water can. 

The hydrant is under our extremely powerful electric fence. The hot wire loops around over the hydrant on its way to the fence. I had touched my head on that wire while my hand was on the hydrant. 

Electric fences works by having the animal complete the circuit between the fence and the ground (the actual ground). In this case, I couldn’t have made a shorter path unless I touched the two terminals on the unit. 

During WWI, the Germans erected the “wire of death” along the border with the Netherlands. It caused thousands of fatalities. Tools can be nasty. 

New Zealander Bill Gallagher kept his horse from scratching on his car using the car’s ignition coil. This began the modern electric fence. 

High tensile wire minimized maintenance. Plastic insulators allowed the use of old steel t posts. 

To conserve grass, managed grazing was plastic string with thin stainless steal threading running through it. It can be moved daily so the cows just eat the tops. The added photosynthesis provided by the tall stubble grows more grass. 

Wireless controlled grazing is real new but expensive. The cows wear collars that are connected to GPS. A map can be drawn on a computer to contain the cows. 

How about that? Spinach and grazing and a shock treatment all in one column. 

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