What do you hear out your window when you wake up at night? I hear frogs. So many frogs! They are loud, too. Our window faces the irrigation pond, which is full of water. The frogs are happy and probably making a lot of noise in order to attract a mate. I know very little about the frog world, but there is more than usual frog noise these days. And so many little tadpoles too! It is so great when the irrigation pond is full of life.

The rain of June has brought mosquitoes, which makes the swallows happy. It is so joyful to see the swallows dive and twirl over the pond, and in the evening, over the fields, catching mosquitoes. Go swallows go! At night I also hear dogs barking. There are livestock dogs barking to keep predators away from the flocks they protect. Recently there’s been a lot of coyote howling, which sets all the dogs in the neighbourhood barking back at them. Our funny little dog, Hak, will howl at the coyotes. He points his nose up, and gives it his all. Front paws come right off the ground as he lets off a big, long, hilarious howl. We’ve banished him to the house employees use during the day so we can get some sleep.

In daytime news, we are now working on bringing a new piece of land into production that is quite heavy in texture. Since the soil doesn’t drain very well, David tried hilling before planting. He has a new ‘power ox’ 2-wheeled tractor, and he is pulling a 100-year old horse hoe behind it. This makes hills, which drain better than the surrounding soil. After the crop has emerged, it can be ‘hilled’ over and over with the horse hoe. This, theoretically, keeps burying weeds. He has tried this before on another farm, using an actual horse, and had good results. We’ll see if it works using the power ox machine.