Spring in the Cumberland Plateau
Sunday is a day of rest in the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. Life on Coal Creek Farm doesn’t stop, so even though I don’t have chores precisely planned, I still have things to do. It’s an excellent morning to split wood for the fire, and my youngest son has gotten good at making kindling.
Afterward, we head out in the ATVs for a family outing. We stop to check on the barn cats and mules. The mules are over about 25 years old and are identical. They have been together since they were six months old. We retired them a few years ago. Their names are Pat and Pam. My children can spend hours petting them, but today we just spend twenty minutes or so feeding them apples and carrots, and then we jump on the ATVs and continue with our outing.
Our farm is on top of the Cumberland Plateau escarpment at about 3,000 feet. The weather changes very swiftly, and it has been windy for the past few days. Luckily, we don’t find any big trees fallen on the trails. Hopefully, our fences escaped unscathed as well. If we find issues, we’ll fix them. Spring is still emerging here on the farm, but the daffodils have gone into full bloom, outshining the forsythia. There are blooms on the redbuds as well. I hope they aren’t showing off too early. We are expecting another freeze next week. This is important because the Longhorns will live in the fields where native grasses (and weeds) sprout. We must time the herd movement just right to get cows to eat new the growth. The Longhorns are doing the regular cow thing while slowly but surely (in conjunction with controlled burns) helping us recreate savannas that existed on the Plateau but have since disappeared, replaced by fescue fields or logging timber.
