Sunday, June 7, 2009

The time-space continuum

People always say, the older you get the faster time goes. I have a theory that time really is speeding up. I just googled "time-space continuum", and noticed on Wikipedia's link that "the rate at which time passes depends on an object's velocity relative to the speed of light and also on the strength of intense gravitational fields , which can slow the passage of time." Humans go a lot faster than they used to, thanks to planes, trains, and automobiles. We've been pretty intent on besting gravity for the last century, too. With only a little bit of faith, one might even surmise that we as a human race are responsible for how swiftly or slowly time passes based on the pace of our activity. Also, I guess if you don't want your kids to grow up so fast you might consider moving closer to a black hole.

This may have seemingly little to do with cows and cheese, but as I sat down to write this afternoon and realized I have yet to create more than one blog entry in a single month's time I had to marvel once more that we are already a week into June. May was very busy, but that had little to do with calving. Only 7 calves were born the whole month, and two of those were on the last two days. So like it or not, my calving window closed a little earlier this year because of the age gap in the calves. I have some nice calves to sell now, though, sired by our new bull.

The grazing is going pretty well so far. We're trying to manage the pastures in a way that builds up soil fertility through trampled mature forages. This is not only beneficial for the soils, but the cows' digestive systems work more optimally, and the densely covered pastures provide a good deal more drought tolerance by holding in more moisture. On the flip side, there is more erosion protection during heavy rains as well. This year's experimenting will focus on trying to find the best balance in trampling forage and maintaining a little better milk production than last summer. The summer heat waves that usually come may have the final word on milk production though!