After slogging through weeks of cloudy, rainy weather earlier in the summer, the weather pattern has finally changed and we have been enjoying sunshine for the past 10 days in a row. The cows stir up a cloud of dust as they plod up the lane to the barn, and my dad may be able to take a break in the lawn mowing department as the regrowth of the grass slows due to the absence of this summer's incessant rain showers.

I was coming back up the lane from spreading manure on one of the grazing strips, when I noticed a big clump of milkweed growing under the lane fence and wondered if there might be any Monarch butterfly caterpillars on any of the stalks. I slowed the tractor down, checking out the stalks as I crawled by. To my surprise, I spotted one! Karen is usually the one who has the skill in finding these caterpillars hiding among the green, leafy stalks. I snapped off the leaf with the caterpillar still clinging to it, and placed it in my coffee mug by the tractor seat. We'll put it in a 2-liter pop bottle, feed it fresh milkweed everyday, and wait for it to spin its chrysallis. Further up the lane, goldfinches were busy in the thistles eating the seeds and a group of yellow-colored butterflies were swarming around a muddy spot in the lane taking salts from the damp earth, I think.

I parked the spreader, and climbed on the loader tractor to feed a round bale. The pastures, like the lawns, are slowing down, and one of my groups of heifers needs some hay to supplement the smaller amount of grass they are gettng from the pasture they are in right now. If the dry weather keeps up, I'll start feeding some hay to the dairy herd, too. But I'm not complaining. It's nice not to be working in the mud, or hoping for some sunny days so that we could get some work done to get ready for fall and winter.