Weekly Review March 27 - April 2

Another busy week in review comin' at ya here on the Prairie Sun Life! Read on to see how the week went in fitness, farm, and life! 

A view of Sage Creek from our pasture.

Fitness
In addition to continuing Shape Up Montana, I also kicked off two new April fitness challenges on April 1. You can read about them in this PREVIOUS POST, but just to sum it up, they are the Million Mile Month challenge and the #OiselleFullHalf challenge. For Million Mile Month (MMM) I pledged to run 50 miles in April. For #OiselleFullHalf, my goal is to run 13 different runs or treadmill workouts in April. I had two days this past week where I woke up early to get my runs in on the treadmill before school. Not my favorite, but sometimes it just has to be that way.

Also, the weather has been nice lately, and Jeff and I were able to fit in a long bike ride on Easter Sunday-16 miles. My longest ride ever on a mountain bike. I was tired at the end, but it felt good.

Here's a screenshot of my route from Strava.

I'm also fitting in slightly more yoga lately, as I've been leading more sessions myself! I lead a brief 15 minute after-lunch yoga session for students every Tuesday at the Elementary School, and we've been incorporating yoga into our Track workouts (I'm a coach on the local high school team) at least once a week. I find that I really enjoy sharing yoga with others, and the kids are really liking it, too!

Here's how the week went:
Sunday- 16 mile mountain bike ride, 3 mile walk in town
Monday- complete rest.
Tuesday- 45 minutes yoga
Wednesday- 3.1 mile treadmill run before school. That 5:15 alarm is harsh!
Thursday- 15 minutes yoga
Friday- 2.8 mile treadmill run before school.
Saturday- 2 mile walk with dogs

Kicking off my April challenges! 

And, here are the Year to Date Stats:
Running: 137.7 miles
Walking/Hiking: 37.2 miles
Yoga: 655 min 
CC-Ski: 500 min / 14.1 miles *Done for the season
Alpine Ski: 3 days *Done for the season
Mountain bike: 26 miles WOOHOO! Movin' on up! 

Farm
We are really starting to transition from calving season into the beginning of Spring farming and seeding. The cows are still up in the corral area- not out to pasture yet- and we have about eight more animals that still need to calve. We continue to feed hay bales every day, but the calving has slowed down enough that we thankfully don't need to walk through and check them so often. So, my morning cow checks are done for the year.

Jeff spent some time on the disc last week to prepare our newly tilled organic farm ground for seeding later this spring. The disc is an implement that is pulled by a tractor and works to break up ground. We have some newly leased farm ground that we have decided to farm organically, and we're really excited about the new challenge and opportunity that will bring. Jeff and Tom also spent some time preparing the sprayer (sprayer only to be used on non-organic, or "conventional" fields!) and other implements for spring work. We will likely start seeding peas first, probably later on this week. This year, we are again seeding yellow field peas. They are primarily ground into flour for human consumption or processed into snack foods.

Life
Jeff and I were able to attend the Montana Farmers Union Young Producers Conference this past Friday and Saturday, along with our good friends Dan and Adria. It was a nice event and we enjoyed spending time with them, and meeting a few new people, too. I'll do a separate post about it soon.

One key takeaway was that people in agriculture can and should be using social media to tell their story. We had more than one speaker who addressed this, and they were convincing enough that my husband has started his own Instagram account! Now, you can follow BOTH of us on Instagram @katie.r.bangs and @farmerjeffinmt  -- Look us up!

Here's a screen shot of one of Jeff's recent Insta snaps. :)

Have a great week, everyone! 

Harvey, Iggy, and Abby on a recent pasture walk with me.