Where's the time go?

Spot and Red will be gone next week this time - they have been great fun to have around and frankly, we will miss them. I head up to Barron, WI tomorrow to look at calves - all that goats milk needs to go somewhere.

We've been battling the thistles again - mowing and more mowing - seems like a losing battle though.

The tomatoes have blossoms on them and the cabbages are going to be cut starting next week; the raspberries are just on the cusp of ripening and the cuke plants look fabulous so it seems the garden is still holding its own.

Summer picnics

Are way more fun when you have a grand-dad to share it with and an actual picnic table!

....And maybe even a friendly dog to take a walk with you afterwards! Crystal leaves for home later this week; we'll all miss her,

June morning

This is the lower garden behind the chicken house - it tends to be wet and this year it's kind of a swamp after the latest deluge.










Here is one row of spuds - just barely starting to flower.











And the cabbage - this is StoneCrop variety.






The pullets ~ the slender ones are brown leghorns, the others are Arucanas and Sussex.

Red

A quick picture this morning of Red next to the pig-o-tel - Red is a gilt and while I sometimes think it would be interesting to have more piggies, memories of childhood stories of pig gone wild always bring me back to reality.

Friday

We are preparing Trouble for herding trials over the weekend - we will need to be out of the house and on the road by 6:30 which means a lot of chorework done very early. I'm hoping for no more rain as we are beginning to see trees breaking from the sogginess and weight of the water. The gardens are coming along well, the potatoes are just getting ready to blossom and the lettuces are wonderful...the beans are sprouting in just a day or so which seems amazing and Jack in the Beanstalk-like!

The buttermilk from this week turned out excellent and I think we'll be making more for baking. I'm hoping the little buck kids leave this coming week as they're drinking milk I'd rather be feeding the pigs now....speaking of whom --- they are now weighing about 150lbs or more which means perhaps another month before they are off to the big pasture in the sky.

Tuesday

Rain, Rain Go Away! It's been coming down all day, the goats are unhappy, the hens are miserable, the bees want to go out now - thank goodness I cut lettuce yesterday for the cafe rather than waited until this morning when it would have been covered in splashes of dirt. I'm trying to make buttermilk today - the milk is heated and held at 180F for 30 to 60 minutes, cooled to 77F, starter is added (from the Dairy Connection in Madison, WI) and now it sits at that temperature for 12-18 hours. I've put it in the yogurt maker (think I'm so smart!!) and will check on it in the morning. It should be great for baking.

The little peachicks are now in a rabbit cage in the henhouse where they are dry and warm with a heatlamp over them and safe from the chickens. They're okay but not really as vigorous as I'd like to see. The pigs are loving the rain, racing here, racing there and having a gay old time being pigs!

Fecund Farm!

Not only did Ruby deliver 9 beautiful healthy puppies but we were surprised by having 3 of the peacock eggs hatch this morning! They are in our little incubator in the kitchen this morning, still drying off and are all white! What fun for us!

To the left: Nomo's milk bottle.

The weekend is upon us - rain predicted but so far I've done chores in the dry part of the day! The pastures have grown over the past couple weeks so that it's now almost impossible to see the lambs and kids when they're only a few yards away. We'll be mowing thistles tomorrow, I suspect! I see the old goose has started up a nest in a corner of the chicken house; she's 11 years old and I doubt the eggs will hatch but Jim suggests just letting her do what she chooses. I'll be tempted to toss them to the pigs! The little chicks are now half-grown pullets ~ they should begin to lay around 4 months of age which can't come too soon now that the Australorps have decided to go broody and set. A black mark on them for this quality!

Crystal's off to visit her cousin Anthony for a week which means I'll have to feed the kids myself; it's been great to see her kind nature blossom under the responsibility of caring for them.

Calves

Crystal has been thinking and thinking of good names for the calves - the one on the left is Patch since we already have a Spot on the farm. The others are still nameless after the first 24 hours here! They're ecstatic to be pasture calves; you can see that they are more used to a mucky feedlot by the way they walk - lifting their legs up very high. I suppose it'll take a few days for them to normalize - they seem good natured (always a good thing with animals weighing many times more than we do!)
We did get rain today; showers off and on so it became a day to pick up some fence panels to go under the bridge and by the creek where the goats have discovered they can sneak under. I made 2 batches of chevre and had whey for the pigs tonight. The peahen is STILL laying - the eggs are big and very hard - the pigs of course have no trouble cracking the shells though. Jim called the fellow who cuts hay and we're on the list to have it mowed in a week or so (hopefully when we're out of this wet cycle) and I need to scrounge up some more straw for the garden. But for now, it's time to make some dinner.

In my pocket

I came in from doing chores this morning and needed to throw my jeans in the wash - you can see what part of my morning involved! Latex gloves for milking, marking crayon for identifying 2 of the lambs needing to be kept separate, bands for the ram lamb who still needed banding and what's left of a package of bean seeds. Thank goodness no staples in my pocket!

The calves arrived today; big holstein steers we will use for training the dogs over the course of the summer. They leave in the fall for parts we all can imagine.

The second batch of lettuces went to the Cafe this morning; they're really quite lovely - and I transplanted some in hopes they'll make heads before bolting in our midwestern heat. We have all the garden in now - planted the last few pumpkins and cukes this morning in the black plastic up by the kennels. Also took the time to prune out the lilacs over near the chicken house since Brother Fox made a visit a few days ago and left with one of the ducks.

Looks like rain is just missing us today; it's to the south of us this time - which means I'll need to water those lettuces in the morning. Crystal is still here, helping out. She's made a chore list for herself with the promise of $1.00 for each one done well each day....her list includes feeding the barn cats but we're negotiating that one since Jim likes doing it himself.