May Days

I've another confession to make. I've been staying up nightly live-streaming T.V. series. Most recently I've been watching a Robin Hood series, cheesy but fun. A more healthy addiction than the Twilight series to be sure. Main side effects include lack of sleep and failure to keep up on the blog or update the website with kid pictures.

I've been spending mornings doing house chores and making food for the day so that after lunch we can all get outside and enjoy the beautiful day. I am elated with our farm apprentice. She has been doing all the morning chores on weekdays, watering and feeding everyone, milking, processing milk and washing pails. I try to have lunch made by the time morning chores are finished. Then we all get out into the garden together to water, sow seed and transplant. I've been having Becca move soil and dig holes while I am usually distracted by the kids and try to decide what to plant where and what to sow next. The garden is pretty much in with the exception of some beans and squash and some leftover onions I need to find a home for. We still have a pile of topsoil leftover from last summer. So Dustin has been gradually building more raised rows and boxes while we, er, Becca fills them.

We have been having summer weather for the last couple weeks, it could easily be June or July weather. The last few days have been in the seventies, highs near eighty, clear and sunny. In the afternoons the thunderstorms roll in, however we seem to be in a bubble. Thunderstorms and rain all around and not a drop for our thirsty garden.

Current mouths to feed: eight goat kids, six does, three bucks, (goats are plowing through the hay), two roosters, sixteen layers, four growing cornish cross, seventeen ducklings, sixteen pullets, four turkey poults, ten one week old Ameraucana chicks, one cat, one dog, two kids and two adults. Whew. I've set a batch of Khaki Campbell duck eggs and we are expecting thirty cornish cross in a couple weeks which will be the last of the birds for the season.

The garden has had top priority, house chores are falling behind as are goat chores. On my goat to do list is to advertise bucklings, whether (neuter) bucklings, tattoo and register doelings, clean goat stalls and pens.

D has been working a bunch and I've been stranded at home without a vehicle. Fortunately that is about  to change as he has been spending a day a week at a friend's shop rebuilding our Westfalia camper van's engine and it is almost finished. By next week I may be taking the kids to the Farmer's market and the playground - can't wait. Well I'm needing to clean the kitchen and make room for processing milk and draining and hanging yesterdays cultured milk- curds. Wishing everyone a beautiful summer day!