Kentucky Farm Life

Today, Emma's a grandmother!

2011-02-16T22:22:00.002-06:00

Emma's only ewe lamb (before the one born last Sunday) just had her first baby this afternoon - a little ram lamb. Only one, but that's good for a first-timer.

Mom's name is Dorothy, and her little lamb is almost completely white, except for some black around his nose and mouth. I didn't see him being born, but I went to put some spare honey out for my bees and there he was. I didn't have my glasses on so at first I couldn't tell what the white thing was laying in the grass. He's our least colored sheep yet!

Since I mentioned them - my bees are going nuts over the warm weather we're having. I put a gallon of sugar syrup out for them on Saturday afternoon and my Tuesday afternoon it was all gone. And they're a little aggressive right now - especially if you are consuming or recently consumed something sweet. This afternoon at least a hundred bees were buzzing around the chicken feed. It's mostly ground corn and the bees are after the corn sugar. So I had some old honey hanging around and took it out to them as a bribe to leave the chicken feed alone!

Emma had twins!

2011-02-13T22:15:00.000-06:00

Just before 2:00 this afternoon, Emma, our very first sheep, gave birth to twins! She's really very cooperative and this is the second year we were able to watch her giving birth. Usually it happens first thing in the morning, or when we're not home. Plus she waited until we had a pretty, warm, sunny day.

She had one boy - the one that's mostly black - amd one ewe lamb - the one that's got more white bits. No name for the little girl, but I'll update when we have it.

I put Emma and her lambs into the barn stall so they can bond, rest and gain strength. I love watching them in the first hour after birth when Mom gets everyone cleaned up and fed. It's hard to explain, but she makes these reassuring little grunts for the lambs. The babies are learning how to stand - and stay standing while their mother is nudging them around to get cleaned up.

So much easier with moms do their part

2011-01-30T10:41:00.003-06:00

Yesterday Charles and I went into Morganfield to rearrange the awards and photographs on the walls of my new office. It always helps to have someone with severe OCD to hang about 50 things up on one wall - it involves a laser level, measuring tapes and a lot of math.
Of course it took longer than I expected, so after grocery shopping we didn't get home until after 5pm. As we drove up the driveway, making plans to split into Charles unloading groceries while I got on with feeding my animals, I saw two new babies in the sheep field.
I noticed that Mabel was standing off a little from the others a couple days ago, which can be a sign that labor is coming. At least she waited for a nice sunny day in the mid-40's (F). Both are baby ewes - this is our first ever set of twin ewe lambs - and one of them is an unusual color for us. It's white with light brown markings. The other is mostly black with a white skullcap and white blaze in her chest. They will probably get names next week.
Mabel is doing a great job raising both of them, which is great for me, since Flora still gets two bottles a day. Flora will get bottles for about another 4 weeks.

Flora the Fauna

2011-01-09T08:05:00.002-06:00

It took her a couple of days to get the hang of the bottle, but Flora is doing well. In fact, by today or certainly by tomorrow, she will figure out that she can jump out of the box where she has been living since last Wednesday. I'll have to figure something out, because it's below freezing and I don't want to put her in the barn yet. There's no electricity in the barn, so there's no heat source. Currently she sleeps on top of a heating pad and under a heat lamp.
No more lambs yet, but I haven't checked this morning. Later on today the sheep and their donkeys will (hopefully) move up to a paddock around the barn. They'll be closer to the house and will have good shelter in the barn and to kidding pens where I can put new mothers and babies if the weather gets nasty. I'm remembering the 2009Ice Storm that hit at the end of January, when I did have Maizie the goat in the barn with her week-old twins Phoebe and Moses. Once I get the sheep up to the barn, as far as I'm concerned, we can have a mild, wet, muddy winter.

Surprise! Surprise!

2011-01-05T20:58:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I shouldn't be too surprised because it's all my fault! Back in the spring, our first lamb that was born was a ram lamb to Tweed. He was a single lamb, and then got the added benefit of eating from his older sister's milk because she lost her lamb after a couple of days. By the time I got to the field to band (bloodless castration) the ram lambs, "Juan Fatram" was just too endowed for it to work. Juan went into the freezer in November, but apparently not before he'd developed good relationships with some of my ewes.
This afternoon, when Ashley was out feeding she noticed a funny little bunch of fur out in the grass. She came and got Charles who called me just as I was getting in my car to come home from work. The lamb is doing all right, but her mother, Cathy Gale, has rejected her. Cathy had a second lamb but it looked to have been stillborn. Cathy doesn't have a very good mothering record - one stillborn, twin rams, one ram and one bottle ewe lamb, and now one stillborn and one bottle ewe lamb.
The new ewe lamb looks like a skunk with a white stripe on her face with black on the sides, so her name started out "Skunk" then went to "Flower" and finally settled on "Flora".

Welcome to 2011!

2011-01-01T08:35:00.004-06:00

Okay - it's resolution time: this year I resolve to embrace change with less fear, and I resolve to resume writing here to keep my friends and family better updated on our farm life.
The second half of 2010 was filled with working on our house. We're down to electricity, insulation and wall board. There's a few other small things, like some finish plumbing and temporary permanent flooring, that will also need to be done around the time we move in. The toilets are in, as well as the wood-burning stove. I am reminded of where we were at New Year's Day 2010 - not knowing that we faced shoveling snow out of our living room three times (once over 7 inches) before winter gave up.
As long as the weather stays nice, early this afternoon I will check on my bees and give each hive a candy board to give them a food boost for the winter. A candy board is exactly what it sounds like and give my hives extra food just in case they run out of honey before spring.
My primary task for today - which is a beautiful day, so far - is fencing for my male animals. A lot of my animals are free-range right now, and I need to get that under a modicum of control. After the boys, I'll finish the sheep fencing I started a couple of weeks ago, then the female goats and finally the chickens. Not all today, but tops on the "To Do List".

So bloomin' busy!

2010-07-26T16:10:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to keep up, myself. We went with Girl Scouts out West this June (troop1156@blogspot.com) and I've been trying to make up those two weeks ever since we got back. There was a lot of rain in June, which is great for the garden, pastures and bees, but July's been pretty dry. Our animals are doing all right, but only because we have plenty of pasture and woods for them to forage around. One farmer said today that if it doesn't rain soon, they will have to start feeding hay to their cattle.

With heat indexes over 100°F just about every day for the past month, doing anything is hot, sweaty work. But we are making slow progress. Charles and Joe Kramer started clearing for new fencing the first week in July and we finally finished it and put animals on the correct side of the fence two weeks ago. So far, four of my eight males are where they're supposed to me (although that could change at any minute). I'm still working on that. Of the four "Good Goats" one of them is a replacement ram. We brought "Lurch" home last Wednesday and he seems quite happy with Belt, Spot and Flint. Lurch is a Jacobs/Dorper cross, and comes to us from the same farm that we got Cousin It from a couple years ago. For those of you who don't remember, Cousin It starred in Christmas Eve dinner, because he couldn't keep his horns to himself.

The house is also moving slowly along. The crawl space is now framed out, and we have to put down a moisture barrier before we can put on the metal siding. I can't wait until my house turns red. Along with the completed siding, we will also install the soffit and woodburning stove chimney, while we have the big manlift on site. My fingers are crossed that the metal will start going up this weekend.

A month gone, just like that!

2010-06-03T07:10:00.005-05:00

It's been a busy month, not only with the house, but with farm work, graduations and Girl Scouts. I doubt it will be much quieter for the next month, so I thought I really should stop for a few minutes to update everyone on our progress.

Quote from Charles: "Those people on Extreme Home Makeover really misrepresent how long it takes to build a house. I thought we'd be at this stage by about Day 12."
All the windows have been installed in the house, as well as the roof trim and ridge cap. We bought our windows at a Habitat for Humanity Rehome auction about three years ago, thanks in most part to the auctioneer, my cousin John Potts. Our windows used to be in the hospital in Henderson (KY)and only cost us $130 TOTAL, for about twice as many windows as we need. Each one was taken apart, cleaned and the corners resealed with silicon. And considering they've been in the barn all that time, they look like brand new.

May on the farm means it's time to bring in the hay and put out the garden. My vegetable garden was nearly doubled this year to get ready for ramped up production. The new part will take a couple of years to condition, but it's nice to look at. The weather really heated up this spring, with days already in the 80s and 90sF. Seedlings really struggle to get started, but we're getting there. I still have to put in some tomatoes, peppers, egg plant and basil. And I'd really like to be done by today! We're also receiving three new beehives from some good friends that are moving to Malaysia soon.

We did a deal with a neighbor and he cut and baled hay for us. About 5 acres of hay gives us 185 bales of about 70 pounds each (or nearly 13,000 lbs total). In return, he gets to cut a further 20 acres for his own use. It may sound a little unfair, but considering the time and fuel it takes us to cut those 5 acres, we came out winners! The only problem was his timing was off - he started baling hay at about 3pm on Saturday. So we had about 3 hours to haul in those 185 bales, get cleaned up and at Graduation by 6pm. We made it, but it was hard work!

I attended both Union County Middle and High School graduations last week. Three of my Girl Scouts - Ashley, Gretchen and Katelyn - will move up to the high school next fall, and Ashley's older sister Kristen graduated high school. I don't think I've been to a high school graduation since I graduated, and it was nice to see so many people attending.

In and out

2010-05-03T11:10:00.002-05:00

On Saturday (May 1) my mother, Peggy, and step-father, Scott, came up to Kentucky to help out on our house. The last time they visited (and worked) was in November when we were putting board up on the outside of the downstairs. Since then, we've framed and clad the upstairs and put on the whole roof.

The main aim we had for Saturday was to install our front door. It's a big, heavy French door set, and having extra people to heft it around was a definite bonus. It rained Friday night, so everything was a little soggy, but it didn't rain all morning on Saturday...until three of us were standing outside the front door putting it into place, that is! With only one small injury (Ma got a blood blister when the skin of her waist got pinched between the door and the front steps) and a small mess of Liquid Nails smeared everywhere, we got the door installed, plumb and level.

Aunt Bev and Uncle Steve brought lunch out to us, which gave us strength to do one more little chore. Our woodburning stove was being stored in the barn, and we brought it down to the house, so we can start siting it in place. When we come to install metal siding, we need to also install the special collar that takes the chimney outside the house. The stove only weighs about 400 lbs. so it was a piece of cake. It was a relatively short workday, but it was work we definitely needed two extra people to complete. Then, of course, we had to get cleaned up so we could drink mint juleps and watch the Kentucky Derby!

Kids are growing

2010-04-27T11:05:00.000-05:00

This week I noticed about 10 goats all on top of their largest shelter. Is it any wonder it's falling over on one corner? I snapped a couple of photos of this year's kids all playing on top of their house, being babysat by two year olds, Belt and Spot, lazing on the next nearest shelter. The babies are so cute when they're learning to jump and climb, but they're also getting a little too big for their britches. They are still small enough to fit through the gate and it drives mom crazy that her babies are on the other side of the electric fence. From an outsider's point of view it might be funny to see grown-ups running around waving their arms and shouting at the baby goats that are outside the fence, but for us, it's just every-day stuff.

Roof metal is finished

2010-04-25T10:57:00.002-05:00

This side of the roof only took us 2 days to complete, compared to 3 1/2 days for the western side of the roof. Part of our improved speed was improved skill, but it was also a little cooler, and we were motivated by predictions of storms over the weekend. It was exhausting work, and hot as anything as soon as the sun came out. All we now have left to do on the roof is: trim work on the gable edges (that's the super-tall peak), ridge cap along the center of the roof from front to back, and touch up all the paint that I scratched during installation.

After we finished the roof on Thursday afternoon, we mowed a lot of grass. Charles did the most part with the ride-on mower and I did around the septic tank with the push mower. I love seeing my lawn freshly mowed.

But it did rain a lot this weekend, a little over 2 inches, and I can confidently report that the rain no longer stays mainly in my living room. A little rain blew in through the hole where the front door will be, but not much, and definitely no rain from the direction of the roof. Yipee! Despite the rain, we did manage to do some work in the vegetable garden, planting seeds for beans, cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins.

Half-way there

2010-04-15T10:19:00.003-05:00

When you're roofing, you never use the phrase, "It's all downhill from here," but we completed the west half of our roof yesterday evening. Now with every sheet of metal we install we're closer to the end than the beginning. To say the least, the last 9 pieces that filled in the last 7-feet of width, were difficult. Before these, we could sit on the slightly slip-proof roof wrap and use our right hands to screw the metal down. For the last 9 sheets (2 at the full 3-foot width and one piece about 1-foot wide), we had to sit on the sheet metal and use left hands a lot more.
Now, the sheet metal is very slick - all the better to shed water, snow and ice. In addition, the metal is covered with dusty, yellow tree pollen. Thank goodness I teach a yoga class. My five sticky rubber yoga mats were pressed into service, with the added benefit of padding between our bums and the hot sheet metal covered in bolt-head screws. Sorry I don't have a picture of that - I was up on the roof and needed all my hands to hold on!

What I don't want to be when I grow up

2010-04-12T07:42:00.002-05:00

The list is long, but the most recent addition is a roofer. Charles and I spent Saturday and Sunday putting metal on our roof and we are very proud to say that one-third is complete. That's 27 sheets of ribbed metal, 36-inches wide, 12 feet long, 30 screws in every sheet. The west side of the roof has about 4 hours of work to go until it's completed.
I'm sunburned, sore, chapped and exhausted, but it does look good.

Now on Facebook

2010-04-11T21:35:00.002-05:00

Heather Kirton and Charles Kirton are now on Facebook. We resisted for a long time, but one of our favorite families is about to spend 2 years in Malaysia at a fabulous private school in Penang, and they're all on Facebook. So that will be the easiest way to keep up with them.
And it just goes to show that maybe I should have joined earlier. Everyone's there, so I'm hoping to make new connections with old Girl Guides, friends from England, and Girl Scouts who went to Poacher 2008 with us. Okay, so I'm texting now, I'm blogging and I'm on Facebook. I might have to go to MySpace, too, but I'm never going to Twitter.

Finally Maisie has her babies

2010-04-06T09:19:00.005-05:00

We were getting worried that Maisie the goat was going to have a whole litter of baby goats. She looked huge, but yesterday afternoon, about 3:00, she gave birth to twin bucklings. We've named them Antonio and Sebastian. It's a complete coincidence that those are the names of friends in both The Tempest and Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, because Ashley named them and says she hasn't ever heard of either of the plays!

Flint goes into the field in the afternoons, when we can trick him into staying there. He's still small enough to fit in between the bars on the gate to the field, so I guess if we want him to stay there we need to do something about that. He trained himself on the electric fence, so that's not a problem, but he would just prefer not to be in the field with the big goats. Maybe these two new bucklings will give him some-goat to play with!

Also, I'm going to take older photos off the main blog page and put them onto Shutterfly. You can find them here: http://hartkirtonfarms.shutterfly.com/. All of the house photos and older photos are there, too.

Another ram lamb

2010-04-05T10:36:00.002-05:00

Mabel is a yearling ewe (Cathy Gale's daughter from last year), and she had a ram lamb on Saturday, April 3. I generally only check on my sheep once a day, when I feed them in the morning. I can see them from the driveway, but from there, they are about 300 yards away. So on Easter morning I was surprised to see an extra lamb in the field. I wasn't expecting Mabel to have a baby so soon, because she didn't look very big. Just goes to show what I know!

We had a very nice Easter lunch with my stepmother, Brenda's family yesterday. Then we sat out on the back patio rolling hanks of yarn into balls for her mother, Marty. The weather was so pretty, warm with a pleasant breeze. We had to leave pretty early because I had to go home to feed my bottle babies, but it was nice catching up with everyone.

After feeding, Charles and I spent an hour or so in our vegetable garden, sowing seeds for spinach, lettuce, chard, and leafy herbs - dill, cilantro, parsley, par-cel, fennel and chives. Last year I missed lettuce season because it was too wet to till the garden. This year, we've already tilled twice, so I have high hopes. Seedlings are also coming along well, with okra, tomatoes and peppers already making leaves. Broccoli is slower than I expected, but I hope to get enough to put some in the freezer for the summer.

Just when it's all going smoothly

2010-04-02T12:55:00.002-05:00

With animals, it's always hard to tell what they're thinking. One of our ewes, Cathy Gale, gave birth to twins on Tuesday (March 30), one ram lamb and one ewe lamb. At first she didn't want anything to do with either one of them, but eventually she allowed the ram lamb to eat. Cathy has completely, violently rejected her ewe lamb, so now I have two babies to bottle feed. Cathy and her ram lamb are living in the barn so I can milk her twice a day to feed the ewe lamb. Now that the lambs are four days old, I can start cutting the sheep milk with lamb milk replacement formula, but I will probably keep milking Cathy for another week to get a good supply. Then I will put Cathy and her ram lamb back out in the field with the rest of the sheep; the ewe lamb will be bottle fed for about 6 weeks, until I am sure she's eating grass and sweet feed.
Cathy had a dead lamb the first year we owned her - it weighed in at 14 lbs, and was too big to survive being born. Then last year she had a set of twins with no problems at all. So I don't know happened that this sweet little ewe lamb was abandoned by her mother. But we've had good success with our first bottle lamb, Emma Piel, who is still doing a terrific job raising triplets all on her own!

Triplets again!

2010-03-29T08:30:00.002-05:00

Sunday morning, we received another set of triplets but this time in the sheep flock. Emma Piel, our first ewe that we raised with a bottle, produced her first set of triplets. Two ram lambs and a ewe lamb.
It was also my first time to see one born. We'd gone down to check on Emma at about 10:45 am, because she was acting strange at 8:30am. Sheep can develop pregnancy ketosis, where they lose the ability to metabolise carbohydrates, and they can die without treatment. At 10:45 am, Emma had started labor, so we left her alone to plant three boysenberry bushes up the lane. At 11:00 we went back to the sheep field because I'd left my gloves on top of their shelter.
By then Emma had one baby, and we could see the second one coming. She was completely professional, three pushes lying down and then she stood up for gravity to help. We left to pick up Ashley from town. At about 1:00pm we walked down so Ashley could see the twins, and to our surprise, Emma had three babies! The weather yesterday was really unpleasant - rainy, windy and cold - so I worried all night about those three little lambs. But this morning everyone was in really good shape.

One ram and three little ladies

2010-03-26T21:24:00.005-05:00

On Wednesday afternoon (I assume because he was there Thursday morning) Tweed, our Lincoln Longwool ewe, gave birth to our farm's first baby of the year: a lovely little ram lamb. He has to run around a lot because Tweed is not a very trusting sheep, but it proves he's in good health. It took ten minutes to take his picture because Tweed not only kept him moving around, but she kept herself between me and the baby.

Then today, around 6pm, Eliza, our beautiful brown goat doe brought out triplets! And all three doelings! What luck to get three baby girls all at once - Grace is brown with white front boots and a white belt, Tabitha is brown with white-ish ears, and Anastasia is black with a white spot on her belly. I'm keeping a close eye on them to make sure she's taking good care of all three of them, but Eliza's a very attentive mother who makes good rich milk. The only goat that seems to be having problems is Lily, Eliza's only baby from last spring - she doesn't quite know what to do with herself now that her mother is completely occupied with the three new babies. Lily will be bred for the first time in October, so she'll find out what it's all about this time next year.

First new baby of 2010!

2010-03-22T14:44:00.003-05:00

Our farm has its first new baby of the year, but he wasn’t born here. “Flint” comes to us from Merryl Winstein of St Louis, Missouri, and will be our new herd sire. At only four days old, it’s hard to imagine him turning into a stinky, horny, lewd billy goat, but that’s his destiny. He’ll be bottle fed for six to eight weeks, but hopefully he’ll be able to join the rest of the herd in a couple of weeks, once we have other babies on the ground, so he grows up as “one of the gang”. Then after about 8 weeks, all the males will be separated from the females to avoid any unexpected winter births.

Flint will be our only in-tact male goat on the farm, unless we get another one from Merryl in a couple of weeks. Since he is completely unrelated to any other goat on the farm, he will be bred with Eliza, Maisie, Sarah, Lily and Phoebe in October. Eliza and Maisie (the goats) are just about ready to have their own babies. I think Eliza will have her baby this week, but since it’s rainy and wet right now, I’m hoping she’ll wait until the sun shines. Maisie should be a week or two later. Up to five ewes are also expecting, but probably not until later this week at the earliest. Keep checking back for more babies!

Merryl has the most amazing set up, raising dairy goats on just half an acre in a normal St Louis neighborhood! This is her new website: http://www.cheesemakingclass.com/. In Missouri, she is allowed to sell raw milk from her farm.

Roof Stage 2 Completed

2010-03-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

After we installed the board on the roof of our house, we thought the house would be fairly waterproof. We were wrong. It was better than before the boards went on, but we were hoping for even less water. Stage 2 was completed this week, when we put synthetic roof felt over the boards. Charles and I spent almost 4 days up on the roof rolling out, stapling and nailing. We’re both very glad we don’t have a steeper pitched roof, because it was very hard to stay in place as it is.
Our metal for the roof may arrive this week, but we don’t have a delivery date yet. In the meantime, Charles will be working on the last four interior walls and starting to figure out how to install the windows and doors. Once the windows and doors are in, we have to put some anchoring framework under the house to close in the crawlspace. Then the exterior metal goes on the walls, along with all its associated trim work – window framing, corners, soffits and the chimney for the woodburning stove. At that point the exterior work in done. Then it’s on to plumbing, electricity, wall board and flooring. “Eventually” remains my favorite word.

Finally up to date - February 5, 2010

2010-02-06T20:33:00.002-06:00

It snowed last night - about 2 inches. That brings us up to about 1 foot of snow this year. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much - after last year's ice storm, snow is a welcome alternative. However I have shoveled snow out of my living room THREE times in the past month. I mean, it's good exercise, but it's very demoralizing.

All of the roof rafters were finished the first week of January (before the first snow), and then we worked on the plywood wall cladding for the upstairs. Last weekend we put house wrap on most of the upstairs walls, and started installing the overhangs for the roof at the front and back of the house. I suppose that if we were being filmed, it would be a comedy. It might be R-rated, though, because there's a fair amount of swearing going on. I hope we're getting the hang of it, because we're only 40% complete, and we hope to get done tomorrow. We had to take today off because it was too cold, wet, windy and icy to work upstairs on ladders and scaffolding.

We took two trips down to visit my mother in Tennessee in January. The first was the weekend of January 15 - 17, when we combined Christmas and Charles's birthday celebrations. We ate out with friends, went shopping in Birmingham, Alabama, and played on the Wii a lot! The following weekend, we stayed with Ma and Scott while we attended the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference in Chattanooga. It's the third time in four years that we've attended and we get something really good out of each visit. Around here, I'm known as the weird farmer - small livestock, bees, market garden, near-organic or natural practices. At the SSAWG conference, I'm way on the side of normal compared to some people!

Catch up on November and December

2009-12-30T20:11:00.000-06:00

The weather favored us in November, with beautiful, warm, sunny days. We got the walls finished downstairs on our house, thanks to help from my mother, stepfather and uncle. We even had our first family meal in our house on November 7. Ma and Scott were here to help put up plywood wall cladding, so Aunt Bev brought Uncle Steve, Scott's mother Juanita, and a pot of chile out to keep the workers working. After the walls downstairs were done, we started working on framing the upstairs walls and putting up the beams that will support the roof.

Ma and Scott returned for a second weekend of work in November, and we tore down a couple of old sheds so our electricity pole and transformer could be installed. That was my birthday present from the electricity company - one very tall pole and a shiny new transformer on top!

The weather in December was not as cooperative, but Charles soldiered on, getting most of the roof rafters up before Christmas. On December 19, he had to stop working because his cutting jig froze to the board he was cutting. That was also the day I went to St Louis airport to pick up my cousin Joe, who flew in from Minneapolis. He came to the farm to work for the week before Christmas to work off his airfare. Charles and Joe did a lot of work on our Uncle Paul's house getting it ready for Christmas guests - fixing the outlet to the septic tank, installing new heating ducts, and building new steps and porch off the front door.

Christmas was really nice, with family split between Paul's house, Dad's house and the Morganfield Hometown Inn. I cooked roast mutton for Christmas Eve and roast turkey and ham in Coca-Cola for Christmas day. All of my father's brothers and sisters were here Christmas eve and morning. There were 16 of us for Christmas Eve supper, including Ashley (my Girl Scout/farm help). She spent all of Christmas eve with us, and really had a great time with my family, especially my cousin Sarah from Minneapolis. Now, they're the modern version of pen pals - they text each other!

The week after Christmas, with everything done and everyone gone, I didn't know what to do with myself!

Now you can see our house from the road!

2009-11-16T12:56:00.001-06:00

The two weeks since we returned from Spain have been consumed by putting board up on the downstairs exterior and covering that board with house wrap. Challenging, but immediately gratifying, the cladding adds strength and substance to the building. The house wrap is a moisture barrier that is supposed to stop condensation forming on the wood and causing rot or mold growth.

My mother and step-father came to help for one weekend and we finished putting up the board in the middle of the next week. We started wrapping the house on Veteran's Day, and finished a couple of days later. Installing house wrap is an all-body workout - pulling the 9-foot long roll tight, holding it level, climbing up and down the ladder, moving the ladder, stapling and then hammering.

It was totally worth it: the house wrap is white, so you can now clearly see our house from the road.

Spanish Holiday

2009-11-01T11:49:00.002-06:00

We spent the last 10 days of October with Charles's family in Spain. Uncle Paul, his daughters Debbie and Alison, and Alison's family, Mark, Maisie and Eliza, came from England, and we rented a lovely villa less than 2 miles from Charles's parents' house. We even had our own pool, even if it was unheated and very cold. The weather was fabulous - we brought some back with us, I hope you all enjoyed it. We shopped together at supermarkets and outdoor markets; we spent one afternoon on the beach; we ate and drank a lot. We even got to spend one day just hanging out at the villa enjoying peace, quiet and company.

It was great to be able to spend time with the cousins, because we only just met them three years ago. Debbie is about a year older than us, and Alison is just a few months younger than Charles. Although we've emailed and web-cammed, we really enjoy being able to sit around the table with them, eating, drinking and playing games. Not to mention the deep psychological and philosophical discussions (proving that every family is nuts, not just mine!).

To be honest, though, the real reason we went to Spain was to see Maisie and Eliza again. Maisie is 10 years old and started secondary (middle) school this year. As a fellow oldest child, we were able to compare notes about being big sisters, and we talked about Magic cards and Harry Potter books. Eliza just turned 8 and is my new hero because she beat Charles at Monopoly - twice! We made pizza together, baked and decorated birthday cupcakes, learned how to do iris folding, and drove up to the top of the world to the Calle Alto Observatory. We even found a ghost town with a dragon's cave!

It had been two years since we were last in Spain, so it was lovely to spend time with Mike and Sue, although it really felt like we hadn't been away at all. Both are in good health, especially with Sue now walking daily. Her doctor warned her about high blood pressure last year, so she started walking and lost a lot of weight. Sue's also met a nice group of women who walk - and shop - together. Mike turned 65 on the day we all got together to celebrate all our birthdays, and got a special two-cupcake salute from Maisie and a song from all the rest of us.

More flooring

2009-10-13T13:34:00.002-05:00

Did I ever mention how much I love putting in sheets of sub-floor? Well if I didn't it's because it's a terrible chore. I'm glad we only ever have to do it once. After 4 days (it rained too much on Friday), we have already installed about 70% of the upstairs subfloor. It's going quicker because we don't have to build upwards as we build outwards - on the downstairs, we could only put on upper beams once the relevant subfloor was in place.

We also put up one of the end walls and installed the first roof beam.

Most importantly, we can now sit upstairs and enjoy our view, or we can sit downstairs in the shade/rain cover!

Moving on up

2009-10-11T16:51:00.004-05:00

The stairs went up today - and so did 62 sheets of subfloor, thanks to a rented scissor lift. Uncle Paul drove, while Charles, Ashley and I put boards onto the lift and then up on to the floor joists upstairs. Not a job for the faint-hearted or vertigo sufferers.

I then had to go to work for a couple of hours. One of our local doctors, Allen White, planted about 1,000 grape vines behind his office this year, and is looking at planting another couple thousand in a field not far from our own farm. He has some state cost-share funding to use and we discussed with him what we can do to help make his new vineyard successful. Dr White also said he would need to find an enologist before too long. I looked it up and that's a fancy word for winemaker. I can get a distance learning course out Rend Lake Community College in Illinois, so that may be a new project for next year. House first.

Oh, honey!

2009-10-05T13:17:00.003-05:00

We finally have honey. I went down to the hives to do an inspection and there was capped honey up in the honey super (the layer of box with short frames to "catch" honey). So I stole it!

I don't have a machine to centrifuge the honey out of the comb, so I used the crush and drip method. I cut the comb off the frame, just dripping with honey, then mashed it all together with a potato masher. Then I put it all into a fine wire collander and let the honey drip out of the mash into a pan. It took 24 hours, but I got good, clear honey. Just under 4 pounds of it.

The beeswax went into a homemade solar wax melter, to be melted and filtered. I think I will use the wax to make more beauty products for sale - lip balm and perfume balm.

I have less honey than I would usually expect, but since I had a hive die last winter due to starvation, I decided to leave most of the honey stores in the hive. I didn't take any honey out of my second hive, because it was just started this year. Next year I hope to harvest from both of these hives.

Main floor almost done

2009-10-02T09:56:00.004-05:00

I haven't done an update devoted to our house in a while...I also haven't posted any photographs. That's because I have misplaced the cable that connects the camera to the computer, but I hope to find it this weekend. The number of places I where need to look is slowly dwindling.

I took Wednesday off work to help with the house and we made great progress. We finished laying the subfloor and putting up all the beams for the upper floor of the house. Now that doesn't sound like much, but we worked from 9:30 am to 7:00 pm. Yesterday, Charles put up three exterior walls, leaving him only one to do today. He will also probably finish the joist hangers for the upstairs floor.

Next week, Charles will start building stairs. We need one set at the front door, one at the back door, and one to go upstairs! The subfloor upstairs will be far less involved than downstairs - downstairs has tongue and groove flooring sheets, both glued and nailed in place. Upstairs will have less traffic, so it's just plain old plywood sheets and only nailed in place. Plus with the hole in the middle of the upstairs, there's just plain less subflooring to put down.

Our aim is still to have first two layers of "skin" in place before the end of October. That's one layer of plywood all over the house, and a layer of house wrap. That way it will at least be weather-resistant as we go into winter. At the beginning of November, we will install temporary electricity on site, so we will have light through these early nights, and get going on windows, doors and metal siding and roofing. By the end of November we will be moved in, by hook or by crook. Maybe by flashlight!

The contractor also arrived Wednesday morning and started installing our septic tank. Before they leave they will also complete our driveway/parking area.

Zucchini Bread is Top Seller

2009-09-24T15:14:00.002-05:00

I can't seem to stop the zucchini (courgette, to our European friends and family) from growing. A plant will have a two-inch-long fruit on Sunday afternoon, and by Wednesday night it's a five-pound monster! I have zucchini and yellow squash in 5 gallon buckets all over the kitchen. When shredded, each fruit is averaging 18 cups of zucchini or enough to make 18 loaves of zucchini bread.

Fortunately, the rules of homebased processing in Kentucky allow me to produce baked goods that contain home-grown ingredients. I've made three deliveries to the farmers' market this month, and have almost sold out each time. I make large loaves (1.5 pounds), small loaves (1/2 pound) and muffins. I've made plain zucchini bread, chocolate zucchini bread, and zucchini-banana bread. The top seller is plain, 1.5 pound loaves. Which is actually my most economical item to produce.

I've also been canning - kosher dill pickles (some already scheduled on a flight to Dallas at Christmas), bread 'n' butter pickles, yellow squash sweet relish, and three temperatures of salsa. All of those will go to the farmers' market for sale. Some things I keep at home, though -my favorites: roasted red peppers, pesto and spaghetti sauce.

Work, Work, Work

2009-09-14T15:01:00.000-05:00

All of a sudden it's harvest time! My vegetable garden is still not a pretty as I would like it to be - no weeds, tomatoes all staked up, beans and cucumbers growing up trellises, but this year has been the best year yet. When we took over our allotment in England, the weeds were tall, but the soil was rich. Our allotments were started during World War II, and had been continuously occupied. Especially in our first year, we grew far more vegetables than we knew what to do with.

It's all different over here in Kentucky. I've had to learn all over again when to sow seeds, when to plant out and when to harvest. What to plant and what to harvest. Since I am converting grass pasture into a vegetable garden, I'm battling grass, giant annual weeds, clay soil, soil compaction and low fertility. At least I have earthworms, now (I started with none). So there's a few things I'm just going to have to give up on for a couple of years - potatoes (ground's too hard) and sweetcorn (not fertile enough), to start with. Globe artichokes are struggling, and cucumbers (ground's too hard AND not fertile enough).

I have a cunning plan...this fall I will create three mushroom beds at the end of my garden. Once the mushrooms have digested all the straw, cardboard, wood shavings and weeds I can gather, I'll move the mushrooms to another location on the garden. The next spring I'll go where the mushrooms were, and plant a soil building mixture of legumes and long radishes, to fix nutrients in the soil and further break up compaction. I'll be able to plant my pickier crops the third year. I'll keep you posted on how the plan works!

Soap Star

2009-09-08T15:24:00.001-05:00

I've always loved science, especially chemistry. Which is one reason why I like making cheese - it's like a science experiment in the kitchen. This summer I have a new outlet for my inner science geek; I'm making old-fashioned goat milk soap. There's a picture of me in my boiler suit, protective glasses and thick rubber gloves. Lye is nothing to mess with.

I've made two batches already. The first is a citrus scrub soap, that incorporates satsuma, grapefruit and lemongrasses essential oils and jojoba beads. It's very invigorating. The second batch was supposed to be chocolate, but will probably be labelled white chocolate because it really smells like sweet vanilla and looks like white chocolate fudge.

Three more batches are on the planning calendar - Amber Romance with calendula petals, cucumber and green tea, and an egg yolk soap scented with Pumpkin Pie and Lavender. I know the pumpkin-lavender combination sounds weird, but an article in Cosmo told me that scientists have discovered that these two scents when used together are a super nostril aphrodisiac (check out http://www.smellandtaste.org/index.cfm?action=research.sexual). I'll have then all ready in time to sell for Christmas, and I can sell goat milk soap in the farmers' market because it's a farm-based product.

House Progress!

2009-08-28T14:34:00.001-05:00

This week my Uncle Tom (Dad's middle brother) came to visit for a couple days, and brought his hammer with him. He and Charles just worked and worked and worked. They finished some beams, some sub-floor, some upstairs floor joists and some walls. They got the next load of lumber delivered and unloaded. And I hardly had to do anything! I told Uncle Tom he was welcome to come work on the house any time.

The wall for our front French doors is now in place, and a new set of concrete block steps. Now we can enter the house through a doorway, rather than in between the frame of the bathroom wall. Sub-floor is laid in the front five rooms, and then diagonally back to the pantry. The exterior pantry wall is now in place, leaving only 6 more exterior walls.

Next week, we're expecting some dry weather, so Charles is going to do farm work and catch up on some chores that we've neglected in favor of house-building. The main chore is cutting hay for winter feeding. It's been too wet for our low-tech machinery to bale. Maybe September will be dryer than the rest of the summer.

Raindrops keep falling

2009-07-31T07:51:00.001-05:00

Usually by the middle of July (and usually on Rally weekend) we stop getting rain until toward the end of August. We might get a noisy thunderstorm or two during that time, but generally it's hot and dry for five or six weeks. Not this year.

It has rained at least twice a week, and been the coolest July and August on record. The pastures are so green, it's almost hard to look outside. The summer legumes - clover and lespedeza - are so tall and lush that it's difficult to mow. It's been so much cooler than normal - rarely getting above 90F (32C) - that the warm season grasses have hardly grown, but our cool season grasses keep getting taller.

Add to that: because of our government programs in place this year, all of our pastures were limed, fertilized and overseeded. The animals are fat! This weekend, Sarah (goat doe) had such a full belly that she grunted and struggled to stand back up after she layed down to rest on top of the bush hog. But they still all want to eat their sweet feed mix as often as possible.

The weeds in my garden are getting a little out of control. Ashley keeps trying but I think the bush beans may be lost. The pole beans are making the best of it, climbing up the tall weeds to find sunlight. Tomatoes are growing, but since they weren't planted out until the end of May, they're behind. I'm sure they'll catch up - as long as the weeds don't take them, too!

Little Sturgis Rally for Charity

2009-07-19T13:53:00.002-05:00

Every year, Sturgis, Kentucky, hosts the Little Sturgis Rally and Races for Charity (http://www.littlesturgisrally.net/). It's a motorcycle rally - not to be confused with the Sturgis, South Dakota, rally - that has given over $2million to local charitable organizations that work at the Rally. People come from far and wide to show off their motorcycles, have fun, and maybe drink a little alcohol. Since Charles and I returned to America in 2005, we've been volunteering, gradually working up to full time volunteers.

The Rally happened on Thursday, July 16, to Saturday, July 19. This year was different for me, because I was asked to be in charge of all the volunteers. In previous years, all I did was train them for gate sales and look after them so they didn't overheat. This year in addition to the training and looking after, I was also responsible for signing them in and out, selling volunteer bracelets, calculating how much money each volunteer organization earned, and generally dealing with problems that came up. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had been sick with a stomach virus from the Sunday before, and was still recuperating on the first day of the Rally (Thursday), but I had a lot of great helpers so I made it. By mid-morning on Friday I was firing on all cylinders.

The weather was also beautiful, mild, breezy and sunny. There was a little rain storm early on Friday morning, but nothing as strong as we tend to get during the Rally. The photo is scanned out of our local newspaper the Union County Advocate. I'm the person with her back to the camera, wearing the Gate Committee t-shirt.

Northern Visitor

2009-07-05T13:06:00.000-05:00

This week my cousin Joe Kramer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, came to visit and help out on the farm. Joe is 12 years old, and is into lots of sports - ice hockey, football and baseball. We like Joe to visit, because he's a hard worker and keeps Charles on task (when I'm not there to do it!).

Joe helped hang gates, build the first wall of our house, milk goats, feed animals, chase chickens, move the chicken run, collect eggs, weed tomatoes and squash, check beehives, house repairs for our Uncle Paul, put up our little soaking pool, and cleaned off Paul's deck. He learned how to drive an automatic and even got a little practice with our stick-shift pick up truck.

Then he would play on the wii until we sent him to Paul's to sleep. And he ate all the bread I could buy or bake. After Independence Day fireworks at the Sturgis Airport, which is not nearly as lame as it sounds, we drove back to Bolckow, Missouri, to drop Joe off for a week with Aunt Sallie and Uncle David. They are also farmers, but on a whole different scale than we are. They have thousands of acres of corn and soybeans, and all the gigantic equipment to go with it.

County Fair Ribbons

2009-06-26T14:41:00.001-05:00

Here in our little community, the County Fair is a pretty big event. There's a lot of good food, rides, pageants, livestock shows, and competitions. I have entered the Fair in three years, 2006, 2007 and 2009, and am proud to say I received ribbons for every year. Apart from enjoying all the cooking and baking, it's fun to see how you measure up to other cooks and bakers.

The photo here shows some blue ribbon baking: a decorated cake, a loaf of white bread, and a Chocolate Dream Pie. It sounds like bragging, but I am proud that I make things that other people appreciate. I also plan to use my blue ribbons as a marketing tool for selling my farm produce. My Hot Kosher Dill Pickles won first place, so I will put a little ribbon on my label so everyone knows they're eating the best dill pickles in the county. Here's what I put in the 2009 County Fair:

Baking Division:
White Loaf Bread: Italian Feather Whey Bread *1st place
Sweet Rolls: Cinnamon Rolls with Orange Glaze * 1st place
Chocolate Chip Cookies: Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies * 1st place
Peanut Butter Cookies: Jif Peanut Butter Cookies
Other Cookies: Soft Ginger Cookies * 1st place
Plain Sugar Cookies: Almond Sugar Snaps
Decorated Cake: Violet Damask Dalia * 1st place
Fruit Pie: Gooseberry Pie * 2nd place
Other Pie: Chocolate Dream Pie * 1st place

Canning Division:
Dill Pickles: Hot Kosher Dill Pickles * 1st place
Corn Relish: Sweetcorn Relish * 1st place
Other Relish: Yellow Squash Relish * 1st place
Corn Cob Jelly: Corn Cob Jelly * 1st place
Other Jelly: Sweet Hot Pepper Jelly
Other Canned Good: Elderberry Syrup * 1st place

Crafts and Photography:
Craft Item from Recycled Materials: Knitting Needle Holder from Pringles Cans * 1st place
Tole Painted Object: Purple Spotted Kitchen Cannisters * 3rd place
Handmade Jewelery: Celtic Knotwork Necklace with Heart Pendant * 1st place
Patriotic Item: Flag Brooch
Other Craft Item: Millefiore Heart Brooch
Black and White Photo: Cimetiere Pere Lachaise, Paris 2002 * 3rd place
Landscape Photo: Ben Lomond, 2001
Vacation Photo: Mojacar Playa, Spain 2005
Collage or Theme: Photos from the Cambridge American Cemetery * 1st place

New Farm Toys

2009-06-12T14:24:00.000-05:00

Charles is excited like a little boy at Christmas ("he's been! he's been!"). His new tractor-driven post driver is fully operational. It's very heavy duty, basically a steel beam with a hydraulic ram. On a full drive it will exert 71,500 pounds of pressure on the end of an 8-inch diameter post. Don't get any body part in the way! The warning contains words like "crush" and "amputation". Once the tractor is exactly in the right place, the driver is adjusted until it is level and plumb. A fence post is loaded - no need to sharpen the end - and held in place with a spring. Then the operator stands to one side and moves a little lever, about six inches long, back and forth, which raises and lowers the ram. Five minutes later the post is firmly in the ground.

It's at the limit of our old tractor's capabilities, but in 75 minutes, he put in 6 posts, including manuvering between post locations. That would take almost two days the old way of auger out the hole, finish by hand with a post hole digger, and tamp the post in by hand. One morning, he and I put in 21 posts in about 4 hours, and that included having to deal with a fountain of hydraulic fluid when the return hose worked itself loose from the hydraulic tank. Messy!

The Campsite Field is now divided into four, with another fence to go, giving us a total of 5 paddocks. Each paddock will have access to an automatic waterer and a shelter corral, but these won't be finished until spring. I'll put pictures of our completed fence up then, for now, just gaze upon the glory of our post driver!

Baby Goat named: JoJo Bucket

2009-06-11T13:49:00.000-05:00

The new baby has been named JoJo Bucket. He is named after his uncle/half-brother Cotton Ear Joe, whom we called JoJo. He got the Bucket from his immediate love of the feed bucket. I gave him a nice manger area, but he far prefered dumping over the bucket and laying in it. He is the boldest baby we have ever raised. He doesn't care where mom Sarah is, he wants to be with the people because they have the fingers required to scratch his ears. Sometimes is drives Sarah crazy.

One day Sarah was bleating outside the barn, and I couldn't find JoJo Bucket anywhere. I checked all over the barn, and even got Charles out of bed early to help find him. I looked between the hay stack and the barn wall, in all the outdoor shelters, in the old barn. Charles rechecked the stalls in the barn, the wood stack, the side of the barn that we use to store big stuff - then he just turned around and there was JoJo Bucket stood in the middle of the barn, like he'd been there all along. I found his hiding place a couple of days later: he was under a little trailer in the barn, so low that he has to crawl under it.

The goat that we processed this spring (JoJo) is turning out to be a real treat. Every way we have eaten goat meat has been delicious - burgers, meatballs, roast and sausages. Some people might not like to read this but JoJo Bucket will share the same destiny. Because he was sired by his own grandfather - which is not the end of the world, but also not the best situation - we don't want to sell him for breeding. He will supply meat for our family, which is, I think, the most noble thing an animal can do.

Family wedding and a new baby

2009-06-08T10:52:00.002-05:00

The past week has been crazy, with putting in the (late) vegetable garden, building the house, receiving our new post driver in kit form, a family wedding, and a new baby this morning!

Charles and I traveled to Columbia, Missouri, to attend the wedding of my cousin, Donald Potter, to Christen Kent. Donald is the son of my father's oldest sister, Sallie. Sallie and her husband, David, are the other farmers in the family, but they farm big-style corn and beans. Their daughter Ruth and her husband John are also farming with them.

Donald owns parts of two piano bars, one in Columbia and the other in Lexington. Christen is a first grade teacher. They depart on their honeymoon in a couple of weeks, going to Italy - Venice, Florence and Rome.

I fretted all weekend that my pregnant goat Sarah would have her baby this weekend while the whole family was away from the farm. But she's a good goat, and when I got up this morning, there she was in the barn with a new baby boy. Mother and son are doing well, both eating and walking around. I'll work on finding him a name today. I already had a name picked out for a female, so I'll have to look around for a male name.

The house is still progressing, with added floor. I can now walk all the way from the front of the house to the back of the house. Charles will only work on the house for another day or two, and then we have to switch to fencing. We have to put in a couple thousand feet of fence by the end of the month, plus the males need a new paddock this weekend. And my tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings are still in trays in the garage, so that will occupy my evenings this week.

Update on House Build

2009-05-28T09:58:00.004-05:00

The first three rooms are complete - the posts, beams and floor joists. Charles has to come in to town to get more lumber in order to continue, but next is the beams that will support the upper floor over these three rooms and the exterior walls. The upper floor beams will greatly stabilize the structure, so we can remove the diagonal bracing you can see in all the pictures after the wall structures are in place.

(The picture are down the side there, I've put them in order from top to bottom for now, but the next photos will just be added on top.)

We're working together pretty well, as a team. We put posts and beams in place in the late afternoon when I come home from work. Then Charles puts the floor joists in place during the day. My Uncle Paul comes down to help lift the posts in to place, because it needs three of us, especially for the 16-foot tall posts.

If we didn't have to do anything else, the main structure of the house would probably be complete in a month, but it just doesn't work that way. Our males need new pasture, the female goats are next, then the female sheep and donkeys (together). Plus I'm still putting in the vegetable garden - I need to get that finished this weekend.

Next week we're expecting delivery of a mechanical post driver that goes on the back of the tractor. Charles is almost as excited as one of our friends, Scott Uzzle, who is looking forward to borrowing it. We have a couple thousand feet of permanent cross fencing to put up in the month of June in order to complete a state cost-share contract. And we received a small amount of funding to deal with damage to our fences from the ice storm in January, and we have about 30 days to use that money up, as well.

One corner is up - and it's almost as big as a house!

2009-05-26T14:08:00.004-05:00

Finally we have what so many people have been waiting for so long to see - we have lumber standing on our house site!!! When the first post went into place, I nearly cried with relief. Four posts went up yesterday, as well as the floor beams that connect them at the base and braces to hold everything exactly where we want it. Charles is putting in the floor joists and sub-floor in place for that one section today, and if that goes smoothly, he'll get started fabricating two exterior wall sections to put into place when I get home. And weather permitting, we'll put up a couple more posts this evening. It's nice to finally have progress.

The weather was horrible over the weekend - what else can you expect from a federal holiday. I took Friday off to haul in hay, which we finished before the rain came in Friday night. We still have more to cut and haul, which we hope to do this weekend, into next week. However the weather man is predicting unsettled weather early next week, so maybe not.

The garden was tilled on Sunday morning - sure do love that big tiller on the tractor. Then it rained all afternoon on Sunday. I planted seeds out into the wet garden, hoping it's warm enough to dry out and not let the seeds rot in place. I'll start putting out seedlings this week, too. I don't feel too bad about being behind with my garden, we still have some farmers out planting corn for the first time - nearly a month late.

We filled the rest of the rainy weekend with a project I've been ready to do for about 2 years - paint the bathroom. This is the upstairs bathroom in my dad's house, and it was never really intended for continuous use. We scrubbed the walls and ceiling, repaired damaged dry wall, and painted with mildew-proof paint. Much nicer - bring on the hot showers!

2009-05-21T11:28:00.003-05:00

It's been a busy week, folks. Charles and I went to Tennessee last weekend to visit my mother and celebrate her graduation from Austin Peay State Univerisity with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Professional Studies (basically management with a liberal arts twist). She's been working very hard for the last two years to complete her degree, and was very glad to be finished. So we met a couple of their friends, Brian and Patty, and went to see Elton John and Billy Joel in concert. Talk about a show! Both were terrific pianists and showmen, but for me, Billy Joel stole the show. When he sang "I Love You Just the Way You Are" I almost cried!

On the farm, the weather finally came good, and we were able to cut hay on Monday afternoon. It was raked yesterday, and will be raked again today to turn over the grass for better drying. Tomorrow afternoon, after all threat of rain is gone, we will start baling and hauling. This is just about the hardest single job on the farm. Not only do we have to wait until just the right weather, we have to be rush to make sure it's all done before any more rain. Even a shower on the finished bales will help mould grow, making the hay almost useless.

On Monday, we took our first goat to be processed into meat. It was hard to do, but just like the vegetables we raise, we raise goats (and sheep) for their meat. He had a really good life with us - no fence could keep him in, he was completely free-range - and he will help to meet our goal of sustainability. We should get him back tomorrow.

Tuesday was our final Girl Scout meeting of the school year, so we had a big celebration dinner, prepared by everyone in the troop. Miss Anna and Katelyn made mozzarella cheese to go on the foccacia Molly made. Charles and Ashley made Salade Nicoise. Sarah made sangria punch, then worked with Molly to make calamari. Ashley made butterscotch Congo bars for dessert, and Kelsi potted up some impatiens for table decorations. On Saturday, Molly graduates from high school, but tonight she will be presented with three local scholarships for college and our troop is giving her a lifetime membership to Girl Scouts.

Tomorrow (Friday) is a busy day for us, so I'm taking off work to try to get as much as we can done. We have our first delivery of lumber for the house, a delivery of fencing materials and hay hauling. Then in our spare time - as if! - we'll start cutting ice storm debris off a section of boundary fence line that is due for replacement. I also want to get my vegetable garden planted and our bathroom painted this weekend. Sshhhew!

It'll take me four months to recover from this four day weekend!

Welcome: Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson!

2009-05-13T08:19:00.005-05:00

Yesterday we brought home a new member of our farm - Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson, the miniature donkey. He is the son of our other mini donkey, Shrek. We'll call him Two Sheds, for short. This morning, as I took these pictures of Two Sheds, Shrek brayed just to remind me that he hadn't been fed breakfast yet, and Two Sheds stood to attention, ears straight up, and brayed back.

When I left, Shrek was running back and forth along the side of the barn where Two Sheds is in the infirmary. He was braying and kicking up his heels. This evening Two Sheds will be able to go out to the field with his dad.

Two Sheds is only about 8 months old, but is already almost full height and weighs about 200 pounds. He was very well behaved during capture, transport and castration, but he hasn't been handled much, and certainly isn't halter broken. He'll need a little work to get ready for visitors, but he's young and will learn fast.

For those of you who don't know (and a probably better off that way), Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson is a reference to a Monty Python sketch about a serious musician being interviewed by a man who is only interested in finding out about his two sheds. I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could find it on YouTube. It was Charles's choice - officially the donkeys are his birthday and Christmas presents.

Beautiful Spring Morning

2009-05-10T11:07:00.000-05:00

I picked up the Sunday paper from the mailbox this morning and walked back thinking what a beautiful place I have to live in. After almost 6 weeks of unusually wet weather, this morning is all blue skies, sunshine, and mild temperature. The animals were quiet (after already being fed) and bees were starting to visit the creeping thyme flowers in my new front lawn. If only I didn't have to spend the morning dealing with two broody, moody, mean hens who need to be booted our of their nest boxes.

I've been arguing with these two girls for about a week now, and with one of them for almost two weeks. I've got a wire cage to put them into, to cool their tail feathers off, but it's been so rainy, I hated to take them out of their usual cozy coop. But today's the day. It might take two of us.

Charles will probably spend most of the day on the tractor, mowing the fields that will make our next paddocks. The only good thing about the wet, mild weather is that the grass is definitely growing. But it's too wet to cut and cure hay, so we just have to wait to do anything about it.

Our last goat kid of the year, Lily, has already had a hard life. She got bitten on one ear by our miniature donkey, Shrek, when she was only 10 days old, and now more than three-quarters of that ear has fallen off. Then I noticed she received another nip from him on her back. I'm sure he doesn't mean to hury her, but he plays too rough. I've just ordered a muzzle for Shrek that will allow him to eat and graze, but will stop the biting. We're picking up Shrek's son on Tuesday to bring him home, and hopefully that will give Shrek someone close to his own size to play with.