Catch up on November and December

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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.