May 25, 2013

I keep looking over at the stove to see why there's a pot boiling, and it turns out to be, in fact, the rain driving against the kitchen windows.  This is new in that for most of the last week we have not had wind with our rain--it's old in that we have had LOTS AND LOTS of rain in the last week.

I'll do the category-by-category farm update, as usual:

Cows:
Castrations yesterday: one.
Current number of cows milking: five.
Dairy cows due to calve: two.
We're doing our tri-weekly milk deliveries to Jessie, and on Thursday we got a sample pint of her excellent $8-per-pint sheep's milk yogurt.

Bees:
Hey, we have bees now!  Lohman Gardiner of Gardiner's Honey moved four hives to our farm last week.  Very exciting.

Goats:
Just kidding!
No goats.  But here's a photo I found as I was sorting and cleaning of the sweet Rove goats at the farm where I WWOOFed in France.

 

Veggies:
Onions have not yet learned to swim and seem to be surviving on a diet of drowned worms and mud pie.
Brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes are next in line to be planted out, along with Irish potatoes and squash.

Trees:
Doing well.  Here are a few photos from way back when we planted them with the handy dandy tree planter.

Pigs:
Elsie headed up getting the pigs out into the woods a couple weeks ago, and they have been happily getting back to their evolutionary roots as forest dwelling critters.  They are eating trout lily bulbs and lazing around in the shade.

Their blue barrel is for drinking water and is fitted with a metal nipple somewhat like a huge version of a guinea pig or hamster waterer, if you remember back to your elementary school days.  The wooden feeder holds a couple hundred pounds of grain so the pigs don't have to be visited every day, and it has nifty flaps so that rain and crud don't get in, but when the pigs need a snack they just head over, nudge the flap open with their noses, and get a bite to eat.

The SQ cabin:
Gilbert has done a beautiful job with the cabin.  In this photo of the NW corner of the downstairs you can see the Jotul 602 (formerly used to heat the Yentes-Quinn residence), pretty wainscoting, the lavatory corner, the spiffy space-saving staircase, and the robin's egg blue walls.  Sometimes I am tempted to move right in.

Little human:
Ada is so much fun!  She has spunk and feist like no other, loves our whole extended family and friends crew, is taking off with the scooter bike (along with Yukon, below), takes awesome naps, becomes a baby bear periodically and hibernates and catches fish and sharpens her claws, proposes yoga time and dance parties and painting, and generally helps us fill our days with fun, exercise, food, and that lurking question: "If I see no Ada and hear no Ada, should I breathe and relax or should I run like hell for the place I last knew her to be?"