Catching Up

I can't believe that it has been over a month since my last post.  Obviously, things have been a bit busy on the farm. The poor weather conditions have not helped much.  It was the second wettest April on record in our area, which prevented us from doing much of anything outside (fencing and planting). 

First, kudos to our friend Doug who was watching the farm while we went to visit my darling husband's family.  One of our ewes gave birth while he was on call and he went above and beyond to try and save one of the two lambs.  When all was said and done, each of the new moms gave birth to twins but only had one survive.  We have four rambuctious gamboling lambs now.  Two of them are as of yet unspoken for and will be ready for processing in October (if there are any takers out there in Cyberland).

We also constructed (largely in the rain) the chicken tractor for our broilers.  The plans we followed can be found on this website.  While perusing plans for chicken tractors I was surprised at how many plans included pressure treated wood!  The plan we used actually calls for EMT (electrical metallic tubing) which is both light and sturdy.  Our final product looks pretty much the same as the one on the website, and it seems to be keeping the birds in and predators out.  However, it was somewhat frustrating to construct (did  I mention it was raining the whole time?!) as the structure wasn't entirely stable until the hardware cloth was attached.  All the birds are now out of the shed (see this post about shed usage), which is a good thing, as it was getting to smell rather ripe in there!

Sheep shearing is behind schedule as well.  Usually, we have sheared the sheep and sent them up to the pasture by now. But with the late birth and the wet weather shearing isn't scheduled to happen until mid May (just days before we get our piglets). 

The good news is that the horse did get shod, so he is ready to go (once it dries out) and there is plenty of lush green pasture for everybody. We also have asparagus coming up!  And I also managed to sew the curtains for the kitchen window (five years after moving into the house).

Next on the never ending list:  plant the peas, carrots, onions and potatoes (and actually write down the garden plan), assemble the 1979 Ashford spinning wheel I was able to find over April break and enjoy the few moments that the sun actually shines!