Maybe I shouldn't blog

Now that spring is here & the weather is changing, I am beginning to think I've not got as much time on my hands as in January when I started to blog. I would say this has been a busy week but it has really just been normal for this time of year.

We've had a few more lambs come along which puts us up to 16. The latest was born to a little Shetland ewe whose udder has just kept getting larger and larger this last week. She finally had the little guy on Wednesday while I was in town. I came home & looked across the pasture which does not have ewes with lambs. There stood a lamb & its mother. For just a moment I wondered how they'd managed to get in there. Then as I walked closer it dawned on me that the little fellow had been recently born there - he hadn'tjust slipped through a fence. He has adorable black curls & already has enormous horn buds on the top of his head. He is long legged which makes him almost half as tall as his mother. I scooped up the little fellow & used him to lure mama into a stall in the stable where they stayed for a day just to be sure mama was well fed & taking care of him as she should. They are out with all the other mothers & lambs today.

The chickens are laying great volumes of eggs. I am bringing eggs in four times a day! I am grateful that American Grocery Restaurant & the Hyatt buy our eggs but am also ready for the Saturday Market to begin. In the meantime I have a few other regular egg customers but the dogs & pigs are also eating quite well. All the egg shells go right back out to the chickens where they happily gobble them up. It keeps me from having to throw them away & also keeps me from having to buy oyster shell to supplement their calcium intake. Of course, it also makes them look a little cannibalistic as they crunch away.

We have been working on adding more raised beds to garden a bit more this year. In the past we've just had too many free range chickens and roaming goats to have much. Now we think we have a nice solution to the chicken issue. The spot with the beds is attached to the fenced backyard where two of the dogs live. Pearl, our little Schipperke, can slip through a small hole in the fence to visit the garden area. She does not disturb the garden much but loves to fly through the hole when she sees a chicken approaching. Looks like she will be our little watchdog. And Al continues to mend spots under fences where a handful of goats can escape. They have yet to break into the garden & are getting closer & closer to actually being contained. The garlic is coming along beautifully so I'm especially hoping to protect that until the end of June when we can harvest it. I planted half a dozen varieties and am always amazed at what a difference there is among garlics.

So normal days have kept me from the blog but I am also beginning to work on notes for the weekly farm stories that I hand out at the Market. All in all, things are pleasantly busy here.