Good Morning Folks

What a crazy awesome busy week, Dear Hubby took the week off his office job and we went to work on the farm giving 110 percent..  We were up early each morning, crashing into bed early tired but content. We also started on our next Reno project, we are replacing one outside door, rebuilding the framing, reworking our deck to a point and re-doing the flooring at the entrance, taking it from lino that matches the dining room and kitchen and taking it to tile.

The last huge push in the gardens were done, now we are just in mop up mode with replanting and fall planting in Aug, otherwise, the planting is at 90 plus percent done. In fact, we were also in weeding mode, putting beans up the fencing and so forth. The strawberries are starting to come in, hundreds more are growing.. Boards are down to help collect the slugs daily and they are being feed to the ducks.

We had one good day of rain on weds which everyone loved, gardens, pastures and a refill off all the water barrels and so forth.. It was just misting at one point and I snapped a long distance photo of the flock grazing and when the auto program tried to clean it up, I got the below photo.. I love it, it looks like a painting to me..

The sheep are loving that they are out grazing daily for six hours on the pastures but sadly we lost our smallest lamb to a coy-wolf Bold as Brass, in full daylight hours with my horse’s on guard..  Hunting Camera’s have gone up, and protective measures are in place and the weaned lambs are only going to be allowed to graze in the “corral” pasture unless I am right there outside with the hounds.

So I have made the choice that I am going back to Hair Sheep only (other than Maude, she is awesome and gets to stay despite being a full woolie) so I sold both wool Rams, two wool ewe and butchered two more woollies past week.  I have put a reserve on a new lovely Hair sheep ram lamb that will join the farm.

This leaves me with only six Pure Hair Sheep Ewe’s with One Wool Ewe, plus three ewe hoggat girls that will butcher out this fall, plus my lambs.. seven of the lambs are already reserved for this fall’s butcher.

I have been canning every day this week..  I now have five kinds of mixed fruit with rhubarb, plus 4 batch of Rhubarb Juice canned up as well as lots of new Pasta Sauce. In total, close to hundred pints were processed this week and put into the cellar pantry. This went a long way to cleaning up the freezer from anything left over from last year.

I have only four of my 30 plants of rhubarb left to pick, and I am thinking of putting up some strawberry rhubarb pies in the raw form and freezing them for easy pulling and baking off as needed over the summer months.  Otherwise the plants will need to grow and recover from this major spring harvest..  so far I have harvested 234 pounds to date..  Some of it went to other folks for their use, but most of it went into our Pantry.

The dryer has been running non-stop, I have put up mint for tea, nettle for pot herb, and everything was finally all ready for harvest this week so I have been making a different Batch of Green Salve daily.

I have made a Heat Rash Salve, A wound Salve, an inflammation – bug bite or plant itch be gone Salve, Green Salve #4 and of a new “Dry Skin Be gone” Salve and a Sore muscle Salve..   The salve below is freshly poured, it set up into a nice light firm Salve.

As it turned out, I also needed to process some of my local raw beeswax to clean it up so that it could be used for the salves and balms.

We did get off the farm for a small trips.. one to the church basement wear I found these lovely huge and long curtains that fit my massive living room windows for a dollar each, I have a heavy thick-set for winter, but now I have a light summer set and it so matches my wall color 🙂

Otherwise, we were home on the farm, we washed walls, we cleaned pens, we trimmed sheep and goat feet, we gardened, planted, mowed, put the older grow out rabbits into pasture based tractors, we worked on our deck, and did repairs on this and that.

Well, you are caught up and I need to get back to my morning chores, I have canning on the go to get it done before the heat really hits, and its a double duty day, hubby left before 6 am and will not be home tonight till 9 or 10 pm..

I might get all my chores done an then slip away to the river for a spot of fishing and maybe a swim to cool off. We will see..

I had better get to it.. I am burning Daylight 🙂