Made in the shade

We are all just trying to lay low and keep cool around here. This is Strawberry(the llama) and Holly(the Pyrenees puppy), hanging out with the sheep under the shade trees along the fence in the big pasture. It is 92 degrees according to my thermometer and there is not much in the way of activity happening right now. When it gets this hot, everyone sleeps away the day and, then, grazes all night. Who says sheep are dumb?
As you can see, Holly is the girl on the job. I'm almost afraid to brag, but she is turning into a wonderful guardian animal. Her instincts are great (except for that unfortunate incident with the baby chick). She seems to have the right stuff to protect the sheep from the coyotes and is a positive addition to farm life around here. I can't help thinking that we have been too lucky to have a puppy just show up and volunteer to work! Where's the catch?
And, how about this for a surprise? I went to the barn this afternoon and found Mrs. Dandy walking around with four baby peafowl chicks! We knew she was on the nest high up in the barn loft with yet another clutch of eggs, but assumed this would turn out like all the other failed attempts. We thought it most likely the eggs were not even fertile because Mr. Dandy has been confined for about a month now after being found guilty of pulling the leaves off the squash plants in the garden! Even more surprising----she managed to get the four chicks down from the hayloft without anyone ending up smashed flat in the barn aisle! We have no idea how this was accomplished. Our dilemma now is whether we should try to catch the chicks and put them in a pen where they will be safe from predators, or leave Mrs. Dandy in charge. It seems cruel to take them away from her after all she has done to hatch them, but even more cruel to let them get picked off by a raccoon or hawk or whatever just happens to see the little morsels toddling around. I never can predict what life or death decisions will need to be made on any given day.

Garden dinner

So hard to come back to "normal" (whatever that might be) Monday after having a three day weekend and nearly perfect weather. Last night was our first dinner this season to come almost exclusively fresh from the garden. It is still just a little early yet, because the tomatoes and corn are not quite ripe. I decided to roast the vegetables in the oven, a la Ina Garten, with olive oil, kosher salt and pepper. They turned out even better than I had hoped. I made cornbread sticks (from the Shakertown at Pleasant Hill cookbook), sliced up some cucumbers and that was it. Pretty simple and we felt so healthy eating this way! We have cut down drastically on the amount of meat we consume these days. We both still like it, just feel we should make an effort to eat lighter and fresher, especially at this time of year when there is so much good produce available from our own garden. We grew the zucchini, yukon gold potatoes and cucumber and the green beans and yellow squash came from two grandson's garden. Though they live in town, they are raising an unbelievable garden and have enough extra vegetables to sell to their neighbors. Quite the entrepreneurs, they even give out free recipes for customers to use with their produce. At 9 and 12 years of age, I'd say they are well on their way to success in whatever they choose to do.

A Mother and child reunion(or stupid farm tricks)

Well, here is the happy family all together again. Last Sunday we spent hours sorting the sheep. We separated the lambs from the ewes, then looked at all of them, graded their fleeces and made the decision about which ones to send to market. Then we fastened the lambs in the barn and put the ewes out in the farthest pasture. Weaning is an unhappy time for everyone concerned. The lambs cry and the ewes keep calling to their lambs. We prevent the lambs from hearing their mothers by turning on a huge fan that makes lots of noise and a loud radio. Usually, I turn on a country music station, but that gets on my nerves pretty quickly, so this year the lambs were weaned to classical music. In about two days things start to quiet down and the lambs are eating well. Our plan was to take lambs to market on Tuesday and I did check the website to be sure there was a sale. It said no cattle sale and that as of July 1st all sheep and goats must have their scrapie tags in place before they are allowed off the trailer. That would make you think there is a lamb sale on July 1st---right? Wrong! We got up early, loaded the animals, drove in to the stockyard, and guess what? No one there. Closed. No sale of anything. Next sale in two weeks. Back home and unload everyone. Now what? I didn't want to keep the lambs in the barn for two weeks and if I let them out, all the bawling would start all over again when they saw their mothers. So, yesterday morning I opened their pen and led them to their mothers. They were all so happy, I felt bad all over again about weaning them.That Paul Simon song Mother and Child Reunion has been playing over and over in my head since then! So, now we will go through the whole song and dance again in two weeks.

This process is one of the harsh realities of farm life and raising livestock. I can't keep all of the males and selling them often pays for a year's worth of feed for the rest of the flock. I'm not enthusiastic about it, but I am resigned to it.

And, yes, those are all her lambs. Two black ram lambs and one white ewe lamb and none of them required supplemental bottles. I'd say she represented herself pretty well this year.

Everyone loves Kaffe

Don't they? I love his sense of color and pattern. I have all of his books and, though I have never made anything from them, I go to them often for color inspiration. It was exciting to see he had designed a line of sock yarn for Regia. This is #4255 Landscape Earth and I really like the way it turned out. This is your basic cast on 60 stitches sock pattern. Nothing fancy, except the yarn. There are colors in this mix I would have never have chosen, but they work so well together. I suppose that would be the reason Kaffe Fassett is a famous designer and I am not!

I think this particular color combination would work for a man or woman, but, guess what? They're all mine!

Couldn't resist this shot with Buster checking out the socks. Buster is my 15 year old cat, who nearly died on us about 3 months ago. After several weeks of intensive TLC (including having to force-feed him 3 times a day and give IV fluids twice a day), he seems to be feeling like his old self again. So good to have the veterinarian living in-house!