How is it August already? I completely missed July. It has been hot and humid now for weeks, with many days in the upper 90s and a few over 100. I have been very remiss in my blogging, so here's an update on recent activities.
Brian's family visited us the weekend of the Fourth, and we had a nice picnic, complete with coleslaw from our first head of cabbage. We butchered 73 chickens on July 9 with help from Pete and Austin. We only lost 5 of the original 78 birds, and they dressed out really well with an average weight of 5 pounds. All in all it was a very successful batch. The next set of chicks are supposed to arrive this week. Over the weekend we cleaned out the coop, and this morning I cleaned up all of the waterers and feeders, so we are ready for the phone call and a mad dash to the post office. July 10 I headed to New Orleans for the annual American Dairy Science Association meetings. It was a good trip and I enjoyed catching up with colleagues from around the world. And, at the airport I had the pleasure of chatting with an acquaintance and discovering that he and his wife raise sheep as well and he was headed home to start lambing; the wait for our plane went by in a flash! On July 18 Brian headed to Toronto for the Pioneer annual business conference. Meanwhile, I caught up from a week away. I froze the last of the broccoli (thanks the the hot weather we didn't get much, so I started some new plants Monday for a fall crop), made dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, and a batch of dill relish. I also took the wool to the extension office for the wool pool. Mid-States cooperative buys our wool, and there's one day each summer that they bring trucks and load up all of the wool in this area. The wool prices are much higher this year; still not enough to cover the cost of shearing, but at least it is a little closer. On July 21, Pioneer flew me up to Toronto too. They have an extended weekend for employees who meet their incentive goals and their spouses. It was a nice vacation (what's that?). We had a chartered salmon fishing excursion on Lake Ontario, a bus trip to Niagara Falls, and a dinner cruise on the lake. By Sunday of that weekend we were both ready to get out of the city and get back home, but we did snag a great lunch at Toula, including fabulous caprese towers (fresh mozzarella, basil and tomatoes stacked up in alternating layers). Last week was another week of catching up, more pickles (14-day sweets this time), more relish, 23 quarts of shredded cabbage, one night at Vacation Bible School, baling some second cutting alfalfa, and a whole day of moving sheep.
We weaned the lambs and moved the ewes to New Hope on July 26. This is almost a month later than we typically wean, but we didn't want to wean them and then be away for two weeks. It was a pretty low-stress event all things considered. It took three trips to get all the ewes and Tony hauled over to New Hope, but it went very well, including catching, loading, and unloading Tony. He actually behaved like he had been led onto a trailer before (he was supposedly a show llama in his younger years). We did not have time to weigh the lambs that day, but we need to get that done here soon. The extended lactation and super hot weather have been hard on the sheep. We have lost some lambs, although we are in line with previous years. It is depressing to lose them, and we are trying some different strategies. We will probably creep feed the lambs next year to see if we can help some of them get a better start. At least that may partially make up for mamas that have less milk and maybe we can reduce some of the variation in the size of our lambs.
I picked some blackberries on Monday. The sheep didn't eat them all, but the only ones left were the hardest ones to get! I'm still not sure it was worth all the scratches...especially when I have some thornless blackberries right here at the house. The red raspberries are producing huge, sweet berries again, and I think I'm going to stick with them until my thornless blackberries start producing. That may be a while though, the deer seem to really like them and continually clip off the canes. This is the first year they have even set fruit. Last night I canned some beets, plain not pickled. Last time we had beets I pickled them all and then discovered Brian didn't like them. So I was nice to him and didn't pickle them this go round. Except last night I found out he's never even tried pickled beets. Grr! Next time I'm doing half and half.
There are probably more cucumbers waiting for me and I know someday soon I will have to pick some shell beans. Tonight I'm going to start drying down some tomatoes. I had this idea last year to try sundried tomatoes, but I ran out of tomatoes before I thought about it. So I'm taking advantage of the smaller number that are ready at this point in the season.
Well, that pretty much brings us up to date. I have a bunch of photos to add, but don't have time right now to do it. Grand views of Niagara Falls and some gorgeous summer color in the flower beds will have to wait. That will give you something to look forward to in my next post!
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