Let the breeding begin!

Tuesday we officially began our breeding season. It's always an exciting time, probably even more so for the rams since this is the only time of the year when they get to run with the ewes. 51 days of heaven. Our dog Dixie is in heat too. Poor Jackson (our other dog) is beside himself with excitement, but thankfully can't do anything about it (he's neutered). The testosterone is so thick in the air you can almost feel it! But I digress...

Here's Thorne with his ladies. He has a group of 17 mature ewes this year.

 Bruce and Dalton are in one group with 34 mature ewes. Although it may look like a confrontation is imminent, so far they have both marked all of the ewes that are marked. Apparently they are sharing. I don't care, as long as they all get bred. Good progress so far. When I checked everyone on Wednesday evening, there were two marked in Thorne's group and three in Bruce and Dalton's group. There were another two in Bruce and Dalton's group last night, so we're moving right along.

 We spent several hours this week working the ewes and sorting them into breeding groups and then hauling the rams over to New Hope. All went well, except for a flat tire on the tractor when Brian was trying to bush hog the pasture. Thus the tall brown grass in the picture above. There's green in the understory, promise!  We decided not to put any of our ewe lambs in the breeding groups this year. That has turned out poorly every time we've tried it. So, we're trying something else and letting them get a little more mature before exposing them to the rams next fall.

 Last Saturday morning I spent some time labeling all of my dahlias in anticipation of the first frost. I gathered these flowers for one last fresh bouquet. Now that this has been in the house, the grass heads have fuzzed out, it is really neat looking. We did have a frost Saturday night, but a pretty light one at just 29 degrees. Apparently this is not enough to completely kill off the plants, (Brian says 28 degrees is a killing frost) because the cannas are basically fine, a little brown around the edges, but fine. And, many of the dahlias survived too, especially if they were even a little bit protected by surrounding plants or structures. That is the only frost we've had, nearly two full weeks behind "normal;" however, it is currently snowing. We are only supposed to have flurries, but they are calling for up to six inches at elevations above 1500 feet. We're right on the border of that, so you never know!

The frost last week did zap the vines on the sweet potatoes. So we dug those and have a good harvest in the basement now. We also picked the cornmeal corn sometime in the last week or two, and it is drying in the basement too. It is an old variety called Bloody Butcher that has beautiful red kernels. Interestingly, we made some corn bread using meal from this corn and some of our home grown wheat. The corn bread was blue. Unexpected, but pretty (tasty too)! With the corn and the sweet potatoes harvested that was the end of our garden along the driveway. Brian tilled it and the garden here at the house and planted some cover crop barley along the driveway. We still need to get garlic, spinach, and lettuce in the ground. I am not giving up on that this year! Does it seem to anyone else like I am using an inordinate amount of exclamation points? Sorry, I will try to tone it down.

 Last weekend we also had an outing with our young adults group from church. We went to Showalters Corn Maze in Mt. Solon. This was the first time in a corn maze for several of us, and it was quite fun. We took turns leading the way from station to station, and made it through with only slight confusion. A good lesson in trust when you are at the back of the line. The two photos here are from the bridge near the end of the maze. Looking out over the field you can see it was a gorgeous fall day.

The intrepid maze crew!