Flowers and wild things

We have seen so many different creatures this summer, but I wasn't really sure which of them was responsible for nipping off my strawberries. One day last week all was revealed. I was sorting through a stack of books, looking for the one I planned to send Easton for his birthday, when something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.

I looked up to see a small doe up in the raised bed munching on strawberry leaves. I went to the door to shoo her away and I saw she was traveling with a friend.

This is one of the three young bucks we've been seeing on a regular basis. From the width and height of their racks, we are pretty sure they are all related to the huge deer we saw a few years back (who has since been poached by some ruffians in our neighborhood).

Butterflies and hummingbirds have also been frequent visitors this summer, especially in the last few weeks. We see the hummingbirds nearly every day and I can't even count the butterflies. They don't call the plants below butterfly bushes for no reason!

I think this is a Black swallowtail

Eastern tiger swallowtail

Another Eastern tiger swallowtail

 

 

 The yard is full of lots of color in addition to the dahlias, sunflowers and butterfly bushes you can see in the pictures above. There are still many black-eyed susan blooming, the four o'clocks and angels trumpets light up the evening hours, and the sedum and warm season grasses are just beginning to put on their show. A few of the daylilies are re-blooming as well.

The crepe myrtle finally bloomed! After seeing these blooming everywhere, ours finally caught up.

The delicate purple spikes of the obedient plant, which one of the ladies Brian used to work with dug up and gave to us.

Mammoth sunflower that has mostly finished blooming, but now is the time the gold finches have started hovering, waiting for the first delicious seeds.

The other sunflowers are still going strong!

Fall lambs soon and more ram power for fall breeding

Last weekend we attended the ram sale at the Virginia Tech experiment station at Steeles Tavern. It was a lot of fun analyzing the sale catalog and then walking through the pens to pick which rams we wanted to bid on. We agreed that there was only one Dorset we were interested in, and we brought him home. There were several good Suffolks. The one I liked the most I was pretty sure would be out of our price range. He topped the sale at $1275. So I am learning a bit about how to pick good sheep; it is nice to be validated! We purchased an excellent Suffolk ram and I am excited to see what kind of lambs he can produce. The two new rams are buddies and have settled in very well. We plan to put them together with a group of ewes for fall breeding, run Dalton and Bruce with a second group, and then run Thorne through to clean up any that have not settled in the first two cycles. I ordered marking crayons today, and we are about 6 weeks from the start of breeding season.

Two new rams, love the power and muscling of the Suffolk ram. His ribeye area measurement was over 3.5 square inches (adjusted to 125 pounds of live weight). The Dorset isn't quite as eye-catching, but he had good carcass ultrasound measurements (REA right at 3 square inches) and a good growth rate. Both rams scored very well on their breeding soundness exams and have the RR genotype for scrapie resistance. Should be a big step forward for our flock.

By the time we start breeding this fall, our fall-lambing group should all be finished. We sorted the ewes last week and have observed udder development in about 15 of the ewes plus 2 that may be developing, all Dorpers. We moved these 17 home so they can lamb here under closer supervision. So, our CIDR experiment produced about what we expected (at least 45%) in terms of the number of pregnancies. Of course more would have been better, but trying fall lambing with a smaller group the first time around is probably not a bad idea! Because the ewes aren't as fertile, they commonly have fewer lambs in the fall than they would in the spring, which means more singles. Singles combined with good pasture all summer and first-time mamas could make for a high number of ewes that have complications in their delivery because the lambs are too large. We'll know more soon... All of the ewes that are not bred will go into fall breeding groups and hopefully they will lamb in the spring.

Click on this picture for a better view, but this is what we wanted to see - udders!

Fall lambing Dorpers

As you can see from the photos, the grass is nice and green. We have had plenty of rain and it has rejuvenated the grass, saved the corn, perked up the beans at just the right time, and got the fall tillage radishes off to a fantastic start. Plus we made several hundred bales of third cutting alfalfa-grass hay and will likely get a fourth cutting.

A very respectable ear of corn. The rain came just in time for us.

Tillage radishes planted into tall wheat stubble. The radishes grow huge taproots that create pores in the soil; it is great for compacted soils and a key part of our conversion of the farm to a no-till system.

Soybeans a little more than waist high.

The broccoli is also off to a good start with some cooler weather and plenty of attention to keep the fertilizer flowing and the flea beetles and cabbage loopers at bay. We've even picked a few peppers now that the heat has finally allowed fruit development. Last night I picked a few lima beans and tomatoes, finally some summer produce, just as September is rolling in and my thoughts turn to fall!

This is about half of the broccoli in the upper garden. We have three more rows further down from this spot, but it was getting too dark to get a good picture of them. Our fencing is working so far to keep out the groundhogs and deer.

San Francisco in June

Back in June we had a nice long weekend in San Francisco, courtesy of Dupont Pioneer. They have an incentive program, and if you meet goals for the year, they take you and your spouse on an all-expenses paid trip. It is a really nice perk of Brian's job.

Without further ado, here are some pictures of our trip.

Brian and I with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

The evening that we arrived, we had a dinner cruise of the San Francisco Bay and got a great overview of the area.

Alcatraz

Alcatraz from the side. It seemed a lot bigger when we got up close to it.

The Oakland Bay bridge, which opened before the Golden Gate and is a similar suspension-style bridge. This is also the one that was damaged in the earthquake during the 1989 World Series, which we both remembered seeing on tv.

AT and T Park, home of the Giants.There was a game the night we were there, pretty neat to see it from the Bay.

Sunset at the Golden Gate Bridge.

A little later as the boat approached the bridge.

San Francisco skyline.

Perhaps my favorite picture from the trip.

Port of San Francisco.

The next day we toured two wineries. This is Benziger, a bio-dynamic winery in Sonoma county.

Olives!

The second winery we visited was Domaine Carneros; they make sparkling wine in Napa county.

Grapevines as far as you can see...

The automated racking, which turns the bottles. I forget exactly why, but I think it had something to do with keeping the yeast active and managing the sediment.

Riding a cable car - hanging on the outside!

Lombard Street - the crookedest street in the world, taken from the cable car.

Our dinner group Friday night, taken by the best cable car operator ever. We had a group of twelve and walked from our hotel to the ticket booth so we could all get tickets (found out later we could have just bought them at boarding). We found a huge line of people waiting to get on the cable car, so Brian shouted up to the operator to be sure that was the line. He said it was, but that we should walk up a block and he'd pick us up there. So we did. All 12 of us. I had no idea we would be riding on the outside. It was scary but fun high-fiving passengers on a passing cable car, tucking in when cars came down the other lane, and narrowly avoiding taking the door off of parked cars.

The third day we went to Sausalito and Muir Woods. After we crossed the Golden Gate, we stopped for some pictures. Here is Sausalito from above.

The Golden Gate in daylight. We had stunning weather, zero fog and beautiful temperatures in the low 70s.

Muir Woods was really amazing. The trees are Redwoods.

From Sausalito we took a ferry back to downtown. The Bay was buzzing with boats as everyone seemed to be out enjoying a beautiful Saturday afternoon.