Rambling Update

Broccoli! Saturday we set out 480 broccoli transplants. Rather than start them from seed, we purchased plants this time around. A lot less effort for about the same price as our "special" commercial pepper seeds. They look really good so far. 

Broccoli plants waiting in the garage

The same can be said for the lambs. We have weighed them a couple of times now, and they are right at 50 pounds and growing about a third of a pound each day. There is a lot of variability in the group, but overall they look good. 

The chicken on the hay feeder is one of two hens who flew the coop and have taken up residence in the barn. They have a stockpile of eggs, which I am hoping they will brood. I will give them a few more weeks, and if there is no evidence of setting, then I will have to clean up the old eggs and start gathering the fresh ones.

The pigs are also growing. They love getting sweet corn cobs as a treat and have started coming up to investigate us rather than running away at top speed. A friend suggested treating them with marshmallows, apparently pigs love them, but we have not tried that yet. We got four barrows this time, but they are all different colors. I can't pick a favorite because they are all adorable. But I notice I did take more pictures of the red one. The black spotted pig is a troublemaker who got out a couple of times a few weeks back. We seem to have gotten the fence right now and haven't had any escapes recently.

Our fall lambing experiment is just around the corner. Sunday I counted 10 Dorper ewes that have udders developing. I don't see any development on the Dorsets. We need to run them through the chute to separate out the Cheviot-Suffolk ewes and get a close look to see how many settled to the spring breeding and didn't slip lambs in all of this crazy heat. We should start lambing in about five weeks. 

The garden has really not been that productive this year. Between busy schedules and hot, dry weather, it is quite behind. We picked our first green beans of the season over the last 2 weeks. The first picking was just enough to eat, and I canned 11 quarts the second time around. First tomatoes of the summer this week too, yum! I also finally got some pictures of the garlic.

The larger bulb here is German Extra Hardy hard neck garlic, and this is an average bulb (the other pics are also of this variety). The smaller bulb is a California White, soft neck type, and this is the largest one we grew this year; most of the others are half this size. So, first year experimenting with hard neck...so far, so good. And it's delicious!

We have been doing a little pest management and harvesting deer under a damage control permit. What better way to use the meat than by corning and smoking some heavenly pastrami. Here are a few of the hams fresh from the smoker.

A pile of pastrami.

And my favorite way to eat this delicacy - pastrami slathered with coarse mustard and wrapped around a dilly bean. Now my mouth is watering.

 The deer aren't the only wildlife we've been seeing. This summer has been full of interesting visitors.

Brian found this beetle in the bed of the truck one morning. It was dead when he found it. It is huge! I think it is a female Eastern Hercules Beetle, which is a forest beetle. This is the first one we've ever seen.

I see the turkeys almost daily, amazing how much the little poults have grown!

We sent five cull ewes to New Holland Saturday. As we were loading them I got a good look at one who is the fattest sheep I have ever seen. She did not lamb two years in a row, and she's been in the barn eating free-choice alfalfa-grass hay since April. FAT. 

Brian has been traveling a lot the past two weeks and will be gone all week this week as well. In the meantime, I've been holding down the fort and dealing with only the occasional animal issue. One morning it was fishing a ewe out from underneath a truck, then chasing a wormy ewe around the field for a while. 

The ewe under the truck scared me at first because I figured she was dead, I mean why else would she be under there? As I got closer to her I saw she was quite alive, but when I tried to pull her out, she didn't come out easily. I stopped pulling and checked to be sure she didn't have her head caught on wire or her ear tag snagged on some mysterious metal. Nothing, so I grabbed her two front feet with one hand and her two back feet with the other and gave it another go. This time she popped out, and stood wobbling, looking at me a little dazedly. I think her legs must have been a bit numb, but she got herself together and teetered off to the water trough. 

A few days later I was moving sheep again and the wormy ewe was again at the tail end of the group. The fact she was still standing was very encouraging, as we have had very bad luck treating ewes once they are that far gone. We had wormed her a couple of weeks earlier, at which time she had very pale eye membranes, an indirect indication of worms. On the day of the truck incident she had clear symptoms of bottle jaw, a swelling of sorts under the lower jaw. But I could not catch her on my own, so she did not get wormed that day. Well, by the time a week had passed she had slowed down a bit. I moved the whole group of ewes from one field to the next without incident. Then I had to go after number 32 (the wormy one). Instead of running into the field she found a small opening between the tractor and the barn and got out into the yard. Where I proceeded to chase her in circles around the house. After a while I tired of the game, plus I had to run over to New Hope to feed the other ewes. So I left her in the lilac bush by the driveway and went to feed the others. By the time I got back it was almost dark, and my first glance around the yard revealed no sheep. I found her in the flower bed, chased her around the house once, and she ended up back near the lilac bush. She was worn out at this point and still refused to walk (I left that out, but that is why I had to leave her before, I finally caught up to her, wormed her and put on a halter, but she just wouldn't budge). I knew it was not a good idea to leave her out overnight. So I found a plastic feed sack and rolled her on it, keeping her on one hip and pulling her along by her upper body, using the feed sack as a sled of sorts. It worked beautifully, but I was going uphill backwards and I knew I couldn't get her all the way back to the barn like that. So I shut off the power to the fence, slid her over close to it, and put her front feet through. She leapt out of my arms and ran across the field to be with the other sheep. Two days later when we were moving the ewes to the barn so we could load them on the trailer and haul them to New Hope, she was again at the back of the pack and we had to help her through the fence. She didn't seem steady enough to go on the trailer, so she's convalescing in the barn for now. Poor thing, I do hope she can get her strength back as she seems to be quite the fighter.

Finally, a stroll through the flowers. I really need to update this more frequently as these photos are already behind what is actually happening outside. The dahlias are blooming quite a bit now and the sunflowers are in full bloom. The obedient plant has also just opened in the last few days. 

Dianthus - you can clearly see the beautiful petal edges that give these flowers their common name, pinks. I loved using the pinking shears as a little girl, so these are nostalgic flowers for me.

I am a flower fan. But if I had to pick just one flower (for summer any way!) it would be the sunflower. They are just so cheerful.

Mimosa tree in full bloom. The flowers attract droves of hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. We didn't see hummingbirds as early as usual, but there have been plenty of them here lately.

A pretty gladiolus in the shade of a butterfly bush.

Another cheerful summer favorite, marigolds planted in the garden.

Drama queen. I love that the hibiscus has these tropical, extravagant blooms. It is all done for this year, but what a spectacular show!

Just another week

Well... maybe not.

Saturday we finally got around to weighing the lambs. One month after weaning they averaged 52 pounds, or approximately 0.3 pounds per day. This is not great, but it's about what we usually get on our pasture. They had no supplemental grain until weaning. Next year we're going to try creep feeding them and see if we can pack a few more pounds on early and try to help out the lambs who have mamas with lower milk production. The scales worked out pretty well, but we need to work on some enhancements, like perhaps a cage around the platform with front and rear guillotine gates.

Sunday we enjoyed a day to ourselves, birthday dinner, a little shopping, and browsing at the book fair (okay, we didn't just browse, we bought some too!). Monday we celebrated Brian's 35th birthday, actually celebrated is probably too strong of a word, but anyway it happened. Tuesday an earthquake shook much of the eastern US. The epicenter was about 80 miles from here. I felt the tremors but we don't seem to have any damage. I was surprised at how loud the rumbling was, like a freight train headed straight at you or a helicopter descending directly on you. I don't really remember seeing items shaking, but I am pretty sure I saw the deck lurch. It was an experience I won't soon forget, but I was actually glad to find out it was just an earthquake. My initial thought was that something in the basement was about to explode. Now there's a hurricane headed for us, but it doesn't look like things will be too bad here in the mountains. Interesting timing because the new book I'm reading is about Hurricane Camille and the devastating flood in the county just east of us (that was in 1969). Today's Thursday, and I just got word that our new nephew, Easton, has arrived. Looking forward to a trip north in a couple of weeks to meet him and see the rest of the family. We also picked 5 five-gallon buckets of tomatoes this week, had our first sweet corn, dug our potatoes, and picked two buckets of cantaloupes. So, all in all a pretty exciting week! 

The broiler chicks at 1 week. I didn't get a two-week old picture, and today is three weeks, so I will have to remember to take the camera with me when I feed this evening.

 Brian made another batch of mozzarella, and we fried some to use up some of the pizza sauce that is still hanging around in the fridge. Thanks to Tammy for a fabulous recipe and for the milk that we used to make the cheese! This was an incredible treat.  Above, before frying; below, the ooey-gooey fried deliciousness. Note, if you do this, don't put the fried mozzarella on a paper towel because the cheese sticks too much.

 We've been grinding our homegrown wheat and trying out the flour. So far, so good. Very good. Brian's biscuits in particular were delicious.

 Still picking red raspberries! 

 And still seeing all sorts of wildlife. We've seen the turkeys less often, but here they are crossing the electronet again.

 Hummingbird coming in for a landing.

And momentarily perched.

Turkey crossing

I think we need a sign. We often see turkeys this time of the year, but this year we've seen them more than ever before. Apparently the hens like this area for nesting and raising their poults. With all the turkey sightings, we've never seen a tom.

Two nights in a row last week I disturbed the evening constitutional and was rewarded with an eruption of birds flying off to safety. The one night they were directly over my head, but moving too fast for me to get a count. I thought I saw two or maybe three hens.

Over the weekend Brian just happened to see them crossing through our front yard. We watched as two hens and approximately 12 little poults passed just under my office window, went up the bank, and crossed the fence into the pasture. The little ones walked right through and the hens flew over. If I am going to keep taking pictures through the glass, I have got to clean my windows and take out the screens! 

This afternoon after checking on the broiler chicks I was walking back to the house and saw movement along the back fence. Sure enough - turkeys again! This time it was just one of the hens with her brood of 5 or 6 poults. I couldn't get a good count on the little ones because the grass was taller than they were, and they blend into their surroundings very well. It was so neat to watch them. I belly-crawled around the back yard trying to get good pictures without scaring them too much. Every time I got too close, the hen would squat down into the grass and disappear. One second I could see her and the next she had blended in perfectly. They traveled back and forth the entire length of the back yard until the poults found a place to cross. Then the hen continued searching the fence line for a crossing, I'm not sure why she didn't fly up, but I suppose she wasn't feeling pressured. She finally made it to an area that has electronet, which is more flexible than woven wire. She hopped right through the fence, collected the poults, and off they went. Later this evening, Brian saw this group of turkeys headed back into the yard and saw them meeting up with the other hen and her poults, who were traveling up the driveway toward the house. What a day!