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!

Don't blink, life goes faster than you think

In the month since my last post, we have pretty much spent every spare minute outside. The garden is all planted now except for the sweet potatoes, cukes, zukes, and sweet corn. The rows are ready for them, but there was a delay in getting the irrigation system working. Brian is away this week, but we should finish planting over the weekend. I ate 5 broccoli florets for supper last night. The crazy heat and humidity we've been experiencing since mid May caused them to bolt without developing nice heads. We'll try again in the fall, provided I remember to start the seeds. I can't blame the weather, but we didn't end up with many cherries this year either. Yesterday I noticed the black birds were around the tree a lot and a saw a pit or two in the driveway. By the time I went out last evening to pick, all that was left was a measly handful. The cherry tree is over 50 feet tall, and even with a ladder in the bed of the pickup, that's all I could reach. At least it was a delicious handful! I don't know what kind of cherry this is, some kind of pie cherry, but it is not as tart as the tree we had back home.

The first batch of 75 broiler chicks for the year arrived May 22. I didn't get any pictures early on, and their in the ugly chick phase now, but they are growing very well. I'm pleased that they learned how to drink from the automatic water bowl that I installed a couple of days ago. Hooray for labor-saving inventions! Plus there should be no danger of them running out of water. Speaking of labor savings, last night I rolled out four hoses so that I no longer have to carry buckets of water to the laying hens, who are far away from a water hydrant way out in the pasture. The new pullets are in with the older group now, and that group of 25 drinks a lot of water when it is this hot.

We've put up nearly 1000 square bales of first-cutting hay and some round ones too. Various breakdowns have slowed progress, but the weather has finally turned from rainy and cloudy to hot and steamy. We had two great weeks for drying hay and are really pleased with the square bales. The corn and soybeans are planted and the wheat continues to look good. The lambs are growing by leaps and bounds. They are at that point in the year where they look fantastic and their mamas are starting to look a bit stressed. We'll wean the lambs in early July and haul the ewes over to New Hope, their land of endless grass. Looking forward to putting our scales to work for regular weights so we can monitor the lambs progress more objectively.

I have planted all of my flowers, except for finding a summer home for the elephant ears, and for the first time ever, I splurged on bark mulch to help keep the weeds in check. It turned out to be much less expensive than I feared. Why is it that I allow myself to be paralyzed by fear of the unknown - happens more than I'd care to admit! Last night I removed a bunch of poppies that are finished blooming, and I'm going to get some more mulch to spruce up that end of the bank. If I keep it mulched I'm hoping I'll be able to see the crown vetch and spray it repeatedly. One day at a time I am making progress in eradicating that stuff!

We hiked to the top of Crabtree Falls with our young adults group from church. It was a good hike, and a beautiful view. Crabtree is billed as the highest vertical-drop cascading waterfall east of the Mississippi, and it was pretty amazing. We also enjoyed an unexpected visit with my Mom, who was here for a nice long weekend. 


Recent wildlife sightings have included many, many big-eyed rabbits, very few ground hogs (thanks to our dead-eyed neighbor), a few deer, but no fawns yet, a large, too-tame coyote over in New Hope (thankfully the lambs won't be going over there), a bear cub 50 yards from the house, and a weird little salamander/lizard that drowned in a bucket on the deck. Never a dull moment.


Our 10th anniversary has now come and gone. I don't know where the time goes! We've also passed the 1 year mark for this blog and for Brian's job with Pioneer (guess I can stop calling it his new job now).

I think that brings our recent activities up to date. Now all I have to do is organize my photos and catch up on my Quicken records, and I'll have my head above water for a little while. It's interesting what can suddenly seem like a fun task when you know it will keep you inside in air-conditioned comfort, rather than outside sweating just for breathing in the 100-degree heat.

Peepers!

Saturday I heard spring peepers for the first time this year.