Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Summer's End Harvest, Early September

I haven't been diligent or scientific in my tracking of our farm and garden's productivity this year, but some preliminary numbers for food harvested and put by so far are-

Apple Cider - 3+ gallons
Hooker's Sweet Corn - 1 bushel (so far)
Poppy seeds - 1/2 cup :\
Cucumbers - About 4 gallons (pickled - does not include what we've eaten fresh or fed to the bun-buns)
Carrots, tomatoes, radishes, beets, peppers, beans and peas - no idea! ;\
Sugar Baby Watermelons - 2 (so far)
Pumpkins - 4 (so far)

The garden was somewhat feral this year. With everything going on in our lives, it was really a miracle that we even had a chance to plant anything at all. This is the very first year ever that we didn't have any summer squash at all. The ducks that live in our garden ate our squash and sunflower starts multiple times. We ended up with ONE sunflower! For all their cuteness, ducks can also be selfish little jerks...

This week or next I hope to get out and forage for apples, pears and hawthorn berries. I haven't made hawthorn jelly in a few years and I think that it's about time to remedy that. ;) I'd also like to start putting up some food for the critters, in the form of dehydrating some corn, seeds (pumpkin, mostly) greens (beet tops, bolted collards, kale, etc.) and herbs to dole out sparingly over the dark months. I'm no longer working full-time plus, and am absolutely relishing the reprisal of my full-time farm-wife role.

Tentatively slated for early October - harvesting our Muscovy ducks. Based on the horror stories I've heard about cleaning and plucking ducks, I'm pretty nervous about the process. Oy...

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Baby Goats!

Chardonnay has her babies on January 6th - one boy and one girl. And I was so sure that she had at least three in there! D'oh!


At 2 days old - the dark kid is the doeling, and the tan fella is our lone buckling, Cocoa.

After fooling me several times, Chardy finally, actually went into labor right around dinner time on the 6th. Farmer Bill was up the hill to feed and came scrabbling back to tell me that Chardonnay was delivering her 2nd babe. We all trucked back up the hill to check on everybody, help Mama dry everyone off, iodine their cord stumps and give them their first dose of colostrum/vitamin supplements. Chardy came through like a champ and her babies are healthy and beautiful!

And then again last night, Sidney did practically the same exact thing. Bill noticed two little new, wet babies at feeding time and came back with the report that we had two new pretty little girls.

The twinses!


Sidney and her darling doelings.

It is highly anticipated that Blue is also expecting shortly, but as she tends to be rather rotund on any given day, who knows for sure?

Three girls and a boy so far. YAY! :)