Farm Friday

First, an apology is in order. I never posted last week's Farm Friday, even when I said I'd put it off until Saturday or Monday. Sorry.

With that out of the way, things have been very busy here, and it will only get busier up until the trip we have planned in July, to these two places: [link] and [link]. Top priorities on the farm list are getting laying hens (chicks) started and out on pasture, setting up irrigation for our garden, and fencing in our hill, which is covered in scrumptious brush just waiting for hungry goats. We started building a brooder this week in preparation for the new chicks, and with the greatly appreciated help of Mr. Danny when he came with his family to visit, the brooder was built in a day (unlike Rome). There are two pieces of tin not yet in place, but that's just because we ran out. Notice the peaked door, so we don't have to duck going in; that's an idea too good for me to have figured out. Thank you Mr. Danny.

The garden is coming along handsomely (that's an old word that means "well"), but I'm an awful photographer and haven't got any good pictures yet. We have corn, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, okra, eggplant, zucchini, purple-hull peas, cucumbers, squash, and one potato. We planted about forty potatoes, but 39 drowned. Now that we can set up the irrigation we're going to lay plastic on some rows and plant pie pumpkins, with the drip tape irrigation under the plastic. The plastic should keep the pumpkins from rotting. I'm also planting some field pumpkins (a little coarser and not so sweet as pie pumpkins) with the corn, to feed to the hens. If you feed pumpkin to laying hens in the winter, it's supposed to keep their egg yolks bright orange.

There should have been some pictures of cute little goat kids in this post, but Mocha, the last pregnant momma goat, is still holding out- despite the fact that she looks like she'd pop if you poked her.

A few little happenings: the creeks have dried up because it stopped raining, we're milking Patty, our goat, and getting a pint a day (we'll post pictures of that sometime), and soon our pennies and nickels may be made out of steel. I might write a post on that last one, which should prove interesting.

Have a great weekend,

Sherlock