Such Good Donkeys

I was so proud of the donkeys when the farrier came to trim their hooves.  Especially Rufus, who stood quietly while the farrier trimmed all four hooves and I hugged his face and petted his forehead.  No kicking!  And, it was only his second hoof trimming.  He's such a good boy.  

Hattie is still a baby, and it was her first time, so she's excused for kicking up a little fuss. She was curious while Rufus had his hooves trimmed, and kept sticking her face in the way.  When it was her turn, she didn't like it much.  I held her as tight as I could, and even had to twist her poor ears to get her to hold still.  The farrier said I was doing a good thing to get her trimmed when she was so young, so she will get used to it before she's a crabby old girl.  

The farrier said their feet were in good shape.  I told him that I don't use a pick to get the dirt out of their hooves every week, like the book says to do.  He said that it's important to do that if they stand around in mud all day, or if they are locked in a stall and can't get their feet cleaned out by roaming around, because they could get thrush in their feet.

In the days leading up to the farrier visit, Hattie got to practice with the halter going on and coming off, and she even got to try having her head tied to a post.  She was not a huge fan, and pulled on the post so hard that it's a little loose in the ground now.  But, even though she didn't care for being tied up, she and Rufus both enjoy the attention of the halter and lead rope.  They stand still and let me buckle them up, and try to stick their noses in my pockets where I keep the sunflower seeds.  I tried leading them both with ropes while we took a walk around the pasture, and it was a fiasco.  They are pretty good at taking a walk with Rufus behind me and Hattie bringing up the rear, but that's hard to manage with leashes.  We need to practice!

The Herb Spiral is Good

I've mentioned before that the mound of rocks and dirt by the back door is and herb spiral.  In this picture, it looks less like an herb spiral and more like an herb clump!  

But in that clump of vegetation, is several types of basil, holy basil, sage, oregano, and thyme, plus a milkweed plant and a couple of marigolds.  

The sweet basil and holy basil have dominated the spiral, for sure.  They smell wonderful, and I enjoy seeing the insects visiting the flowers right outside the door.  It's two steps past the door to harvest more herbs that we can eat!  Our favorite salad dressing during the elimination diet is a giant handful of herbs, mostly sweet basil, blended with olive oil, raw apple cider vinegar, honey, and a pinch of salt.  It's bright green, and tangy.  I keep a jar of it in the refrigerator and have been known to brush it on fish, and even add it to tomato sauce.  If I were smart I would figure out how to freeze some of these herbs in oil so I could have salad dressing even in the winter...  

Of the three milkweed plants that I transplanted to the top of the spiral, only one survived.  It's the tall plant with the broad leaves sticking up above the others.

Summer Harvest

So many tomatoes!  It's exciting to harvest so many fruits from the garden, but also daunting to have so much food that needs attention.  I would feel overwhelmed if I weren't able to pass on all the ripe tomatoes to family members who like to preserve tomato juice in jars to enjoy through the winter.  I've enjoyed eating my fill of tomatoes and even freezing some sauce.  

The tomato patch was low maintenance and incredibly productive, but not incredibly easy to harvest from.  The plants grew into a lush tangle of leaves, and the cages could barely support the weight of the heavy fruits, so they are leaning on each other.  I've got some ideas for improvements for next year.  

Brandon and I completed the full two months of the elimination diet.  High five!  It was intense, to spend so much time and thought on food and food preparation, but it leaves us in a very good place, health wise.  We learned so much about how our bodies respond to different foods, we got into some good habits, we feel really good, and all our clothes are too big.  We had suspicions that eggs were a problem for Brandon, and unfortunately, the elimination diet confirmed it.  He can't eat eggs, and I have fourteen laying hens.  Sigh.  But, we get to share eggs with friends, and any eggs that get dirty shells get cracked into some dog food for Wendigo.  She loves eggs.   Lately, we always have a bowl of eggs sitting by the front door ready for the dogs.  The cats think it's weird.  

Our most productive summer crops, other than eggs and tomatoes, are the green beans.  Inside the garden fence, with zinnias and sunflowers, the beans have conquered the corn and wire trellises.  

The corn was planted so late and so thinly, I didn't anticipate them actually making ears.  They are lost in a tangle of beans, but the corn made corn!

I picked half the beans, and we ate beans until we were tired of them.  There's still plenty on the vine.  The lettuce, chard, and kale kept us in greens all spring and early summer.  The herbs I started from seed in the greenhouse are monster sized plants that have given us delicious dishes and salad dressings all summer long.  I have a pile of garlic drying in the barn, and sweet potatoes still growing in the ground.  The apple tree is covered in tiny spotted apples, and even the old pear tree in the front yard has a load of pears that will be ready to pick soon.  It's funny that when I list all the foods we grew this year, it sounds like a lot, but when I look at my weedy garden I don't always see the food past the weeds!  

Siblings in Halters and Goat Intimidation

Can you tell they are related?  Now that Hattie is shedding her lighter colored baby fur, she looks more and more like her brother Rufus.  They have the same fuzzy ears, and the same velvety noses.  They squabble over who gets to stand closest to the food, or who gets to be petted, just like siblings do.  A giant horse fly was buzzing around them yesterday, and Hattie practically crawled under her brother trying to escape before she kicked up her heels and raced for the barn.  She does not like horseflies.  

Look - Hattie is wearing her new halter!  It's pink.  You know, for a girl donkey.

Getting the halter on was a big step for Hattie and I.  Luckily for me, she loves sunflower seeds, so I was able to bribe her into wearing the halter.  Now that she can wear a halter, I can more easily wipe her down with the herbal fly repellent.   I made an appointment with the farrier to get both of their hooves trimmed too.  Hattie's eyes are frequently watery, and the tears make tracks down her face.  Her eyes aren't red or gunky, so I'm not sure if she's got allergies, dust in her eyes, fly problems, or something even worse.  Being able to tie her up is going to help me figure out what's going on.  

Little Buck has made his place in the goat herd.  He still gets bossed by the older goats, but he doesn't seem to mind as much these days.  He's pushy, just like Peaches.  I don't know if it's a difference in their breed or their upbringing, but the River brothers are less likely to step on my feet trying to force their way out of the gate when I come in.  Peaches and Little Buck just barge their way right past me, over me, or under me, if they can.  I can see now that I'm going to have to assert myself more in order not be trampled by my growing herd.  I was warned that slapping a pushy goat doesn't do anything but hurt your hand, since they are so bony and hard headed.  Seeing how hard they hit each other lets me know they would be hard to intimidate physically.  They respect the water hose the most, since they don't like to get wet.  I'm about to introduce them to a squirt bottle in order to teach them some manners! Stop stepping on my toes!

Hoards of Hay

Would you just look at all that hay!  That's all hay that we cut from our own fields, stored on two hay racks that Brandon built.  They aren't even completely filled up yet!

As you may remember, we've been making small bales of hay with the home made hand baler.  It makes tidy little square bundles of hay, perfect for stacking.  Baling the hay with the baler is quite, meditative work, that uses plenty of arm strength to load the hay in the top, and to compress the hay into bales.  We filled our available space with bales, and then wondered how we were going to store more.  After all, I used up three giant rolls of hay last winter to feed the goats and donkey, and this year I have an extra goat and donkey to feed.  Thank goodness other folks put their good hay storage ideas on the interweb, right? 

 

Brandon loves a carpentry solution to a problem, so he had the two racks built and partially loaded before I even fully understood what he was planning.  I think each rack cost around sixty dollars for the wood and the tarp, and we hope they will last many years.

Wendigo is an excellent mascot for our haymaking, as she sports a Scythe Supply hat!

There is some danger in making hay.  Danger of bee sting!  In two places in our fields, Brandon has disturbed nests of giant black and white bumble bees while cutting hay.  The bees swarm into the air when they are disturbed by the mower, and Brandon has to make a quick get away.  He's been lucky so far, even once jumping from the stalled out tractor and making a run for it.  I snapped this picture of Brandon as he was gearing up to cut the hay near one of the nests.

I now know why a tractor with a closed in cab would be nice!  

Last evening, as Brandon and I were forking a row of cut and dried hay onto our small trailer, which we pull with the jeep, we were talking about why I love hay so much.  I really do get a thrill from making hay.  I like to bring in a load of garden produce or a pile of eggs too, but I didn't know I would get so much satisfaction from harvesting hay.  I should have known, considering I've always loved plants, and hay is plants.  It's like I'm hoarding up mounds of plants!  And you know who loves plants even more than I do?  

Peaches does!

Mermaids for the Weekend

We got to spend nearly an entire weekend with a couple of mermaids.  Did you know that nieces turn into mermaids when there's a pool to swim in?  It's true!  I spent so much time in the pool with them that I felt like a mermaid myself.

Our adventure started on Friday, when I picked them up at home and we began the long drive to our little farm.  On the way, we stopped at Goodwill for a shopping extravaganza.  They asked me how many things they could get, and I said we should just put everything we wanted in the cart and then see how much we had in the end.  Oh boy, did we shop!  First, we each picked out a purse, and then a wallet to match.  Then we found cute pajamas and some fun t-shirts, which led us to fancy dresses to match the purses.  Shoes, of course, to go with the dresses, and while I perused the kitchen items, they dove headfirst into a giant bin of toys and after much debate made their choices.  Hours later, we left the store with a pile of treasures for about what it would cost to buy one pair of new shoes.  Brandon laughed when my youngest niece walked in the house wearing a bright orange Dollywood hat and carrying a toy riffle.  He said that wasn't what he expected!  

After shopping our hearts out at goodwill, we made a trip to the grocery store to buy food for the weekend.  Brandon and I are still on the elimination diet, so the girls were supportive and agreed to a no sugar weekend.  We loaded up on fruit and broccoli, which they declared was a vegetable they would both eat.  By the end of the weekend, Brandon said he had never eaten so much broccoli in three days!  I tried to hard to make food they liked that was healthy, but I still think they had hot dogs for at least two meals.  Hot dogs plus broccoli.  Feeding kids is a challenge.

We spent a lot of time in the pool, of course, but we also gave the zip line a good workout, and picked some pretty flowers for bouquets.  We made popcorn and watched the Dark Crystal, which is a Jim Henson movie from 1982.  I remember the Dark Crystal from my childhood, and it was creepy.  Turns out, it's way more creepy than I remembered!  The Little Buck seemed to be the favorite farm animal this time, and they wanted reassurance that I wouldn't eat him someday.  No promises.  

They caught a monarch butterfly!  It's the first one we've ever seen at our place, and it was exciting to find.  The girls had fun running around the yard making swipes at butterflies with the butterfly net.  When they would catch one, Brandon would help them put it inside this collapsible mesh insect viewing basket.  Most were released after a few minutes, but we kept the monarch for a few hours so we could show it to Uncle Jamie.  We tried to feed it a watermelon slice, but it wasn't interested.  

I'm glad that all my effort to save the milkweed plants from the mower are starting to pay off. 

Kelp Tongues

Some friends of ours visited recently with their young sons.  When the kids and I went to visit the goats, I brought out some scratch grains that I feed the chickens, and helped the kids give the goats a nibble.  The littlest boy was hesitant to let the slimy looking goat tongues touch his hand, so I held his open palm in my hand and prevented him from retreating so he could experience the full impact of having an animal lick kernels from his fingers.  While Peaches and the River brothers lapped up the grain through the fence with their long sticky tongues, the little boy squealed with a mixture of glee and repulsion and I could feel his entire body shiver and convulse with sheer grossness of feeling those wet tongues lick his little hand.  Ha!  

I ordered a box of kelp meal.  I can't even really remember what I read that convinced me I need some for my goats, but once it arrived, Brandon and I had fun offering the goats and donkeys a taste from our hands.  

They love it.  They squirmed and pushed each other so they could squeeze their faces close enough to our hands to lap it up.  It smells like the beaches of Maine to me, and brings back memories of a fun hiking and camping trip from years ago.

Our little town has very few commercial establishments, but thankfully it does have a Dollar General store (and a liquor store!).   I'm not sure how the dollar store manages to have some of everything, but it does, including small bags of black oil sunflower seeds for feeding the birds.  You know who loves black oil sunflower seeds?  The goats and donkeys!

Even the Little Buck finds his courage when sunflower seeds are offered, and he will brave Peaches displeasure by sticking his tongue out for a taste.  She pulls hard on his ears if she thinks he's getting more than his share.

They look like mamma goat, papa goat, and baby goat.  But they are not.

How could I resist that funny face?  Okay, Peaches, more sunflower seeds coming right up!

I picked the first batch of big tomatoes from the garden yesterday.  The plants are so leafy that I didn't realize the tomatoes were getting ripe until I got down on my knees and peered inside the leaning and tumbled down cages.  This is just the beginning!

But, I Like Sugar!

The nine little chicks that hatched here at home a few weeks ago are out of the coop during the day now, and enjoying the fresh grass and interactions with the rest of the flock.  Eight of them are white with random black feathers, and one is a pretty brown hen with speckles.  The mamma hen has her hands full, keeping them all safe and leading them to tasty bits in the grass.  

They know I'm the food lady now, and when they see me approach they run toward me peeping and begging for food.  I have so many birds to feed that when the whole flock clusters around my feet begging for dinner, I can hardly find a place to step that isn't occupied by a chicken or a guinea.  

Yesterday evening, as Brandon and I prepared to gather up all the hay that had been drying in the field, we could smell rain on the breeze, and see the curtain of rain drops in the distance.  Instead of working on hay, we walked around the farm putting away our tools and admiring the sky as we watched the rain approach.  I was glad that the garden got a shower, but it wasn't very good for my nice dry hay to be rained on.  

We don't always have a sunset, an approaching rain shower, beautiful cloud formations, and a rainbow in a break in the clouds all at the same time!   

Brandon has been working on the exterior trim on the new studio barn addition so we can paint the outside and make sure the wood siding doesn't get ruined by the weather.  He's not supposed to be lifting heavy things while he recovers from surgery, but he's feeling so good that it's hard for him to restrain himself.  

We're both feeling pretty good after more than thirty days on the elimination diet.  There are times when I feel like we might be a little predictable with our meals, since we tend to make the same dishes over and over again, but, we're introducing a new ingredient every three days (today is chocolate!), so it's not always exactly the same.  Brandon has had pretty clear reactions to some foods that we did not anticipate, like pork, and walnuts.  Until we tried cane sugar, I hadn't had any type of reaction.  

I still have a hard time believing this, but I think when I ate the organic cane sugar, in my tea, on my breakfast, on my sweet potato, and in some homemade coconut cookies, my nose got all stuffy.  I couldn't breath well through my nose, like my sinuses were swollen, and my throat felt raw, like it does with post nasal drip.  By the morning of day three with sugar, I was sure I was getting a cold or having a seasonal allergy.  I had two nights of terrible sleep, felt all congested in my sinuses and just generally felt sort of crummy.  Could it really be the sugar?  According to some stuff I read on the interweb, sugar is one of the most pro inflammatory foods that cause sinus congestion.  I stopped eating the sugar after breakfast yesterday, and I slept good last night since I could breath through my nose, and feel much better.  Sugar?!?  Really?  I'm going to test it again in a few weeks.  Maybe it was just a coincidence and I was having sinus problems because of some plant blooming outside or something.  Or maybe I'm in denial - I like sugar!