Hunker Down and Plan for the Future

With things turning from Summer, to somewhat skipping Fall and heading straight into Winter (we've already had snow!), there aren't a lot of updates to share with all of you. Our chickens continue to give us eggs, but have slowed, with the shorter days and colder weather. The animals are all doing well. We borrowed Zero, an alpine buck, to freshen our ladies. Zero was on loan from the farm farm that bought Herb, Fauna and Blanche from us. If I haven't mentioned that farm, that family, before, I should. They are wonderful people. They have a ton of kids, a combination of natural and adopted (including a number of special needs adoptions). They are so helpful to us, letting us borrow Zero, at no cost... I believe he got to Mabel and Ethel...and unfortunately goats can be escape artists and I worry that he got to Flora (she has a bad leg, and I worry about her being pregnant), and the angoras (does the world need more angora/alpine crosses?). These animals aren't our pets (although we treat them as kindly and lovingly as our pets), they are here for purpose. We need to figure out a better solution for when we have a visiting buck...separate pasture maybe? We continue to work to figure things out.
It is getting close to Thanksgiving, which means two of our four turkeys are short-timers. The question has been asked if it will be difficult to let them go. My response is that, it's never going to be easy to process animals. They are living creatures, they have faces and personalities. We weren't brought up raising our own food...but am I going to let those feelings stop me from enjoying home-grown turkey come Thanksgiving....no! The purpose of those two turkeys was food. They were meant to be eaten and that's what will happen. We have discussed the option of taking them somewhere to be processed. I think that will be the option we choose. Rather than doing the processing ourselves. Time and, I'm not going to lie, emotions, may keep us from doing it. But it must be done.
I was asked if I ever feel down about the limited comments made to this blog. I really don't. It's mostly for us to keep a log of what is going on around here. To keep track of our lessons learned or to be able to look back and see where we were, compared to where we are (so glad we aren't ghetto apartment dwellers any longer). So while I hope that this blog grows and it'd be nice to get additional readers, I'm happy to just have this space...to remember.
....and speaking of growing...Mark and I are trying to figure out what our future looks like here. We are happy with where we are, for the moment, but are always looking to improve. We have oh so many projects that need to be completed around here (the barn, the coops, the parking area etc etc) and we will continue to make those spaces what we want. It's just difficult to find times when we are blessed with both the time and money to complete these tasks. Our focus was lost for a bit last year, but now we've refocused. Once we have some of the major tasks completed, we plan on paying our knowledge forward. So what does that mean?? Well, the plan, at this time, is to transition this place into a learning center. We'd like to start developing lesson plans, to create a variety of classes for children, adults and families. Learning anything from processing chickens to knitting a hat. In addition, we can use the learning space to create a little shop to help support the farm....eventually selling goat's milk and honey soaps, lotions a lip balm...other honey products, including pollen and candles and hopefully some fiber items. I also see this space as a way to support some friends of Fresh Egg's...showcasing our friends talents, referring to farms that have helped us (Spruce Hill, for angoras and Marushka Farm, for sheep etc) and develop a list if resources for services, for people just starting out (county extension offices, quality feed and hay providers, livestock processing places and shearers etc). I've been working on building a website (separate from this blogspot space) and we are going to be launching (hopefully) in a year or so. We'll be taking this time to plan, build out the class list, locate educators (for topics for the "learn with us" series) and finishing the property to make it a safe and pretty space for visitors. In addition to classes (something that lasts for a few hours), we've talked about adding week-long 1/2 day or full day "camps" for school age kids, along with "Fresh Egg's To Go" lesson plans to cater to the needs of our local schools to meet their core curriculum standards and finally, work with some homeschooling networks to offer classes to meet their curriculum needs. It's all a work in progress and we know things could change, but as long as there is interest, we believe we have the skills to make it a success. It would be great to do this to help supplement our income and to help those that are just like us, wanting to learn some of the skills, that generations before us survived on.

Thieves!

So I mentioned (in my Honey post, about our extraction party) how we noticed that our bees were being robbed. Bees from surrounding hives were taking advantage of weakness in our hive and robbing them blind, leaving them honeyless for the winter. It didn't help that we took seven pounds from them - but better us get some than those nasty thieves! We assumed this was most certainly a death sentence for our colony. It still might be, they might be done for, but we are trying to take a stand against those bees. So how can you help a colony that is under attack???
Lessons we've learned:
1) Entrance Reducer: we did not have an entrance reducer on our hive - we had left the entire width of the hive open, leaving roughly 18 inches of space that the guard bees have to defend. It's just too hard for a hive that is already in jeopardy. Our hive kit came with a wooden entrance reducer that allows us to select various sizes of entrance - we chose the smallest size, approximately an inch, thus giving the guard bees a significantly smaller space to defend.
2) FEED!: we need to replace that honey that they've lost. It's not as simple as giving them back their honey (plus, we want to enjoy the fruits of their labor)...so we need to give them a replacement food source. The easiest way to give them instant food is making a 2:1 sugar/water mix. We put 4 cups of sugar in a saucepan with 2 cups of water and dissolved the sugar. Once the mixture cooled a bit, we poured it into a ziplock bag and took it to the hive. We added a super on top of the hive and placed the baggie of sugar water on top of the frames below. We jabbed a few holes into the bag, so the bees can access that food and hopefully calm them down a bit.
3) Continued Feeding: Since we don't have an actual "feeder" we ordered a hive component that is specifically for feeding (to replace the baggie, a more permanent/reusable option) - hopefully that will arrive shortly. Additionally, we need to find a food source that isn't just sugar/water. Bees need a well balanced diet too, while they may survive on carbs (like we would with bread and water), they won't be as healthy as they could be. We've found a couple of recipes - I'm not sure what the best option would be.
We are thinking of doing something like this for the water:
:: 5 cups water
:: 2 1/2 pounds of sugar
:: 1/8 teaspoon lecithin granules (used as an emulsifier)
:: 15 drops spearmint oil
:: 15 drops lemongrass oil
Additionally, they need a protein source. I've been looking online and I think we are going to try something like this:
Makes 6 (1 lb) patties:
3/4 C. pollen
2 1/2 C. hot water
5 1/2 C. sugar
6 1/3 C. brewer's yeast
Perhaps add some Vitamin C to the mix? I'm not sure. But we should be able to mix this into a thick substance and roll it into patties. We can put one on the hive and save the rest in the freezer, until we need it.
We want strong, survival of the fittest bees - we want to help them come along, but they should be able survive without medication etc.
We'll let you know how things go and if they survive the winter then we'll be looking for a strong hive for next year. If they don't make it, we'll know that we gave them a fighting chance and will start again with a new colony (or three!).

Cora's Egg Salad

So this family...we're big fans of egg salad sandwiches, and now that we have eggs galore, we thought we'd make up a batch of Cora's famous egg salad. We let our kids find and try out recipes and this one just stuck - it's so so good.
We took 18 of our farm fresh eggs and boiled them up - we increased this recipe by 1/2 and it was gone by the next day!!! YUM!!

Ingredients:
½ C. Mayonnaise
1 ½ tbsp Dill
1 Small Chopped Onion
1 ½ Tbsp Chopped Pickles
1 ½ Tbsp Mustard
½ tsp Pepper
¼ tsp Salt
12 Eggs

Directions:
Hard boil the eggs. While you are waiting for the eggs, mix all other ingredients together in a medium size bowl. Once eggs are hard boiled, peel and chop eggs into small bits. Add eggs to mayo mix. You can eat right away, but it’s even better the next day.

The trickiest part of the whole process is boiling/peeling fresh eggs. Did you know that the eggs that you get from the store are usually a week or two old? The bonus about older eggs is that they are easier to peel. Since our eggs are just a couple days old - if we were to boil our eggs the standard way, it would be hard to peel and we'd lose a lot of the whites, since they'd peel off with the shell. So I searched the interwebs to find the perfect way to boil fresh eggs and found it HERE!! Let me tell you - it worked! Our eggs came out beautiful - beautiful enough to use for deviled eggs! I'll never go back to the old way!
Enjoy!

HONEY!

Part of what we are doing here at Fresh Egg's Farm is not only learning for ourselves, but sharing with others. It's so neat to open our home up to people that are interested in beekeeping themselves or just want to learn about the process. This past Sunday we had our first ever Honey Extraction Party!!! Including our family, we had about 20 people here, all seated around our dining room table (so happy our dining room can fit all those people!) - listening and learning. We brought out our gear and broke down a beeless hive. We talked about some of the problems that bees/hives/colonies can have, in general, and problems we've had specifically with our bees.
If you've read this blog or followed along on Facebook, you've seen some of the problems we've experienced with our bees...we started this Spring with two hives, two nuks - a "nuk" is a five frame mini-hive. Essentially, we purchased two somewhat existing hives in order to give them a head start - they were to have a working queen, brood (bee babies), built out frames and we were to add them to a 10-frame hive and start from there. We had started with what we called "the good hive" and "the bad hive". Needless to say the bad hive had a failure to launch. We tried to feed them, add bees and requeen and nothing seemed to work for them...and one day, they completely collapsed. Within a two week period we went from "maybe they have a chance" to dead, gone, robbed (by other bees). It was sad, but at least we had this other hive, the good hive, that seemed to be going gangbusters. They took advantage of the Spring honey/nectar flow and built out some of their hive with honey, instead of brood. They were strong. It was fascinating to watch the front of their hive - always bustling with activity. Just a couple of weeks prior to the extraction party, we pulled out these beautiful capped frames. The super (the top honey storage box that contains short frames, which makes for easier handling and extraction) was FILLED with honey, so much so that we put on another box, just in case. There were many deep frames that were filled with honey too. When I talked to the leader of our beekeeping club, he estimated that there would be 20-25 pounds of honey in the super and about 9 pounds of honey PER FRAME of the deeps that we had. He suggested that we pull out 4 of them and extract the honey out. Doing that kind of math, my eyes turned golden at the thought that we might be pulling 50-60 POUNDS of honey off this hive. What an amazing extraction party that would be - we'd have plenty of honey to harvest, store for ourselves, share with others and perhaps even sell.
I went home and put on a bee escape - which is essentially a board that has a circle on the top and a maze of sorts on the bottom - the bees are able to crawl down, but can't figure out their way back up (in theory). We went the next morning to pull off the super and those 4 deep frames and were disappointed. The bee escape seemed to work - many of the bees were out of the super and the job of pulling off those frames was fairly easy - but as we started to work through the super, we noticed that the frames weren't fully capped, as they had been. Almost like the bees had started to break into their honey storage already - which didn't make sense. This honey was just meant as reserves and shouldn't be touch unless the bees have gone through their winter storage below and are in desperate need of honey.
As we started to go through the deep - we noticed how light it was, each frame we pulled out was nearly empty. WHAT HAPPENED!?!?!? We were saddened and confused and oh...no...we were having an extraction party the next day and what if we had NO honey to share. We watched the front of the hive to see if we could see something, a clue as to what was going on. After closer inspection, we noticed strange behavior - there seemed to be a wrestling match on the"landing pad" of the hive. Bees were literally pinning each other down and throwing each other down and kicking some of the bees out of the hive. Our hive was being robbed. Jerks. Apparently there is a strong colony (maybe a feral one??) nearby and found our hive, that since they we are a newer hive (weaker hive), the stronger colony decided to take advantage of this "free honey source" and attached our hive. Ugh. Heartbreak. At this point, I don't think there is anything we could do. It's so late in the season to try to requeen (did I mention that the queen is gone from this hive too). We've learned some valuable lessons from beekeeping this year. I know some things that we'll do different next year. Yes, we've already decided that there will be a next year. We enjoy the bees. And now, more than ever, we realize how fragile these beautiful pollinators are. We plan on expanding our hives and building out three hives/colonies for next year (at least that is the plan).
We debated not having the party - but then thought, no, this happened for a reason. This is a way to share the message about how fragile bees are, to talk about the importance of these pollinators for our food. Without bees, we don't eat.
So friends, old and new, and even some strangers, who became friends, came to our home, on a rainy Sunday afternoon and talked animals, birds and bees (get your mind out of the gutter :-) ).
Here are some photos from the day:

Talking about the frames and breaking down the hive.

Here's a deep frame, with foundation only.

Notice the deep gouges in the wax? This isn't good - I'm not sure if this is from the robbing activity or if something else is happening. That a question for beekeeping club.

Uncle Dave and Cousin Rhett - checking out the frames.

My girl, Lissa. See the mess that something made on that frame. Frustrating.

Josh holding up a frame of foundation only and another frame that has comb and honey. Definitely a surprising difference in weight.

Lissa, modeling the capped honey frame vs foundation only frame.

Mark - making sure that the extraction is put together correctly. In the forefront, you can see some of hive tools, including our beloved smoker.

Super Model! I should have put this on and modeled my lovely beekeeping attire, but it was hot and frankly - I know it isn't a good look for me. LOL

 

Mark, modeling his classy member only/london fog 80's style jacket that he wears for beekeeping. SEXY!

Our beekeeping club has three different ways to uncap the cells - a heat gun, a heat knife and a standard serrated. They wanted us to test which way we liked best. This is me demonstrating the heat gun - it worked well. It uncapped without too much damage to the cells. The con: it's nice to have some cappings - why? it offers a nice taste of honey (kinda like wax bottles from when we were kids) and it you'd like to make candles etc. it provides you with a collection of wax to save up. It also uses electricity and our goal is to minimize our electricity usage. So while this is a good option, we probably won't utilize it.

A nice view of the heat gun uncapping.

Almost ready for the extractor.

Mark using the heat knife. This seems to be somewhat of the standard these days. We aren't fans. It doesn't really add anything to the experience for us. It cuts similar to the standard knife and if we needed heat, we could place the standard knife in warm water in between cutting.

Mark using the standard knife. Our favorite. It's natural. It's non-electric. It does the job.

Asking if anyone else wants to try uncapping - Emily (our new friend and photographer - THANKS EMILY!!!!) was the first taker.

Beautiful job Emily!

Look at those wax caps just rolling down the frame. MMMM!

We collected the wax cappings in a bowl and shared with everyone around the table.

Lissa digging in and uncapping.

Here's a look inside the extractor - bits of wax stuck on the sides - but if you look at all that golden liquid on the bottom - that is PURE, RAW, AS LOCAL AS YOU CAN GET HONEY!!!! From our backyard!!!!!!

Another honey picture! Look at that rich, golden color. Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?? This is such an excited sight to us.

The bottom of the extractor has a gate on it - it allows us to easily pour the honey out of the extractor and strain it through two levels of strainer. If you are doing this on your own - make sure that the bucket you pour into is a food grade bucket.

This picture, excites me, makes me proud, makes me hungry :-) I love watching the honey flow out. It's just gorgeous!

Our new friends Emily and Little D :-) Modeling our takeway honey bears. He was so excited to have his very own bear filled with honey. CUTE!!!!

SO where did we end up? We got just over 7 pounds of honey. Not the 50-60 pounds that we could have had, but still seven more pounds of backyard honey than we had last year. Everyone that came to the party got one of these two ounce bears to take home and these are the leftovers. We figured we'd give one to each neighbor and have honey for us. I am thankful to the bees that worked so hard for this honey. I'm thankful for the roomful of friends and family that came and shared this experience with us. I look forward to next year!!!!!!

Because I want to remember...

It's seems like I haven't been in the mood to post lately. I think there are a few factors to this...work has been busier than normal...good busy, but busy nonetheless, home life is always a dance, balancing that work, family, and farm. I suggested to a friend/fellow blogger this morning that sometimes writing a blog post will help you/force you to remember the good things in life...and maybe it will help you move past some of the bad. I thought I would take a moment or two to go through some of the things that have been going on around Fresh Egg's Farm.

I feel like the farm offers us some consistency in our lives. No matter what else we have going on, the animals will need fed/watered/hayed, the garden grows and the lawn needs mowed etc. etc. etc. I'm thankful for that, although at times it's stressful to be in the middle of another project (or blog post) and realize that the goats are bahing for their food and to be let out. I force myself to make time for pasture, from time to time - because I realized that for a bit, I was more or less going through the motions of feeding and letting them out to pasture and not stopping to enjoy them. Now, I make sure that, when I can make time for it, I spend at least a few minutes in the pasture, talking with my animals, scratching their heads, giving them hugs and snuggles and laughing at their antics. They make me happy.

Our birds are FINALLY acting like real chickens! Each day, it's like an Easter egg hunt at our farm. While we have two nesting boxes, which they seem to want to sit in together and fight over, someone (ahem, Andy, our Blue Andalusian...I'm looking at you here), likes to find her way into the turkey's side of the coop and lay her eggs over there. I don't know if the egg laying sneaks up on her and she just doesn't think to get to the nest in time or what...crazy bird. I did have the opportunity to watch her lay an egg though. This time, she was in the nest, I thought something might have been happening and she kept getting comfortable and then wiggling around and repositioning and the next thing I know - she pushes out an egg! I've never witnessed that before. What an honor and an amazing thing to watch. We are getting lots of eggs now - which is AWESOME...but you know what...life has been so busy, we haven't even had the opportunity to TRY them. Can you believe it? My plan is to make some sort of lovely egg dish for dinner tomorrow, so we can all try them together. It's very exciting for us. The eggs are light brown, dark brown and white...hopefully soon we'll get some of the Easter eggers (they lay blue/green eggs) and can round out the look of our egg carton.

Our garden is better this year than it has been in the past - although we still got it in too late and I know some serious changes we need to make...I'm excited about future gardens. We got lots of tomatoes from the garden, although we could have gotten more, if we had staked up the plants like we should have...next year. We finally got some pumpkins - which will make sweet decorations and maybe a pie or two (yay fall), although we've learned about trellising and will likely trellis the pumpkins and squash...next year. We've also seen super cute trellis options for beans and such (I think Mark is going to be busy, building trellis options for our garden...I'll help, but he is super builder). Garlic and potatoes were great too, although we know that we could get a better crop with a few adjustments. Next year, our gardens will be different and better.

In extremely exciting news...we are getting ready to harvest honey for the very first time. We have decided to open this experience up to anyone that wants to come out. I hope we'll have a few takers that want to learn about the experience with us. The plan is to take off all the honey frames either the day prior or earlier in the day of extraction, so that the likeliness of someone (other than us) getting stung is limited. Yesterday we got our bottles - we decided to get a case of the 2# glass jars and a box of 50 of the 2 ounce little bears. The bears are more of a sample size and the 2# will be for us and if we have extra to sell. I have no idea how much we will even be able to pull off of the hive...I'm hoping for a billion pounds, but we'll likely get around 20 :-) I'll share another blog post after the extraction party.

So I've had to force myself to look at all of this good, because we also had something extremely terrible happen here. Our LSG (livestock guard dog), Ollie, passed away, extremely tragically and unexpectedly. He had been digging his way out of the pasture lately and we were afraid that he'd get into the road, so we made the decision to put him on a long lead, that would allow him to go between the barn and the pasture. Unfortunately, he tried to jump a portion of the fence that we'd been using as a makeshift barn door and got hung up and ended up hanging himself. The boys and I were coming home from picking up the boys from school and as we drove down the driveway, we saw his body hanging from the fence...we thought he was just struggling...but he was already gone. Our hearts are broken. His body is being cremated and his ashes will be spread under the bush where he liked to lay with his flock.

To end this post on a happier note, I want to remember this past weekend. Mark gave me a weekend getaway, for my birthday. He purchased a weekend pass, for each of us, to attend the Mother Earth News Fair, in Seven Springs, PA.  First, Mark and I have only been away, on our own - without kids, without it being for work etc., since we've been married - well, this is the third time. In 17 years. We even spent a portion of our honeymoon visiting with our older daughters (their bio-mom still had custody, at the time). So, when I say "We needed this time away" - you know I'm speaking the truth. Second, the weather was a perfect way to enter into Fall. The air was crispy and cool, with hints of the warm sun shining through. A thunderstorm and heavy rain made for perfect snuggle weather on Saturday. We watched the leaves turn colors over the few days that we were there from just a touch of orange here and there to bright oranges and reds streaking through the entire treeline. It's such a beautiful area. We were happy with the hotel and the food we ate. It was such a nice time...But finally, it was awesome because of the content of the Fair. It is a three-day event, at a ski-resort, in PA - there are vendors, both inside and out, showcasing their sustainable living goods. Throughout the day, they offer many breakout sessions with a WIDE variety of topics - from authors highlighting the content of their books to seed saving to live poultry slaughter/processing and everything in between. We walked away from the event with a renewed sense of excitement about our farm and our journey. We've been second guessing our poultry slaughtering methods - but when Daniel Salatin, yes, SALATIN, as in Joel Salatin's son, as in Polyface Farms fame - processes chickens, using the exact same method that we do, I think we are good. And when the person teaching how to make goat milk chevre cheese, is also using the exact method we do, again, we are good. In addition, it got us thinking about the future of the farm. We, as stated above, need to better set up our garden - perfect our seed starting and saving processes, perfect our planting/transplanting methods, add/take advantage of all our spaces by putting in cold frames and raised beds etc. While we are perfecting our gardening methodologies, we need to also perfect our "putting up" methods. When we were at Mother Earth News Fair, we had the privilege to listen to Niki Jabbour - "The Year Round Vegetable Gardener" author and Sherri Brooks Vinton - "Put 'Em Up" author and look forward to ordering their books. While we were there, we bought some delicious kettle corn and maple syrup. We bought Gage some tea - he's been getting into the idea drinking more natural herbal teas. For Cora, we got her a bunch of seed packets to get her started on her bee garden - she wanted a garden of her very own and I think that giving her the bee garden will help her understand pollination, beauty, bees, seasons etc. Drake was honored with a gift from a vendor. The gentlemen were so impressed with Drake's confidence (his willingness to crochet on the bus, without fear of being made fun of etc.) that they gifted him a skein of beautiful light olive green yard (50/50 mohair and wool)...he has already made a hat with the yarn and it's really cute...so "him". Finally, it was good for me to see some excitement from Mark, about our farm. He's so even tempered that I'm not always sure what he thinks of all this craziness, but he seemed just as pumped about most things as I felt. Which makes me even more excited.
...and these are just a few of the things that I want to remember.

Sept. 1, 2013

Whew - I finally have a moment to sit and write. What a crazy past couple of months we have had. I'm not sitting because here is nothing left to do and I've checked everything off my list, it's more like my body said, "yea, you're done" and gave me dizzy spells this morning - so I won a nap and an afternoon on the couch, resting. I get it, I've been pushing too hard. Not enough sleep, lots of work, lots of go-go-going. I'm thankful for this moment and the relaxation, although, my mind is racing with all of the things I should be doing/want to be doing. Here's some of the things we've been up to...

My work has been insanely busy lately. I manage a program and have one staff member reporting to me. She has been shipped off to another one of our programs for a few months, which means I am left to work both her job and mine. In addition, we've been up to our elbows putting together a proposal to continue my program for another two years - the proposal was submitted Friday afternoon and fingers crossed, I will be working here for another couple of years!!! (although, I have got to do something about these 12 hour days)

Speaking of work, my company has invested in a number of employees, working to gain our PMP (Project Management Professional) certification. In order to take the exam, we need to have a certain amount of Project Management experience, logged training hours etc. My company hired an organization to provide us with a project management training seminar, which is AWESOME - but it also meant two trips to Portland, OR. I spent a few days in Portland, came home for a week and spent a few more days in Portland. I got to spend time with some of my co-worker/friends. It was a great time, with lots of learning, but I missed my family SO much, I always do when I'm gone. 

As most of you know, Mark finally got a full time teaching job, working as a Second Grade teacher. SO EXCITING! But it also means that we needed to sort through the previous teacher's MANY, MANY years of teaching supplies and try to make his room his own. He picked an ocean theme (perfect to represent our previous years in Florida). During that week home from Portland, I'd spend all day working and then head over to Mark's class and help him until late at night, getting him classroom set up. By the time open house hit, it looked amazing!! Now he's been teaching for a couple of weeks and doing a great job!

The day after tomorrow, the kids go back to school. I find it unbelievable that Gage is going to be a sophomore, Drake in seventh and Cora is going into 4th. Our kids keep growing into these awesomely amazing people, right before our eyes. I'm a proud mama and so excited to see how this year goes for them. I'm sure that they will do great. Drake and Cora are going to be students in brand new buildings. We were able to tour them this past Friday - and they are AWESOME...with air conditioning and everything!!! This summer has been a bit of a whirlwind - Cora had her concussion and most recently had her tonsils and adenoids removed (just a day or so before I left for my first trip to Portland). I worried so much about her while I was gone - but she is a very strong little girl. She healed up nicely and is back to her old self. Gage and Drake have transitioned from boys to young men over the summer - they have both grown leaps and bounds. Gage is already taller than me and Drake is getting close. Crazy.

This summer we've had the awesome fortune of eating much of our own fruit. We've had black caps galore, our first apples (EVER!), a few handfuls of peaches (AKA the most delicious peaches I've ever had!), a pear is hanging on the tree, nearly ready for picking and all the remaining trees are healthy as can be. We even have a number of baby lemons growing on our lemon tree - which I cannot believe, since we just bought it and replanted it in the spring. We've enjoyed strawberries (after we realized the damn turkeys were eating them all, before we could get to them). It's been a great year for fruit.  Soon, we'll be harvesting walnuts and it looks like some pecans too!


Finally, let's talk chicken...those little b!t$#es are holding out on us. We should be getting eggs, we've provided them plenty of daylight and outside space, we've built in lovely nesting boxes, that get ignored, I mean, that's cool...we'll just keep feeding you ladies. We'll go capture you when you escape your yard area and want to discover areas of "Narnia"(the wooded area near our house). You just hold out and not worry about giving us the eggs...because ya' know...it's not like it's your purpose on our farm. Grr...Hopefully soon.

Hope all of you are doing well in blogland. Rumor has it that Fall is coming soon...you ready?

I'm alive

Wow, it's been a bit since I posted. We're still alive...just in the thick of it with everything life is throwing at us. Things that we've realized this year - shearers are hard to come by. We had the perfect one - one that shears all types of animals and is priced just right and...he got into a disagreement with his brother/shearing partner and won't travel out this way any more. I contacted everyone listed on the shearing list and couldn't find anyone to help us out. So we put an ad in craigslist to see if we could get someone out here. After a few days, we got a call from a gentleman that said his wife/girlfriend could shear, although was inexperienced with larger animals (aka: alpacas) - we explained how nice and sweet our girls are (and how sassy Josie can be) and they came out. Except they came out with dog clippers...UM...that's not going to work. They tried anyway - got through 1/2 of Frankie before quitting for the night. They said they were going to invest in a pair of shearers and come back...which they did...but without the right blades and combs...but they tried anyway. We got through Frankie, Itty and Jester - but still have Steve, Josie and Blossom to go. They left for the night and never came back. SO...back to the drawing board. I think we need to learn to shear. That's right folks, we are going to add to our seemingly never ending list of "what else can we do" and learn the process of shearing animals, correctly. It's a bit of an investment - a shearer is around $300, plus each animal type requires their own set of cutters and combs. Oy! and time, did I mention how much time it'll take for each animal? We'll figure it out.
I have so much more to tell...but we'll need to wait for more time to sit and gather thoughts. Just thought I'd let everyone know I'm still alive.