Monday Dose of Cute: Hangin' with the Big Dogs

This is a low maintenance time of year with the sheep. Breeding season is over, lambing season won't start for another three months (which I know will go by in a flash, it always does), and there's still enough good food out in the pastures so that we don't have to do any supplemental feeding. We're behind trimming hooves, but we're always behind trimming hooves.

If the weather and the grass hold out, we may not have to start feeding any of our homegrown organic hay until winter, which would be really nice. In another few weeks we'll separate out the 15 bred ewes (including the two that I'm afraid aren't pregnant since they were seriously flirting it up with Da Big Guy the other day) and start giving them a daily ration of grain to make sure they're consuming enough calories to sustain the twins and triplets that are probably growing inside most of them. This past lambing season we ended up with 19 live lambs from 9 mamas, and not a single single.

For now, though, the entire flock is fat and happy and living together (minus our ram, Da Big Guy, and his buddy Teddy) with their guard dogs, Daisy and Marta, out in the securely fenced, big front field. This means peace of mind for us, and an easier job for the dogs, since they don't have to worry about any of their sheep wandering off in search of better snacks.

Twice a day I head out front to count and check on everyone and visit with the dogs (and maybe do a little sheep snuggling too). Lately the flock has been resting at the very far end of the field, but I don't mind the hike. With the lovely weather and beautiful autumn color we've been having, this is definitely one of the most enjoyable parts of my day. And it's always more fun when Bear and Bert come along with me.

18 more photos below. . .

Friday Dose of Cute: Have a Relaxing Weekend.

© FarmgirlFare.com, still getting used to the fact that it was 21 degrees this morning. Polar fleece, here we come!

Thursday Dose of Cute: Down at the Sheep Barn

Great Pyrenees livestock guardian Daisy and nine-year-old pet wether Teddy.

Bye, bye, breeding season! These weeks are flying by so fast it's frightening. On August 27th we moved our six-year-old ram, Da Big Guy (born during the 'D' year) in with 15 ewes, and last Thursday we moved him back out. If all went (and goes) well, adorable bouncing baby lambs should start arriving the end of January.

A ewe cycles every 17 days, so we kept the ram in a pen with them for 37 days: two cycles plus a few extra days just in case. Hopefully, though, lambing season won't last nearly that long. Last year nine ewes had 19 live lambs (plus one newborn that died), which was fantastic, but they spread those lambs out over a month.

The idea is to have all the lambs arrive in as short a time as possible, although that doesn't always seem like a great plan when you're short on sleep and babies are being born every time you turn around. But the alternative—endless days of round the clock barn checks with nothing going on—is even more exhausting.

During the past few years we've significantly reduced our flock in an all around effort to simplify our lives and reduce expenses, so besides Da Big Guy and his 15 babes, we had a separate splinter flock this year of just eight sheep: three 2013 lambs that we'll have butchered next spring, three big old pet wethers (they also make great ram companions), my baby Cary (who I decided not to breed again after her first horrible experience), and nine-year-old Silly, a sweet old retired girl who is Da Big Guy's mother.

When we pulled Da Big Guy out last week, we put Teddy (aka Uncle Teddy) in with him and merged the rest of the flock back together.

We combined this merger with a sheep working session, trimming some hooves, running everyone through a zinc sulfate foot bath to treat foot scald (raw spots between the toes from moisture), and giving everybody a dose of organic garlic juice and apple cider vinegar as a natural wormer and all-around health tonic.

More photos and story below. . .

Friday Dose of Farm Dog Cute

Have some good clean fun this weekend.

More Bear? Here.

More Topaz? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, thoroughly washed—and less terrifying than it looks.

Weekend Dose of Hot Dog Cute

More photos below. . .

Wordless Wednesday Big Dose of Farm Dog Cute

14 more photos below. . .

Friday Dose of Cute: Hot Dogs Chillin' Out

We've had over 11½ inches of rain in the past two weeks. I can hear raindrops pattering on the metal roof above my head as I type (one of the best sounds ever), and there are more thunderstorms in the forecast through Tuesday. This never happens in summer. This never happens at all. It's been wonderful. And weird.

The rosemary and lavender plants are very unhappy about their soggy feet (they're now covered with vented plastic laundry baskets in an attempt to keep them from getting any wetter), the 20 tomato plants are looking sicklier by the day, the cherry tomatoes (the only ripe tomatoes in the garden so far) are all cracking, and a lot of rain has fallen inside the leaky Shack, but otherwise things are so far pretty much fine, which is actually kind of a miracle. A lot of places are flooding.

We're thrilled that the hayfield and grazing pastures are getting so much rain after the beating they took during last year's horrendous drought. It's the middle of summer and there's still plenty out there for the sheep and donkeys to eat, with more grass growing up every day. It's hard to believe the farm looked like this last August.

On the way home from an 8-hour errand running trip to town on Tuesday, we stopped to buy 10 pounds of heirloom tomatoes and have a little visit with one of our Amish neighbors. We talked about guinea hens, growing herbs, and of course this crazy weather. I think she figured it out: "We're getting all of last year's rain this year."

As long as we aren't getting next year's rain, that's just fine.

The best part? Our beloved wet weather creek, which usually only runs for a few weeks each year during the winter and/or spring, is swooshing crisp, cool water through the farm during the heat of summer.

10 more photos below. . .

Friday Dose of Anonymous Beagle Cute

Have a delicious weekend.

More beagle Bert? Here.

More farm dogs? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, good to the last lick.

Monday Dose of Random Critter Cute

The only thing sweeter than a bird hitching a ride on the back of a sheep? Three birds on one sheep.

I didn't get around to putting together a Friday Farm Fix last week, but it wasn't for a lack of cute. Here are nine favorite four-footer shots taken around the farm during the past week (sorry, no chickens). Hover your cursor over each image for a description.

More photos below. . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #32

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (sometimes actually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Marta and Daisy snoozing in the creek bed shade during the heat of the day.

Wondering what was happening on the farm this time last year? Check out the Friday Farm Fix #16. (It's so nice to still have grass in the fields this year!)

Hot, hot, hot. That pretty much sums up the first week of summer on the farm, with each day hotter and more humid than the next. We all spent the week just trying to beat the heat.

Thursday night a huge thunderstorm crashed and boomed around us for most of the early morning hours, bringing high winds and a much needed 1½ inches of rain. Thankfully it's a little cooler today, and there's a gorgeous breeze blowing. We may even get some more rain tonight.

After 18½ years in Missouri, this San Francisco Bay Area girl still isn't used to the noise and ferocity of thunderstorms, especially at night. A few years ago I learned that the Pacific coast is one of the few places that doesn't regularly experience thunderstorms. The rare appearance of thunder and lighting was always a big deal when I was a kid. Now I just whimper and snuggle up to my hunky farmguy Joe, then lie awake worrying about things like big trees falling over and how badly (and in how many places) it's raining inside The Shack.

The best part of the week was the daily sightings of a young doe and her spotted twin fawns in the hayfield. This graceful trio has been coming out of the woods near the house each evening, but now we're seeing them in the afternoons too. Mama strolls through the grass, alert at all times, while the babies scamper and play around her.

All week we've been calling each other on the radio announcing "Doe and twins alert! Doe and twins alert!" (These handy little two-way radios are one of our best farm purchases ever; we've been using them every day for years.)

In other (much less cute) wildlife news. . .

18 more farm photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Wednesday Dose of Cute: The Next 30 Days of Yoga Session Starts July 8th!

Get happy, do yoga (no mat required).

Have you been wanting to try yoga, or wishing you could establish (or restablish) a regular yoga practice at home? Marianne Elliott's 30 Days of Yoga: A Lifetime of Well-Being brings the benefits of a yoga class into your own home, and it works. I've taken the course twice, and it really did change my life.

The next session begins July 8th, and registration is open now.

Marianne is an author (her book, Zen Under Fire: How I Found Peace in the Midst of War, was just released in the U.S.), yoga teacher, courage cultivator, and human rights advocate and consultant, as well as a former human rights lawyer in New Zealand and a United Nations peacekeeper in Afghanistan. She created 30 Days of Yoga for herself because she struggled with her own home yoga practice, and her approach is grounded in a radical form of self-kindness.

30 Days of Yoga is a lovingly crafted online course to help you develop and sustain a home yoga practice that adds self-care, kindness, and a greater sense of well-being to your daily life.

There are three different 30 Days of Yoga courses to choose from: the standard version (which I did), one for total beginners, and one for people who think they're too busy to do yoga. The standard version lets you choose from several different yoga practices to suit your needs and goals.

Each course includes daily e-mails and weekly podcasts from Marianne, plus additional special practices, access to a special course site, and an e-book containing all the written materials from the course.

You'll find plenty of support and encouragement (and meet some really neat people from around the world) in the private 30 Days of Yoga Facebook group, which you can remain a part of after you finish the course. You can also request a personal yoga buddy for the 30 days (I'm still good friends with mine).

All the details, including a link to three free sample videos (the yoga for bloggers is wonderful!) are here.

Marianne says that a little bit of yoga every day will not only keep you well, it will also help you stay clear, connected, and courageous—all qualities you need to do your great work in the world. I totally agree. 30 Days of Yoga might be exactly what you need. I know it was for me.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where, as demonstrated here and here, yoga is for everybody.

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #31

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (sometimes actually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Beagle Bert still likes his chicken TV.

Wondering what was happening on the farm this time last year? Check out the Friday Farm Fix #15. (I miss not having all those baby chicks around this year!)

Happy first day of summer! We spent it recovering from cutting the third—and final—section of the hayfield. It's been sweltering this week, which is great for the hay but rough on the hayers.

It felt ironically appropriate to be lugging 148 square bales of hay from the field into the barn on the longest day of the year, since that itchy, exhausting, sweat-drenched job always makes you think that the day is never going to end, especially if you aren't as young as you used to be (which is why we broke down last year and bought a 25-year-old round baler to help out).

But it also feels really good to be done with haying for the year, and to have a nice crop of hay in the barn. The 330 square bales—which we're figuring as 300 since some of them are really light—along with the 26½ big round bales from the second cutting, plus 43 high-dollar square bales of alfalfa leftover from last year, should (knock on wool) be plenty enough for the coming winter and next spring, no matter what might happen.

In comparison, two years ago we put up just under 900 square bales (and had plenty of hay and more sheep), and last year we didn't put up any hay because of the horrendous drought.

This year's hay all looks pretty good, and it's such a relief to know that even if the fields burn up in a summer drought, or the cool season autumn grass doesn't grow, or we get extended periods of early snow on the ground, or there isn't enough rain and the grass gets a late start in spring, the donkeys and sheep will still have plenty to eat. You never know what Mother Nature is going to throw at us.

20 more farm photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #30

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (sometimes actually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Haying round two: cutting the far end of the hayfield.

Wondering what was happening on the farm this time last year? Check out the Friday Farm Fix #14.

I was going to just blow off this week's Friday Farm Fix—seeing as how it's already Sunday afternoon—but while sorting through the past week's photos (so many!) I realized there were some things I wanted to capture and remember, like all that really tall and thick hop clover in the front field. It feels like something out of The Wizard of Oz out there. Picking the first spring green garlic (so good chopped up in tuna salad). Fearless Jasper working on his junior stock dog badge.

And, most importantly, that we put up 26 big round bales of hay. Or, more correctly, that my hunky farmguy Joe put up 26 big round bales of hay. All I did was make lunch, deliver gallons of ice cold fresh mint sun tea and snacks, and drive the truck with the flatbed trailer back and forth when we brought the bales into the haybarn.

The only time I even touched any hay was to help move a bale that had rolled down a slope and onto one of the windrows of raked hay. Compared to the hot and sweaty effort required to bring in square bales, I practically felt guilty.

Putting up round bales is a whole new thing for us, and I'm hoping to write a separate post with more about it, but since I was also planning to put up a separate post about our first 2013 cutting of hay (in square bales) a few weeks ago and still haven't, I figured it might be now or never.

Something I did finally get around to posting this past week is an update on my garden blog about everything that's growing in my organic kitchen garden right now. We've been savoring the last of the beautiful lettuce, lots of green onions, and the first of the spring onions. Also on the menu this week:

29 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Friday Dose of Cute: Have a Happy Weekend.

More photos below. . .

Monday Dose of Big Dog Cute

Happy Marta

Happier Marta

Wishing you a wonderful week.

More Marta? Here and here and here.

More farm dog photos? Here and here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where the joyful urge to fall over and roll around on the ground is reaching epidemic proportions.

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #29

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Lucky Buddy Bear cooling off in the creek.

Welcome to the Saturday evening edition of the Friday Farm Fix! The best news of the week is that last Thursday and Friday's five inches of rain started the wet weather creek running again on Saturday. A week later it's still gently flowing, thanks to another half inch of rain we got on Wednesday, most of which slammed down during a five minute period while I was out in the kitchen garden. I was afraid that if I went inside it would stop, and sure enough it did.

The biggest news of the week is that an enormous black walnut tree fell over in the barnyard during last Friday night's thunderstorm. Sometimes you don't realize just how tall these trees really are until they're horizontal.  Miraculously, nothing was smashed or hurt.

I laid awake half of Friday night worrying about the sheep while the storm raged outside, because we'd locked them in a section of the driveway adjacent to the barn without much protection from the elements. The next morning when I saw the fallen tree, I was so thankful I hadn't sloshed down there through the downpour at two a.m. to let the sheep into the barn and barnyard like I'd contemplated. And, like my hunky farmguy Joe assured me, they weathered the storm just fine where they were.

What else has been going on? Joe brewed a double batch of beer, and I made a double batch of these classic beef Cornish pasties (only this time I added an egg yolk to the crust); they're great to have on hand in the freezer for quick meals. I also bought and froze another four quarts of Amish strawberries to sweeten up our so-healthy-you-feel-virtuous-for-the-rest-of-the-day morning smoothies.

The weather has been hot and sticky (hello June!), so we've been drinking lots of fresh mint sun tea. So refreshing, so easy to make: just stuff a handful or two of fresh mint leaves in a glass jar, fill with water, set in the sun for a few hours, then strain and chill—or serve over lots of ice if you want some right away.

Lemon balm sun tea is wonderful too (you can read more about growing lemon balm along with my five other favorite herbs here). I love these half-gallon wide mouth canning jars and plastic screw-on caps for sun tea and so many other things.

26 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #28

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (mostly on Fridays). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Tiny fawn hidden in the hayfield.

Whew, what a week. In five days we managed to accomplish three big tasks that had been looming over us: clipping poor matted Marta Beast, putting up the first batch of hay, and getting the sheep sheared. I just realized they all have to do with cutting.

Tuesday morning we were so wiped out that we both slept in until 10:30, and that was before the hardest work even started. Then the power was out all Tuesday afternoon (which also means no water pumped from the well), making us even more discombobulated.

Saturday we spent an unplanned four hours wallowing on the ground in the sheep/bunny barn with our new animal clippers and a (thankfully) drugged Marta, who is a 100+ pound mix of three thick-coated livestock guardian dog breeds: Great Pyrenees, Komondor, and Anatolian Shepherd. She's also a big mess. Marta could find a mud puddle in a desert, and unlike her Great Pyrenees partner, Daisy, she wasn't blessed with that amazing self-cleaning gene. She also hadn't been clipped in two years, so this was a real challenge.

The last time we had Marta professionally cut it took them five hours and cost a small fortune. The 80-mile round trip drive wasn't much fun either. So we decided to invest in a good electric clipper—which actually cost less than the last grooming session—and try tackling her ourselves.

I wasn't sure it (and we) would be up to the job, but this little Andis professional clipper outdid itself. If it can handle Marta, it can probably handle anything. She won't be winning any beauty contests (which is our fault, not the clipper's), but she looks much better than she did, and I'm sure she feels a lot better too. (Note for home dog groomers: blowing off the blade every several minutes with compressed air to clean and cool it and then oiling it made a huge difference. We're also going to buy a second blade that doesn't cut as close; parts of Marta are very pink!)

34 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover over each image with your cursor for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #27

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week (usually on Friday). Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Daisy, our seven-year-old Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog, leads the flock down the driveway. (Marta was napping.)

The only thing about starting back up with the Friday Farm Fix is that it's making me realize just how fast the time flies by. It's already Friday again Saturday again?

Here's what's been happening around the farm this week. . .

The highlight was seen from the upstairs bedroom window: a mother doe nursing her itty bitty spotted fawn about 75 feet out in the hayfield. So sweet. You can just make out the baby in the photo below.

The humidity jumped up to 87% in the house and had us turning on the upstairs a/c and wondering how we were going to survive the next four months drenched in sweat, but thankfully we've been given a brief reprieve, with a few beautiful breezy days and sweet cool nights. Temporary bliss. We're gearing up to hopefully start cutting some hay next week if the weather cooperates; it can heat back up all it wants to then.

I spent as much time as I could in the kitchen garden, planting, plotting, mulching, watering, clearing out a few more raised beds, and picking lots of bolting Swiss chard (cold tolerant, heat tolerant, easy to grow!) for the chickens. I've also been marveling at how much farther ahead things were a year ago this week. Look at all that beautiful basil! (The Friday Farm Fixes from this time last year are here and here.)

We signed on for a month of rabbit sitting. So far so good.

We fed about 5,000 ravenous mosquitoes. I think this may be the worst they've ever been, but at least their appearance means we've had a more 'normal' (and much needed) wet spring.

I made yet another version of a yellow cake with easy lemon curd that I've been sporadically working on for the past couple of years. Joe loved it, but I don't think it's quite there yet. At this point I've decided it would probably be easier to simply bake a plain yellow cake and pour the lemon filling over each slice.

23 more photos and the rest of the weekly recap below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #26

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week. Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Incoming!

I'm not quite sure where this past week went, so I'm not quite sure what all we did during it besides a whole bunch of laundry. I think we had some rain; I know we hoped for more.

We said farewell to the wet weather creek, which hasn't run this long in years. Hopefully we'll see it again before next spring.

There was lots of lawn mowing and weed whacking and mulching the raised kitchen garden vegetable beds with green gold (aka grass clippings).

I cooked a fresh ham roast and made a batch of Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Coconut Cookies and a batch of double chocolate chip cookies and baked three Four Hour Classic Parisian Daily Baguettes.

We hooked the 16-foot flatbed trailer up to the '86 pickup and spent 11 hours out buying lumber and groceries and supplies while the new cat, whose name at this point is still That Cat, went to the vet to get tutored (my mother is probably the only one who will get this decades-old Far Side cartoon reference).

We ate big freshly picked Swiss chard and kale chopped salads most nights and had macaroni and cheese with leftover ham three times (I may have made a little too much).

Oh yeah, there were two (!) big black snakes curled up together in one of the nesting boxes in Rooster Andy's coop. Black snakes LOVE fresh eggs. The slithery couple was put in a cooler (which wasn't easy) and relocated to another part of the farm, hopefully far enough away so they don't make their way back. I actually snapped a couple of pictures, but I didn't think you'd want to see them.

And I guess that's about all—or at least all I can remember. The rest is in pictures.

18 more photos below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .

Tail End of the Week: Get Your Friday Farm Fix #25

Welcome to the Friday Farm Fix, a sporadic series where I share a random sampling of what's been happening around the farm during the past week. Just joining us? You'll find all the previous Friday Farm Fix posts here and here.

Hay inspectors back on the job.

It's been quite a while since I posted the last Friday Farm Fix, but the other day Joe and I were talking about how much we both miss this series. We love being able to look back and see everything that was happening around here during a specific week, and I confess to sometimes including extra photos especially for us.

This time I thought I would also a list of some of the things we've been doing around the farm, for those of you who are interested. If you've been missing your Friday Farm Fix, I hope you enjoy this cute-filled, spring green installment.

So what's been happening on the farm during the past week? We've been busy. . .

—Eating giant freshly picked kale and Swiss chard salads nearly every night.

—Splashing through the creek.

—Worming the sheep and trimming some hooves.

—Planting 10 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes (the 5 pounds of Pontiac Reds already in the ground and a few inches tall froze this week but should hopefully make a full recovery).

—Reorganizing the walk-in pantry (it looks and feels so much better in there!)

—Cracking up at our new farm cat (a proper introduction will hopefully be coming soon, maybe when he gets a real name).

—Getting invaded by armadillos (including one that almost dug its way into the shop, which is attached to the house, the other night at 10pm).

—Enjoying the unseasonably cool (mostly under 80°) and beautiful mid-spring weather.

—Locking seven wayward, disappointed donkeys back in Donkeyland (I told you they'd start misbehaving).

—Stopping to smell the lilacs.

—Trying to fix the broken sickle bar mower and the little antique diesel tractor so they're ready for haying season (with a minor head wound to Joe and a sledgehammer to my finger in the process—ouch).

—Celebrating the much needed rain and hoping it keeps on coming.

—Polishing off the third (!) batch in a row of these addictive (and almost too easy to make) Baby Chocolate Chip and Toffee Shortbread Cookies (hint: you can double the recipe).

—Loving all this gorgeous green.

16 more photos below (hover your cursor over each image for a description). . .