Friday Farm Photo: Have a Peaceful Weekend.

Any plans this weekend? Joe is finishing up replacing the ratty pine construction stairs we've been living with for nearly five (!) years in our "new" house with the locally made oak boards that have been beautifully finished and sitting around for nearly five (!) years. What an upgrade.

I'm hoping to transplant about 40 heirloom tomato seedlings into larger containers since I don't have space for them in the kitchen garden yet. I also need to figure out where to put several pounds of seed potatoes and at least a couple of rows of haricots verts. All that fall/winter bed prep I'd planned to do never happened!

Meanwhile I'm listening to far off thunder rumble and waiting for some much needed rain to start falling any minute (this photo was taken yesterday) while planning meals of eggs, eggs, eggs, and salad greens, salad greens, salad greens (spinach, Swiss chard, beet greens, three kinds of kale, six kinds of lettuce, and some very happy arugula that I'm pretty sure is getting bigger by the hour). I've been craving yellow cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting, and it's time to bake some more hearty loaves of sourdough sprouted rye.

The still very woolly sheep and the donkeys will (finally) be eating grass, grass, and grass. More decluttering and spring cleaning (two year round pursuits) are on the agenda as well; not my favorite things, but it always feels so good once you're done. I'm hoping for a quiet, cozy, and productive weekend at home on the farm, which is just the kind I like.

Friday Farm Photo: Have a Colorful Weekend.

Any plans this weekend? I'm hoping to spend some time in the kitchen garden sowing a bed of Swiss chard and cucumber seeds (did I really order five different varieties this year?), finally getting the rest of my poor tomato and pepper seedlings in the ground (can you tell I'm a little behind?), pulling approximately 3,000 more weeds, and mulching everything I can with grass clippings—now that it's finally dry enough out there to cut the grass—and that wonderful, nutrient-rich manure/bedding hay from the sheep barn.

I'll also be savoring the fact that our hayfield no longer looks like it does in the photo above because there are 225 square bales of hay now stacked in the barn (we didn't cut the entire field, just what you see here). We'd hoped to get a lot more bales, and it's not the best hay we've ever put up, but it's nowhere near the worst.

Fortunately we still have a lot of big round bales left over from last year (because for the first time we cut Donkeyland as well as the hayfield) so no matter what Mother Nature throws at us this fall and winter, we should hopefully have enough hay to keep the sheep and donkeys fed well into next spring.

Even so, depending on the weather, the rain fall, and what grows up in the hayfield over the next month or two, we may try to go ahead and put up some more round bales just in case. Because if you have a farm full of grass eaters, an always unpredictable climate, friends and neighbors with herds of cows but no hayfields of their own, and some room still left in the haybarn, there's really no such thing as having too much hay.

Wondering how you put up hay? Have a look here and here and here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, hanging out on the bright side of life.

Sunday Farm Photos: Oops.

Looking out the bedroom window yesterday morning.

More photos below. . .

Friday Farm Photo: Have a Lovely Weekend.

Morning view out the bedroom window (taken on 10/25; that tree is bare now).

More hayfield? Here.

More farm landscapes? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where white-tailed deer have taken over the hayfield. On Wednesday morning we even saw four big bucks at once. This evening Bert and Bear started barking like crazy at three does up close to the house; all three of them just stood there staring at us. Mom and the twins are still out there and doing just fine; we see them nearly every day. The babies are almost grown up!

Friday Farm Photo: Have a Beautiful Weekend.

After a brief rainstorm yesterday.

More hayfield photos? Here.

More farm landscapes? Here.

© FarmgirlFare.com, shiny and bright, not a coyote in sight—but we can hear them howling out there all night.