I woke up this morning
Looked out my door
I can tell my milk cow
I can tell by the way she lows
If you see my milk cow
Won’t you drive her on home?
I ain’t had no milk and butter
Since my cow been gone

So if you haven’t figured it out by my choice of song quotes this morning, Rosemary’s gone missing. She’s been in the backyard behind a strand of electric poly wire and really, she’s practically on the honor system with the electric fence, because, while she finds it mildly annoying, she doesn’t hate it. This is the first time she’s ever gone anywhere, though; usually she comes to the house and hangs around, looking for company. I’m afraid that this time she’s off looking for bovine company. We looked for her last night until it got too dark, and we’ll go looking again this morning. Except I’m not positive how you go about looking for a cow. She doesn’t come when called. She doesn’t even moo when called. She’s lost her collar and bell, so we won’t be able to hear her. It almost sounds like she was planning this, doesn’t it?

Last night our neighbor S* had a party. Her sweetie T*’s 1966 Dodge Coronet turned forty this year (coincidentally, so did T*, but that had nothing to do with the party, of course). The Coronet was decked out in flowers and a huge party hat—sort of a car shrine—and offerings of beer and other booze were piled in front of it. S* had a cake made with an image of the Dodge in icing, and we actually all stood around and sang Happy Birthday to a car.

S* and T*’s place is magical, especially this time of year. The flowers and all of S*’s whimsical touches—two pairs of leather boots hanging on the porch with petunias growing out of them, a chandelier on the front porch covered with glass bracelets from India, a 1913 Victrola cranking out scratchy Prussian waltzes—there is so much to enjoy, and it’s all so pretty.

We could’ve walked down there, but coming home I was glad we didn’t.

It’s been nearly a year since we bought this place—we closed at the end of August—and I don’t know if I’ve ever fully expressed how much it was like winning the lottery. The farm itself, of course, but even more the neighbors. Moving in next door to T* and S* (and G* and K*) has truly been a dream come true, and we all four give thanks every day.

Lughnasahd/ Lammas was last week, but the weather was so heavy and hot that it was hard to talk about the beginning of autumn. It’s still too hot, but I’m noticing the changes just the same. After all, the seasons are more than just temperature, as we had better remember when we get that inevitable sixty-degree day in January!

Lughnasahd is the equivalent of Candlemas in that it whispers of the tiniest beginning. The buckeyes (“Judas trees”) are turning red. Joe Pye is blooming, and Ironweed is just around the corner. Sunrise is a little later, sunset earlier. Cicadas during the day and katydids at night are really getting going now. Flash, our buck, is getting a good stink on, making me think maybe it’s time to separate him from the does unless I want January babies! The school buses are roaring by, lights strobing, at 6:30 every morning. And there’s just an indefinable change in the atmosphere.

What a lovely, hazy, warm summer morning. I can tell, though, that I’m going to be flattened by this evening again. I know that for all y’all in Florida and Georgia and other places warmer than here, 90’s are just life in the summer. Not for us; when it’s that hot we all complain and moan and don’t do much in the heat of the day. So that’s pretty much the plan for the rest of this fine Sunday.

Our sheep tractor is working out marvelously well—the yard is getting mowed and fertilized, the sheep are getting fat and are getting rotated off wormy ground, and they’re even getting over the whole weaning thing, though in the evenings mamas and youngsters start missing each other and their baas mix with the chorus of frogs, crickets and katydids to make quite a cacophony in the dusk.

I spent the morning playing with my camera; Bernard’s red hibiscus opened its first blossom today—cherry red and the size of a dinner plate, and last night our datura opened its first bloom of the season. Everything’s so lush and gorgeous right now. And fragrant, for better or worse.

I guess we’ve decided to wean the lambs. The nearly-adult-sized lambs that still insist on nursing on their mothers. We need to finish the (twice annual) shearing, so we have the two mamas down here in a stock panel pen in the front yard, and when we’re done with them, we’ll trade them for the lambs. I think the two ram lambs will stay down here until we butcher them, except for maybe a weeklong stint back in the pasture to simplify matters for the farm sitter while we’re at the beach.

The ewes called back and forth with their lambs all night, but we could barely hear them over the fan next to the bed.

I spent all day yesterday (and I do mean all day—from 9 am to 11 pm) in the kitchen from hell. I roasted a gazillion tomatillos and a bunch of peppers and some garlic and made (and froze) salsa. I started ten gallons of blackberry wine and froze a few quarts of blackberries. I made pickled beets. Feta. Bread. Chicken stock. Chevre. Kefir. Supper. I was very hot and a little irritable by the end of the day, but it actually was all kind of fun while I was doing it.

There’s thunder rumbling off in the distance—I think I’ll go will it closer.

In spite of absurd nervousness, we all managed to give our presentations and turn in our finished (for now) business plans. I feel relieved and pretty proud of myself, and at the same time I understand that this really is only the beginning. Kind of like getting married, I guess, where after the huge buildup to the wedding, and then the wildly relieved partying, you wake up the next morning to realize that now the work begins.
(That was a pretty cute metaphor, if I do say so, though our wild partying yesterday consisted primarily of having coffee and muffins.)

I”ve been hoping to take a couple of weeks break from paperwork, but already this morning I’m beginning to see that may be just a fantasy. I want to begin exploring some possibilities for grants that may be available, and I feel that needs to happen asap. Also, we’re planning a trip to Ocracoke Island in September, and on the way across the state we’re going to tour a number of cheesemaking facilities, and now is a good time to start planning our itenerary. That’ll be fun to plan, though.

Today my focus is back on the farm a little more. My list:

1. Fix the electric fence. I’m not sure why we don’t have a charge all the way around, but it resulted, night before last, in the horses running, right at dark, across a neighbor’s field, and ED and I chasing them down. Chasing is a pretty strong word, actually—we just walked up there with halter and leadrope and found them, in the dark, by smell. Seriously. Isn’t that great?

2. Weed the garden paths. They’ve gotten a little lush for my tastes—I like more contrast between bed and path—it just looks so much prettier.

3. Pick tomatillos, peppers and cilantro and make salsa.

4. Rig up a “goat tractor” out of stock panels, and get Tallulah out on some new browse.

5. Castrate the two bucklings. I’ll be weaning them later this week or early next week, and I have a home for one of them. I love this 75% doe rate!

DH is going to glean blackberries this evening at the D*’s for yet another batch of wine, hopefully mixed with elderberries, if he can find enough ripe ones. That’ll involve swimming in the pond with the girls, and for me, a quiet couple of hours in front of a fan with a book. Theoretically. We’ll see how it all pans out.