This is surely the longest month of the year—thank goodness for Bernard’s birthday right smack in the middle of it!

It was 8° this morning with a dusting of snow, but now the sun’s out and it’s beautiful, at least from in here with a cup of coffee in my hand. Today we will have 10 hours and 15 minutes of daylight, up from 9 hours, 46 minutes for a week at the solstice, and Candlemas, the first day of spring and the end of solar winter arrives a week from tomorrow, for which I give heartfelt thanks. It’s been a long winter: I fell ill the day after Thanksgiving, and did not recover until the 10th of this month, and really only in the last week or so has my energy begun to return. It’s demoralizing and depressing to be sick for that long, especially over the holidays.

OK—enough whining! Here are the good things that are happening: The cow is a delight, and the milk and cream are heavenly. I’ve been making butter (so much work!), and am just about at the point of being able to keep up with our family’s butter needs. I started out making it in the KitchenAid mixer, then tried the blender and the Cuisinart food processor, and finally broke down and bought a butter churn from Lehman’s, along with a pair of scotch hands. It’s harder work churning now—obviously—but the scotch hands have made all the difference in working it. And any day now DH is going to make me a butter board.

We have 8 pregnant does, with kidding starting February 24th. We’ve had a nasty case of hoof rot that has required a lot of attention. I think it has something to do with a complete lack of exercise: seems that since we got rid of Tallulah, our herd queen, nobody goes outside anymore. We finally took away their water bucket so that they’re forced to walk across the pasture for a drink of water now. Lazy bums. We’ve treated them by aggressively trimming hooves, soaking in bleach water, peroxiding between their toes, and using a copper solution designed for hoof thrush in horses. All of this three times over the last couple of weeks, but (knock wood) I think we’ve got it now.

We have three of last year’s lambs to butcher, and we desperately need to shear, but I’m waiting for slightly warmer temperatures. Last night we had lamb shanks from the last butcher lambs—so good!

The chicken flock has been taking some hard hits from possums; the girls have caught several (they just walk up to them and pick them up!), which DH has hauled to the far corners of the earth and released, but there seems to be an unending supply this year! So I guess that’s sort of an ongoing project. We really need to build a chicken house! The pet possum is doing well—we’re planning a spring release.

Here come the girls back from the barn—time for school!