Maude is being dried off now. She’s due January 9th, but it worked out to dry her up now, before we go to the beach, so that our trusty farmsitter will only have one cow to milk, once a day. Plus, Maude’s production has been down around a gallon a day—Pearl’s is two and a half or three.
Everybody adores Maude. Dixie the pig loves her. Liath loved her and guarded her faithfully (forget those stupid sheep!), and visitors love her. She’s a sweetheart!
Autumn day
Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell
We found Liath a new home a week or two ago. She had been on a chain all summer because we couldn’t keep her out of the road: her daily patrol was taking her up and down the road to the neighbors’ houses, which was a nuisance to the neighbors and a danger to herself and cars. So it was with somewhat heavy hearts and a huge feeling of relief that we traded her to a great home in exchange for a pair of breeding Toulouse geese. I love geese—the rest of the family isn’t so sure—and these are living in the garden right now, looking very regal. I’m looking forward to goslings and next year’s Christmas goose!
There’s been a lot of work on the driveway since the big storm, which has been both entertaining and a little stressful, but the driveway looks wonderful now. Like our favorite dozer operator said, we can just about go 60 mph to the barn now.
Shearing is going well. Slow, but well. We’ve about got all the sheep rounded up and in their winter pens—I love it, because they’re so easy to take care of, and they all get so tame again so quickly.
The cows are just being milked once a day, and we’ll stop milking Maude altogether this weekend. Pearl will go on until mid-November. Maude is due to calve January 9th, and Pearl is due January 19th. I’m on a push to get as much cheese made as I can before Maude’s not milking—I’m trying to make a 4 lb cheese per day. I’m still using a recipe similar to the one on Fankhauser’s page that I was using, but now I’m cheddaring it for a recipe similar to Caerphilly, a Welsh cheese. It ages well and we love it. But once we’re down to just milking Pearl I won’t have enough milk at one time to make a four pounder a day, and that’s when I’m going to start playing with blues and brie-types. Now that sounds fun!
It’s shearing time again, and we’re staying pretty busy. We’re the world’s slowest shearers, so our 20-ish sheep take a week or so, but we’re staying on it. Today we’ll build three pens in which to winter the flock. ED requested a moorit sheep for her birthday, so we bought a moorit Icelandic ewe and a white Icelandic ram. Anybody know what a Cotswold/Icelandic cross looks like? Check back in April and find out! Here’s the new ewe, before and after shearing:
Isn’t she gorgeous?
Aaron Newton nominated Moonmeadow Farm for the Kreativ Blogger award yesterday. Thanks Aaron—I’m honored! Now I must do four things:
1. List 7 things I love:
* my daughters
* food—eating it, producing it, preparing it, reading about it, talking about it
* the ocean
* farming, especially livestock
* flowers and gardening
* early morning—just me and my cup of tea
* a good book
2. Link back to the person that nominated me: Aaron Newton, who has the awesome and informative blog Powering Down and is a fellow North Carolinian.
3. Choose 7 blogs to award as ‘Kreativ Bloggers’:
* threecollie’s Northview Diary. I love reading about life on a dairy farm in New York, and she has wonderful photos.
* Ed Bruske’s The Slow Cook for fantastic recipes, and lots of good food discussions.
* Pile of O’Melays for farm inspiration.
* Thrice Shy has lots of interesting and informative posts about what we eat.
* Our awesome and crazy neighbor Dana, who has loads of adventures.
* Walter at Sugar Mountain Farm, maybe the most useful blog ever.
* And Musings from a Stonehead is a great read, with great pictures
4. Comment at each blog to let them know they’ve been chosen.
Taking the cows to pasture.