The Color Green

This is from last spring. After such a dark and dreary winter, we’re so ready to refresh our eyes with the color green!

Geese, Donkeys and Roller Derby

We had such a fun day today! We’ve noticed that since Bernard has become a teenager, it’s gotten to be pretty rare for all four of us to go do things together. We spend a lot of time together at home, but whenever an outing is proposed, somebody (often me!) decides to take it as an opportunity to have the house to themselves. And yet, somehow, today we all drove all over creation together.

We started out by contacting some folks trying to sell some geese on Craigslist. As you may remember, Siegfried has been very lonely since the fox ate his girlfriend, and lately he’s been making us all miserable. He’s very noisy, and has started sneaking up behind people to grab their legs, so he’s been banished to the garden, poor lonely guy. So anyway, I called these folks and the woman told me her husband had just loaded all the geese up and taken them to the livestock auction. She gave me general directions to the sale barn—at least an hour and a half away—and we piled in the car and took off. It was so much fun! This was a  little teeny barn on some guy’s farm, a real live auctioneer, and a fascinating cast of characters. DH did the bidding, and instead of one goose, we ended up with two geese and another gander, for $13.50 each!

So we put the three huge birds in a box in the back seat of the Subaru—where they were very quiet and well-behaved—and took off for Tennessee, stopping to refuel at Taco Bell and Dairy Queen (we know how to party).

We’ve been buying hay from this guy in Tennessee all winter, and had admired his adorable little donkeys. Well, it turns out he wants to sell them—cheap! $150 for the pair!—and so we went to look at them. We fell in love. They are so sweet and affectionate, and—maybe the best part—experienced sheep guardians. So I think we’ll be going to get them next week.

Then we rushed home so DH and Bernard could get ready to go watch a roller derby match in Asheville. Bernard is now skating in the junior league (her skating name is Psycho Sis), and really enjoys going to watch the big girls skate.

ED and I are planning to enjoy  a lazy dinner and a movie. As soon as chores are done, that is.

Spring Update

This is such an odd time of year—we look so forward to it all winter, forgetting how much work it is, and how exhausted we’ll be! Everybody’s gimping around with sore muscles and blisters, and we fall into bed at night. We also freeze, because I’m so tired of dealing with the woodstove and smoke and mess, and DH is completely burned out on firewood, and so we tell ourselves it’s warm enough that we don’t need a fire. Which isn’t quite true.

No new lambs yet, though a couple of the ewes are starting to bag up. The cows are all doing great—the girls have been walking them up the mountain to graze and Maude the other day ran circles around Pearl. I think she’s recovered, though she did end up with a bedsore from laying too long on her flank. It’s clearing up rapidly, though.

I’ll pick salad from the greenhouse today or tomorrow—this is all from lettuce that I allowed to go to seed last year! Let’s hear it for lazy gardeners!

First Lamb of the Year

I can’t begin to express the change in mood around here after a day of sunny, relatively warm weather! A few friends came over and helped me in the garden, cleaning up my sadly neglected asparagus beds and hauling several back-breaking loads of manure from the barn to the garden. We even got a bed mostly ready for peas (I’ll bring some manure down for it today) and got a decent load of firewood split and in the house. Fantastic! I paid out a few moopons, our farm currency.

Callie and her lamb---the first of the season

The first lamb of the season was born yesterday—a Cotswold/Icelandic cross. She’s delightfully sturdy and vigorous, with beautiful loose curls, and a short tail—no tail docking for her!