Yeah... No Mulch

Oh boy. The heavens opened up today. We got about 1 1/4 inches. The only ones that were happy about that were the ducks!

On the up side a friend came to visit and she helped me line all my soap molds. It is a time consuming job. If they are already lined, I can get a wild hair and make soap on a whim.

Another wet day on the homestead!

The Start Of Spring Clean-up

Our farm intern arrived this morning and we tag teamed the first of the flower beds that needed cleaning out. It took about 3 hours but the final result was beautiful. I have a load of mulch slated to be delivered Friday, weather permitting. Another rainy weekend is in the forecast. ;-(
Before:

After:

We also planted some more edible landscaping. Globe artichokes were put in pots and spaced throughout the flower beds. I am looking forward to see how this works.

I finally got all the soap sliced from last week. It turned out nicely. Even the grapefruit scented one is going to be ok. I wish the scent was a little stronger but you can definitely smell an essence of grapefruit.

I froze the homemade bacon Dad had cured for us. Some of it he had sliced so I froze it on wax paper and then dropped it in a freezer bag. The other piece was a big chunk. I will slice as needed or cut large pieces to cook with dried beans for seasoning.

This afternoon I was super happy with Miss Violet! Her milk production had dropped to a little less than a gallon but with the new Spring grass it has jumped back up to 1 3/4 gallons!

A Quiet Sunday Morning

Hubs headed out early this morning to shoot in a skeet tournament. It was a cloudy foggy morning and I am nursing a pulled hamstring so I decided a morning of kitchen therapy was in order. I pondered what to fix for our weekly family supper tonight and decided meatloaf sounded good. The boys are usually big eaters so I laid out 3 pounds of meat for that. Then I hung another batch of clabbered milk for cheese. What I have left will get wiped out tonight for an appetizer.

I made a test batch of biscuits using clabber milk instead of buttermilk and found this to be a great success! Chalk another one up for being more self sufficient. No more store bought buttermilk!

I set another half gallon of milk to clabber.

I noticed yesterday I was running low on canned deer in the 8 ounce jelly jars and had laid out several packs to thaw. I got those jarred up and processed.

The chickens and ducks have been laying up a storm and I had quite a pile to wash and sort. I packed 6 dozen up to be sold. I hard boiled another dozen for egg salad later this week and made a bacon mushroom crustless quiche with yet another dozen! I used the bacon my dad had cured and smoked from our Kune Kune pork belly and home canned mushrooms from the pantry. So yummy...that was lunch.

Lastly I fed the sourdough. I'll be making bread for the week tomorrow night.

 A lovely productive quiet morning on the homestead!

Kidding Season Is Done

The last of the goats kidded late yesterday. A beautiful set of twins, a doe and a buck. I love the moon spots on the little girl!

Earlier this week an unexpected little girl arrived. She was born to a tiny mama that was not supposed to be bred. Both are doing well though.

Our final count this year is 9, 3 bucks and 6 does. Now comes the part I hate. Deciding who stays and who will be sold. I will be posting pics and descriptions on our sales page soon. Link is to the right!

I unmolded the soap today. All of them turned out nicely except the grapefruit. I am deeply disappointed in that one. I guess the essential oil was not strong enough and it actually smells more chemically than grapefruity. Darn. You'll have those days. I'll see what happens after curing out but as of now it looks (or should I say smells!) like a looser.

Taters and Onions

We have finally had enough dry days in a row to get the garden ready for spring planting and thankfully yesterday's mist was not enough to get the ground too wet. With the help of my mom and our farm intern we cut up 75 pounds of seed potatoes and planted about 350 onions! We planted purple, red and yellow potatoes and a sweet yellow onion.

We also weeded the strawberry row and found a few are starting to bloom.Yum! A lot of the baby plants have hopped out of the row so next on the to do list will be to dig up and transplant them.

A good day on the homestead.

It is a misty moisty morning here on the homestead. Thankfully it is not supposed to amount to much since tomorrow's chore is getting some things in the garden. After my morning coffee I got an urge to make some soap. This tends to happen on gray days! I poured 7 blocks before running out of lye. The story of my life ;-( 

Today's scents were lavender/lemongrass, grapefruit, russian tea and one called "the garden" which is a custom blend of frankincense, blood orange and vetiver.