Strawberries!

Strawberry season is here. We are picking several handfuls every couple of days here on the homestead but not enough yet to make jam. Yesterday a sweet friend left a beautiful basket of berries in my mailbox!

Tonight I washed and capped them and tomorrow morning will be making my first batch of jam of the season. It will be the first of many goodies tucked into the pantry. I am so excited to see the empty shelves of home canned goods start to fill again.

We cut hay Saturday and with the low humidity it was ready today. The first field yielded 618 bales.

Doug has certainly gotten our hay mowing and baling streamlined! This winter we added 2 more hay wagons, for a total of 3, which means we don't have to leave the field, unload and head back. All are loaded and then ferried back. The field today had 4 1/2 wagon loads.

Rain is in the forecast for the next few days but we are hoping to cut the rest of the fields this coming Saturday.

Getting Ready For Hay

I arrived home from dog training to find Luke and a helper busy working on hay equipment and servicing tractors.

 It's that time of year again. We are hoping to drop some fields on Saturday, including the beautiful red clover, If we can get that dry and baled it will make excellent hay for the pigs. This is an experiment, so we will see. The rest of the fields are a fescue mix for the sheep, goats and dare I say cows again? Maybe, just maybe.

P.S. We checked the bees...second queen is out. Hooray!!

Fighting Another Battle, Loosing The War

Well, most of the seeds in the garden have germinated and are looking very good. Except for the corn. Not one green sprig. None, Nada. That would be because all of the seed is gone. And that would be because...

Yep. Here we go again. You may recall last year I trapped 51 squirrels. We did manage to harvest a very small amount of corn after the third try. It is very frustrating to say the least. So, here is #7. We will replant as soon as the ground dries again. I think this time we may try covering with row cover until it germinates. This is NOT a fun game. Grr..

A Busy Weekend

We spent the whole weekend outside, dragging in around dark. Grass is growing at a fast rate from all the rain and the weeds are even faster. Mowing and weed eating were top priorities. I have yet to finish cleaning out all of the flower beds from debris and leaves from the winter. Another must do. I got all but 2 finished and still have some pots to fill.

We checked the bees. One queen was out and the other was not. We are supposed to go back in on Tuesday,

We also finished transplanting all the the strawberries. Turned out to be a very nice long row and berries are starting to ripen. We got a nice rain shower on them afterwards so that should help them settle in.

Of course all this was done in between feeding,milking and lamb checks! Lots of long treks across the fields led to some exciting baby discoveries. Today 4 sets of twins! Sadly I lost one due to a bad presentation and by the time I found the mama he was dead. I had to finish helping her deliver.
As usual they weren't up for much in the way of pics but here are a few of the new cuties!

More Lambs!

Lambs are appearing at a rapid rate! 3 sets of twins and a single in the last couple of days!

Bees, Once Again

We are once again adding bees to the homestead. I love them and have missed them since we lost our last hive. I now have a third generation bee keeper that is willing to offer his wisdom and experience so I am very hopeful things will go well and with any luck add more hives next year.

I picked them up yesterday afternoon late and we installed the packages in the misty rain. Today they are very busy. Hopefully releasing the queen and building out brood chambers!