The Month Of May

May started out at an even pace but quickly picked up speed! The strawberries started to ripen. It was a daily battle as to who would get them first- me or the squirrels! Sadly the squirrels won more times than I did.

On Mother's day this crazy looking lamb was born to one of the Suffolk ewes we picked up earlier this year. After much discussion we found out that the person I bought her from has some Cheviot weathers in the pasture with her ewes. Well, apparently they were not weathered correctly and managed to produce a few lambs! It is a little ram lamb and we call him Donkey cause we think he looks like one! We have decided to keep him and use him as a breeding ram.

The sheep got a much needed haircut.

I started harvesting and drying herbs from the garden.
May was a stormy month and in addition to daily chores we had  lot of cleanup that took up serveral weekends.

We're Still Here!

Life on the homestead has been extremely busy these days! New and unexpected lambs, the garden booming with produce and canning up a storm. Speaking of storms, we have had several nasty ones roll in and have spent lots of weekends cleaning up and cutting trees off fences. Lots of news to tell and I will be catching the blog up over the next few days.

I can't believe it's been close to a month since my last post! It has been a busy few weeks here on the homestead. We have had several nasty storms blow through with damaging winds and torrential rains. A lot of time has been spent cleaning up the mess they have left behind.

We had a window last week and were able to drop some hay and get it baled before rain came again.

On the critter front the babies are growing like weeds, Violet is still giving almost 2 gallons of milk a day and we had a duck start setting on her nest.

Sadly something got in the pen, destroyed her beautiful nest and ate the eggs. Hopefully she will try again!
We have also gotten a good bit of the gardens in. The beans and cucumbers are up and the plants have settled in nicely.
Strawberries are beginning to ripen. We are picking daily. Jam is definitely in the near future.

One rainy day I poured 11 blocks of soap.

Lastly we have been dealing with the loss of a dear friend. My husband's best friend since the third grade was tragically killed in an accident on Easter Sunday. A brother to him, like a brother to me and an uncle to my children. It has been a hard loss to handle.
Life goes on...on the homestead.

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!