Missing Willow Farm

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  We harvested some more sweet potatoes.  They are planted in the spring as tiny plants called ‘slips’.  They grow into vines that have run out of their raised bed.   Some of these potatoes are bursting out of the soil.  They are pretty prolific, all of these were from a single plant.  Too bad I’m the only one in the family that will eat them!

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To plant garlic.  At least around here it is, we’re gardening zone 7.  I encourage you to try it, too!  Go into your kitchen (or run to WalMart) and grab a head of garlic.  Break it into individual cloves.  Don’t worry about peeling them.  Plant them pointy end up at a depth of twice the length of the clove.  If your clove is 1 inch long, plant it 2 inches deep.  Water them in, then next June/July you’ll be able to harvest your own heads of garlic.

Xena is the alpha dog of our pack.  She’s a great pyrenees and is a good 50 pounds lighter than our karakachans but bosses them and her brother Zeus around.  She was very jealous of our border collie Jenna at first and used to give her the stink eye any time Jenna came near her.  Xena even went after her a few times and got an ass whoopin for it!  They pretty much ignore each other now, although Xena delights in chasing Jenna when they’re on opposite sides of the pasture fence.  Although that is less than desireable behavior, we tolerate it (because we can’t get her to stop….).

Zeus and his sister Xena make up half of our livestock guardian force.  He’s a great pyrenees who came from the same Tennessee Fainting Goat farm that our Karakachans came from.  He’s got a thyroid problem that keeps him from being as fast as I’m sure he once was but that doesn’t keep him from doing his job.  He’s the sentry and his sister Xena is the muscle.  They make an awesome pair.  We’ve had them for 3 years now.  We drove 4.5 hours to pick them up in Tennessee.  When we got them home we put them up in our small barn, behind a metal barricade.  Less than an our later, our first three sheep were delivered by our friend C, who brought one of his champion herding dogs with him.  C let the sheep out of the trailer and then asked his herding dog to move them into our pasture.  Zeus and Xena heard the sheep and came bounding out of the barn and before we could blink, the champion herding dog was pinned under the sheep trailer.  My first thought was great… our dogs that we’ve owned for a few hours just killed an incredibly expensive border collie.  Thankfully, he wasn’t injured and C was extremely nice about it.  He told us we had some great guardian dogs, and he was right!