Missing Willow Farm

We’re heading to NC today to meet a young, fully trained herding dog.  It took over a week after Jenna’s passing for me to be able to contact the folks we received her from.  They told us they have a young trained dog available if we’re ready to welcome another dog into our home.   As it turns out, that was the same day one of our sheep got loose and we had spent the good part of an hour chasing her up and down our driveway.  If we didn’t have a farm and animals to move, I’m sure we would have waited.  But we do and it’s been difficult for the past few months.  We need a farming partner.  No photo today, but I’m planning on lots of photos over the next few days!

Every morning when we go out to the pasture to feed our critters we’re greeted with this sight.  Since my two milking goats have spent the night across the driveway, their babies are anxiously awaiting their reunion.  Jessica waits patiently for her bucket of sweet feed.  Bella, who didn’t have a kid this year, looks longingly at the milking stand where Mina and Hermione will get an extra share of grain.  Our guardian dog wants his butt scratched before and after his breakfast.  The sheep ignore everyone.

About 20 feet off our back deck, the hawk rests on top of our wisteria and grapevine garden structure.  Unseen in this photo is the blue jay that was fussing at it.  I’m guessing the hawk got a little too close to a nest.

Hermione fights Mina to be first to the milking stand every morning.  They butt heads and jostle for position at the gate.  Since they haven’t figured out yet how to open the gate by themselves yet I always let Hermione out first because if I don’t, she leans against the fence by the milkstand and has actually started distorting it.  Brat.  It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a goat could open a pasture gate…. 0ur first buck  Jerry Lee could open it with his lips and that’s no small feat.  When we have new visitors to the farm I always tell them the gate is an I.Q. test because it’s kind of tricky to figure out.   Jerry Lee was too smart for us, we sold him pretty quickly.

I get almost a quart a day from each of my girls from the morning milking.  I’m on a once a week cheesemaking schedule, it’s nice to have spinach and warm chevre salads again.  If anyone has a favorite recipe using goat cheese to share, I’d love to see it!

Garlic scapes are in abundance this time of year.  They are the flower stalks of garlic plants and they’re delicious grilled with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.  We’ve been grilling them with asparagus from our garden.  They’re also yummy in stir fry.  If you run across some at your local farmer’s market, give them a try!

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The hawk who lives in the woods behind our greenhouse is getting bolder.  We found him sitting on one of our invisible fence posts in the garden this morning.  He can sit there all day as far as I’m concerned, he keeps the bunnies away.

Spring honey is overflowing in our hives.  I’ve got one of our chickens defrosted for dinner and soaking in an apple juice and citrus brine.   Spring spinach is ready for picking, the carrots, asparagus and garlic scapes are delicious, the peas are flowering, the soybeans are up and we’ve got tiny green tomatoes everywhere.  This cabbage is taking it’s time getting ready, but is so far unmolested by bugs and bunnies.  Feeding ourselves feels good.

Normally seen flying into the woods behind our greenhouse, this hawk decided to sun himself on our dock this morning.  They’re known to fish, but we haven’t seen it take anything out of the pond… yet.

Every single potato we planted last month is up, and we still have a mess of seed potatoes in the fridge.  These were planted in a furrow and now that they’re up nice and tall, we mounded soil up around the base of the plant stems.  So instead of growing in a ditch, they’re now growing in a hill.  This is supposed to encourage even more tubers to develop along the stems so we’re hoping for a bumper crop this year.  I guess I could toss those seed potatoes, we’ll surely have enough of these to save for next year.  We added some squash to the bed yesterday and left some room to plant pumpkins.  They mature in 110 days so it’s a little early to plant for Halloween.

Moving plants out of the greenhouse to our back deck has kept us busy this week.  Here are some baby Persian limes that should find their way into a margarita this summer.  I could use one right now.  We tried moving a pregnant sheep from one pasture to the other today and she got loose.  It took us 45 minutes of chasing her through the woods and up and down the driveway until we finally were able to catch her and put her where she needs to be.  I’m pretty sure Jenna was laughing her tail off at us!