Missing Willow Farm

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!

Jenna lost her 6 month battle with bone cancer and we lost an integral member of our family and farm team.  It now takes both of us to keep the sheep and goats from eating from our cow’s bucket at feeding time, and some of our sheep missed their grain this morning because we didn’t run out and get them like she used to do for us.  We’re lazy.  We miss her.

A guest post from my husband Brian: We had never had a dog, so we didn’t really know what it would be like to have a border collie.  Because I’m allergic to dogs, we went out and bought a dog lot enclosure to put next to the house and got her a Canine Condo, a ridiculously expensive Cadillac of dog houses with a heated dog bed.  Of course, within 2 weeks we went out and bought a cheap kennel from Walmart and she moved into the house.  The outdoor kennel sat idle for 4 years.  She was a part of our family and we will miss her dearly.

Checking in on the chickadees the other day, all I saw was a mass of feathers in the nest.  I thought they were dead because they didn’t move no matter how close I got.  Yesterday, I went to check on them, got in close and they all flew out at once.  Almost scared me to death!  They flitted around the feed room and eventually made their way back to the nest.  Today they’re gone.  They grow up so fast!