Whew! Summer is so busy here at Buzz and Bleat Farm. Our goat kids are nearly eight weeks old. Know what that means? Almost time to start milking twice a day. I love my goats. I love my goat milk. But milking twice a day is very restrictive.
We have been blessed/cursed with a lot of rain this year so far. It is great for the garden but seems to be even better for the weeds. We plant a huge garden even though there are only two of us. I can and freeze most veggies and fruits and give away the rest. Last year our squash was so abundant that we donated 93 of them to the local food bank.
With feeding ten goats, cleaning two barns, taking care of a huge garden, we were both starting to feel our collective ages. We decided it was time to bite the bullet and buy a tractor. We have a couple of tractors already. But one is a 1946 restored Farmall Cub
and the other is an old AC that has seen better days. Neither is equipped with hydraulics nor a PTO. Since we need help with the heavy lifting we searched for a used small tractor with a loader. Finally we found one.
Other things keep me busy. Still making my dolls and I am working on order number 72. We also picked cherries.
When we bought this home, we did not even know that there were fruit trees on the property. Well we have two very prolific pear trees, a peach tree that died last year, and a cherry tree that has seen better days. When I say "better days" I am not exaggerating. It looks as if it has been struck by lightning.
But it still produces cherries, which until last year was a yummy meal for the birds and other critters. Last summer we picked a few and this year I got enough for seven half pints of jelly.
While I had the canner and jars upstairs I thought it would be a good time to can some pasta sauce so I got a couple of bags of tomatoes from the freezer and cooked up 5 pints of sauce. Now, don't get me wrong. I love to can. But the mess...I could do without that!
I made some soap as well. This latest is my all time fave. I made some pretty soap called After the Rain. It is a pretty soap, perfect for gifting. It reminds me of the smell of the damp earth after a spring shower.
Some floral soap called Wildflower Field is a mixture of all the different floral notes you get if you are immersed in a field of multi-color wildflowers.
There is also a light evergreen scented soap I call In the Forest that reminds me a bit of those evergreen forests in Colorado.
And my fave, a cinnamon and citrus soap with ground coffee and oatmeal that I am calling Morning Gardener. I love the spicy scent of cinnamon and chai coupled with the sweet, refreshing scent of orange.
My laptop, which was over eight years old, decided it was time for a newer model. There was such a comfort level though. It is kind of like starting a new job without your familiar coworkers. I am sure I will get the hang of it, but for now it is a little slow-going.
Stay tuned for the continuing saga of growing old on a hobby farm!
