Monday, April 21, 2014

Good raining morning from the mountain

Good morning from the mountain, as the soft rain falls I am still thinking about last night.  We need more security, that is for sure.  I plan to buy a system to tell us when some one is near our gate and our neighbors. So I guess I will have to start baking bread and cakes and head down to the farmers market soon.

In regular farm matters I have a defiant sheep who refuses to stay in the paddocks or the barn.  My lead on new sheep was a dead end.  So we will still keep looking.  I really need a ram and at least one more ewe, though getting two ewes would be best.  that would give me three ewes and on ram which is an easy number to deal with.

I am enjoying milking the two goats morning and night, we are making some lovely cheese, mostly feta as I do not have the right rennet at the moment to do the harder cheese. I have been teaching our 8 year old to milk the goats, he is so cute, as long as he can spray dad with milk he is interested.  I normally would not condone the waste of good milk, but some times you have to go with the flow.  He is learning fast and I think in the future may be a better milker than I am.

 I plan to make soap again as soon as school lets out.  I need to make enough for us to use for the year and some extra to sell and barter with.  We use only Natural plant oils from Kosher sources in our soap, plus our farm fresh honey.  Even our plain soap is wonderful, and when I make chocolate, well it is amazing.

As far as selling eggs is doing, we are doing a little better then breaking even.  I still have to get photos of the black and copper marans up. We are still trying to win others to our cause, so we are sending out eggs to a family member in Illinois hopes of getting them to raise their own chickens. They are in an area where they are aloud three chickens and no roosters. It could be a great opportunity for them to become a little more self reliant and closer to their food and nature.  So I am excited to get the box out.  I do feel a bit sorry for the postal people though, our carry will pick up 8 boxes today, she is not going to be really happy. I had to order more tape and boxes as well.

The gardens are coming along nice and for the first time when some one came to the house, I was not ashamed.  Sometimes I feel like I should fill every spot of ground with food, I just want to make the best use of the land. It is hard to do so much, to have to plan out every little thing.  I know in the end it will be worth while though, I just have to hang in their.  With school still going on it is so hard to finish any project, I am blessed to have such an understanding husband who has taken on so much of the farm work while I attend classes.  It is a blessing to have such a good partner in all this.

Still looking for barley to plant, found a 40 pound bag of regular buckwheat seed, organic origin in the new kitchen, I have no idea why it was out there, but is is going to be planted in every pasture till it runs out. We did good with it the first year we tried it.  The bees made very dark honey from it and the deer are crazy about it.  We never get any to eat, but that is alright as long as the animals have what they need.  Plus the deer...yummy.

I guess I need to get off of here for a while and get the boxes ready to ship, I have math to do, kids are already doing there school work and I still have that goofy paper to do for history.

Be Blessed
Shekhinah


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