Planting season has begun-Snakes good and bad and sweet little geese

 Our lives here on the mountain are full of amazing moments and sad ones...Storms have been hard on us this season, we have lost many fruit trees and some of the older oak trees.  With all of that, we are still blessed to have good friends and sweet little creatures to love.  Our baby horse is doing well and although we lost most of our goose eggs we did have one hatch.  Our poor hatchling was so lonely and then a neighbor called, she had one lone baby goose with no one to love it.  Now our little goose has a friend.  They are adorable and get under your feet any chance they get.


Then there is the ever constant threat of snakes.  The snake is the photo is a harmless snake that was released back into the wild, though just a day before a cotton mouth had to be killed and before that a copper head that bite and killed one of our dogs.  It is never easy on the mountain and each day presents us with unique opportunities to learn and become better people.

Today we planted tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, peppers, fennel, basil, and some other stuff.  I am glad to have that part finished.  Not the rest will seem so easy after all this.  We are do for more rain, this is our rainy season and we are glad to have it and we hope for a good growing season this year.  I still have seeds to plant, some black tomatoes, some peas, some yard long beans and some pole beans.  So that is it, not much to talk about, just those few things to share.


All of us on the mountian send blessings to everyone who reads about our little farm on the mountain!


Shekhinah, Michael, and all the kids and critters here on the mountain...

Good morning from the mountain...it is a long day already and I am really dragging.

Your edible plant identification of the day and led into the blog post.

This plant is called lambs quarters, it is a wild spinach and does not require any prep work to eat other than a good washing. It can be eaten as any salad green or cooked. I have like ten pages about this plant and it's uses in the past and future, but they are not handy at the moment.

So, I know not a great way to start a sentence, but mercury is in major retrograde and I feel it all around me.  I lost one of the adult sheep today, just dropped over dead. What a great way to start one's day.  150 pounds of meat wasted, I am sick over it, so I am worming the ones that are left.  I hate to use wormer, but I have to safeguard our meat as that was winter meat.  I still have two sheep, need to replace two now and buy a ram.  It is all a bit overwhelming.  Thi sis life on the farm, we have good days and not so good days, each day is a lesson.  When you have a farm you have to always know what is going on all the time, otherwise you can lose $500 bucks just that fast.  So that is that...now even if I want to eat them I must wait a month.  

The good things that came out of it Elijah learned how to skin a large animal.  Note the lovely pictures.

Upon further dissection, the lamb had a type of deer fluk that affects the lungs.  I will share photos latter.  This means I need to worm the wild deer along with our animals.  We had to do this many years ago, I guess this spring was just so wet it made an ideal breeding ground for the pests.  I buy these natural wormer blocks at one of the feed stores in MO so I guess I will try to do that on Wednesday.  At least we know now so we can treat all the animals on the farm at one time as well as those that come in for food and hopefully contain this to one death.

The dogs will get the meat of the lamb so that it is not wasted and the skull will be cleaned my nature and available for purchase later in the year, the hide will be salted and tanned.

Very rough way to start a week.

Back to work for me...

Blessings from all of us on the mountain...

Shekhinah, Michael, Dah'veed, Elijah, and Elisha and all the animals