Spring is springing!

Newt says: "This darn pink monkey can't even properly trim the grass without me constantly riding her ass! With a workload like this, is it any wonder I sleep 19 hours a day?!"

Now for something completely different - apples! We finally spotted some early produce cheap enough to give the dehydrator a trial run. These granny smiths were soaked in an ascorbic acid & water solution for a few minutes to prevent browning. I think they should soak a bit longer next time, since they did turn color a bit. But that's why we're experimenting before we bet a whole season's harvest on this one gadget.

Today we seeded paddock two and used our fancy one-ma'am harrow to rake the seeds in (a rake). We decided to toss in some leftover veggie and sprouting seeds. The mix included - Alice White & Cinnamon Red clovers, 7-way pasture mix (from the feed store), barley, broccoli & alfala & radish sprouting seeds, cauliflower, cabbage, peas, beans, zucchini, pumpkin, tomato, peppers & carrots rounded out the veggie selection. Most of these won't make it to maturity. In fact, we'll have to chop the squashes before they flower to keep them from crossing with our garden choices. It will be fun to see what comes up and who eats what.

More big news - looks like Lassie & Berry are going to new homes next week. We decided we really need to work with Stella and it's nearly impossible with the goats around. So they're going to a home with people who want more fleece goats.

Speaking of Stella - she's got a date lined up June 1st with a handsome lad named Bob. He's going to come up here for a 45-day visit, hopefully leaving Stella....with child! Bob's owner has also mentioned another, younger, bull possibly for sale, so we're going to see how Bob works out and decide if we can handle 24/7 bull at Seven Trees.

Here's Bob as a baby. He's actually 10 days older than Stella and comes from excellent milking lines as well.

Another rainy day!

Here are a few pics of Seven Trees' goings-on, or lack thereof. We're still on the garden-prep trip. Lots of digging, compost mixing, seeding, watering. Except for today. It finally rained.

Here's the crew on a grazing field trip, courtesy of the new ElectroNet fencing. It's a mesh with little stick-in fiberglass posts that is connected to the main hotwire. This way we can let them get to areas that aren't perimeter fenced yet. When I went in to close it up for the night they all had gigantic grass-bellies!

A wonderful new tool for the mead-making part of our "brewery" - a floor corker. There is a doohickey that compresses the corks right as another doohickey pokes the cork into the bottle. With this we can use a better quality cork, which is important for meads which are usually cellared for a long time. Oh yeah...that's heather mead getting corked. A really sweet mead, with a gallon of honey in a 5 gallon carboy. I added dried heather flowers and plant tips for a historical recipe with medicinal qualities.

And Crichton the sleeping wonder cat! According to our calculations, he manages about 19 hours of sleep indoors, with an unknown amount outside. It's a hard life!