Farm-ish Things

I may not be that productive this week thanks to this lovely cold virus that has me moving at snail pace, but the creatures and plants outside of the four walls sure have been.

Here come the cherries, oh yes, here they come. Last year's harvest was piddly. The year prior to that produced a massive harvest. I had heard that cherries experience biennial harvests, meaning that they will have a good harvest one year, a small one the next, a good one, a small one, and on and on. That's proven true here. The cherries on this tree are sour and great for desserts. We pop them off the tree and right into our mouths because we like the tartness of them, but they definitely have sour going for them. We do have several sweet cherry trees in the fruit orchard in the back, but those trees are still young and aren't producing much of anything yet. I was excited to see that we have fruit buds on all of the fruit trees (apples, plums, peaches, and cherries) in the orchard this summer. This is the first summer that we've had any. 

We've got chickens galore. In fact, I need a carpenter to come donate some time and build me a bigger chicken coop. My poor husband. I think we're wearing him out with all of our plans. I really wish I had the construction know-how like he does. He can pretty much build anything. Me? Yeah, definitely not my strong point. At all. We have 32 hens, 1 rooster, and 9 unsexed chicks. I'm still waiting to see what those youngest nine are going to be, although I do have some guesses since they're getting older now and starting to show some signs of gender.

I'm afraid that I may bore you with goat photos over the next couple of weeks. Oh do I love them! They're so fun and sweet. And I love their little "baahs, maahs," they make when they want something. I'm so used to my alpacas. Our relationship with the alpacas is definitely on their terms, and they never want touched. But these goats, oh my, they are affectionate and sweet and love having our attention. It's so different than raising alpacas. 

This goat business has not been without fatalities though. Despite our effort to box in one of our young white oak trees, the goats figured out how to get over the fence and eat the tree. Also, as you can see in the one photo above, 3/4 of one of my lilac bushes is gone. Eaten away. Needless, to say, we still have some goat-proofing to do!

The gardens are growing nicely. Although it's been a cool couple of weeks, we've been getting a nice mixture of rain and sun which means that the veggies are growing wonderfully. I am having a problem with a little wild rabbit who has taken the liberty of eating almost all of my kale (Grrrr) and my swiss chard. One of the challenges of gardening, I guess. Some of my herbs are big enough now that I'm going to begin drying them and storing them for the winter. I like to do that throughout the summer so I can have a nice supply built up. 

Thanks for all of the prayers for me! I'm still sick, but God has given me the strength to get through the evenings of Bible school. I will say that I'm not getting much done otherwise, though. I had a little bit more energy yesterday morning, did way too much, and was S-I-C-K last night. I'm definitely going to pace myself today.

Have a great day!