Hmmph.

Big dope.

Pear Harvest

One more than we expected.

Weather Report

Warm and sunny. Winds are from the south.

Awww

Little Miss Fluff snoozing on her little bed by the window.

Mole Exterminator

Harry has taken it upon himself to dig up and eat every mole he can find, which is fine except that catching a mole often involves digging a hole in the yard half the size of his body. Sometimes he'll hear them digging and will wait until they surface. Here he is with his loot.

Sold!

I sold Cosmos today and not a day too soon. Now that he's gone, I can move the does out of the small pasture into a the larger one with an enclosed shelter. He's going to be Big Man on Campus at another dairy farm.

And we're getting rain, lots and lots of much needed rain.

Lots of Eggs

We're getting plenty of eggs now. We've been getting about four per day, but today we got seven. The fake eggs worked their magic and the chickens are all laying in the nesting boxes instead of on the floor. Yesterday, I saw one of the hens sitting on one of the fake eggs. She lifted up for a moment, reached under and turned the fake egg over and sat back down on it. So I guess she was trying to hatch it as her own. I read that when a chicken starts to brood (which, I think, means sitting on her eggs to hatch them), she will stop laying eggs. We don't want that to happen, so I removed all the fake eggs so as not to encourage brooding.

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

I think I'm wasting a lot of time lately. It actually feels kind of good. **guilty**

I'm not milking any goats and my garden is at a point where it needs little attention. It's almost completely weed free (thanks to hours of weed pulling followed by some nice cool weather which stopped bermuda growth). There are just a few pieces of bermuda tucked in amongst the tomato plants that are just about done making. I've cut and pulled out all the finished veggies and planted most of my fall garden which is coming up but requiring little effort at the moment. I don't have to mow the grounds every week any more because we haven't had much rain.

Sooo, I have a lot of free time that I should be filling with other projects. But since those projects aren't urgent, they are getting ignored.

Maybe I can do some tractor work or something for Tom...next week. Things will turn around soon enough.

New Goat

We bought another Nubian milk goat on Saturday. She had a baby in June so she is still in milk. I would have preferred that she was not in milk because I didn't want to milk again until this spring and I also thought it would be better for the goat to have time to adjust to us, it's new pasture mates and our routine first. But all of the goats at the farm where we went had kidded in June, so all of them were in milk. I did not foresee the problems I would have, though.

She seems to be distraught, looking and calling for her baby; not eating much. Her udder is very full, but she will not let me milk her. We have to force her onto the milking stand and while I try to milk her, she kicks, jumps, twists, bucks, and fights it the whole time.

I've decided to just risk letting her dry up on her own because it is just too stressful for both of us. Hopefully, she won't get mastitis and be ruined as a milk goat. She has good bloodlines and should be a good milk producer in the future if we can keep her healthy.

Ouch!

I'd like to know which one laid this egg.

Tennis Elbow?

Tom has been suffering with tennis elbow for about a week and a half. Apparently, it is very painful, so he has been trying to take it easy for a while. He's better now.

So, Harry has been limping since last Friday. Tom took him to the vet yesterday and he has...tennis elbow. Isn't that ridiculous.

Harry is a little over five months old and a little over 63 pounds. The vet said he smells like a skunk. I hadn't really noticed him smelling, but I have been smelling skunk for several days.