Catch Up

Internet's been out for a while. I've been busy:

Flopsy is finally just about entirely well again. Well, she was never really systemically ill, but her udder was sick. After a week of penicillin shots and three weeks of as frequent milking as my schedule would permit, I am at last satisfied that her milk is fit to drink again. There is still a slight thickening in her teat, but I believe that is scar tissue from the original injury and I doubt it will ever disappear entirely. The udder itself is entirely healthy-feeling, without any lumps or hard areas. This is good, because Iris is not giving me hardly any milk: her baby nurses through the fence and I don't have any way of preventing it. Oddly, Flopsy's baby is not picking up on the trick. Or maybe Flopsy isn't accommodating enough to sidle up to the fence and let her baby have at it. In any case, I'm not getting a whole lot of milk and it's annoying.

Neither am I getting a whole lot of eggs. For a while, I was getting almost none, like TWO eggs a day from a flock of twenty layers. Clearly they were laying somewhere hidden, but where? Not under the barns, we blocked those up (again; the horse likes to pull the boards off). Day before yesterday I decided to really investigate the hayloft, I mean get up there and crawl around and peek behind every bale of hay. I found eighteen eggs. Damn birds.

Summer's bounty is at maximum expression. Last week my sister and I went back to the blueberry farm and picked about a million blueberries. I now have some thirty pounds in the freezer and am so sick of blueberries I could puke. The trade network is also functioning well. Saturday I got three pounds of the most delicious little orange cherry tomatoes and a bunch of herbs of various types from Veggie Man, and today I am going to meet the Kale Fairy at her garden to pick up this week's assortment. Tuesday I'm going to Veggie Man's farm to U-pick tomatoes and actually can some red sauce. I am still woefully deficient in the canning department for this year.

It's time for my most dreaded farm task. I've put it off as long as I can. Now I must gird up my loins and trim the goat's hooves.