Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Updates

Too much time has lapsed since my last post, 3 weeks exactly. Three weeks ago today I bred Brie. Today would be the day she goes back into heat (give or take a day or two) and I see no signs of heat. She cried a lot a couple days ago and I wondered if heat was to start but I saw no other signs. So I am hopeful she settled(the term used in the goat world to say she's pregnant).

Butter will be dried up in 2-3 weeks to give her body a rest before kidding. Once the milking season is over and we have that 2 month break I plan to completely clean out the barn. We have been storing quite a bit of stuff in there and it really isn't a good place to store. So now a lot of things need to be gone through and probably thrown away. I'd love to whitewash the whole interior but it's one of those things that is probably not going to get done. Too much to do.

Today it is sunny and 50 degrees! Spring is in the air even though it's a ways off yet. Last week I moved the chickens out of the garden where they were fertilizing and clearing weeds and grass. This week we'll start prepping the garden for tilling. Today I'm headed out to rake rocks back into place. We have a french drain that runs down the middle of the garden and one of the disadvantages of having the chickens in there is that they scratch at everything, including the rock over this drain. So there are rocks spread out from the drain probably a good 3-4 feet on either side. Raking in this beautiful weather won't be so bad. The next thing to do will be to lay newspaper out everywhere I plan to have a bed or plants to prevent the weeds and grass from sneaking up before tilling. I'll lay a very small amount of compost over the newspaper to keep it in place and then in a month or so I'll till everything under.

I've been reading through my new Territorial Seed Catalog picking out everything I want to plant. My main crop this year will be green beans with the goal of lots of freezing or canning. I want to try some new things like beets and summer squash.

Well, I guess that about covers it for now.

Happy February.

2 comments:

Mimi said...

I've been drooling over the same seed catalogue - I need to find out what grows in the shade, because we have a really shady garden space.

And, can I be rude and invite myself to your canning day? I've never canned and would like to learn how. I'll bring lunch.

Liz in Seattle said...

Ooh! Ooh! Me too :-) We've had a cabin-raising; no reason we can't have an old-fashioned canning party!