Week 10

Emily is our new farm photographer.  She's learning so she should develop her camera eye as time goes by.

Week 10 and the cucumbers are the focus this week!  So get out your cucumber recipes!  You'll be getting more potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, cilantro, onions, peppers, zucchini, beets and dill.  

Tomatoes are turning red and I think there are about 20 lbs a day turning red.  Yikes!

The peppers continue to do well and the first round of zucchini is dying while round 2 of zucchini plants are starting up.  

The eggplant is not doing well.  If the eggplant ever grows, it isn't going to be to my standards of organic.  I did have to spray the plants in late June for potato bugs but I did use an organic type spray.  I still don't like to spray anything for bugs but if I didn't help the eggplant it would have died.  It still may die but I gave it a chance.

We have some more chicks (in our basement because the brooder room is ready for turkeys that should come on Wed).  I got 16 Marans-- they lay large dark eggs.  They lay less often but have larger eggs.

I also got 10 Welsummers.  These lay lots of eggs but smaller dark eggs.  We love chicks.

And look what we found in the nest boxes today.  A super huge egg-- and a tiny egg (likely one of the birds first laid eggs).  I'm not sure which chicken laid that egg but I hope she's doing ok.

My animal story of the week is about one of our lambs.  This particular lamb cried a lot for its mother when it was still with its mother.  We weaned the lambs and so they've been separated for over 2 weeks.  Last night we had a storm at 3am and it looked bad enough that I needed to move the lambs to an area that had better shelter.  So I get dressed at 3am and get Frank and move the lambs to the larger pasture.  Well, that one little lamb that always cried to mama I'm sure is blind or has something wrong with her vision.  Frank moved the other lambs so fast that she got left behind.  She was wandering around and looked lost.  So I had to sneak up on her and carry her into the pasture.  Normally lambs will kick and fight you.  This girl laid her head on me and though her heart was racing, she accepted my help and I carried her out to the field so she could find the rest of the flock without getting too lost.  I say that like this is a 15 lb lamb-- it's about a 65 lb lamb and so the fact that she didn't struggle was a gift.

This morning I had Frank herd the flock and sure enough this lamb got lost because he was moving them fast and she wandered around the pasture until she smelled and heard the flock.  It was amazing to watch as well as heartbreaking, but she found them.  She has likely adapted herself and figured out how to stay with the flock by smell and sounds and feeling.

  She's now back with mama so we'll need to call the vet and see if there is anything we can do or anything we should look for and we'll grab her and check her out.  She was likely born this way (she came to us during the week where we got more lambs and ewes from folks getting rid of their flocks).  And we thought sheep were not smart.....