English Roses

Some of my favorite flowers are roses, pinks and pansies. But not just any roses, my favorite are David Austin English Roses. They are hardy, repeat flowering and the fragrances are hard to describe. The one on the left  is called The Pilgrim, but my favorite is Abrahm Darby(below right). A vase of these roses and the fragrance fills the room.

Honey Bees

Where does the time go? Between lambing, kidding and getting early veggies in the garden there seems to be very little time for posting. The first week of May we recieved our shipment of bees. In each package there were 3 lbs of bees and a queen. It was raining when we got them and putting them in the hive body was challenging. They are now pulling comb and foraging for pollen. We feed them sugar water and a pollen patty with vitamins. The honey flow is coming and we need to get the hive ready for gathering by giving them all the help we can.

Towels

Well I finally finished the waffle weave towels I started over a month ago. It took me over 2 weeks to warp and less than a week to weave 2 towels. I liked how fast the weaving went with my new boat shuttle. I will definately weave more but my next project will be a table runner.

Got Kids

This past weekend our daughter came over with the grandkids. They love coming to grandpa and grandma's, can you guess why? This is Mya our 6 year old granddaughter who loves the baby goats, and it apppears that they like her too!

Lambs and border collies

Although the lambs could care less about the dogs their moms react a little differently. They are very protective and will charge a dog. We have put our older dog on the moms and lambs and she took a wide circle around the flock. She has been butted before. One of our 2 year old male dogs brought the sheep in off of some wheat my husband let them graze on and he did real good. It doesn't matter how small of job it is to the dogs it is all work.

French Alpine Kids

On Thursday my 7 year old alpine Annie had triplets, 2 bucks and 1 tiny doe. All are healthy and doing fine. It will be good to have goats milk again. I plan on making some swiss cheese this year too. My husband is making me a cheese press.

Carrots in March

Yesturday Dave and I went out to look over the garden. He was looking at the rich soil that 10 years of composting goat manure has made and I was pruning grape vines. I walked over to a spot where last fall I had planted some carrots. I had left some in the ground planning to mulch but never got around to it. There they were just as crisp as ever. All that snow had done the job for me. So Dave grabbed the garden fork and I cleaned the mud off and took them inside and washed them off. Boy are they ever sweet and crisp. That was a nice surprise. Don't they look good.