Rain is falling!

We are finally getting a good rain!  There is almost 3/4 of an inch in the rain gauge and ti's still coming down.  It's quite chilly, too.  43° is all.  The wood stove is going and the heat feels good!

John is enjoying being back home again, and I am enjoying having him back!  Thanks to helpxers, the wood shed is 95 % full, and John has about 2/3 of the trees that were cut and left in piles out in the woods all cut up into firewood.  They just need to be stacked and left out there for another year and brought in next summer.   It looks much better out there now.  It's nice to be able to turn the gardening over to John and I just have the animals to take care of now.  I'll have truly tame goats again!  The last three years the kids haven't been handled much, I haven't had the time, so there is almost half the herd that won't let me touch them easily.  Time to work on that!

I'm busy spinning and needle felting.   Today is a good day to be inside.  The goats are all staying under cover.  Most of them have a good cashmere coat growing already.  I love petting them now, they are so soft. ☺

We are having to run the generator today.  It hasn't been run for months, but it's been cloudy for a couple of days and lots of electricity has been used, so it needed to be started up.

We've started processing the young roosters from the batch of straight run laying chicks I got in May.  They sure are scrawny compared to the meat bird crosses!  A bit tougher, too.  But, they still taste good.  They are either Jersey Giants, or Buff Orpingtons.  So far we've done more of the Orps than Giants.  I was going to wait a few more weeks, but they are starting to fight a lot and harass the hens too much. So it's time to downsize the rooster crop.  I'm going to keep one of each breed and all the hens and go from there.  I'll let them hatch out their own chicks next year and keep the flock going now without buying more. I do think we will get some more meat birds.  They are easy to raise and it only takes 8 weeks.  It truly is only 8 weeks, too. 9 weeks or more and the quality goes down.  I kept two to them longer to see, and 8 weeks is the best time to process them.

I lucked out and got into a feed co-op here that buys organic feed at wholesale prices.  That has really helped with the feed bill on the birds.  The turkeys are eating us out of house and home.  They are getting huge, too.  The toms spend most of their time fanned out and strutting around.  The two hens stick to themselves most of the time.   It's funny how the toms gobble at any noise they hear.  Forget about trying to carry on a conversation with someone anywhere near them.  Every time a person starts to talk, they gobble.  Silly birds.

Well, that's all the news from here for now.  Time to get back to spinning....