RIP Dani

 Today my faithful, loyal companion of 16 years died. She was 17 years, 3 months old.  She had a good long life, covering lots of miles riding with me back when I had my horse.  She was very protective of me, even growling at my husband a few times!  She was great at herding chickens and turkeys, baby goats, too.  But, she was afraid of the adult goats.  Dani is the one on the left in the picture.  Nellie, the great pyr is 10 now, so she won't be around for too many more years.  This picture is a few years old.
  The picture below is a large mountain lion that came around for a day or so, then has moved on.  It seems they come around about once a month.  We must be on their rotation of places to get close to.  Thankfully the dogs are keeping it on the outside of the fence.  The cover to my game camera wasn't closed all the way it seems, so the picture is a bit like looking through a porthole.

We are making progress on the thinning project.  It's down to piling all the branches and putting the logs in piles to be cut up later.  Then once fall comes and open burning season begins, we will burn all the piles and get it totally cleaned up.  It looks so much better out there!  I've wanted to be able to walk anywhere on our property without having to duck, go under trees, or around thickets since we bought the place, and it's finally happening, 22 years later.  There will be more grass and brush for the goats to eat, too.
  Well, that's all for now...

Empty spot in the yard

Today I got done processing the meat chickens for this year.  24 all together, with 10 going to friends.  Now it's rather empty out in the yard, there aren't any white chickens running around being chickens.  These birds got the best life, plenty to eat, free ranging all over the yard and goat pens, they were healthy birds!  These didn't have any leg problems, they were moving around just fine up till the minute I caught them.  They could still run/waddle even!  Some people call them "frankenchickens", but I think they just don't feed them right and let them eat too much and get too weak to move.  If fed right, they act like a regular chicken, eating bugs and greens and walking all over the place.  They sure taste good!  We will be doing this again next year for sure.

I hauled and stacked 190 small square bales of hay, 90 in the dairy barn and the rest in the cashmere shed.  The stuff in the cashmere shed is my "emergency" stash in case I can't get down the mountain this winter when I run out of the big bales I'm getting now.  I get one every week or so.

This summer has been pretty good weather-wise so far.  Not too hot, some rain and cool enough to have the wood stove going Wednesday!  We're in a warm couple of days now, but it is supposed to be cool again next week.

The garden is doing really well.  There are enough edible pod peas to enable us to have peas every day all winter if we wanted.  I think John may have planted too many!  His greenhouse looks like a jungle, too.  The tomato plants are touching the ceiling in there.  There is a good amount of onions and carrots, and it looks like there will be a decent crop of green beans.  Not a super germination rate on them, but it's looking like enough to do something with.  Cabbages are growing well.  I'll have lots of cultured veggies this fall and winter.

Tomorrow I am going up to Eureka for the fiber festival and quilt show that is happening up there this weekend.  It's a small festival, but I like going, it's in a nice venue and the people are good that run it.  There are hundreds of quilts that line main street which looks pretty cool.  I'll be seeing a friend I haven't seen in three years, too, so it's going to be a great day!

Have a good week-end!