Been a long week

It has been a pretty exhausting week. Along with work all week I was at the crisis pregnancy center three nights until after 9 P.M. volunteering and going through training. On Thursday, the only night other than Monday that I was home at a reasonable hour, I just sat with my wife on the deck enjoying the nice weather for almost three hours.

We got our ewe sheared, check out the before and after pics!

She looks completely different but on Thursday it was in the low 80's here and she was dying with all of that wool.

Looking at rain the next three days, soaking the already soaked ground. The farmers were trying to get some of their crops into the ground the last few days but it is still pretty wet. The Amish were having more success because their horses and old fashioned planters are a lot lighter than a huge tractor and they had their horses working morning to night the last few days. Our ducks are enjoying the huge puddles in the yard and the pasture, so they aren't complaining!

Speaking of horses, we sold three of our draft horses to an Amish family in Michigan, so we are down to one mare. She is the best looking of the four, so we are considering breeding her. We kind of are thinking breeding her to a Friesian stallion to get a smaller but still powerful riding horse for dressage or jumping. If not that, maybe we breed her to another Percheron to get another draft horse, one we can train when it is younger and use for pulling wagons.

Our daughters have been trying to get some gardening done but the weather has been uncooperative. We have some serious tick issues outside but as our five guinea hens get older they should take care of a lot of that problem! Our chicken population is substantially smaller, the fat meat chickens met their demise (and met the freezer!) a few weeks ago. It is a lot more of a hassle and more expensive to raise and butcher them yourself, I don't think we will do that again.

We are remembering now the difference between living in the suburbs with a small yard to mow once in a while versus living on a little farm where there is always something to be done!