What a great mother’s day I had this year! Sarah sent me a wonderful card on My Space as well as made me a German Chocolate cake. We had a cookout and hung out all day. It was the best mother’s day!

The eggs in the cardinal nest by the office door hatched and I was able to get a picture of one of the babies!

Flowers are blooming like mad – Iris, Poppies, Columbine, Dianthus, Pulmonaria and a few others. The Peony buds are beginning to show some color so it shouldn’t be much longer before they bloom.

Jerry spent the last two days working on getting the pool up. What a job that is!

We decided to get another dairy goat from Kim. Her name is Sugar. We are waiting on her to have her babies and then we will bring her home.

Friday I will pick up my Polish Frizzle Chicks provided they hatch.

I have a total of four turkeys now. They are Spanish Black and Bourbon Red crosses. Their names are George, Ringo, Hobbles and Gobbles. Now I just need Paul and John!

Princess had babies today but started eating them. By the time I got them out, none survived. I am trading her on Friday for a female baby bunny that hopefully I will have better luck with. This was the second time her babies did not live. The first time I was told she just neglected them. She was a really nice bunny but since I want a female for breeding, she is not the one for us.

It has been raining here all day which is really good for the new trees and shrubs we planted last night. Most of the items I ordered by mail this year have not arrived yet.

There are lots of birds – cardinals, sparrows, blue jays, mourning doves, finches, etc. enjoying the feeders today. We also have squirrels and a wild rabbit eating seed from a ground feeder!

Finally we are thinking of putting some instructional gardening videos up on the website. To do this we need to have more space.

This decision needs to be made by the 20th of this month. I would like to encourage anyone who can to please use the donation button and donate what you can. You will have a choice if you would like to be listed as a donor.

Thank you in advance.

Today was a busy day on the homestead. We planted peas, lettuce, radish, carrots and nasturtiums in the vegetable garden. Jerry started digging the holes for the potatoes to go in.

We took Darla and Mr. Buck out for a walk so they could mow the lawn near the road! Darla really loves dandelions!

I made a pound of Colby cheese today, some ice cream – hot fudge and pecan and some carmel corn from scratch. I am ready for the day to come to an end.

It was a nice day outside and all of the animals were out soaking up some sun. Jerry even took a baby duck out for a walk! Sunshine, our lone male duck, did not seem impressed with the baby but I am sure once they start feathering out and acting more like ducks they will all get along.

Saturday I will be at the North Park Mall from 2 to 4 with Lisa talking about the National Wildlife Federation for Earth Day. I will also be talking about the Plant-A-Row For The Hungry Program and encouraging people to participate! If anyone is in the area please stop in and say hi!

Finally we are thinking of putting some instructional gardening videos up on the website. To do this we need to have more space. This decision needs to be made by the 20th of this month. I would like to encourage anyone who can to please use the donation button and donate what you can. You will have a choice if you would like to be listed as a donor.

Thank you in advance.

I got up this morning and went out to milk Darla as ususal. I came inside, processed the milk and made our daily batch of butter.

I felt pretty tired today, I think due to the nasty, cold, rainy weather, so I took a brief nap.

I went out to the chicken coop to gather eggs. I have one person wanting my guinea eggs to hatch and another wanting some regular ones to hatch so I set those aside since I have plenty in the refrigerator for us and customers.

After my nap I decided to see if the yarn I had spun was dry. It was, so I rolled it into a ball. I have 4 ounces of wool yarn! I am considering making socks but have not decided for sure yet.

I may slip out to the greenhouse later to see how my seedlings are doing. I need to get some more seeds started but with this weather I have not been in the mood.

Update: I did go out to the greenhouse and found the following seeds germinated: Anemone sylvestris, Cotoneaster CC5454, Arisaema CC5698, Melaleuca alternifolia, Amsonia tabermontana, Primula CC5602 and Primula CC5600. The two Primula are growing in my unheated greenhouse. The rest are in the heated greenhouse.

I got up this morning and went out to milk Darla as ususal. Since I had almost a half a gallon of milk left I decided one of today’s projects would be to make cheese. I came inside, processed the milk and while I was waiting made butter and homemade bread. Then I made cheese. I made a spread that had Tuscan Herbs in it. We will eat it on crackers.

I am hoping to find my homemade cracker recipe tonight and bake some after supper.

Jerry was able to get some fence ran today so the goats could go outside. Mr. Buck found an escape route and they both got out. Mr. Buck ended up on top of the chicken coop before we were finally able to corral him!

I did several loads of laundry today and hung them on the line to dry. I love the smell of line dried clothes, especially sheets and blankets.

In the garden we planted my Elodie Lilies and the Iris Rikugi Sakura. I also planted seeds of various sweet peas, zinnias, several annual flower mixtures and poppies. Some of the seeds were several years old but I am pretty sure they were still viable. I guess we will know soon enough!

I am ready to eat supper. I think we are having steak and mashed potatoes and gravy. Corn sounds pretty good too! I think we still have some that I dried last fall.

Then the only thing I want to do is relax and maybe watch a show before bed.

Have a great evening!

Let me start by wishing everyone a Happy Easter!

I’ve been rather quite lately and for most of you I am sure you know why. Learning to care for a milking animal takes quite a lot at first.

I have been busy hatching eggs so I can increase my egg production and also have some roosters to put in the freezer this fall.

We have also been working on cleaning out the stalls and incorporating the manure into the vegetable garden.

My goal was to donate 1600 pounds of food last year to St. Martin’s. My garden was a flop. I will try to reach this goal again this year.

As many of you know in addition to donating food we can and use the food for our winter supply. This past winter has been quite lean due to the garden failing.

We had planned to plant 100 pounds of potatos before Good Friday. The weather did not cooperate. Jerry’s vacation has been a mess – but the weather will warm up and he does have at least another week coming so we will get them planted!

We also are adding some baby ducks this year since, after the neighbors dog incident last year, we only had one left.

I will be getting some turkeys at the end of the month. I can’t wait. I have been wanting some for a while now.

I am looking for some Sebastopol Geese babies. I would like the colored but the white ones will do. If anyone knows of anyone with some please let me know.

Now, back to the goats! We have Darla, our wonderful doe and Mr. Buck – who is also known to us as bam bam! I think that explains it. Darla is a wonderful milker and I am so glad Kim chose to sell her to me. She is so nice and loving.

So far we have made 2 quarts of ice cream – butter pecan and chocolate marshmallow, enough butter to keep us supplied, chocolate and peanut butter fudge, buttermilk for bread and pancakes and still had lots of milk left to drink.

We are really enjoying the milk and no, it is not goaty at all. It tastes like regular milk although even after scooping the cream off the top that I can get it is more creamy than regular milk. The ice cream was the best I have ever ate!

I have been making my own loaves of bread and have found if it rises long enough and is allowed to cool completely before it is cut you can get nice, fluffy slices just like store bought.

We have also been making all of our own noodles. There is nothing quite like homemade and the richness of our eggs just adds to the goodness.

I have also acquired a French Angora Buck. I am looking for a female for him. We named him Prince. I have got quite a bit of Angora from him so far and have been working on spinning it. I went out today and groomed him again. There was quite a bit of hair ready to come out on his underside. I think I have most of it off the top part of his body but am sure there will be more to come off the underside in another week or so. The hair is so light it wants to float away once I get it unstuck from my fingers and my clothes!

For those of you who do not know my friend Minnie had a spinning wheel that she sold me several months back. I have spun quit a bit of yarn. I have also been making my own socks which I like so much better than anything I could buy.

Finally I would like to say a big thank you to Susi for thinking of me and giving me her Grandmother’s rug loom. I have already started a wool roving rug. I am going to felt it when I am done so that it will be washable.

It has been a long day! Life on this farm starts at 7 a.m. and goes well past midnight!

I got quite a bit of milk from Darla today. We made homemade butter pecan ice cream with some of it as well as butter and buttermilk to use in pancakes tomorrow morning!

We spent most of the day working on the new duck pen and cleaning the chicken coop. What a mess that was!

 Jerry started working on the garden so we could plant potatoes but before he got too much done the storms moved in. What I did notice is the soil is improving. When I first started three years ago I had red clay to deal with. Now I have lots of areas that are nice, loose, dark soil. There is still some clay and it will take time to loosen all the soil but it was quite obvious that putting the hay, feathers and manure from the chicken coop on the garden every spring before we till and every fall when the garden is done has made a difference.

This fall I will have stall cleanings from the bunny and the goats to add as well.

The peas I planted are sprouting! The radish seedlings are looking really nice too. I am anxious to plant but know I have to wait until the weather is more stable than it is now. I can’t wait to get all the fresh vegetables and fruits from our land this year!

I made a batch of homemade noodles today that are drying. Jerry cut them up and put them on the dehydrator while I worked on making a loaf of honey cinnamon wheat bread to go with supper.

He ran to the store for some ginger root so I could make ginger, garlic and cherry rose tea marinated chicken breast for supper. I am also going to make a chicken broth to cook some of the noodles in. I haven’t decided on what vegetable to have but we will eat some of the fresh baked bread and homemade butter!

What a morning it has been! I took both goats out for a walk, milked Darla and gave Prince the bunny some nice organic carrots to munch on.

Jerry is on vacation this week. Today he is helping his Grandma out. Tonight he said he was going to make an old tub into a pen for our baby ducks so they can go into the chicken coop. I can’t wait to get them out of the house!

Darla is beginning to quite down although she still yells when I leave but the time is less and less. Mr. Buck may have been just the answer.

I see lots of weeds popping up in the flower beds. I need to get out there and take care of them but have been really tired lately and not in the mood to weed!

I would also like to get the goat fence ran this week so they can go outside without me being there.

They are predicting snow for later in the week. I sure hope not. I am ready for spring to be here!

The last few days have been quite eventful. Darla, our Nubian/Alpine milk goat came home and has been quite the handful. She was the only goat we had and wanted constant attention from me. Learning to milk has also been an experience. It takes approximately two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening to milk her. So far all of her milk has had colostrum in it and has had a bitter taste due to that. Hopefully she will quit making that in a few more days and then we can drink it.

The chickens have been quite happy with the fact that we cannot drink it because they are getting all of her milk!

Anyway, yesterday when she tried to escape and was caught between the barn wall and the fencing I decided enough was enough and got her a companion. I went to my friend Alice’s house and purchased a Toggenburg wether. Now that they are together, Darla is still making a few crying noises but not as much as she was. Since the new goat was unnamed I have been calling him Mr. Buck, even though he is a wether.

I told Jerry he could help decide on a name for him. He said since we had a Darla we should name the new goat Alfalfa so we would have two of the Little Rascals! What will he come up with next!

On the garden front bulbs are popping up everywhere and I am really pleased with the show they are putting on. My Star Magnolia has bloomed, daffodils, tulips are showing their buds, the pussy willow has bloomed and lots of miscellanous bulbs as well. The Hellebore get better every year. I have lots of blooms on those this year and the primrose are simply blooming themselves silly. My one purple pasque flower is also putting on quite a show. The hardy cyclamen continue to bloom as do the forsythia bushes. My variegated forsythia has both flowers and leaves open!

The peas do not seem to be coming up yet but I will look again today. It is obvious that the seeds are swelling. The radish have germinated.

Jerry will be on vacation starting Monday and I am hoping we will get a nice start on the vegetable garden. In the greenhouse lots of plants are coming up. I have many seedlings from last year that are resprouting such as my Jack-in-the-Pulpits and several Milkweeds. I also have three primrose from the Nepal expedition coming up. They are CC5603, CC5604 and CC5600. I also have various cleodendron, arisaema, hedychium, anemone, melica, veronica, cymbopogon, lavender, alyogyne, kenneida, campanula, codonopsis, phlomis and lupine varieties germinating.

This morning I woke up to the sound of heavy rain. The last two days have been really nice and we have got a lot of yard work done so I guess the rain should be a welcome change and will certainly help the new trees to settle into their homes.

This morning Jerry and I had to clean the baby duck cage and give all the baby ducks and chickens clean food and water. He went outside to take care of the ducks, chickens and guineas in the coop.

He also fed and watered Prince the bunny so I didn’t have to go out in this weather.

Angel and Sasha, our two lab mixes, didn’t even want to go out to potty this morning.

Bibbs, the cat, was sitting by the ducks watching me turn the eggs in the incubator.

Looking out I saw lots of new daffodil buds that had started to open. I am glad I went out yesterday and took photos of the ones that were open.

I just received the phone call that Darla, our goat, kidded and had two baby girls. I will find out later this afternoon when we will pick her up! Woo Hoo!

If I can be of any help please email me at SheriAnnRicherson@exoticgardening.com