A New Goat, and Garden Hopes

Yesterday we made a 2 1/2 hour trip up through the east part of the Ozark Mountains to pick up our new buckling, Rainy Day Prince.  He is a gorgeous little guy and we welcome him to the herd.  

Al and I got the tomato trellis up before we left Sunday morning and I tied everything this morning.

Hannah pulled out all the carrots and I harvested the very meager harvest of potatoes. 

The small carrots and greens were fed to the goats, while the remaining carrots and greens were cleaned up for us to eat. 

Another raised bed of carrots were planted in the kitchen garden. 

The sunflowers are all in bloom and looking quite gorgeous. 

Meanwhile, the battle continues with the squash bugs, but I believe I am coming out on top of the game. Very few are found each morning, and most of what I do see end up dead. 

There is an abundance of cucumbers which are being made into a lot of fermented pickles. The Beit Alpha type are used for salads. 

I have two loaves of sourdough bread proofing in the refrigerator and some chicken broth going in the old roasting oven.

I have been working on getting my homestead calendar put together with to-do lists for each month. Some things are time sensitive and need doing at certain times. Other things are not so urgent and can be completed when things aren't so busy. 

On my list to do in the next week is to prep the garden and plant another planting of beans. I also hope to get some more summer squash planted. My peppers need to be transplanted into the main garden with a possible plant going into the kitchen garden for saving seed. 

The quail are "tractoring" along in the garden and doing well. The males will be processed when I return from Kentucky. 

I candled the quail eggs and our of 40 eggs, 37 are fertile. The plan is to set up two more breeding sets and raised the remaining quail for meat. Our goal is to be able to produce our own eggs and quail in a sustainable operation. 

We have decided that our older four turkeys will be processed when weather permits. From the 11 poults, we will choose 2 new breeding pairs and process the remaining turkeys when they are about 6 months old. 

Our hens are back up to two dozen eggs a day after I realized a huge error on my part which brought our daily egg count down to zero.  After realizing what I did, I gave them their full rations and it took a little over a week for them to start laying again. Our goal for them is to thin the flock a bit, providing a few stew hens for the freezer, and hatch out chicks for future meat. 

We decided to keep Leg'o as a breeding ram even though he is the Rosemary's son. Since we lost our other ram lamb in the spring, we decided we didn't want to be left with one ram. So as of now, we have no sheep due to be processed and do not know if any are pregnant. 

Since I have to make a trip to Kentucky, I am in the process of drying up my milk doe, Amber. She is actually drying up quite nicely without me milking her a little each day. I am sure this is because she wasn't at full capacity anyway. I am unsure if any of the goats are pregnant but won't worry about it. Eventually, this fall we will separate goats into pens to allow for breeding. No crazy "unknowns" this time around. 

Well, I guess that is all for now. The kids are getting ready for bed so I can read our next book, Christy, to them. We were sad when the movie series came to an end leaving us all on the edge of our seats.