Could It Be Summer Already?

Wow...so, I guess it's been awhile since my last blog...Of course, it has been a busy year at home and at work, and it seems like writing gets set on the back burner, well, usually. So let me take this chance to update everyone on this year so far!

 

First of all, our farm is growing and progressing - moving forward every day. Even though it may not be as big, as fast as we would like, it is still moving along quite nicely and keeping us busy every day. Our dairy goats, Mabel and Flora each had two goats each this spring. Mabel had two girls, Ethel and Blanche, and Flora had a girl, Fauna, and a boy, Herb. The angoras each had a baby: Frankie's baby girl, Sweet Pea, and Itty Bitty's baby boy, Coffee. So far, we are keeping all of our goats while we figure out whether the angora/oberhasli mix will produce good fiber and, well, while we figure out what we're willing to feed! We still have our sheep, Steve and Jester, and our alpacas, Josie and Blossom, all of whom need sheared desperately in the recent heat of summer. Our scheduled shearer is apparently pretty busy, so we're at a point now of figuring how how much longer we're willing to wait to have this done. Our animals are beginning to show their discomfort, and we definitely don't want it to become a health issue. The boys all need their manhood put in check - Herb and Coffee will need banded soon, and we have had the talk with our vet about having the sheep, dare I say, castrated (wince). Our barn is still under construction, but we did turn our dairy goat pen into a double wide, giving up our feed storage for the comfort of our growing family.

 

Speaking of a growing family, our new animals this year are chickens and turkeys and bees! I'm trying to keep everything "big picture" for this post, so I won't get into too many details, but I will say that we did raise and process our meat birds, and have enjoyed eating a few (the rest are in the freezer). It isn't a fun process, but it is not the hardship I was expecting, and we plan on ordering our next meat birds soon. The processing of our meat chickens definitely helps to provide respect the food that we eat. Our six layer chickens are still growing, as are our turkeys (four), in their coop-in-progress and yard. Our two bee hives were started in May using nucs, so each began with five full frames of bees along with five of our empty frames per brooder box. One hive is doing awesome, and one is struggling and helping us learn how to take care of hive issues - more on that later.

 Work - I was fortunate to work two long-term substitute teaching jobs in the same school for last half of the school year - first, first grade, and ending the year in second grade. This was a great opportunity for me and led to...wait for it...my recent hiring as a second grade teacher for this same school beginning in the fall! Whoot! This is so exciting for all of us here! A great school with a wonderful staff, and only ten to fifteen minutes away from home! We (Shelby and I) have already been preparing for the classroom, and soon my grade teaching group will be getting together to start preparing academics for the new school year. In the meantime, I am working this summer at the company that I worked for way back before we moved to Florida...the company where I started working when I got out of the Navy and where I worked when I started college to become a teacher. A weird experience, and definitely a brain switch from my teacher self to my techie self. Just weird. And reassurance that teaching is the career and passion for me. But I do appreciate the summer work and the opportunity to revisit my technical expertise and see old friends...it's nice to have that door open.

 

With that, I think I will end this post. This year has been busy and, as usual, our to-do list often exceeds the time that we have to do it all :) But we keep at it and get things done, always moving towards our goal of sustainability and living our dreams. With every animal we get and every tree and bush that we plant, and every goal that we achieve, our lives get a little more colorful and each of us grows as a person. It's an amazing life we have...for us, anyways - I would never proclaim it is the life for everyone, because we know that it is not. But for us, this life is pretty sweet!