This summer has been quite discouraging for me. I had such big plans for the garden, but the heat and drought have all but done those plans in. While temperature-wise it is as hot as it was earlier, it really doesn’t feel as hot and it stays cooler longer and cools off earlier than it did even a week weeks ago; but it’s still dry as a bone out there. On Saturday, Wally and I took out seven tub-fulls of vegetation. Squash bugs number among the billions down there. I harvested all of the butternut squash and gave the pumpkins to the pigs. If all goes well, today we’ll have the pasture cross-fenced and maybe on Monday, we’ll get two more beds installed in the garden, but it may be too dry to dig.
As I wrote earlier, I sold two goats on Sunday and on Thursday, I pulled two more from the milking “string.” Once they get down to a quart or less per milking, it isn’t worth milking them. Because the bucks are living with them, they are being bred earlier than I would normally breed them so that may be contributing to the reduction in milk. Breeding them this early may end up biting me in the butt.
Gwen is doing well feeding the two calves and I get about a gallon and a half of milk from her in the morning. I am still making quite a bit of cheese, but that’s primarily for the whey to feed the pigs. Of course, I could just feed them the milk, but we’ll use the cheese over the winter.
Maybe in preparation for starting to work at Mellow Mushroom, I’ve been cooking like crazy. I made both banana and peach bread this morning and while breakfast cooks, I am preparing to make banana pudding. Craving bananas? Wonder what that means.
In a little while I am going to head down to the local horseman’s club with Trophy to ride with them for a while. It will do us both good to ride with other horses. I called the girl I got him from yesterday and told her he needed a new name: Spook. I can’t blame him. It’s a lot to ask of any horse to ride alone in a strange place. It was may more than we should have asked of Virgil. You live and learn.
Until later …