Isn’t spring absolutely wonderful? It feels like with every sunny day things are just bursting to life. The pastures are full of lambs and the garden beds are ready for seeds. It does feel a little overwhelming on some days, though. This is, without a doubt, the busiest time of the year for us and sometimes it is hard to keep up on it all. Today is fabulous though and it is spring days like today that make me very happy to be living in such a beautiful place as the Pacific Northwest. Everything on the farm is quite pleasant today. We’re delighted to have Ashley hanging out at the farm until she begins her PhD. program and the extra hands are a blessing. Makes everything more fun when you get to share it with your family that enjoys it too. Just to make sure everyone knows how our crew rolls on a spring day like today , we thought we would share some photos of our favorite kind of ‘Spring Fling’!
Happy to report that we have breezed through lambing without a hitch. One more ewe to go and everyone is rolling along beautifully. Every year we remark about how much we love the lambs. There is something about the lambs that just say ‘spring’ more so than anything else.
It is such a delight to watch the little buggers pronking around the fields on those springy sticks of theirs. They are really something else. We continue to be grateful for the great mothering ability of the Border Leicester ewes. Rarely a worry about their babies; those girls know how to be mamas.
In the doe barn, we have Turtle and Blessing on board milking with Pigeon, Juno and Roxy anticipated this week. Turtle is a little work-horse. That goat can milk! With more goats fresh, milk has really started coming along and we keep thinking we should send out a notice to our interested customers, but the truth is, we can’t figure out when we are going to have time for interviews. Our ‘other job’ schedules have been something else and sometimes I think it is hard for people to even conceive the type of routine that we keep on a daily basis in order to keep the farm running and working full-time too. We really are stretched to the max.
Hopefully everyone reading this is on the edge of their seats waiting for our big announcement of what we have coming up this year; what our big secret something is. Sorry to report, you will need to wait until our end of April post before you hear the news. We have set a May 1st, launch date and it looks like we are on schedule for that, so the wait won’t be too much longer. Isn’t the suspense just tantalizing? I assure you, not nearly as tantalizing as the surprise! 🙂 We promise it will be worth every second of the wait. Suffice it to say, yet one more thing that proves goats are truly diverse and wonderful.
Cheese making this year is clipping along at a fairly good pace. We are working on the cheese cave….AGAIN! Oh my gosh—it is really the project that will never end. Access to the cave has been a problem since we put it in, so this year the path to the cave, electricity for fans and an antechamber are all on the agenda. We’ll see.
Happy to report that the new bulk tank is working out beautifully. I think it is fair to say with the does really starting to roll that we made that little investment just in the nick of time. It is wonderful. Because we are always in an improvement mode and because we are faced with some business decisions this year, we are in the process of putting together a little survey for our current and potential customers to help us know how we can meet your needs in the face of our business challenges. We hope that you will take the time to fill it out for us. We appreciate your input.
So how about this…two updates in the same month!!! See, I told you I was going to try to be better about keeping you up to date on what we have going on!
So, hang on for the ‘big news’ everyone, and we’ll try to drop another line or two before we make the big announcement next month.
Until then, wishing everyone a blessed Easter and beautiful spring days!
Peace+
Shaun & Lorrie