April and May

Welcome back to the blog! Sorry that it has been a while. Many things have happened on the farm since I last wrote. A few weeks ago, our lovely chicken Fennel died. She was a sweet girl, and we will miss her very much.

Fennel's grave

Another thing that occurred was the emptying and cleaning of our cement bottom pond. There was SO much sludge and algae at the bottom, but it is now cleaned out and looks much better. The previous owners of our house had been cleaning the pond by draining it, (although it never drained fully), and threw come bleach crystals in. This didn't really help clean it, but it did kill some of the life in the pond. We figured out that the pond had never drained fully before because the pipe that emptied the pond was very clogged. So we found the end of the pipe, which was hidden in the brook and filled and covered with silt and rocks, and unclogged it. We did not clean the pond with bleach, but with a lot of determination and persistence. It is all filled up now, and the water is clearer than ever.

Half-emptied

Biking in the emptied pond, and a half-full pond above it!
(Are you more of a pond half-full, or half-empty person? :P)

The goats have gotten much friendlier, and will now stand and let you pet them if there is something in it for them (e.g. food, brushing). 

         

We are also getting our garden started, planting sunflowers, peas, lettuce, carrots, mustard greens, lavender, rosemary, cilantro, & basil. On Memorial Day, we bought two more blueberry bushes to add to our patch and a lovely little peach tree.   

Here are the sunflowers just starting to poke up through the ground

The garden and blueberry patch

Our peach tree!

The weather is getting warmer and warmer, reaching into the 90s a few times!  

I will leave you this time with a picture of our cat, Madison, enjoying a sunny day outside.