Grazing

The veggies are coming in, but there will not be very much to harvest this season as the family has been grazing in the garden all week.  It's such a wonderful thing to just be able to run outback and pick all those expensive extras you need for dinner.  The lettuce is all just about gone, we've made quite a few salads and my husband likes this rather odd concoction of leaf lettuce, mayo and sugar. The squash is comming in one or two at a time and is disappearing just as quickly through the creation of summer salads and a wonderful dish of perch, squash and scallions.  The scallions have been wonderful to me, I've been putting them into everything and they grow right back in a day or two. Today I  noticed that the pickling cucumbers are starting to make an appearance so I need to be finding a recipe for that right away! I've never done it before but my friends have and they usually come out pretty awesome!  My friend also makes different types of pickled eggs  and since the incubators are all full I may have just found something fun and suprising to do with our extra eggs.

Peppers are also popping up right after one another, they have been making a snappy little addition to porkchop and chicken dishes. About the only thing I'm not seeing ( other than the corn, that blew away) is the okra. What the heck is up with that? They are nice looking and bushy plants but I don't have a single okra and I wanted to pickle some of those too!  Dagnabbit! I have hopes that the ockra will appear soon but it will be really disappointing if they don't grow!

On the animal front, it appears as though Sassy is pregnant again. YAY! I would really like to have bottle fed babies here on the farm so they really make an attachment to me and the children, however when you OWN the mommy it's really hearbreaking hearing the babies crying for her so I guess we'd have to buy them at auction.  I was thinking today that if I could keep Sassy milked after she has her baby this time that I would try and get Cassie to make goat milk soap with me. We could do it ourselves, it's not all that hard and with both her older kids going off to school next year I bet I could con her into it.

Velaney (the rabbit) stopped eatting today but hasn't started pulling hair. The nesting box has been in the hutch for a few days and I expected that she would have started pulling already. There is always a chance that the first breeding opportunity didn't take, so we have until the 29th before I'm really going to start worrying about her. Hopefully the bunnies will arrive soon. I'd really like to get my "program" back up and running again... i'm excited about the rabbitry being self sufficient, Even if I sell babies for only $5.00 I'll make more than enough to cover the costs of feed and of course I'll have the manure for the garden and if need be a fryer or two for the table. I'd really love to have more than 10 adults rabbits but at this point I just don't have enough hutches to expand, mabe by the end of summer...

Well ...... one can hope!