The Browns Visit the The Farm

A farm visit begins with a cocktail - friends usually arrive in the afternoon and it seems the best welcome after a long hot, beautiful drive through the mountains to our place by a little river.

There are lots of conversations and stories being read.

Of course it isn't all play, we put all our visitors to work - kids included!

Lucy and Jasper have become great helpers - they know how to feed the chickens and Ducky,

and to collect the eggs that I sell from our house,

and now they are learning how to be one with the Flock.

April made friends with Jack & Jill,

and Fred & Ollie, the Tom Turkeys.

"Gobble, gobble, gobble"!

When the chores were finished we did let the kids play in the hay!

Meanwhile, the Men were busy working in the vineyard, finishing putting the last of the trellis poles in the hard, rocky ground.

Thanks Rob!!!

All these photos were taken by Rob and April, and they were so kind to share them with us.
There were so many beautiful shots it was hard to pick which ones to post.
I will close with these two that shows off the farm and the great weather we had during their visit.

We hope The Browns visit again soon!!!

End of July

I'm doing the "catch-up on the blog" dance.
Unfortunately I haven't been taking very many photos....we've had lots of visitors and lots of fun, guess too much fun for me to take the time to get photos.
Mary was here in July for a short visit and the only photo I got was on her last morning just before she boarded the train to Seattle.

We had a good visit, lots of sisterly talk and hanging out, we did pick peas and shell them, I took a photo of that....the rest of the visit I have photos that Mary took,

she documented my first attempt at Camembert (we call it "fuzzybert") and baguettes...

Keith on his tractor, he was still hobbling about at this time, he is now very much improved,

and she just had to take a photo of Felix's present he left for us to find early one morning in the bathtub....Life on The Farm!

After Mary's Visit Keith finished the new chicken coop.

This is where the chicks and turks that we hatched earlier this year will live.

From this small yard they have access to the larger goat yard for even more tasty grazing.

I'll just finish this wee update with some shots of the goats out in their yard.

Cinder feels she must keep an eye on those goats, but it does get her tired.
An August update coming soon....

HAY!

The hay is in and we needed to put it up out of the way for more hay to come.
For the first time we needed to use a contraption Mr. Whitehall left behind.

Our task for the morning - move 74 bales of hay to the loft.

Mission Accomplished!

Of course we have two sore backs....but they would have been broken without the hay conveyor.

Goats On The Lam

The male goats must have got wind that today is Independence Day and took it to heart.
They were out of their pen this morning.

"Ha Ha, we got out! La De Da" said Valentino sticking out his tongue.

"Hay, Watch Out There's A Cat!" warned Sparky.

"You are my Best Friend Sparky", murmured Valentino.

Keith and I decided to let them be for the day - let them have fun in the sun and worry about getting them back in later. These boys really hammed it up for the camera... I think they Stars!

Happy Independence Day!

What we are eating from the garden this week