Finally threw together some footage of Zoe’s babies!

Drama Queen’s udder is full, full, full – and her ligaments (near the tail, that soften for giving birth) are gone, gone, gone!

She’s in the birthing stall, chewing her cud and having her contractions. Probably later today we’ll have new little goatbabies to show you!

You just can’t beat eating truly fresh food. Two recent meals:

Naturally raised, grass-fed free-range beef from Deck Family Farm, on a bed of our own kale, topped with homegrown tomato, homegrown onion, ketchup Teri made from last year’s tomatoes, and a slice of our own goat cheese.

Breakfast today: fairy tale eggplant, kale, onion, bell pepper, yellow & red cherry tomatoes, squash flower, and sweet corn omelet (all veggies picked minutes before cooking, and of course using eggs and milk from our critters)

Did you make it this far? Good reader! You get CUTE GOATS!

Drama Queen is looking like a football – she’s due to kid this next week!

Thursday evening, after dark. A blanket in the orchard. Raspberry wine (for me) and pale ale (for him). Surrounded by a billion stars (some of them shooting). Dog snuffling in the grass. Just us and the Perseids. The show was amazing.

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Can you find the goat in this one?

Here she is:

These are not goats:

Lulu and Zoe:

Nikabrik:

“Oooh, where are we going?”

“Oh. I’ll get you for this.”

It’s difficult to capture or describe the lushness around here this time of year, so I decided that I’d spend 15 minutes walking around and see how many different flowers I could spot. Here’s the result…

Brandywine tomato:

Strawberry:

Foxglove:

Cool frost-colored plant (this isn’t Photoshop, this is what it actually looks like in June):

Last year’s kale finally allowed to go to seed:

Ahh, yes, the Meadow Multi-Dangle:

Peas:

Purple clusters:

Purple cones:

Red clover:

One rosebush:

The other rosebush:

Rosemary:

The Dreaded but briefly lovely scotch broom:

Small daisies:

Umm…purple:

Trailing blackberry:

Something lavender colored:

A magenta one:

A pink one:

More pink:

Purple again:

Fantastic red flower:

Unknown yellow flower:

Another yellow one:

White clover:

Yarrow, or Queen Anne’s Lace, or similar:

And finally, today’s garden haul – the Chinese Pink garlic, which mostly crapped out but gave a few small clusters, more turnips, and the first good pint of domesticated strawberries:

(first three images are scaled-down; click pic to see full size)

Peck peck…

Crack!

Peep…peep…umph…

Hello!

(images below are scaled-down; click each one to see full size
or click here to expand them all)

The Asian Pear tree has leaves as lovely as any other’s flowers.

Cover crops of clover and cereal ryegrain are so pretty it’s almost a shame to till them in when planting the next crop. In some places, I’m experimenting with just opening a hole in the clover cover and planting into that, cropping the clover surrounding the transplant to let in light. Might mean less weeding, which is always a good thing.

Radishes…fast and reliable, they really lift your spirits when you’re looking at everything else you planted and wondering where the heck it is. These were planted from last year’s seeds. Several radishes were allowed to complete their whole cycle undisturbed, and when they died in the fall it was an easy matter to strip the seedpods off into paper bags. I crushed the pods in the bag with a beer bottle and sprinkled some of the resulting mixture here about a week ago. The greens, being early and abundant, are almost worth more to us than the spicy little radishes themselves.

Turnips and Kale are having a riot in the cold frame. We’ve been taking several large helpings of kale every week, along with some turnip thinnings – the greens are a little sandpapery when raw, but wonderful steamed.

Purple flowers by the house…this is our third spring, and I’m not sure I ever saw these in that place before. There are always surprises waiting here!

This is a close-up of pollen settled onto the Letsgo…for a few days, everything had a yellow haze around here.

Random decoration from a previous tenant.

Garlic plants are looking great!

We have about 26 hops vines going, thanks to a friend who let me dig some rootstock from his patch. An essential beer ingredient, we are currently paying about $4/ounce for the dried flowers, so this may be one of our more practical plantings.

There was recently a 2,200% tax increase on the tobacco I like…these TN86 tobacco seedlings are my response to that. It’s a shame; of all taxes I pay, a sin tax that is largely spent on medical care is one of the most palatable, but with close to half my salary going to taxes, tolls, and other government fees, I don’t feel the urge to pay more.

Ahh, spring!