First June, now July

And the summer marches on...roses have bloomed and gone by - they out-did themselves this year, as did the lavender.  What started out looking like a bumper garden season quickly turned to punishing heat and little rain.  Weeds grew, vegetables and pastures suffered.

How have you all been?  The farmer who puts up our hay now finally got that done, so we have our first cutting in the barn.  Second cutting (and pastures) are growing back slowly (way to slow for my comfort level, but I suppose there is a lesson in that!)  I didn't think I was going to need straw this year but I might, so will probably do a trade for some if it becomes available.

We have two new lambs in the barn, new bloodlines that were purchased and not born here.  I'd like to show you a picture but haven't been able to get a good one yet.  I can tell you that one is a ram lamb and the other an unrelated ewe lamb.  Both of them carry good, fine fleeced Corriedale breeding crossed with moorit (red) colored Australian Bond sheep!  You might have heard me say before that I really desired having some moorit in the barn.  I've used CVM in the past, but the wool is sometimes just to "fuzzy" for me - I like the nice distinct crimp the Corriedale gives.  This will be fun to try.  We also have one more ewe lamb arriving from yet another farm, another moorit Bond cross sheep girl.  But of course, our main flock will continue to be the full Corriedale with our young ram "Hank" leading the way, and possibly a youngster from this years crop to grow out and see what he turns into.  Its harder and harder to find good rams, the quality and predictability I'm used to in the stock from Mar-Rita Farms.

We're surviving the heat as most farmers do - the livestock comes first and we do our best at keeping them as comfortable as possible.  As with people, we have to watch the young ones and the old ones the closest.    We're so thankful to have gotten some good rain showers in the past week and things are greening up again in our area at least.  I've been doing a little sock knitting, a little mitten knitting and during those really hot days in between farm jobs and husbands doctors appointments I sat in the shade and did some spinning!

I'll try to get those lamb pictures up real soon!  Oh, and I sat down to write this post (and another) last week but couldn't publish either of them for some reason.  Things seem to be working fine now.   Finally, here's a picture I took on an early spring walk through the woods, an old fenceline that's hidden there.  I like how it looks