Anyone notice I jumped ship for a week? Steemit was the last thing on my mind last week with all my family away, except my little boy, myself and a homestead full of animals! If you missed out on where Farmer Buckaroo was be sure to join the journey he took to the beautiful Kalahari Desert. He brought me photos and I was delighted to write this post:
https://steemit.com/travelfeed/@buckaroo/kalahari-dreams
Meanwhile back at the ranch......I have been as busy as an entire swarm of bees! The neighbours and the staff have told my husband that he should let his wife be the farmer. A wonderful complimented. But I am exhausted. Apart from my usual responsibilities - milking goats, making cheeses and soaps, preparing the vegetable gardens for planting (and planting) sewing cloth diapers and children's clothing for orders, making body butters for the health shops AND raising my baby boy - I took on my husband's responsibilities.
We are in the third week of the onion harvest. And we are literally drowning in onion seed! It is such a blessing. But my usual hours had extended so that I was getting by on 5 hours of sleep a night. I had to organize an extra team of 12 onion pickers because our usual team are not keeping up with the wonderful onion harvest.
Not only do we pick and fill the stores but the onion seed needs to be constantly turned in order to dry, without moisture building up and causing rot. The dried seed needs to be bagged. We have simply run out of storage space. We have also run out of grazing for our small flocks. I seized the proverbial bull by the horns and got the biggest of our two fields for pasture prepared. While I had a man on the tractor disking, ploughing and sewing I - gulp - hitched up the huge farm trailer and had to drive the bags of onion seed out of the field to the store room. I hate pulling a trailer. And had to conquer my fears. Let's just say it was my least favourite part of the week.
Thanks to the combined efforts of my goats and the chickens we have piles of beautiful rich compost. Bags of these went into building up and feeding my herb gardens. I have also cleared the overgrown winter veggies and planted new seed. The brocolli and tomatoes have already come up. I'm so excited about my gardening as this is usually an area that falls to mom and mom-in-law (who have also been away).
Sadly 3 of our baby chicks have died. The first two I suspect were inadvertently scratched to death by a naughty rooster who flew over the fences to get to the mama hens. The last baby chick was very quickly killed by a sudden outbreak of mites we have. There are various natural ways to deal with mites. However, because a chick is so teeny his blood is quickly sucked from him and he dies. I've cleaned the area, more than liberally sprinkled diatomaceous earth, painted their little faces (and the nasty mites) with olive oil and chopped aloe ferrox in their waters. Everyone looks happy albeit indignant about the bitter water. But they will need to have their olive oil facial again today.
It was a very satisfying week. But I am happy my husband is home - so is our little boy! And while I am good at farming, I am happy to be fired from the post! I will stick to the cheese making and goat cuddles. My little farm boy is such a big helper. And learning very fast. I hope I don't get put out of a job all together once he knows how to make the soaps and plant the herbs!
Like my kitty mama I'm trying to take it easy(er) this week. There is still much to do but at least I don't bear the full weight of the farm! So for everyone who has been waiting for the goats milk cheese and soap posts you will have a little longer to wait. I have 3 week old kittens demanding a Steemit introduction and my goatie girls new young buck arrives tomorrow. So watch this space!!