As the title says there never seems to be enough time.  We are starting June now and it feels very hot here in VA.  Even in the mountains it feels hot, where I was raised in the swampish areas around the state capital it would be unmercifully hot and no breeze, humid with LOTS of insects.  One of the first things I noticed when we moved here was how much cooler it felt.  Guess I am just use to being here now.

Well I started harvesting the chickens(to say it nicely..)  I only managed three this weekend.  With my wife being with child makes it harder, so this year I decided to skin them instead of pluck them.  It goes faster and leaves less for her to do, all she has to do is cut them up and bag them, but I don't feel they taste as good that way.  I am hoping to get a couple more done to night and some later on this week.  The big butcher day thing is really a big pain and this will probably be the last time we do it.  I am hoping to get the flock up and going and just butcher as we need or want.  This has its own problems though as well.  The chickens are never as tender this way, many are culled hens only suitable for stewing, and the occasional young bird for anything else and I love roasted chicken and as the username implies fried chicken.

I have also gotten way behind on the garden.  I got all the mulch down but then took a "break".  Now I have a lot of weeding to do or I will loose it all to the weeds.  They are not bad yet, but are to the point were I must get off my a$$ and do something or they will be.  I have put way too much work into the garden this year for that to happen! A bit of good news discovered that one of our trees is a mulberry and they are starting to get rip so while weeding yesterday we were enjoying mulberries, my wife is already looking at recipes for them.

As I said it is hot here and I have not even begun shearing the sheep.  The poor things spend most of their days lying in the shade.  Ramboullets are very woolly and I HAVE to start this week.  We were suppose to get a rain yesterday and we did not, I was a little mad because the garden really needed it, but if it had I would have been put off for shearing by several days, waiting for them to dry out, so thank the gods it did not as now I could start on Tuesday.

I was really feeling annoyed and swamped yesterday evening, but I got a sense of peace between then and now.  I now feel I still do not have all the time I want, but I feel that everything important will get done.  I feel this will be a good week for me, but a little extra mojo juice never hurts so if you got some to spare, you find it lying in a corner or something it would be great if ya could send it my way.

Well the big news this week kiddies, is I am weining the kids.  A very difficult process with goats since they are smart AND presistant.  I tried penning them seperately from the mamas, they managed to find a way out within three hours and nearly destroyed a fence in doing so.  So I resulted to teat tape.  Basically medical taping up there teats so the kids can't get at them.  This method is about presistance on my part.  It is not perferct.  Usually one of the kids manages to get one teat uncovered.  but they are trying less and less I am hoping in a couple of weeks they will have quit altogether.

But we are now enjoying ALOT of milk and I mean ALOT.  We are averaging about two and half gallons a day.  If I am here all day I can easily drink half a gallon by myself.  I love milk.  I use it to "top me off"  at meals and it makes food go alot farther.  But even as much as I drink we cannot put down that much milk.  So cheese production is starting up now. 

My chores have lengthend by a good half hour and my wife now has to dedicate several hours, a couple days a week to trun the surplus milk that builds up in the refridgerator into cheese.  So that part is not so fun.

I have been haullling a lot of mulch home to fill in the garden paths to try and combat the weeks better this year.  I have hauled about five loads in my new/old little ranger and it is looking like another two before I am done.  But all in all it has been a very good week I am dog tired but things are getting done around here, and it is feeling like a true homestead.  

Well I hate to do it but it is time to clean up my friends list and request list.  I am always hesitant on adding friends.  I do not want to friend 1000 people just because.  I want to share my life and the lives of the people on my list and you cannot do that in that large a number. So to those ends I will be eliminating some people from my list whom I have no contact with.

I laso need to clean up my request list.  It is hard to tell who is wanting to friend me because we have something in common and who is doing it to add to there ever growing collection of friends.  So if you sent me a request and remember doing so and still want to be my friend hit me with a PM so I know.  Otherwise I apologize to those that get cut.

The garden is finally done. I finished digging and it is also completely planted with the first crop. We have already begun harvesting lots of salad greens, radishes, and our first round of broccolli(obviously planted much earlier). Tomatoes, peppers, corn, peas, brussel sprouts squash, zukes, cucumbers, canteloupe, and watermelon all in. Once the corn gets a few inches on it we will plant greenbeans and pumpkins.

The second round of planting will begin in a few weeks once all the early stuff and the peas are spent. That is looking like limas and I am not sure what else.

We had to do some major repair to the fence when I stupidly forgot to make sure the gate to the pasture was closed one evening and the goats got out. Luckily they did not do that much damage, mainly because I think my wife found them not too long after they had gotten out.

With the garden somewhat under control I have to start thinking about other things. Three big ones are butchering the chickens, shearing the sheep, and finish spraying the fruit trees. None of the three are an easy task but they are mostly time consuming, perhaps the most precious and smallest resource I have.

Well on to some good news. My wife and are about 19 weeks away from our second child. We have held off telling anyone for several reasons, mainly because we want to keep stress down. But homesteading has taught us a lot of things that are wrong with society around us. And when it comes to having a baby it seems there are more. I think people ask a lot of questions that they do not have the right to ask, or feel it is ok to touch a woman's belly. We are also not happy with the medical industry in the USA. That is all I am going to say in a public blog. For my friends feel free to message me and I will give yall alot more info.

Well after a month I make a return to the computer. And what a month it has been. After the birth of kids the whirlwind begin. Two kids were rejected by mothers meaning bottle feedings multiple times a day. They are all nearly two months old now. And unfortunatley with a hay shortage I will have to ween them instead of letting them do it on their own. Not much hay, especially alfalfa hay means less milk. The kids drink alot and so there is less for us and we really need it right now. The two girls are hopefully going to be sold as will one of the boys. I am still hoping to keep two for draft training but they may end up goign as well if we need the money and cannot afford to feed them.

I am also trying to finish upgrading the chicken coop for the chickens. All that is left is to finish the wire inside and outside of the coop. It is hard to find time to work on it there is so much else to do around here plus actual employment. The cross rocks will have to be butchered in less than two weeks... something else I MUST make time for.

I have finished tilling the garden. After three years the ground is still hard as rock in the lower section. I have decided to improvise some beds down there using three very long pieces of plastic cut about 4 feet wide. This means ALOT of shoveling. IN order to avoid the hard pan and make them raised beds I am shovelling out the good soil in what is to be my paths I am also moving a couple of inches of the hard pan as well, and putting them into the new beds. This is back breaking and slow work. The final results should be 6 ro more inches fo good soft dirt in the beds and a hardpan path that should be very weed resistant espcially after I bury it in 4 inches of mulch.

I have also cleared away new ground and installing a new berry patch( black raspberries, blackberries, and wineberries so far.) That is more or less complete at this point. The ground there was not so hard but full of roots and trash left by the previous owner. Everything is doing well there. We will most likely not get any berries this year as it wil take most of the season for the roots to really get established.

We were also forced to get a new truck. The transmission blew on our old one. Money is always tight around here so we new we had to go cheap and fuel efficient we found an old 84 ranger on Craig's List that fit the bill fine. Get it road legal was another story. We got it in North Carolina and I live in Virginia. This proved to be a nightmare at DMV. And since we have a more rigorous state inspection on vehicles it will not pass inspection till I do some work to it. Mainly the exhaust system.

Then we got a dog a very nice looking Austrailian sheperd. We decided on this because of of its ability to herd, loyalty to owner, and it was also free on Craig's List (I love that site!) But since I work, I am away from the house and he has bonded with my wife and son, but does not much care for me. This is causing no end of problems. The only way to fix it is to spend time with him but I have no time for him.

Spiritually I have not been doing much in the way of ritual or formal spells, I am sad to say. But I am feeling more recharged than ever, so much so I think working these long days trying to keep everything together, that my spirituality is the only thing keeping me going. I feel it is driving me to make all these improvements to my land, steering to sustainability and giving me the strength to endure the hardships till I reach it.