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 the first of our goats gave birth Tuesday to a beautiful boy and girl (I will post pics tomarrow.)  This is the mother we thought was carrying a single and she had twins.  So that most likely means the one we where comparing her to and we thought was carrying twins is likely carrying triplets. She, Norah, is probably going to give birth toaday or tomarrow.  That will then leave our newest and youngest goat, Ostara to give birth in a few weeks.

I did manage to get my partition finished in the barn in time and so far it works wonders.  it will be even better to milk in and pen the kids up when the get bigger.  Speaking of milking I will begin that chore again Monday. It will be sooooooo nicehaving fresh milk again.  Won;t be much at first but after all give birth it will be plenty for drinking, and a few weeks after that we will have way more than we can drink and will be making lots of cheese.

Yesterday we got chicks.  12 white rocks for eggs (not really what I wanted :( ), 12 cornish cross rocks for meat, 6 partridge cochins for setting eggs, and 3 ducks. We still intend on getting some more in a week.  If I can keep the cats away till they are older and then keep the raccoons away with the new chicken fort knox I am working on they should do well.

With everythign greening up fast and all the babies we are starting to again feel like a working homestead.  It is funny, my goal each year is to add something new to our place, not just replace something lost.  It feels like without chickens we were not a homestead and now that we have chicks again I feel like I am back at the starting point even though I KNOW I am well past it.  None the less I looking forward to Ostara this coming week as I truly feel spring is here in my heart.

Sunday morning I got the posts up for a our seven foot garden fence. I choose the day of the biggest windstorm to hit our area in years to do it.  Despite the fact that the wind made it VERY difficult get the posts level I did it.  I need to now figure out a gate configuation and get the posts up for that. 

After that the actual fence can go up.  For two years the deer and other wildlife has pillaged my garden, leaving scraps for us if that.  This year I am day dreaming of a huge and very productive garden as well as harvest.  I have to admit I get a little smile when I think of the dear standing on the other side of my fence gazing longingly with mouths watering, at the heaping tomato plants, the tall corn, and lush beans..hehe keep drooling! 

Well I have been busy as usually trying to keep our home going through the cold and readying it for the fast approaching spring!  We hope to get chickens soon so I have been doing massive renovations to the coops to hopefully make them raccoon proof this year.  I started by cleaning out the run and pulliny down the old chicken wire.  Probably 5 years of neglect left me 18 heavy duty wheelbarrow loads of manure to remove just to get down to the dirt.  I still need to do the other run which I am estimating to be about 10 wheelbarrow loads.  I need to start replacing the old torn up wire with new wire and probable some rabbit fencing along the bottom for good measure.

The only good thing about all that manure is it got carted right to the garden.  Lots has been going on there too.  I removed some old wire trellising, which I am not sure what it was for originally.  All it ever did for me was get in my way.  The posts for it are getting reused as fence posts to keep the deer out of my garden this year.  My garden is going to be Fort Knox this year.  I am putting a seven foot high fence around it and using every spell I can think of to keep the critters out.  Also going on there is soil preparation and re-terracing a half finished job.

On top of all of this we are also tapping maples for sap.  This is the first year we have ever done this.  The weather has been so mild here the trees are starting to flow.  We have 6 rather large sugar maples and are able to do about 12 taps, We have three in so far.  Out of a gallon of sap this week, we got about a half a cup of syrup, needless to say we ate pancakes for about 3 days straight.