Around the farm today.

 I looked up how long it takes for blue bird eggs to hatch. 12-14 days. This poor momma is hot.I put a bowl of water out there for her. So I think just a few more days. I will be glad when they hatch, because then a few weeks later, they will fly away! I have not been able to use my front porch. Whenever I go out the front door, she flies away. I also read that the father looks for food for the mother while she's sitting on the eggs. What a great guy, right?

And look at this! Baby barn swallows already! There are 4 of them that I can see. 2 on each su=ide. They have the biggest mouths ever. And every time I come in the milk room, they are almost hanging out. I put a box with some hay in it right under the nest, just in case one falls out. Baby birds are just really ugly. These are all mouth.

There's 1 on the right side looking over the edge.

One of the parents. They look alike to me. Most birds you can tell male from female, but not these birds. They are very diligent. One of these days, I am going to have a bird right in my face though. They fly out when I go in the door. But now, when I'm milking Freja, both of them will come on in and feed the babies. I am talking to them the whole time. I just love these birds all over.

                                                My front yard is full of day lilies right now.

This is a pot of flowers I bought last year that's coming back. It was so pretty last year.

More day lilies. I love this color. And the yellow ones.

My harvest today from the garden. I've been getting lots of squash and zucchini. I make zucchini bread and sell it at the market. And these tomatoes are SO good.

I spent all day yesterday washing 2 fleeces. The brown is Cameron and the white is another white fleece, not really sure who it is. The black milk crate on the floor is Campbelles' fleece washed.  And in the red basket on the other side of the crate is half of Annabelle's.

This is Adelaide's from last year. I've been using the evil hand combs to make little bird nest rovings. It's so pretty and soft.

It's just HOT here these days. I made up 2 poems or Haikus about the heat.

I like spring and fall.
That is all.

The parking lot
is hot.

Yeah, it's just plain ole hot now. And all week, in the high 90's.Trying to keep the animals all watered and cool. I forgot the milk bucket this morning in the freezer. I hate frozen thawed out goat milk. It's just not good to me. So I put it out in the chicken coop for the girls. They loved it. I've been getting 7 eggs again! All of them laying again. I hope no one tries to steal my hens, since egg prices have gone up. Crazy.

So, all day Saturday, I was outside. Farmers market til 12. Then hurried home to the first wedding up on the mountain at our friends Wolf man and Bambi. Our friend Rodney got married to his girlfriend. Wolf man married them. Rodney was our best man in our wedding 35 years ago. We had good food there. BBQ smoked in a big smoker. Lots of good food. Saw lots of old biker friends there. Lots of old bikers now! It was fun. In the shade too. So pretty nice. Then down to the next wedding at Mt. Cove Farm, about 5 miles from us. The mountain wedding was just 13 miles from us. This was my husband's niece's daughter. It was outside too, way back at the foot of Lookout Mt.. It was nice and shady there too. Then we had more BBQ! Can never have enough BBQ, right? I had to leave at 7:30 to go milk a goat. My husband didn't get home til about 12:30. They danced and had lots of fun after I left. That's ok. They really did have fun. Both our daughters and Kansas, danced and danced. So a very nice busy day. I was so tired Sunday.

Just a little shower.

I went ahead and picked our first red ripe Rutger tomato this morning! And we had it with dinner tonight. I don't care what anyone says, you just cannot beat a fresh out of the garden home grown tomato. Anywhere. Just can't be done. I had breakfast, or brunch really, today at the Bluegrass Cafe on Main ST. It was SO good and I will be going back there. But they get their tomatoes from Linda's produce. Those are not fresh local tomatoes. Sorry. No flavor at all. But this one, oh my goodness gracious! So juicy and tomato-y. I can hardly wait for more now. But I do love trying out some of the good new places to eat in Chattanooga.

It looked like it was going to rain all day here. So I hung out a load of clothes and got the bad goat back in the back. Olga, the flying goat, went over a low spot up between the back and the back yard. Just flew right on over. I was out there hanging the clothes when she did it. So I got that all blocked up, put her in the milk room, got Freja and the milk bucket. It was just 7. I usually milk at 7:30. But it looked like it could rain.

Well, it did. It poured. For about 10 minutes. Long enough to get soaking wet. I got the goats back in the barn with some hay and I ran back to the house. Soaked! But it felt so good. I got dried off and put on my big ole t-shirt, with no bra. Finished getting dinner ready. Just about finished and a car out in the driveway, someone honking the horn. It's our friends from up the road. So I had to run look for a bra and get it on. We had a little visit outside, they were just driving home and decided to stop. Well, me and Isabelle were getting bit by something out on the driveway. On our left boobs. It was crazy. We were both ready to rip our shirts off! It was quite funny.

My camera battery was dead this morning, so it's been charging all day while I was gone. Then I was too tired to take any pictures of the garden/ Everything's growing so fast. I am so happy to see the corn doing so well. It's almost as tall as me and some already has some tassels! The bees will love this.

Bank to Mrs. T's for the day Friday. Then farmers market Sat. morning, a wedding at 2, then another wedding at 6. I'm tired already!

Happy goats!

 Just about every day, I go around the farm and cut branches for the goats. Then I stick them in the fence so they can reach up for them. If they fall to the ground, these goats will not eat them. They are very persnickety goats. I don't care what anybody says about goats eating everything. Not mine! I have always had picky goats.

I love this one. Olga looks so happy to have some good leaves to eat. I am glad I can be here to serve these 2 sweet girls. Freja gives the best milk too.

I am finally at 210 this morning!!!!!! Only 50 more pounds to go! Yay! Maybe by next March I'll get there.