Departures and Arrivals

I'm falling down on my blogging duties. There are so many things I wish I had photos of--things like the sugar snap peas in flower, and garlic scapes forming, and calendula starting to bud, but every last minute of daylight on the farm for the past two weeks has been devoted to watering transplants, planting out, weeding, harvesting, feeding lambs, moving sheep and donkeys, starting seeds, preserving, cooking and so on. When racing against the dark, it's hard to squeeze in some time for photography.

It's been two hectic weeks--Donna, our amazing spring WWOOFer, headed out for her summertime farm gig in Pennsylvania on the 23rd, the same day Mom and I made the drive downtown to give some fiber arts demos at the Children's Museum of the Upstate. We already miss Donna a lot; her help was absolutely critical this spring when the unexpected kept happening. Without her around, I'm sure I would have had a nervous breakdown when Mom was ill. But Donna is a trouper, and she kept things alive in the greenhouse and the bottle lambs fed, which freed Mom up for some much-needed recuperation time.

That's Donna with Carmen, one of the seven bottle lambs we had this spring. We've never had so many at once, and Donna spent a lot of time playing mama and giving them the attention they needed! 

Pictured above are five of the seven (Rosie and Josephine decided to hang out in the barn the morning I took this) and from left to right they're Ethel, Carmen, Ricky, Lucy, and Fred. After the first four, we ran out of sitcom names and Donna just picked what she thought suited them. They're all Tunis lambs except for Ricky and Carmen who are technically both Coopworth crosses (they're twins), though they couldn't look less alike. Genetics are funny sometimes. He's a porker and she's the most delicate of the bunch.

They're gaining weight at an astonishing rate, chasing the barn cats and the chickens and chowing down on all the grass in the paddock near the barn. Lots of lamb-pedes occur during the course of the day as they run up and down and around, leaping and bounding. They've almost passed the stage of cuteness (well, Fred passed it a while back because he's got no manners at all and will actually jump up like a dog and paw you to see if you'll produce a bottle of milk for him), but they're still fun to watch.

So things settled down on the arrival and departure front for a little bit, until we had a very unexpected arrival this past weekend: a baby donkey! Meet Basil (pronounced a la Basil Rathbone), a jack and the first donkey born on the farm.

His mama, Lizzie, is one of two donkeys we purchased last summer, and we knew there was a possibility that she was bred back when we got her. Donkeys have a very long gestation--11 months--so we weren't sure exactly when to expect a foal, if there was one. So last Friday night, Dad came in and said that Lizzie's udder looked like it might be filling up, and we needed to go out on Saturday to check her. When he and Mom went out the next day, it was very obvious that Lizzie was not pregnant, because she'd already had her foal! Now, we've seen a LOT of baby animals born in our 15 years here, but Basil takes the cake for sheer cuteness. (Dad was so taken that he insisted that I take pictures and post them ASAP!) His ears and knees are so huge compared to the rest of him, and though he'll grow into them, right now he looks like a giant stuffed toy. He feels like one, too--I didn't get close enough to touch him, but Mom's already been working with him and says he's soft and fuzzy.

Lizzie's pasture-mate, Luna, may also be about ready to foal, so we're keeping an eye on her. We're hoping for a jenny this time.

In the meantime, the first Saturday Market is this weekend in Greenville, and we're making sure we have plenty of tomato plants, cut herbs, and fresh greens ready for sale. The first market of the season is always the most terrifying for me (what if I forget the basil plants??) but it's like riding a bike: once you get on it, it all comes back to you. I'm looking forward to greeting familiar faces at our booth as well as meeting new ones.

And after the market, one more arrival: our new intern, Eric. We're looking forward to having him here and can't wait to get started on lots of great things for the summer!