Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever “catch up”…I’ve spent time all week putting up pasture fences, trying to find the best way to put them up so the sheep can be transferred easily from one pasture to another. The pigs are growing, and I need to put up some electronetting in the ram pen where they are, so they can get used to that fencing, before I put them out on pasture. The chickens are off my garden and in their “chicken village” for the season.
This weekend is the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool Festival, in Cummington, Mass. Sue and I will stay the weekend, rather than drive back and forth the two hours each day. John is home working on my office/sewing room. Everything from that room is in boxes strewn all over the house. The furniture is on the porch. Hopefully, by the time I get back, it will be ready to put back together again.
Next weekend is Dottie’s and my yard/perennial sale. I have about 100 perennials to pot and take down to her place, and I have to get the yard sale stuff organized, priced, and transported there as well. But first, this weekend, south to Mass. with a car full of fleeces, tables, cloths, yarn, and roving.
Joyce stopped by today with a ton and a half (maybe slight exaggeration) of bagged spinach past it’s sell by date, but not it’s use by date, for the animals. Well, I blanched and froze quite a lot of it for us. And gave some to Dottie. The rest the animals will get.
I can’t believe it’s only three weeks til we leave for Ireland and the UK. The final papers have come, tickets and such; I’ve reserved ferry space for the trip to the Aran Islands, located a yarn shop in Yorkshire that has Wensleydale fleece and yarn, and a promise to take me to see some sheep of that breed. The cell phone is ordered (in case there is some sort of emergency relative to John’s mother), the Dartmouth coach tickets to Logan are with our passports upstairs. I’ve started getting clothes ready and packed, one outfit at a time. Farm sitters will be here Friday just about the time we are scheduled to leave.
And as if there weren’t enough to do, Jamie from some telephone wire installing place is coming back on Tuesday to pull new telephone wires up onto the poles…which means through our ram pasture, so I have to catch up the rams, and lock them in the old goose pen so they don’t bother or attack the guys doing the work. They aren’t usually aggressive, but I don’t want to take that chance. So, early Tuesday a.m. they will be enticed with grain into the small enclosure where they’ll stay until the guys are finished, hopefully by noon.
The Onondaga Viburnum, one of my favorites, is in bud. When it opens, I”ll try to get a photo. It is very striking. The Hawthorne’s pink blossoms are half opened, and will be in full bloom by Sunday or Monday. My garden needs to be planted this week. And next week, I have some lambs to deliver to a friend who is using them for lawnmowers for the summer, and for eating in the fall.
A busy life for sure…Have a great Memorial Day weekend.
