5/14

Onyx delivered a healthy baby doe yesterday afternoon. The people coming to buy her showed up within an hour after she delivered. We didn't hold out for the maximum price on her and her doe, as she had to go, but did double our purchase price. We now have Mable's two bottle babies, the three white bottle babies now a month old, Mable - who's milking out an impressive 1/2 a gallon a day as a Nubian first freshener, and Marley, the loaner doe, who's supplying the babies' milk. Her production has steadily gone down from over 5 quarts to about a gallon a day.

The electric fence is working great and it's a beautiful sight to see all the animals out to pasture - the chicks, hens, roosters, ducks, and goats. We'd tried the rabbit one morning - didn't work out - she spent all day digging out dens in the chicken coop.

We're heavily planting the summer garden now, and having perfect spring weather. The boards will soon arrive to finish siding the barn. The next step is testing the well water and calculating the cost of filtering the iron out - we'll need tons of water for the garden and pool and irrigating the pasture this summer. We may instead invest in a metal roof for the barn, and cheap-as-we-can-go cisterns with a sub-pump to water everything.