And More Babies

As of this weekend, we are up to 29 kids, with 8 mamas left to go. We should end up with a few more than 40 babies. Yesterday, Sunday, we had 5 does kid ( and 5 on Friday) – the last one was Agnes, who did indeed have triplets. She is still pretty round, but she had to have dropped 20 pounds! We had 3 student interns here for a few hours, working in the garden, and they got to watch Susanna deliver a little girl. It's so rewarding when visitors get to experience totally new, unexpected things like that. We haven't had a single kid with any issues since the little triplet (we did have to put her down that night) – such a relief to have a normal kidding season!

Spring is suddenly here – the weather is still coolish, but the green things are going crazy, both good and bad. The garden and hoophouse are consumed with weeds seemingly overnight, while the crops that have been growing in the hoophouse are suddenly bolting. Even if they are not full-sized, if they've been in the ground since the fall they seem to have an internal clock that knows it, and bases it's desire to bolt on longevity rather than actual maturity. The spinach from last fall is actually blooming, and the half-grown carrots are starting to form stalks. Frustratingly, the spinach I planted about 6 weeks ago is also bolting, after 2 cuttings. It's just too warm in the hoophouse for winter crops. I need to start a batch of it outside in February, under cover, and then I'll have spinach through May.

On the plus side, some crops are putting on growth beautifully – the mustard went from small to plenty big enough for cutting in a few days, the radishes are nicely sized-up, and best of all, the strawberries are looking incredible! There are blooms and little berries everywhere, and I saw one berry that was actually white, which means it's almost pink! Liam and I got them all weeded and mulched with shredded paper, hopefully that'll keep the weeds from getting out of control for the next couple of months. We have the strawberries in barrels, with holes in the sides that also have berry plants, and we used compost to fill the barrels. Unfortunately, my compost never really gets hot, so there's all kinds of seeds in it. Aside from all the unwanted weeds, I found – and saved - several sunflowers, a few asparagus, and 6 or 8 melons of some type. There's also a little cluster of baby tomatoes sprouting from a fallen tomato last year, a great bonus since I never got any started and I'll need to buy all mine this year.

All this lush growth means the grass is growing too, and we've already mowed the yard twice. I'm using the cuttings to fill in the thin spots in the garlic mulch before the weeds really get going (particularly clover – it goes crazy!). It also means the garden is covered in weeds. Mowing helped – it changed the raised beds from an undulating sea of weeds to mowed paths between beds full of weeds :) The students really helped Sunday – between the 5 of us we got 3 beds weeded before I notice Susanna going into labor. Now I've just got to get them planted before the weeds come back...

Best of all, the incessant rain has finally gotten the asparagus to pop up! A good thing, too – I discovered a second bed of it that I forgot I'd started last fall with transplanted babies. I'd hate to have tilled it up and planted something and then remembered! There's about 6 or 8 feet of the bed in asparagus, but the older bed has quite a crop of seedlings coming up, so we should be able to fill the rest of that bed this fall with more transplants. I'm not sure how much asparagus will be too much, but we haven't gotten there yet!