New Year, New Help

Happy New Year!  So far we're having a good one - well, Liam has a stellar case of tonsillitis and strep, but seems to be on the way up after a couple of days of sounding like a miserable chipmunk and a sleepless night for all of us (except Malachi, who slept like the proverbial baby).  

Our biggest news is that we have a farm-ful of help!  We've had a couple here for about 3 weeks now, Dave and Nicole, and rather than WWOOFers, they are "Eager Farmers" as Liam calls them.  We posted an ad on the website eagerfarmer.com a couple of months ago, and they were the best candidates who responded, so here they are.  If all goes well, they plan on staying at least a year - !!! - and plan to get some facets of our farm really off the ground in a more functional way, and so far all is going very well.  They even came with their own housing, an RV they've retrofitted with extra insulation and a composting toilet, so they actually get to retain some privacy (something nearly impossible in a small house with 2 small kids!).  

This last weekend we got the spare room to a livable condition, all the way down to a light, a ceiling fan, shelves, closet rod, curtain, rug, and of course bed, chair, nightstand, etc.  I even managed to get 2 coats of paint on the floor, so it's infinitely more sweepable than the bare subfloor, and looks much nicer!

This was all done within a couple of hours of the reason for it - our WWOOFer that arrived Sunday afternoon.  He's also looking to be a good fit here, and is planning on staying a few weeks, possibly more.  Between the 3 of them, and Caleb's 3-day weekends, we've gotten so much done in the last few weeks!  We moved the sheep into their own pen, and Nicole is hand-feeding them daily to get them friendly (pretty successful so far), she and Dave got the rest of the garlic planted, mulched a lot of it, we've put compost on all the empty garden beds, weeded and cleaned up the hoophouse, rehabbed the old goat house into the "new" sheep house, fixed the broken milk stand, broke soft several tanned hides - and of course, so many other things I'm not even thinking of!  They've even started a Twitter account and a Facebook business page for the farm - check them out if you get a chance (sorry, I don't have the links off the top of my head).  

I hope everyone's year is off to a good start as well, and hopefully we will have more good news to report soon (more lambs?).