Devo was saying the other day how much he liked living somewhere where you see animals all the time. I sort of generically agreed, thinking of all the creatures you see hiking and all the farm animals we have and all that stuff. He said "no, but really, you see animals all day every day. It's pretty rad." I've been thinking about that more and noticing how true it is and how much I dig it. Obviously there's all the times I'm weeding or seeding or prepping beds and look up to watch a chicken who has escaped from the poultry netting wandering around the garden or when I catch the pigs running around in their hilarious way out of the corner of my eye, or when the sheep run down the edge of the field to follow me as I walk by. But there's also having a snake race across the path in front of me a few times a week, being able to look up at the mountains and see mountain goats on the way into town, or even just glancing out the window as I was drying off from a shower today and seeing a deer with an impressive set of antlers moseying by on the other side of the fence. It is indeed pretty rad.
Dinner tonight was a giant salad because it was too hot to cook and I got distracted with woodworking anyway and ran out of time. I thinned some spinach beds this morning, so we had fresh picked baby spinach mixed with local lettuce, tomato, cucumber and peppers from the greenhouse in the next town down the road, parsley and radishes from the garden, and a farm egg. Not bad local meal considering the season is only just starting.
As you can see from the picture, the farm now has a couple of lambs. Judi got them just to raise for the summer and eat. They are Icelandic sheep and damn but they're awesome. They have badass horns, sweet dispositions, and they're great animals for milk, meat and fleece. We are kind of batting around the notion of getting some. I have yet to realize my goal of having an animal that will yield me milk and let me start cheesemaking experiments. Maybe next year, obviously, as I think we've taken on enough new projects for this year. Still, it's encouraging to feel as though everything is going well so far. I feel like I'm learning so much every day, but it's getting less and less intimidating and more and more exciting/empowering/whatevs. It's just posi to feel like all my daily work (and there is a lot of it) is going directly to meet my essential needs. Or at least, that's what I tell myself when I am digging out giant rocks like the one pictured above. For the record, I unearthed it and pried it up myself ... Devin just helped me roll it out of the bed and apparently this yielded him picture rights. Also, contrary to the evidence of the photo, he still has eyes. I'm not really sure what happened there.
Anyway, I'm gonna run ... gotta feed and water the new chicks and shut 'em up for the night.
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