Catching up to get behind...

HA! Gotta love spring......I'm catching up so that I can at least get behind!

Lots of goats kids have arrived.......and almost all at once. Twins this morning, triplets and twins yesterday. Lots of goat kids and milking to do. And lots of doe kids available for a change! The 2 Nubian girls are very very pregnant now and growing udders, so it won't be long before they kid. I'm guessing twins for both of them.

The registered sheep on the other hand are holding out........seems there was a lull in the breedings 5 months ago and I have 3 Goodyear blimps out there! I swear they're going to burst! And loooooooooooud!! They sure let me know when it's dinner time.

All else seems to be holding steady on the farm. The wintered-over roses have just come out to see their first daylight via the greenhouse which Rick has begun heating a few weeks ago with the woodstove in there. It's doing a fantastic job too. The roses have 4 to 12 inches of new growth on them, very pale in color and certainly not green. As they sit in there with the cloudy days, they'll start greening up again. Always take them out of winter storage when you're due to have mostly cloudy days for 3-5 days. They are very tender at this point, can break easily, and can burn up if exposed to strong full sun. Lots of water, a jolt of liquid fertilizer, and patience. I've transplanted the tomato starts into bigger containers so in a few days those will head out to the greenhouse too, along with the calendulas, gourds, cukes, a flat of 3 varieties of red lettuces, and other miscellaneous seeds I've started. A friend brought over a flat of pansy starts for me too. And in the dirt bed in the greenhouse, the soil temp is now up to 70 degrees again so I planted radishes and spring mix lettuces which have all popped up already. Hopefully in another month we'll have a fresh salad from the greenhouse. The woodstove in there is just a barrel stove, but we run hot water heated in a big pan on the top of the stove that circulated through hoses with a little electric water pump deep down in the dirt. So not only is the greenhouse warm, the soil is heated to prevent the cold from the frozen earth below from coming up into the beds. We had a similar system at the old place and it worked well. Here's to spring!