Someone had asked me how to know what a llama or alpaca is thinking. Here’s a good example. This pictures is a llama, Lief, happily sharing his morning hay with Brody. They get along like that.
Here is a picture of what it looks like when the llama is done sharing. See his head? The neck is arched, ears back, lips in the air? The horse was soon covered with green, slimey spit. Of course Brody decided he didn’t need extra hay that much. It was a real surprise for the horse, since he’d very politely shared his own breakfast with Lief.
Ray came home early today to round up the Cornish Crosses and the Australorp rooster for slaughter. He drove them down to another farm that has a plucker. We’ve decided plucking feathers by hand is for the birds. Minus driving and catching the rooster, the entire process was done in the time it would have taken us to pluck the feathers of one bird. To the right is a picture of some of the birds in the refrigerator. They will age in the fridge for a couple of days before moving into the freezer for use in the next year. You can really tell the difference between the rooster (middle) and the Cornish Crosses.
We’ve been harvesting and hosting harvests for about a month now. The blackberries are spectacular this year. These are invasive Himalayan blackberries. The native species is a little sweeter, has a bit more seed in it and will be available all September. If we leave any for you!
Yesterday was spent canning. There was lots of help and fun in the kitchen.
Today we pulled in some of the harvest. The corn wasn’t as abundant as we’d have liked, but in reality, we don’t eat much corn. There are three tomato varieties, onions and a few cloves of garlic ready for storage. The potatoes did awesome.
Ray’s been working for the good of the house this winter. You can’t see because there is a human-height pile of wood in front, but the wood shed is full of split wood already.