So I made our annual Raspberry Lemon Cake this week.  I do this every year when the raspberries are at their peak.  It is really, really good.

We had some leftover buttermilk in the fridge from a biscuits and gravy recipe I made a couple of weeks ago.  So I decided to find and make a buttermilk salad dressing recipe.  Here it is with 4 days worth of lunch ready to go, using our lettuce.

Part of my pre-work routine is to clean the house while listen to Tom Morton’s Beatcroft Social.  This week I listened to last Saturday’s recording which included a tribute to Peter Green.  It started out with Oh Well Part 1 which sounded great on our speakers.  There was also a tribute to Emmy Lou Harris, a song by Pink Floyd that I hadn’t heard before, and a version of I’ll Fly Away (this was the song that was in my head with a slight change of words while I was plying on the mountain) as well as other great songs.  His show is a great accompaniment to house cleaning.  I have learned that I do not tolerate mess well when I am tired so I clean before work to avoid this.

We have not had any further deaths on the farm.  No more sheep have died from the heat (they and the other critters do have some shade). And no more of the “chicks” have died after I put up the colorful yarn streamers.  In fact, I counted 20 “chicks” for several days but now we have 21.  One of them must have been hiding somewhere.  Here are some of them under the streamers.

Today a co-worker of mine was thrilled to obtain a horse that she had always wanted as part of her Breyer collection.  I took the below photo for her to show her my “collection”.  It pales in comparison to hers and, I have since learned, to other co-workers collations.  I wonder how my horse and other farm toy fascinations as a child influenced my desire to become a farmer.  Interestingly we have never had a horse.  (My grandpa Showalter made this Iowa shelf for me.)

And today I think we took a big step to becoming “real” farmers.  I found a sickle bar mower on CraigsList, and Tom drove all the way to Buckley to get it.  It was over $1000 cheaper than anything we could find around here so worth the drive.  And it appears to be in great condition.

So hopefully tomorrow we will finally start cutting our grass to make our own hay!!!