and we are doing summer chores.  Watering the plants and animals is a huge task now.  The pipe to the barn is still broken from the freeze in the winter.  We were waiting for the water table to drop enough to repair it and just now that has occurred.  But we are overwhelmed by our to-do lists so this hasn’t happened yet.  So the sprinkler doesn’t work well, and there is a lot of hand watering of the garden, greenhouse, potted tomatoes, porch plants and the plants surrounding the house.  This is now occurring first thing in the morning, and the animals wait until after the plants are watered.

Our shearer had to cancel due to illness just prior to this heat wave.  I am worried about my animals with full fleeces handling this weather.  I do make sure they have water and plenty of shade.

On Monday I was able to get the felted fiber off of my two Nigora goats.

I also was able to get a fair amount of felted wool off of my ancient ewe Wilma.  I stopped at that point as we were both spent.  But at least some air can get to her skin now.  I will try to finish up tomorrow.

Tom repaired and sharpened our mower and took it out to our far front field to mow down the grass.  It was getting tall and unruly.

Today the sun seemed a little hazy.  I know there are some fires north of us so not sure if some smoke is drifting this way or if it is just pollution due to lack of rain.

The other thing that happens with the warming weather is that the flies are out.  And any wound can get fly strike.  So you need to be vigilant about this, and I wasn’t.  Big Orange had some diarrhea earlier in the year which I treated and it went away.  Then on Saturday I noticed it was back, but he was acting fine.  Then I was busy with Mother’s Day, chores and work so I just glanced at him to make sure he was still acting OK.  But this morning he wasn’t and had bad fly strike on his butt.  I started treating him but realized it was bad so quickly pulled up this website on my watch (it actually came in handy).  Here he is after the treatments.

I hope that he makes it, and I am not just torturing him.

In other news, Ryeleigh almost got one of our peahens today.  She was so jazzed up that she proceeded to carry on about the peacock on the peak of the barn roof.

And I thought this was a cute picture of Cassidy in our bedroom window.  She is fitting in quite nicely.