Canning Peas

Canning peas is great fun. We have been shelling peas for several days. That is also quite fun. I’ll be talking all about that and more in today’s podcast.

I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. I appreciate you all so much. I’m so excited to share with you what’s going on at the farm this week.

Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates

It’s a beautiful time of year. Summer has arrived in full force. The days are often sunny and hot. We could use a lot more rain, but again, it is summer. The rains will be few and far between for the most part. That means watering the garden and orchard a lot. We really need to get that irrigation system back up and running. Oh well, it’s on the very long list of stuff we would like to do. Right now, life is all about canning peas. But first . . . how about some animal updates?

Cows

Surprise! Hansel and Gretel, the twin calves, have a new home. Each day I went out there to give them their bottles I looked and them and mused about what we were going to do with them. Then God provided. A man called out of the blue. He actually lives relatively close, about an hour away. He was frantic for a calf. Just that morning one of his cows, a Holstein, had lost her calf. I was happy to say that we did have a calf he could buy. In fact, we had two and the cow being a Holstein, she would produce lots and lots and lots of milk. He could probably use two calves.

It all happened so fast. Before nightfall, this wonderful man and his wife were here picking up those two calves. It was such a win-win situation. Again, it all happened so fast I didn’t have much of a chance to think about how much I would miss seeing those baby faces every day.  

Artificial insemination is in progress. It is less than a week before we see if the AI took. We look for signs from any of the cows coming into heat. If so, we do it again. Fingers crossed all seven cows and heifers are pregnant on the first try.

Donkeys

Scott got all of the donkeys spiffed up with their hooves trimmed nicely. They are going to the sale barn. If you would like one of these great animals, let us know soon. Their purpose on our homestead was livestock protection. Now that we have decided to use livestock guardian dogs for that task, their jobs no longer exist and they will have to move on to help out someone else.

I will miss them, especially Daisy and Cocoa. Well, Sweet Pea and Johnny will also be missed. It was a hard decision but we have to do the best we can for all of our animals and the coyote pressure was too much for them, I think. They are miniature donkeys. Perhaps if they had been full sized donkeys, the job would have been an easy one. In any case, we are moving on with the next plan. It’s how we roll on the homestead.

Sheep and Goats

I just checked the possible delivery dates for the sheep. We couldn’t find the day that we put Lambert back in with the ladies, so we guessed based on the log entries for when the animal predation stopped. Our best estimate indicates we could have new lambs the last week of October. That would be such a blessing. We really have no idea how it will go as we’ve never tried to breed the ewes for a fall lambing. Many sheep and goats will only breed in the fall for spring lambing. The katahdin breed is supposed to be able to breed year-round. We shall see.

Orchard and Garden

Just before I started this podcast, I went to the spare bedroom and looked out the window to see if Scott might be in the garden. It was not likely but you never know. He has been working on fixing the deer fencing that was annihilated a few years back during a particularly difficult thunderstorm. Trees were down all over and one took out some of the deer fencing.

The game cameras we have out there indicated to Scott