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My goodness, it is nearly September!

July only dried out a little bit and we didn’t really see true summertime weather until a couple of weeks ago. This has been the summer that wasn’t. The rain and damp helped fuel a plague of late blight that ruined many a farmer’s tomato crop and also affected potatoes. My tomatoes seem to have not produced much of anything more because of the constant cool temperatures rather than disease. I have to check the potatos to see what is going on underground. This may not have been the best year to do NOFA-NY potato trails~lol.

The farmers markets have been affected by the damp weather only occassionally which is a blessing. We have only had a handful of rainy weekend days.  The fall season is always so much fun with pumpkins and gourds and the cooler weather with a hint of the end of the season making everyone appreciate the market so much more. Hopefully we will continue to have dry sunny weekend days

We will begin breeding the does in a few weeks for February kidding but the three yearlings that never kidded may well kid in January since I left them with the bucks all summer. Morpheus and Neo are taking their job very seriously this year and have been fighting over whichever yearling doe is in season. I will need milk for winter markets so I need to experiment with staggered breedings to accommodate the demand for cheese year round. I’ll miss the two month hiatus from milking each winter though.

Well, I have a batch of washed curd goat milk cheese on my to do list so I better get to it.

What a strange summer so far. June brought us a new record for rainfall in this area at well over a foot which is making life quite a challenge for all farmers in the area. Vegetable crops are late or lost and mud rules most fields and barnyards. The goats are holding up under the strain of poor weather but lately have been making regular breaks out of the barn in the hopes of finding higher and drier ground. Zues, one of my daughter’s wethers, is particularly fond of jumping out of the barn and wandering over to the  unopened pool and nibbling the weeds that have grown out of control. He is a funny fellow when we lead him back to the barn and doesn’t want to walk through the mud to go back in… afterall he had to walk through that mud to get outof the barn. This past weekend was sunny and breezy so the herd went down the hill to browse for the first time in quite a while. The unrelenting rain made it impossible to be outside much less walk around. Despite the dreadful June weather the girls are milking fairly well and all the kids are weaned so we have plenty of milk going into the cheesepot. We have a full schedule of markets and we are hoping July will bring some sunny dry weather so everyone can be in a sunnier mood.

It rained another 2.25 inches yesterday and we are up to our knees in mud. This month has been filled with rain and we have been unable to finish planting the garden and cleaning the barn. This type of weather is the worst for goats and we are doing everything we can to keep the girls healthy and happy in a bad situation.

The new Gardiner farmer’s market was scheduled to open yesterday but it rained so much it was cancelled. We hope for a better day next week so we can kick off this new market with a smile.

The regular farmer’s market season begins in less than two weeks and let me tell you it is BUSY around here. Our live in intern arrived a couple of weeks ago and we have been doing farm clean up and getting things in place and generally running ourselves ragged to make sure that when the market season starts we can make cheese and get to market with a smile on our faces.

The weather has not been our friends lately with rain coming down in huge quantities followed by dry spells that have triggered brush fires and one big blaze on the mountain in the next county. Keeping the goats healthy when the ground is forever wet or the wind is blowing is tough but we want the animals to be as healthy and happy as possible so it all somehow gets done. The milking does have been able to spend time down the hill and have been browsing the spring growth and making happy milk for the cheesepot. Another group of kids are nearing weaning so we will be able  to spend more time on paddock rotation and less on milk feedings which is a good thing in the rhythm of the day.

Cold Spring and New Paltz markets open in only a week and a half so milk will be going to culture for chevre on Friday and batches of fudge will be in the works for early next week. Stop by one of the markets and say hello and taste the cheeses and fudge.

We look forward to seeing you.

Or at least the calendar says so. It was 15 degrees here this morning! We are still waiting for Neesa to kid… very hard to believe but she will kid when she is ready so what can we do….

We did actually have some very nice weather this past week with highs in the 60s so spring is really starting to get going. I have the mini-greenhouse ready for seed starting and picked up some addtional seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library at the farmer’s market today. I will have to prune the fruit trees this coming week also and get some dormant oil onto the apple tree. I hope to pick up some more material to build additional raised beds in the garden for the potato trials we are participating in this year. We will be growing three different varieties of organic potatoes as part of a program that NOFA-NY is conducting.

Our regular winter famer’s market season ended today in Poughkeepsie with the final Winter Sun Farms sponsered market. It was a great winter season and we look forward to next winter with the Winter Sun markets. We are not finished with winter markets though, we will be at the Rosendale community center on April 5, 2009 for their winter market. The regular market season will being the thrid weekend of May at Cold Spring and New Paltz… not far off at all.

We are still waiting for more kids to be born. Poor Neesa looks about ready to pop and is so wide it is pretty funny. Her udder looks like it is beginning to fill so we may not be waiting too much longer. Neesa’s daughter Peaches is not letting on about when she may kid even though her due date is within a day of her mom’s. In the yearling barn Calypso is looking like she may not wait until the 18th to kid but she comes from a line of does that always keeps us guessing – LOL

The weather turned very warm over the weekend and it rained most of last night and this morning so the sheets of ice are pretty much gone and have been replaced by deep mud and standing water. It is a messy situation but it does mean that spring is here… afterall spring is mud season.

A large amount of snow had been predicted for today and schools closed in anticipation but in the end we only got four inches. Not much snow to me but the kids were a bit confused by the stuff. They stayed inside until the snow stopped this afternoon and the sun peeked out. They ventured out and got cold little hooves and promptly went back inside. We still have three February kids in the house because one had an injured hoof. She is much better now but I can’t put her back outside untill the current bitter cold passes.

We need to get the kidding pen ready for the upcoming births. Neesa and Peaches are due this coming weekend and one of the yearlings around the 18th. I also discovered that all the wind we have had took down a tree at the northeast corner of the bottom pasture so we will be fixing that fence before the herd can go down the hill.

Thirteen does kidded between February 6 and February 13. It was a quite a week with both the joy of easy births and the sorrow of losing our beloved herd queen Sprinkles. Sprinkles was eight years old and a gentle giant who had triplets on February 9 around midnight. Unfortunately two of the kids were stuck in the birth canal and it was quite a time to get them out into the world. Sprinkles became very sick afterward and although we did everything we could she died on Wednesday the 11th.

We will miss her….

The next kiddings should be around March 7 – 18 followed by a few in April and then the yearlings mostly in May.

We are very busy with kid feedings, winter markets, and CSA orders.

The cold wind is back after some nice mild weather last week. I sure wish spring would get here.

Just a photo to remind me of warmer days when I could see the ground. We have had snow cover for well over a month now.

Less than one month until the goats will begin kidding.  In the first week of February we have fifteen does due to have babies… that will be one seriously busy week. This is our first year having kids born so early and we are hoping the weather will at least be a bit mild. It can get rather cold watching over a laboring doe in the middle of the night   . The remaining nine does are due to kid mostly in February and March with a few stragglers in April and the youngest of the does kidding in May.

The weather so far this winter has been grey and messy with fluctuations from cold and snowy to warm and muddy and the goats have been spending quite a bit of time in the barn and the barn yard. No walks down the hill on ice in over a month.

When I get my new photo editing software installed I will post photos of some of the pregnant does.