Raking

I hope you are all having a wonderful day! Things are fun on the farm. We are raking the hay to prepare it for baling. The tractor and rake in the picture above are pretty much "antiques" but doing their work. Marvin has a knack for finding friends that have equipment to loan so we don't have to immediately go out and buy everything until we know just what we need. While he was raking yesterday, I felt as if I had been drawn back in time to the days when I used to go with my dad to farms in the area. My family owned a welding and machine shop in Paso Robles and my dad would often be called upon to repair equipment. If it was summer, he would ask if I wanted to ride along. Since the sun rose and set on my daddy, I never turned down an opportunity to go.

The romaine lettuce is really great right now. It's amazing that 60% of the outer leaves are torn off and disposed of. It's really just the heart that is eaten by most of us. We picked a few heads and gave them to friends to try out. The heart is good, but the further out, the more bitter. This is due to the fluctuations in weather we have been experiencing. Our head lettuce is good, but very small. We have a friend who manages a large organic operation. He said that their head lettuce did the same thing - again a weather problem.

We have two of our ewes that have lambed so far. We feel pretty confident that the other 3 ewes should be lambing soon. We are holding off shearing them until after the lambing ends, but Marvin had to catch one of them and pull fox tails out of her face. She is a "babydoll" breed and has long hair all the way up to her eyes - poor baby.

The bees are doing well. We have 5 hives, but actually lost one queen. It was really odd. When Marvin set them up, he had trouble with one of the hives. He put them all inside their hives, but one swarm kept coming outside the box. Evidently, the queen didn't like it inside (maybe she had claustrophobia). Anyway, Marvin continuously put them back in inside, but it did not good and finally the queen left. I guess we have much to learn.

Enjoy the day!