Recent Projects & Photos

This post is going to be mostly pictures. Hope nobody minds. :)

I have a small garden with cooler weather plants. These pictures show the colorful radishes and lettuce I am starting to pick.





The past few weeks I have been working on getting a summer garden started. One weekend we all got out and moved a fence to give us more planting space. Last week Bob Keulen Jr. brought his tractor over and broke the ground up. It was very packed and hard. And this week we have been rototilling it. I started tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers and a couple gourds indoors several weeks ago. The plants are starting to get bigger and ready to plant. I am excited to be getting closer to planting everything!









This is just a cute picture of our dog.



We also ordered baby chicks. Chickens are not my favorite animal but they sure are cute as babies. We got some Americauna chicks that will lay green eggs when they grow up.





All the roses have starting blooming. They are so pretty.

Blossoms

He is Risen!

But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

Matthew 28:5-6

Soapmaking

For awhile now Melissa and I have been wanting to try making soap. It took us awhile to get together the ingredients and supplies to actually do it. On Wednesday we finally had everything we needed so we tried making a small batch. We used a simple goat milk soap recipe that we got from the Majestic Mountain Sage website. The soap has goat milk, palm oil, olive oil, coconut oil, sweet almond oil, and lye in it. We scented it with lemon essential oil. The whole process was a lot of fun and pretty easy too. This morning we just took it out of the molds, now it has to cure for several weeks before it can be used. It turned out very nice. It is light and creamy and smells wonderful. I forgot to take pictures of the whole process but took some just after we finished.


The pot we used as a double boiler to melt the oils.


The bowl the soap was in.


Just after we poured the soap into molds.


The finished soap out of the molds.

Rose

Spingtime

Mandolins Baby!!

This afternoon our goat Mandolin kidded. We have been waiting for this to happen for a week now. She had one little doe. It all happened while Melissa and I were gone. We got a call from Mom telling us we needed to come home. We came as quickly as possible but by the time we arrived everything was over. We waited around to see if there was another one but it turned out there wasn't. Both mama and baby goat are doing well. Here are some pictures of the new baby. Isn't she sweet?

A Walk in the Almond Orchard

Mandolin and Willow

This is Mandolin. She is a friendly and confident Kinder goat. She will be kidding for the first time around the end of this month. I am planning to learn to make cheese and also try making soap with her milk.





And here is Willow. She is a shy and skittish Pygora goat. She is a fiber goat and I will be shearing her this spring. I plan to spin the fiber and experiment dyeing it. Willow is the newcomer around here, I have only had her a week.

Ice Skating

On Thursday we all took a day trip over to Yosemite Valley. I wanted to go there for my birthday this year and go ice skating. I had never been ice skating before, which is sad since I lived in Montana for 10 years. We had lunch in Yosemite before going over to the outdoor skating rink. It was quite chilly, but once I started skating I was warm enough. It was a lot of fun but also very hard. I had the worst time keeping my balance! Everyone else made it look so easy:) There was one lady who was very nice and helped both Melissa and I a little at the beginning. Altogether we skated for about two hours then drove home in the dark. It was such a fun day. Now I want to ice skate again and actually get better at it.