Letting the Cat (well, puppies) Out of the Bag

 Big news on the farm! Yesterday Breeze successfully delivered 11 (yes, you read that number right!!) Scottish Collie puppies. 6 of them were delivered in a den she had dug under my porch before I got home from work, lol - Breeze is true farm dog! It was very considerate of her to have her puppies during the day - nighttime is much more common.

Thane is the proud father. For the sake of full disclosure, his PennHip score (an x-ray that measures the amount of laxity in the hips) is slightly above breed average on his right hip, but since he is 5 years old and seems perfectly fit, I decided to use him this one time. If puppy owners want to x-ray hips, I'll be offering a partial refund to help cover some of the cost of the test; see me for details.

Breeze is a wonderful dam so far - very attentive to the needs of her babies, and very reluctant to leave the whelping box. All the puppies seem healthy and vigorous so far. ❤️ 

Here are the puppies. 

Sable and white male:

Sable and white female:

Tricolor boy:

Sable and white female:

Sable and white female: 

Tricolor female:

Sable and white female:

Sable and white male:

Tricolor female:

Tricolor female:

Sable and white male:

And a couple close-ups of sweet little faces... ❤️

I can't wait to see their little personalities start to emerge over the next 8 weeks!! ❤️

Hey, Hay!

 Last week, my family and I drove to West Virginia for a family reunion. It was a looong drive, but we had a great time. 😊 

It was back to work on Saturday and then church yesterday to finish off a super busy week.

I was definitely still moving a little slow today, but puttered at a couple projects I've been wanting to get done. For one, I started on a big compost pile in the future garden area. I've got some awesome compost already started just from the hay and goat droppings that have been sitting by the old goat pen for a year, and plenty more partially rotted hay to add to the pile.

The other project is hay! I recently learned that you don't necessarily need to grow a hay field... you can literally just let your grass grow long, cut it, dry it, and bale it. 

So that's what I did in my driveway today! 😃 

Here's what it looked like before: 

And after a couple hours of weed whacking:

And here is some of what I collected!!

I spread it out, some on the ground and some on my truck tonneau cover - I figured the black surface would help to dry it quickly. I turned it over a couple times throughout the day, making sure there were no clumps of wet grass.

Then this evening I packed it into an old styrofoam cooler with baling twine underneath the grass...tied it up... and I have one adorable miniature bale of hay to show for my labors! 😂 

This will likely be for rabbits, which I hope to add to the farm as an additional source of protein sometime this summer. But if that doesn't work out, I'm planning on getting more goats or sheep this fall or next spring, so it definitely won't go to waste!

Happy Monday!!!