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A month and a half has passed since my last blog entry. I have neglected you, my dear readers and I am truly sorry. To show my remorse, I will attempt to summarize some of the more noteworthy events, which have transpired since my last update. Fortunately (or not) more has happened than would be prudent to include in a single update, but I will do my best with it.

To start with, the more wild of the two feral cats that we kept was run over by a speeding car on a cold winter night - darn it. The remaining cat, Murka, is lonely, bored and lazy. She prefers laying in the sun, getting in the way, rubbing against anyone and anything, purring and stealing chicken feed over catching mice. That really sucks, as mice and voles are happily multiplying faster than ever. Which leaves me wondering, what to do?

Three weeks ago Thursday, our goat, Sarah, gave birth to a pair of the cutest kids - one brown and the other white, both girls. I thought she had another two weeks to go and so let her go out to pasture, as usual on that day. She gave birth in the field and neither of the kids survived - so unfortunate. On the "bright" side, she is now in milk and we are milking her daily. She is not thrilled with the experience and neither are we - it takes Lena and I half an hour to get a quarter of a cup of milk out of her every day.

The day after Sarah gave birth, we put Abraham, the buck, into an adjacent stall with its own run. They can still see and touch, but can not know each other in the biblical sense. I intend to keep them apart like this for another two weeks and necessarily confined (they will not venture very far from one another) to fairly close quarters. In the meantime they are not going onto the pasture and this should give it a chance to recover and begin greening up.

The challenge is to keep Abraham and Sarah plenty fed, without relying on the very expensive goat feed. So far I have been able to do that by gathering last year's dried up kochia, raked up leaves and wild sunflowers. These sunflowers are an especially important part of the diet - they are plentiful around here, local farmers consider them to be weeds, yet their seeds are very high in protein and the goats love them.

To accommodate Abraham's and Sarah's new arrangement with sufficient room to roam and improve their access to the pasture once they are reunited, I had to move a section of the chain-link fence. This created an enclosed space between the two goat runs and the pasture. Now, they will be able to go to the pasture and return to their shelter at will and without me having to guide them through the building.

A portion of the chain-link fence that I used for enhancing the space for goats came from the area used by chickens. It was not needed there anyway and by removing it I gave chickens more room to run, as well. They were fully enjoying the added space, especially after I raked up huge masses of old dead grass from the backyard and threw it into the chicken runs.

Speaking of chickens, now that the days are longer, they are laying more eggs. The record so far this year has been 21 eggs in a single day! Last year it was 13, but then again, last year we had half as many laying hens and we spent half as much on layer pallets - that's their chicken feed. On the other hand, we now get enough eggs that selling them for $2/dozen is not entirely cost prohibitive. In fact, I have made $41 so far - almost enough to pay for 3 weeks of feed - IRS should be really proud of me now!