Long needed update

Well, hello out there.

We have not updated this in some time. I think I've been waiting to get pictures, or have something especially profound to say or something. Also we have been busy.

So to begin with on May 16th Annie and I got married. YaY!!! It really turned out to be a beautiful ceremony - after some stressing about getting the outside of the house into shape, essentially everything took place either in the house or on the porches because of the rain. Well, actually the rehearsal dinner did take advantage of the rented tent, which was nice. The wedding itself was incredibly beautiful and moving, I think largely because there were so many people we love involved - and the rain forcing us into the house made it feel very intimate. Thank you to all who gave us gifts - we are working on thank you cards (really, we are!) but again - we are busy.

An update on soap stuff. We have now sold a couple of batches of soap stuff to better for babies (you can check them out at http://betterforbabies.com/ ). We have not yet started making anything to sell on our own - but are thinking we may start with liquid product - such as shampoos and body washes and whatnot, as we don't see those being represented in our local market place.

The garden seems to be growing well. At present we are harvesting cucumbers, zucchini, and a few tomatoes. Also there is basil. We already pulled all of our beets and pickled the vast majority of them. They came out red this year, which is a nice change from last years weird white beets.

The chicks that were featured in one of the last blog posts are now practically grown. They aren't to laying age yet, but the roosters are beginning to get their voices and start crowing. We are building chicken tractors for them (movable chicken pens - we'll put up a picture sometime soon). We need to get more of them built ASAP, as right now at least some of them are vastly overcrowded. Also we have put our wellsummers (two hens and one rooster) in "The Love Shack" and have been saving their eggs for hatching. Winona, our wyandotte hen, has gotten broody on us - so she is now setting on a dozen wellsummer eggs (since the wellsummers weren't getting broody). The projected hatch date for them is July 21st I believe. It will be exciting to see some chickens get raised by a mother hen for a change, rather than us having to care for them so directly. Other than that the other chickens are laying pretty well - though not as well as they did earlier in the summer. Chickens and goats seem to both produce less when the weather gets hot - so whereas we had a few weeks of getting between 60 and 70 eggs, we are now somewhere around 50 or less I would say.

The goats are doing well it seems. This is probably the most newsworthy part of this email - we now have one less goat. A friend of mine had a barbecue for July 4th and thought it would be a cool idea to serve a goat for it. So (avert your eyes if your likely to get teary eyed) Chevy (which is short for Chevron - french for goat meat) was taken to the slaughter house on Monday among tears (from Annie) and "moist eyes" (from me) and a fair amount of vocal protest (from Chevy and Hoppy). If I get a chance I'll write more on this later, but I'm trying to do a bare bones update right now just of what has been happening.

I'm sure there is something I am leaving out. but to find out what it is you'll have to stay tuned for the next exciting update of the deerfield follies (which I promise won't be so far away in time as this one was.)

Hope you are all doing well,

Jeff