Finley is away at band camp this week, so it has been 75% less dramatic around the house this week.
Last week, the girls turned 8 and 12. We had the usual party on Saturday, and Reanna came out sporting her almost 8-month pregnant belly. We will be grandparents by the end of August!
We have a thing in the Knight clan that provides great amusement and satisfaction, in that we all turn odd ages on odd years and even numbers on even years. Even the little grandson will continue the pattern. But then we discovered that Reanna's fiance' will be turning 23 this year. He had to ruin everything...
Business is booming. We are hoping that we haven't over-committed ourselves. Chris is working long hours, and I am doing my best to keep up with the administrative mess while caring for kids and laundry and whatever else. Someone asked me last week, "How's the farm?" "It's out there, I think," I responded.
And it is.
My garden is asprawl with squash vines. I pulled out a summer squash and zucchini plant to give the peppers more air, but the Pennsylvania Dutch winter squash vines are invading and overgrowing everything. I had plans to trim them back and re-route vines to a confined space, but I am not very consistent in my gardening habits. They have started climbing through the tomatoes, and seeing a few fruits forming, can't bring myself to cut them out. Slicing one of those huge crescents open come mid-winter for soup is one of the great joys of life.
The calves are doing well. Banded nut-sacks have finally fallen off, and horns are starting to peek out out of fur. The grass, thanks to recent rains, has turned lush and green into a magnificent salad bar for their bellies.
Then there are the chickens. One of these days I am going to learn my lesson and resist the temptation to buy all those fancy chicks. Or at least I will pay an arm and a leg to order them through a company that will sex them for me. Out of the 13 chicks I bought from Co-op this spring, five of them turned out to be roosters. We had one grown rooster already, then last month, my nephew, Robert, who lives in the city, discovered that his favorite hen, Ginger Ale, was really a rooster. He had started crowing in the early hours of the morning, and as that is something looked down upon in the big city, we agreed to offer him refuge, lest he be slaughtered by a mob of sleep-deprived neighbors. I have renamed him Trans-Ginger. And now we have seven roosters.
If it weren't for the fact that nearly all those boys have unique characteristics that make me hesitate to cull them, I would re-purpose them as chicken pot pie. What to do?
At least we have Goldie (the 3rd). She's a sweet little silkie that has been handled enough, she's easy to catch, hold, and take pictures with.
Until next time...
