And, she is....

NOT pregnant. 

Which is good and bad. Good because timing is much, much better to breed Penny now and have kids about the time Felicity's milk starts to dry up. It gives us a better chance at having a consistent milk supply. Bummer because, well, kids are always fun. And now we have to deal with the whole breeding process.

My job now is to try to figure out when Penny goes into heat and get her over to the buck. I'm told it is a fairly quick process, so I will take her and let them have their sexytime and then bring her home with me. 

This is the buck that we are planning on breeding her to:

His name is Tempo. You can find out more about him here. Isn't he cute?

Other things happening on the farm...

The green parts of my potatoes were dying/gone so I decided to open up the cylinder early, and was pleasantly surprised. We have some beautiful potatoes. I will try to do a post on how we grew our potatoes. I've learned a bunch and will do it different next year, but still in the wire cylinder. We have 4 kinds of potatoes. The Russets were on the bottom and didn't grow as well, so we have a hand full of small ones. Then the Red potatoes. They did better. The Blue potatoes were next with the Yukon Gold at the top of the cylinder. The Yukon Gold did the best because they didn't have to deal with so much water early on. Next year I will have way more straw and a way to cover it for the early rain and more water for the later summer. Next year it will also be in a sunnier spot that is not a walk way. I couldn't really move the potatoes when we decided to get goats and the potatoes were right by the gate for the goats (bad for both walking by and goats munching potato plants). Bad planning, but nothing I could do about it this year.

We went ahead and pulled our carrots too. I did not thin them enough and so they were starting to bolt (flower) but did not have anymore room to grow underground. Next year we should get a better crop of carrots (now that I know how much they really, really do need to be thinned!). We planted purple, white, red and round. 

The chickens are slowly being allowed out of their coop after their disciplinary grounding. The first day I let them out they just ran around the yard, they were so happy. I leave them in to lay until about 2pm then they can free range until 5pm or so. Then they go back into the coop. So far, so good. It took them several days to start laying in the nesting boxes, but now they are doing well. Also, the chicken that was laying sans shell is now fully shelled. We are getting an average of 4 eggs a day. Never as much as 6, but we will get 5 eggs a day every now and then. It's possible that we still have one that isn't laying. But, since we are keeping up with what our family is eating I'm happy. We have also been able to share a few out to neighbors and family.

I recently saw a video of Jean-Georges making scrambled eggs. Best. Eggs. Ever! You MUST try them.