Rain!

We got a good 2 inches last night and a little more this afternoon. Coupled with cooler temperatures over the next week, this should give the pastures a good foundation for moving into late summer.

Even with the rain, though, I've decided to feed a little alfalfa hay to the sheep. I'm afraid if I don't, we're going to have some little lambs when it comes time to harvest them in mid-September. The amount of hay I plan to feed equates to about $10 per head for the ram lambs (the ewe lambs and mamas will be eating it too) which works out to around 6 pounds in the live weight of the lamb. I don't have any research of my own but things I've read lead me to believe that feeding some alfalfa now will be a net gain when we sell the lamb.

We bartered chickens for some of this hay we got earlier this week. Today the woman we got it from left a message saying the chicken was fantastic and the carcasses were very clean. I sold another bird to an egg customer today. She said, "I'm so excited! I get to eat chicken again!" She can't eat supermarket chicken because of a reaction to antibiotics or pesticide residue or GMO grain or something. It's nice to be able to provide people with food of higher quality than they can get commercially. The truth is, you can't buy chicken in the store like we sell.