For the past 3 weeks or so, it has been raining at least a little bit almost every day. Old timers are saying they’ve never seen rain like this here before. The amount of rain we’ve gotten varies from 2 1/2 to 5 inches in the past month, depending on where in the valley the measurements were taken. Our annual average is about 15 inches, and usually that’s spread out pretty evenly throughout the year. This deluge is causing some interesting dilemmas. For example, people who plow and plant their fields with tractors are having to wait it out because their fields are too muddy. Also, rivers and creeks are flooding the banks and approaching people’s homes. But overall, people are grateful for all the moisture. Paonia, Minnesota creek and Overland reservoirs, the main reservoirs for irrigating the North Fork Valley, are all now full. We had been worried about getting our irrigation water turned off early this year due to lack of snow melt but now it looks like we’re in the clear. Phew!

Things have been SUPER busy here lately, I feel like I’m a chicken running around with my head cut off sometimes. This morning I woke up to three lambs and a ewe trapped in the electric fence that wouldn’t charge because of all these cloudy days, and all the rest of the sheep roaming all over the property. After spending half the morning getting them rounded up and back in their pen, I found all the baby bunnies were loose. The turkeys were out of their enclosure, too, but they’re easy to catch. That’s not an average day, though. Daily, there are baby animals and plants everywhere to take care of. All the seedlings in trays need hardened off so we put them outside during the day and inside at night. We just direct seeded our squash, cucumber, and melons today. Last week we seeded buckwheat, sorgum, and amaranth. Before that was beans, beets, chard, kale, and other brassicas. But all this rain is making the grasses, bindweed, and white top take over before our crops have a chance, and staying on top of weeds is hard. In addition, we’re building a greenhouse, I’m finishing up my EMT class, and both James and I are starting businesses. We’re currently looking for an intern on the farm to help us keep up with the animals and gardens. But we’re finding that good help is hard to find…

On a brighter note, here are some of the spring highlights:

This is one of Dafodil’s triplets. She’s 8 days old in this picture and much, much smaller than her two brothers, who never let her get any of mom’s milk. We’re bottle feeding her til she gets her strength back. Two days ago she was so weak and lethargic, she wouldn’t even stand up to eat. Now she goes after the bottle eagerly, follows us around, and plays with the other lambs. In a few days, we are going to try grafting her to another ewe, Sooner, who only had a single lamb. We’re going to use a method called the head gate method, where you trap the ewe’s head in a gate for several days so she can’t turn around and see/smell who is suckling her. Of course, she has access to food and water, and can lie down and stand up. After her milk runs through the foster lamb for a few days, the lamb will start to smell like the ewe and hopefully the graft will “take” and the ewe will foster her. Despite how cute it is feeding a baby lamb, I don’t have time to bottle feed several times a day. If grafting doesn’t work, I’ll make a milk bucket with a nipple on it for her to nurse freely from.

Here I’m making sure all three of Dafodil’s lambs get plenty of colostrum, mom’s first milk, filled with antibodies and extra fat. If a baby doesn’t get colostrum, its almost guaranteed it won’t survive.

We found a good sized rat snake next to the house a couple weeks ago. Nice to see them around, keeping the voles and mice at bay. This guy was about 2 feet long. Looks like he’s eaten recently.

We put a round of eggs in the incubator last month. 18 duck eggs and 6 turkey eggs. Unfortunately, the duck eggs didn’t hatch well. All three ducks that made it needed help getting out of their shells. I wonder if I didn’t crank the humidity high enough at the end, or early enough. We’ve got a female duck sitting on a nest outside now. Hopefully she’ll have better luck than we did. We had 4 out of 6 turkey eggs hatch but one turkey drowned in the water dish. From now on I’ll put marbles in the water dish until they’re a few days old. We also have 2 turkey hens sitting on nests and one turkey who hatched 2 chicks last week. I haven’t been able to get close enough to her to get a picture, she’s very protective of her babies.

I went on a training up the gulch above our house last week with the West Elk Mountain Rescue. We were looking for a man who was missing for 24 hours on a hunting trip (Marcus Pickle). Little did we know it would snow the night before and cover up the carefully placed tracks we were supposed to follow to find him. A simple search and rescue turned into a difficult tracking exercise. But that’s what might happen in a real scenario. We all got soaked but it was fun and we learned A TON.

Gemma’s precious little bunnies being cute (and michevious little escape artists).

That about sums it up. Hope you enjoyed the pics!