My birthday started with the big orange forest ferry bringing me my very own washer and drier, fresh from Habitat for Humanity. Washing clothes and sheets on the same property where you live is such a luxury! Because the new grass was just starting to grow on our muddy mud pit between the driveway and the well-house, I made Tim go around. The excavator doesn't mind nettles! It was a slightly early present and not strictly birthday related.
On the morning of my birthday, Tim made me ducky egg-breads and I opened presents from my parents one-handed while holding my ducky.
Friday morning, the last of our poultry order finally came!!! Punky/Kokanee was very happy to finally have brothers and sisters, which seemed like a pretty good birthday present to her/him too. We had one last early morning snuggle before heading out to pick up the box of baby ducks from the post office.
My little ducky quickly took to the flock and the geese watched with interest as some miniature waterfowl invaded their pool.
At school, we had Birthday Science Friday where we ALL wore birthday crowns, ALL traded birthday presents (chocolate), and ALL sang birthday songs until Tim came to join us for the science part and do excellent experiments involving electricity in it's many forms: lemons, helicopters, lights, and even a little fire.
We stopped by Greenbank Farm for a walk on the way home and Tim tried to snag some baby geese to add to his collection, but in the end decided his joy of more geese was no match to a mothers heartbreak of losing a baby goose - but we did see three families including one very close still sitting on the nest.
Back on the farm, Andy and Elias came to visit for the last time before moving up this way. They brought me a toilet paper garden!!! Full of soft, thick leaves like lambs ear. The plants are still perking up from a long car ride up but it is in the perfect place next to the outhouse and is beautiful! The base is a moss log Elias sculpted himself and the boxes are made from old cedar fence-boards, left over from what they've been planing down and sanding into wall panels in their tiny house.
They spent one night in the bus, then set up a tent on their new home-site on the back of the property. Tim took his helicopter back there to do some aerial scouting of the area and we showed off all the clearing and leveling we did on Elias' last visit two weeks ago. Andy will have some time this summer while watching our farm to plan out just where to put their house and garden and workshop.
Saturday morning we all got busy cleaning up the property, taking the recycling out, stacking wood, making repairs, and decorating for our potluck party with the rest of the young farmers of Whidbey.
We had deep-fried cod and halibut chunks over the fire, courtesy of Carleton, rhubarb pie from Andy and Elias, chocolate brownie cake from Jordan and Kimberly, cheesy apple hand pies from Morgan and Arjai, fresh watermelon from Kevin, hot dogs and salad from Daniel and Amanda, home-made veggie burgers from a long-lost friend from Sitka Fine Arts Camp who also happens to now be one of they young farmer types of Whidbey (Megan from Talkeetna), an assortment of fermented goodies from Elisabeth who managed to drag her cooler up our hill and join us as we all stared at her wondering if she might give birth at the potluck, with her due date only days away.
Sunday, I put the over-night guests to work moving furniture. We don't have a house, so this was out-door type furniture in the shape of chicken and goat barns. I built the first chicken shed to be strong enough to stand up to goats but possibly movable, then built another much much lighter and realized the first one was impossibly heavy. The only solution I came up with for trying to move it was to throw a party to lour people to my property, then rope as many as possible into shuffling across the property with a giant awkward heavy barn still teaming with frightened chick and angry hens.
Acacia, Carleton, Tim, Andy, Elias, and me. Many hands make heavy but possible work!
When all the work was done, it was time for more fun in the sun.
Have you seen the finished well-house? And notice the nice wood-chip path surrounded by green grass? Things are looking better and better around here!
Okay, yeah, I know. I'm not doing great and narrowing down the baby goose and duck pictures here, but remember how many pictures there were of Baby Tilly? Now there are a whole bunch of baby animals on the farm! It's hard to resist... Plus Coxinga (the yellow baby goose) looks super weird swimming underwater. Tim is putting Derringer the smallest goose in the water and I am putting Punky the biggest duckling in the water. They're about the same size.
Tim's geese swimming. And then Tim herding his goslings home to the well-house.
Tim and the goats, Tim and one of the baby snakes we found under an excavator bucket. (Sorry Dawn!)
Glad to see the blog up and running again. It even has tons of multimedia (perfect music on those videos) awesomness.
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