Recap

I've been getting out of order lately. Looking back over my recent pictures, I realize I never posted in April about the Search and Rescue helicopter that didn't come, despite our very cool gear and good positioning around the edge of the landing field. At the very last minute, the crew decided the wind was above their safety limits and had to cancel.

 April 21 Search and Rescue helicopter drill

The first weekend of May, Tim, our friend Zac, Tilly and I headed east over the Cascades to Okanogan Barter Faire. Zac stole the show with an excellent fire-spinning show. Tilly wasn't allowed in the faire, so she spent the day in the woods with her Eastern Washington foster family. Though they took great care of her, she was happy to get back to our camp site on Curlew Lake.

I also didn't say much about our most wonderful Juneau/Whidbey neighbor finally returning to the island! Nancy's son, Zac, and I spent the morning at her house clearing out piles of horsetails from the yard so she'd come home to beautiful flowers rather than a sea of green.

I had the most excellent birthday on Sunday; waking up to a delicious breakfast (after milking Petunia) of french toast made with our eggs and Amanda's pumpkin bread thanks to Tim, going to Unity together, stopping by a farmers market, (milking again), and having friends over for an evening on the beach around the campfire (between milkings).

Tim has our car almost back together again after spending the last week removing, rebuilding, and replacing the transmission.

And I have succeeded at my potato project, I moved the finished compost to the potato bins to "mound up" the plants after adding more side board, then moved the second compost into the third bin, first compost into the second bin and the giant pile of stuff into the first bin. Hurrah! 

Potato bins now half filled with dirt after adding three more levels of siding.

 The compost shuffle! Turning the compost pile and adding water as needed helps keep the composting process going by mixing together the inside and outside, mixing in air, mixing the "greens" and "browns". Also note the potato plant growing out of the middle bin? 

First harvest of the year! 

For the first time in a long time, I actually cleaned up the ground all around the bins as well, throwing everything in for composting! Now it's all ready to be piled high with fresh weeds and grass clippings and coffee grounds and - time to clean the barn? Here I am just trying to take care of my potatoes and somehow it leads to turning compost and cleaning barns!

Zac is kindly using his arm and to measure the height of the nettles around the compost bins - over 8 feet?

 Tim took a little time out from fixing the car to fix the goat playground. They had a teeter totter for a while but it was becoming increasingly sad and broken. The new and improved structure is a kennel they are loving going in and on, with a raised walkway over to a second platform. They love having something to fight over!

The milking is continuing to be increasingly productive with increasing time between milkings and decreasing milkings per day. The result is my enduring resolve to continue with the milking program. If I had to go the other way, starting with one or two milkings a day and gradually working up to 10 a day, every two hours and waking up at 3am to try (and fail) to convince myself to milk just one more time... I would not have made it a week. Below is my magnetic refrigerator calendar clock milk scheduler as of Monday. The colored magnets mark milking times during the day, with little fuzzy chick magnets starting and ending the day. The white inner magnets with lines pointing to times are my goal magnets, which I march my milking times steadily towards in 15 minute increments every day. Today my markers are on those white dots - 5 milkings a day about 4 hours apart. Tomorrow the little rainbow markers will start marching towards 4 milkings a day about 6 hours apart. It gets better!