Autumn Days

The autumn days are filled with preparing for the cold winter months. We clipped the goat's hoofs, gave the alpacas their shots (and decided for another day to trim toenails since I was tired out from the wrestling match with Mystifier during the injection), groomed the rabbits and trimmed their claws. In the afternoon Matt helped me dismantle the potato tire garden. We were very disappointed to only find a handful of potatoes in one of the 3 stacks. I think we should have layered in some straw with the soil and compost to help with the moisture since the bottom 2/3 of each tower was very dry. We'll try again next year. I'm very thankful that we didn't plant all our potatoes using this method.

We found another group of tomato plants hiding under the gourd plants...they were rogue plants, but the tomatoes are beautiful. So-o-o we'll be making more batches of salsa this week. We're really amazed by all the gourds we keep finding hidden under the leaves and in the cornstalks. Some of them are huge. When we harvest them I'll post pics of our crop.

Wayne did some carding of alpaca fleece for me this week so I'll have a steady supply for spinning. This is Flashdancer's fleece. Jonathan thought it was great fun to help Dad.

The kids have been enjoying the fall weather and leaves. They rake up big piles of leaves which the 2 youngest love to spread all over the lawn again.

Captain was so photogenic that I had to include this cute pic of him. Last night Jonathan fell asleep on the loveseat. Captain decided that Jon had picked a pretty comfy place to rest so he climbed up and fell asleep too.