A Magical Place of Rainbows and Butterflies

Today's adventures involved some good luck, a bit of bad luck, lots of elbow grease, and still no goat babies.

It is pretty lucky to see a rainbow but to see three rainbows in two days is a new farm record!

Yesterday's rainbow.

It was a double!

Today's rainbow.

We are also luckily enough to have a monarch caterpillar choose our farm to make its big transformation.  

I am not the hugest fan of caterpillars but watching the metamorphosis of a caterpillar is pretty much a childhood rite, so I have relented and allowed the boys to house this very lucky caterpillar in our old chameleon terrarium until it becomes a butterfly (which weirdly I am much more okay with).

Gael Glen Farm is clearly a magical place of rainbows and butterflies; however, we still have our bouts of bad luck.  Today both Seamus and Emily got caught up in burr plants and Charlotte got attacked by a super pricker vine.  Seamus' only injury was about a million burrs stuck in his curls.  Brushing them out of both Seamus and Emily was not pleasant for either of them but oddly satisfying for me.  Meanwhile, Charlotte ended up with a bloody nose.  Poor old girl.  I will give her lots of love and snuggles tonight to make her as good as new.

No amount of good or bad luck will replace the huge amounts of elbow grease required to maintain a farm.  Ian spent the day repairing fences.

After some fence reconfiguration, we moved Martha, Mellie and Ava into the goat birthing suite.  This is a much smaller paddock with the little barn.  It is visible from the kitchen window and is the closest barn to the house.   I will let a very pregnant Martha and Mellie tell you about their new home (look at those udders!!)...

Charlie and the sheep got moved into the big barn.  The chickens and ducks remained in their coop but without the goats and Ava for company.

When I was not shuffling animals around the paddocks or chasing children, I worked on cleaning out our fridge.  This is the best time of year to do it as we are eating mostly out of the gardens so our fridge is almost bare.  

Whatever leftovers we did have, I made into pasta sauce for supper using our homegrown garlic, onions, basil, zucchini, and tomatoes.

My evening was rounded out with an ice cold glass of nice and fizzy homemade blueberry mint kombucha and a relatively uneventful bedtime with the boys.  

We had everyone asleep by 8 pm and Ian headed off to the Arnprior fair for an evening concert.  After coaxing the farms animals into their new barns, I have chalked today up to one with a little bit of everything.  Life is certainly never boring here on Gael Glen Farm.  Now bring on those baby goaties!