Farewell Vermont, Hello Cleveland!...John Muir, here we come!!

Our season in Vermont has come to an end. Many new friends, new skills, new perspectives, new ideas to take away from our time there. We will definitely miss the DuGrenier family, the animals, the fresh berries, honey, syrup...I should stop before I get sad.

But saying goodbye always means saying hello, and we've got to spend some quality time with our family here in Cleveland. Got to see all 3 of our nephews and our one and only beautiful niece. Went to the zoo, the museum and the park. So here's some pics to enjoy.

Is that John Muir?! Actually it's Lynea's dad getting ready for our John Muir Trail hike. Months of planning, preparation and training will meet the trail on Thursday as we enter the wilderness known as the Sierra Nevadas. The trail is over 200 miles, and we're gonna see how far we can get in 2 weeks. Will we come up against bears? Will our legs and feet hang in as we haul our 40+ pound packs? Will we find water? Animals? Ourselves? Stay tuned...dun,dun, dun.

The simple things.

Getting ready!

The donkey had a baby....

Monday morning started out normal with Kyle and I filling up all the feed buckets. All of a sudden I hear Kyle yelling in the barn, “Neea!! Come here!!” And there she was, the long awaited Marmalade’s baby. Unfortunately I cannot reveal her name because it is still in deliberation.

Lots of cool stuff.

The Garden.

It grew. A lot. This is an amazing process to watch...and eat.

WWOOF Dinner

Another farmer friend, Leigh, has 4 wwoofers (that’s what we are) working up the road from us. We had them over for dinner in thanks for helping us hay on Sunday. It was a beautiful meal consisting of 12 different food items from our farms: cucumber, duck, chicken, lettuce, arugula, broccoli, basil, blueberries, blackberries, black trumpet mushrooms, chanterelle mushrooms, and the maple syrup used to sweeten the vinaigrette dressing!!!

Bees

Our honey bees are doing great. We went in to add brood chambers (where the queen bee lays her 1,000 eggs a day) and supers (where they store the honey). If the hive gets too populated, the bees will pick a new queen, split, swarm, and find a new home. That would be bad for us because half our bees would be gone. So every few weeks we add more chambers.

Hay

Just a sneak peak to our haying assembly line. We are moving so slowly because this was our 5th round of unloading. A total of 362 bales weighing about 30lbs each. For Kyle and the guys, that’s not a big deal. For Kathy and I....oh man are we sore. It’s a full body workout starting with lifting with the hands/back/shins, walking it with the hands/back/resting on the thighs, and then lifting it with the hands/back/every arm muscle. That’s a lot of hands and back!!!

Robert, Kyle, and I went for a mushroom hunt and now it’s dinner time!

Pigs

A farmer friend of ours, David, has pigs. I like them. They are useful critters...they eat all our food waste, they improve the land, and eventually they give you bacon, ham, and sausage. We are loving learning how to take care of animals that provide food.