Love the Summer Days

Now that June is here (which is my favorite month), it means some nice, sunny, warm days. I'm loving this!

I went to the Cambridge market on Friday at the courthouse. Very busy day! But it was so cool. I even had to take a jacket. I met Michelle (from GLU message boad) and that was exciting! She is so sweet! I'm glad she made it over to the market.

Michelle and Me

Had a baby heifer born yesterday. It is so cute up running beside it's mama. We'll bring mama in this evening and start milking her. Her milk will be dumped for 96 hours due to the dry treatment she is given before she is dried off. We dry our cows off about 60 days before their due date. Her baby will be moved to the calf barn with other babies and will be put on milk replacer. They seem to do so well on that. We had been giving them whole milk from the cows, but the fat % is so high right now that it was giving the poor babies the squirts. Pretty common this time of year. I'll get some pictures of baby and mama this afternoon while they are still out together.

Emily located a killdeer nest about a month ago or so, I noticed today that the eggs are gone, so I imagine the babies hatched out. Mama killdeer would screech at us if we even got near her. Then of course do the "injured bird act".

Mama killdeer, acting like she is hurt and screeching.

Her little nest. Those eggs really blend in with the rocks!

Al has started mowing hay as of last week. Baled it up today, got about 40 bales and it's only a section of our first hayfield. We have the rest of our front hayfield, center and back fields to do. We're looking at about 500 bales of first cutting. That will be one of our best hay make.

One thing we watch for while cutting hay, especially right now is baby deer. The mama's tell those little fawns to lay down and not to move, and they won't move either. They listen so well! Al saw one hop up and start to run toward the mower. He shut it down and picked it up and set it in the woods so mama could find it, but as soon as he started the tractor back up, it jumped up again and went toward the mower. He ended up bringing the baby in so that Emily could see it. Then we drove back in the truck and put it in the woods, and off it ran. As we drove away, we saw a doe running up toward where the baby was. It was my first time seeing a baby deer up close. So cute.

Of course I want to include a picture of our dear little dog, Annie and one of our chickens. I can't believe Annie will be 9 years old this summer. It seems like yesterday she was a raggedy little stray that was hiding at our barn.

A couple of roosters and our hens.

Poor things are molting right now,

so they are missing some feathers!