During August, the growing horns on the goat girls began to cause problems. The would stick their heads through the fence to the "greener grass", and be unable to get back out. The best solution we've come up with so far is to duct tape a stick across their horns for a couple days. Here's Tulip modeling her new headware... hornware?
The garden started really booming in August, as seen above from the goat barn roof, and below, with squash, corn and beans, and LOTS of weeds.
With the finish plaster on the walls done, we tackled the finish plaster coat on the earthen floor. Same mix as for the walls, except that for each gallon of earthen plaster, we added one raw egg (for strength). We later finished the floor with two coats of walnut oil, then two coats of walnut cut 25% with beeswax (and applied hot), then rubbed off after a week, then another two coats of OSMO Hardwax Oil. We were very happy with the final result. Very durable, slightly glossy, and feels great under bare feet.
We wondered if the pastured chickens were missing the dust baths that they had so enjoyed back when they were free range. Their favorite dust for bathing was the duff that accumulates under the Juniper trees, so we shoveled a bunch into a kiddy pool that someone gave us, put it on an old trailer, and moved it around the pasture with their camper coop and mobile fencing. They do enjoy it!
Jeanne harvested over 360 garlic bulbs from the garden! She hung them in bundles, still attached to their stalks, from the frame of our portable storage garage/hay barn. I don't think we'll run out of garlic this year!
The peaches came on in an orchard up on the opposite side of the valley, and we needed exercise, so we hooked a trailer up to Linc's bike, bicycled to a You-Pick orchard, piled 30 or so lbs of peaches into the trailer, and biked home. It's doable, but Linc is now looking into adding a small, electric assist drive to one of our bikes for when we want to haul groceries from down in the valley back up here. We could recharge the battery off of our solar electric array. Beats burning gas.
We did get out hiking about once a week in August, while a friend took care of our farm for the day. Thanks Siobhan! Here's Last Dollar Lake (below).
Jeanne, during a rest break below the Beckwith Range (probably telling me to point the camera the opposite direction!)
We're starting to learn about edible wild mushrooms. Here is what we tentatively identified as an edible King Bolete, but being tentative, we never did get up the nerve to eat it. Next year, we'll try and get out with some of our mushroom hunting friends to learn more.
This year, we finally made it to the top of Mt. Lamborn, just across the valley from our home. Here, we're looking down at the North Fork Valley, the town of Paonia, and our homestead across the valley.
Here's the same view, but zoomed in on our homestead quite a bit.
And zoomed in even more. Our place is at the top middle of the brown field in the center of the photo. You can even see some green streaking where we put the last of the irrigation water on the field below the garden.
On the way home, the truck managed to levitate one wheel on a tricky section of road, causing both of us to abandon ship long enough to get a photo.
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