Another lamb! and copper and sheep

Okay, I admit, I was holding out on you yesterday. We actually have two new lambs! On Saturday, Majik gave birth to this beautiful little ewe, whose father is also a mystery -- and yet another reason to do DNA testing. With this little girl being so black, I'm wondering if Albus might be daddy. We've never butchered a ewe, and I don't want to wind up with a flock of unregistered sheep, so DNA testing seems like the obvious solution.

Now perhaps you'll forgive me for holding out on you yesterday when I tell you that I had a reason -- I want to talk about sheep and copper. You see, Majik looked absolutely terrible at the end of winter. I was worried that we might lose her. She was thinner than I've ever seen a sheep, and she was anemic. Her face was almost white. Her wool was half as long as it had been in past years. Deworming her with Cydectin didn't do much to improve her condition. Providing a protein tub from Sweetlix didn't help either. She is only seven, which isn't old enough to be having this much trouble maintaining good body condition and wool growth.

In goats, copper deficiency can cause a loss of color in the coat, but people in the U.S. are very worried about copper toxicity in sheep. When my goats were copper deficient, I did a lot of research on the topic and learned that in Australia and New Zealand, they've started using copper boluses in sheep. They've given them to ewes during pregnancy, and they've given them to lambs after weaning.

Copper boluses contain tiny bits of real copper -- copper oxide, which is a different form of copper than what is in feed mixes and minerals -- copper sulfate, which is much more readily absorbed. Researchers have given copper boluses to sheep for two reasons: copper deficiency and as a dewormer. It has worked well for both problems. As a dewormer, it only works for haemonchus cortortus, which is a stomach worm, because the tiny bits of copper sit in the animal's stomach for three or four weeks as they dissolve, creating an environment antagonistic to the worms. It doesn't work for intestinal worms. And it may come as a shock to a lot of shepherds that sheep could ever be copper deficient, but they have diagnosed this problem in New Zealand and Australia.

Looking at sheep minerals, I think we've gone overboard, since many of them contain molybdenum, which binds with copper, making it less available to the animal. So, in addition to not providing sheep with any supplemental copper, they're also giving them something to keep them from absorbing whatever tiny amount they get in their diet naturally.

Since Majik had all the signs of copper deficiency, I decided to give her a copper bolus, using the same dosage as I would for a goat her size. As you can see from her picture, she is much improved. Her face is almost completely black again, and her wool is growing normally. She's gained weight, and she just gave birth to a healthy ewe lamb. I'm glad she is a colored sheep, because the bleached hair on her face was what made me consider copper deficiency. If this had been one of my white sheep, I probably would not have considered copper deficiency as a possible culprit.

For more information on this topic, you can visit the Southern Consortium for Small Ruminant Parasite Control.

New ram lamb!

Fairy presented us with this handsome little fellow nearly two weeks ago. Sorry I haven't shared this sooner, but it's no good to share baby news without pictures, which I didn't have until yesterday. Doesn't it look like he's wearing a bib?

While I am thrilled that I'm finally getting brown lambs, I'm pretty sure it's because Teddy is both sire and grandsire of the little bugger. (He is Fairy's sire.) About five months ago, he busted through two livestock panels to get to the ewes. I knew someone had to be in heat for him to do that, but I didn't know whom. All the rams were actually running around with the ewes at that point, but Teddy, being the dominant male, was probably the sire. Although this little guy will likely become lamb chops next year, I am thinking that maybe I should go ahead and get Teddy and the other rams DNA tested, since it seems to be nearly impossible to keep them away from the ewes sometimes.

Update: Growing your own pineapple

Back in May, I shared my pineapple growing experiment with you, and since "growing pineapple" is a popular search phrase for people finding my blog, I figured that means it's a hot topic and some of you might want an update. Yes, that beautiful plant in the picture is my baby pineapple, but it's not such a baby anymore. It looked downright scary back in May, didn't it? I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of you thought that it wasn't going to make it. I certainly had my doubts. You see those little brown-tipped leaves at the bottom? That's what is left of the original pineapple top. All these long, green, beautiful leaves are new.

What have I been doing? I water it at least every other day. I give it a cup of coffee every month, and when I rinse milk bottles, I pour the first rinse into the plant for a touch of extra calcium a couple times a week. I have no idea whether these things actually help, or if the pineapple is surviving in spite of my foolishness. I recently watered it with some vermicompost tea and will be doing that weekly now that my worms are finally producing plenty of manure.

Now I just have to remember to bring it inside before the first frost, which usually doesn't happen until mid-October. However, tonight's low is predicted to be upper 40s, and tomorrow night's low is predicted to be lower 40s, so I think I'll be bringing it inside to be safe. I don't remember my last pineapple plant looking this terrific before I lost it to frost. If I lose this baby, you'll hear my sobs all the way to Minnesota and Ohio, at least.

It's crunch time

Around this time every year, I start to panic. Mike has gone back to teaching, which means that he only has Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to work on the farm. I know I should be happy that he doesn't teach on Fridays, but three days compared to seven is quite a reduction in hours. And fall is approaching, quickly followed by winter, when hibernation is the only reasonable option for all living things in Illinois, including people.

My annual panic had not set in until last night when Mike informed me that the forecast is calling for nighttime temperatures to fall into the 40s within the next week. Unlike some parts of the country, we have been having unbelievably cool weather this summer, which I love. This colder-than-normal weather pattern has been here since last winter when we had temperatures at something crazy like 16 below zero, which I did not love. I've been hoping something would snap soon, and we'd be back to normal seasonal temperatures. If this trend continues, our first-frost date of mid-October will probably be coming a lot sooner, which means less time for things to grow in the garden. I'm still waiting for my fall lettuce to sprout. And if frost comes sooner, frozen ground probably will also, which means we have even less time left than normal. In other words, it's crunch time.

The Urban Dictionary defines crunch time as:

The interval of time immediately before a project is due, when it becomes apparent that the schedule has slipped and everyone is going to have to work like dogs to try to complete the project in time. Crunch time usually occurs during the period between the next-to-last scheduled milestone (prior to which everyone was able to delude themselves that the schedule had NOT slipped) and the final deadline for delivery. During crunch time, workers are in crunch mode. Prevalent in the software industry, but used elsewhere as well.

My delusion this year was acute. So, what do we have to do before our world freezes over?

• Put drain tiles in the yard around the house. Every year the flooding is getting worse, and we said that we were definitely going to get this done this year. Can't do it once the ground freezes.
• Replace almost all the electric fencing with woven wire. Goats and sheep do not respect electric fencing. Woven wire is destroyed when it floods. So, we're going to put woven wire in all the areas that don't flood, and we'll use the temporary Electro-net for rotational grazing in areas that do flood. New fence posts have to be put in before the ground freezes.
  
• Create kidding pens in the smaller barn. Last winter, Mike created "temporary" pens in the smaller barn for me, so I could sit in the heated office and keep an eye on goats that were in labor. Over the summer, he removed all of them. New pens have not been built. After last year's experience kidding in below-zero weather, I am not breeding anyone for due dates in January or February this year. Although we could do this after our world freezes, we are kind of wimpy when it comes to working outside for very long in cold temperatures, so it needs to be done soon.
• Stain more trim for the house. Yes, this can also be done after it gets cold, but then Mike is tempted to do it in the heated barn office, and I'm afraid that the fumes are going to cause him serious problems. Katherine is supposed to start staining this weekend, so she can do it in fresh air.
• Put tile around my bathtub. This might sound like a low-priority item, which is why I have been staring at concrete board for four years. At some point, it needs to be moved up on the priority list. And it has to be done when windows can be opened because it's a headache-inducing-stinky job.
  
• Landscape in front of the house. I'm over-the-top optimistic to think that this is going to get done, but I either need to seriously get it landscaped or learn the names of all the weeds growing out there so it sounds like it's a "planned natural area" when people ask what we're growing in front of our house. It is kind of pretty when the weeds are five feet tall and blooming, but I don't think anyone would ever want that much Queen Anne's lace.

And we need to get all these special projects done while continuing to do the daily work on the homestead. Right now, there is also a lot of gardening that needs to get done, as well as canning and freezing vegetables. I was going to make salsa yesterday but ran out of time. I need to remember to order garlic for fall planting, but my indecisiveness in choosing varieties usually leads to procrastination in ordering. You can see how this is problematic.

Speaking of ordering, I need to order maple sugaring supplies, so we can tap our maple trees next spring. I just ordered two books from Amazon on the whole process. As we were walking around looking for oak and hickory trees, we realized we have a lot of very large maple trees. My sister-in-law in New York learned that all the suppliers are sold out during sugaring season, so last spring she used Chinese take-out cartons to collect sap. I've already started looking for supplies, but the less-expensive suppliers are still saying "sold out," so I need to remember to keep checking back or just order and hope it all arrives before next spring.

This weekend, we need to do goat maintenance: FAMACHA everyone (check their anemia status), give copper to those who need it, trim hooves, tattoo summer kids, and probably a few more things that I've forgotten at the moment. Oh, yeah, the bucks need to be moved to new pasture, which is always a fun job.

Now, I have to get ready to teach today.

Sustainable and delicious pork

Conversations with organic farmers are a happy treat for me, since I always learn something, and Friday was no exception. I was talking to a farmer I hadn't seen in a few years, and I mentioned that we now raise pigs. He started talking about how mast-finished pork was getting popular, and I asked him, "What's mast?"

"Nuts, hickory nuts, acorns," he said. Supposedly it makes the most delicious pork in the world, selling for as much as $5,000 a pig. My jaw nearly bruised my chest as it dropped. Without even knowing we were doing it, we've been raising mast-finished pork. We cannot not raise mast-finished pork, because our property is covered with oak and hickory trees. And now I know why the pigs two years ago kept getting out and rooting up our front yard, while completely ignoring the field across the street. The pigs were rooting up the area under the oak and hickory trees to get the nuts.

This explains why everyone raves about our pork. I always thought it was the breed, since we raise Tamworths, a heritage breed of pork. I was considerably confused when a customer told me that she bought a Tamworth from a farmer in Wisconsin last year when we didn't raise pigs, and it wasn't as tasty as our pork. (When she heard we were raising pigs this year, she immediately reserved a whole one.)

When I got home from my visit with the farmer, of course, I went straight for Google and searched for "mast-finished pigs." One site said that they sell for hundreds of dollars a pound in Europe, but they didn't give a source for that info, so perhaps it's exaggerated somewhat. It would be $25 a pound if the $5,000 pig price is accurate, which is still amazing, considering that we sell our pigs for $3 a pound. I did find a farm in Connecticut that sells their mast-finished, whole pigs for $5.50 a pound, so we're still considerably under-priced.

Mast-finished pork is rare because there are only so many hardwood forests where pigs can be raised, which was the traditional way of raising pigs. Buying nuts to feed pigs would be prohibitively expensive! The practice has been lost almost completely in the last hundred years. The nail was put in the coffin of chesnut-finished pork in Virgina by a blight that killed many of the chestnut forests. Bakers have to share some of the blame too, because they preferred the solid lard of corn-finished pigs. The lard of mast-finished pigs is considerably softer, sometimes even liquid at room temperature. Not so good for pie crusts, but that means mast-finished pork is healthier for you, because it's lower in saturated fats. Of course, mast-finished pork is the ultimate in sustainable meat, because the trees just keep producing their nuts year after year without any chemical inputs. If you want to learn more about mast-finished pork, Badgersett Research Corporation has the most information on a single page.

Saturday we took a walk through our woods to see how many hickory and oak trees we really have. We talked about how to get the pigs to the trees, so they can get even more nuts to eat. The sheep live in the east pasture, which is a grove of oak trees. I wonder how they would feel about sharing their pasture with pigs. I picked up a couple acorns and hickory nuts to take back to he pigs. I dropped them in their pan of corn, and they immediately gobbled them up and started rooting through the pan of corn looking for more. They definitely prefer the nuts over corn.

Last night when I walked into our library, a 20-year-old copy of Mother Earth News was staring me in the face with a cover story about raising acorns. The article briefly talked about finishing pigs on acorns and gave me good numbers on how many pounds a tree can produce per year. As you can imagine, I'm really excited to learn that we have exactly what we need on our little farm to produce the most sustainable and delicious pork in the world.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade.

More on beans, beetles, and the winner

I'm so proud you all for figuring out the right answer, although if you've read my blog for long, it should have been pretty obvious. Choice A is not even an option. As for B we've never used a trap, but I did buy a lure one year and hang it on the turkey pen. As the beetles were lured to the pen, the turkeys snapped them up. I do sometimes take a bucket of soapy water out to the garden and shake the leaves over it, but I've done it less each year; and since I realized that the beetles are quite happy munching on the lazy wife beans (and a weed with huge round leaves), I've pretty much abandoned that practice.

I love all the other options readers mentioned, in addition to planting the Cherokee and rattlesnake beans. Since we will have free access to the lazy wife, we'll probably plant some of them again, and since heirloom beans are so much fun, I want to try another new variety or two. Who knows what other fabulous traits I'll discover.

By the way, all three of these varieties are pole beans. After harvesting our first batch of bush beans a few years ago, our backs told us to plant pole beans forevermore. It might seem like a lot of work to give them something to climb on, but it's nothing compared to the backache of picking bush beans.

The winner of the contest is (drum roll, please) Laura and Kelly Allen. Drop me -- Deborah -- an email at Antiquity Oaks dot com with your full name, mailing address, and variety you prefer, and I'll send the bean seeds in the fall after they're dried.

Mixed feelings about Julie and Julia

If I were a movie critic, I'd rave about Julie and Julia, the movie. Meryl Streep and Amy Adams give excellent performances. It's a well-written script with solid technical work and direction. If you want an entertaining experience, go see it.

I went to see the movie for two reasons: food and Meryl Streep, and the latter did not disappoint. I am conflicted, however, about whether or not food came out a winner in the film. I was really hoping that people would leave the theater with an increased desire to cook real food, but I'm not sure that happened at all. For those of you not familiar with the film, it's a true story of two women, Julie Powell and Julia Child. Julie Powell is a secretary and blogger in 2002. Julia Child needs no introduction, but this film covers her life in France when she attends the Cordon Bleu and writes her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julie spends one year in the movie cooking her way through that cookbook, which is 700+ pages and contains 500+ recipes.

It sounds good on paper (or a computer screen), but in the movie it looks really hard. Julie has more than one mental meltdown, and it seems that they seldom eat dinner before 10 p.m. That little fact right there will validate eating out for a lot of people. Yes, Julia Child made French cooking accessible for us servantless American cooks, but it is kind of nuts to attempt to cook something that complicated every night after you've been away at work all day. And it's not exactly healthy to eat such rich food every day. Julie complains about getting fat, and her husband is seen with a bottle of antacids more than once. Those recipes are for Saturday night dinner parties and Sunday night family dinners, not daily fare.

Good cooking and sensible eating is not that hard, people! Nor does it make you fat or give you indigestion or result in frequent mental anguish. The recipes I post on here are delicious, quick, simple, and thrifty. Real people don't spend three hours in the kitchen every day. So, I doubt that the movie has really made a difference in the status of food. Those of us who already love it will find the movie charming, and those who don't have time to cook will find validation. Sigh...

But the real story behind Julie Powell is the thing that I dislike. In the movie, we discover that Julia Child does not like the blog, but we never learn why. So, I did a bit of sleuthing around the Internet and found two different sources that said she didn't think that Julie really cared about cooking. Julia Child's editor at Knopf, Judith Jones, said she did not "respect" the blog. Jones said Julie "did not care one bit about cooking" and was just trying to cash in on Julia's famous name and book. (Another blogger spent a year living Oprah and got a book deal also, so it's not an uncommon idea.) I visited the old blog, and after reading a few posts, I agree that it doesn't sound like she really cares about cooking. It was just a shtick to get a book deal, and even though I'm not Julia Child, I'm disgusted, so I can only imagine how annoyed she must have been by the blog.

Amy Adams was far more likable than the real Julie Powell, who dropped F-bombs as often as eggs in a quiche. And the way she uses them, it definitely gives you the feeling that she doesn't care much about cooking. In one post, she says, "I was supposed to degrease the sauce, but f--- it." (Hey, Julie! Degreasing would really reduce the antacids your husband needs, and it would be less calories for you!) And she writes as much about watching television and getting drunk as she writes about cooking. No, I didn't read every last entry; it was just too painfully boring, whining, and uninspiring to continue.

On a positive note, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is number one on Amazon. I can only hope that people will actually use it once in a while.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays. For more posts on real food, visit Food Renegade.

A hard lesson to learn

You don't want pictures today. Trust me on this. Today's post is about the worst things that nature can throw at animals -- coyotes and maggots. A bourbon red turkey hen hatched babies in the pasture, and a coyote attacked her. The llamas chased off the coyotes, but a good deal of damage had been done. Within a couple days, maggots started to hatch in the open wounds.

I told Katherine to put screw worm spray on the wounds. As soon as she did it, the maggots started wiggling like crazy, and the turkey hen swung her head around and started pecking at them. [expletives deleted] I grabbed the can and started reading the label very carefully. I didn't think the poison would kill the mama turkey, but I was definitely worried about the babies eating the maggots as they fell to the ground. The label had no warnings about using it around young poultry. In fact, it said it could be used for poultry lice, so I hoped the babies would be okay.

I was mad at myself for not thinking through all the repercussions before spraying the hen. We don't use pesticides on our farm because we know that bugs -- dead or alive -- are a favorite food for chickens and turkeys. Then two years ago, a lamb was infested with maggots. We brought her in the house and elevated her to pet status. She would never be eaten, so using the spray on her didn't seem like a bad idea. But, it didn't require an entire can to treat her, and the remainder sat in the storeroom. Once you have something at your fingertips, you think about using it. Mike asked about the safety of the spray when I told him my plan, but I responded that we would not be eating the turkey hen because, number one, she's four or five years old, and number two, her leg and back are infested with maggots. I didn't think about the babies.

Once I did think about the possible problem, the options did not seem very desirable. We could bathe the turkey hen and pick out the maggots by hand, but an adult heritage turkey is not like a cuddly lamb. If you've ever been smacked in the nose by a heritage turkey's wing, you understand my fear. Yes, fear. I'm emphasizing heritage here, because heritage turkeys can fly, and you have to have to pretty strong wings to lift 15 pounds into the air. It would have meant many hours of struggling to pick the maggots out with tweezers -- and then we would have had to put her in the house, so more flies wouldn't lay eggs in the wound. A dog crate is the only thing I have that would hold a turkey in the house, but she'd be cramped and unable to stand up straight. We couldn't think of any alternatives that weren't met with, "That's crazy."

You probably know how the story ends. Over the next two days, the babies died. As I started beating myself up about my stupidity, another voice in my head pointed out that's what happens when you have that crap within your grasp. I made the same mistake that's made every day in modern agriculture. They have antibiotics, so they use them -- daily. They have hormones, so they use them. They have pesticides and herbicides and GMOs, so they use them, whether they need them or not, whether there is an organic alternative or not. I can't believe how easy it was to just grab the can and use it without thinking about all the possible repercussions.

I need to learn to deal with maggots organically. It's obvious that they are an unavoidable part of farm life, especially when you have coyotes. This summer I discovered that Shaklee's Basic H works very well as a fly spray, so I can use that to keep flies off animals in the future. I think I've read that diatomaceous earth kills maggots, but I want to do some more research on that. Hmm ... maybe I'll have Katherine do an experiment.

Organic green beans

The first time I looked through an heirloom vegetable catalog, I thought all the different varieties of vegetables were pretty. That was it -- just pretty. I had no idea that it was important to plant a variety of the same vegetables. I didn't know that bugs find some varieties more or less palatable than others. I was clueless about garden diseases. I thought that maybe some varieties do better in one climate than another, so I ordered a few different types of each vegetable, having no idea which ones might do best in my state. I ordered tomatoes based on color and size, but with the other vegetables, I was really winging it.

Looking at my green beans and hearing Michael Pollan say that nature abhors a monoculture, I finally had an epiphany. The two pictures in today's blog post are both green bean plants, and they are planted right next to each other in my garden. The one that is covered in Japanese beetles is the lazy wife variety. The one that looks lovely is the rattlesnake variety. At the other end of the row are Cherokee beans, which are also perfectly beautiful. I have no idea why the Japanese beetles fly past the Cherokee and rattlesnake beans to feast on the lazy wife beans, but I really don't need to know. I'm just glad I planted three varieties.

In The Botany of Desire, Pollan said he used to think that organic farmers grew plants the same way as conventional farmers, but used safer pesticides. Then he interviews a potato farmer who avoids problems by not planting certain varieties of potatoes, as well as planting a number of different varieties each year. Doesn't that make sense? The Irish potato famine occurred because they had planted only one type of potato, which was unfortunately susceptible to a disease. If they had planted a variety of potatoes, the famine would not have happened.

What do you think will happen in the Antiquity Oaks garden next year?
A. We'll spray on a heavy-duty pesticide to show those beetles who's boss!
B. We'll buy beetle traps to catch the little buggers.
C. We'll spend an hour every evening shaking the leaves over a soapy bucket of water into which the beetles will fall and drown.
D. We'll plant Cherokee and rattlesnake beans.

Put your answer in the comment section by midnight Friday, and everyone who chooses the correct answer will be entered into a random drawing to win an ounce of bean seeds from my garden, so you can plant them next year. (Your choice of variety.) We will definitely be saving seeds for our own garden. That's one of the great things about growing heirlooms -- you can save the seeds from year to year, because they aren't patented. Choosing heirlooms also means you don't have to worry about GMOs. Since they are patented, you have to sign an affidavit swearing you will not save the seeds for planting in the future. If I see a contract in a seed catalog, the whole catalog goes into the garbage. I refuse to patronize companies that sell GMOs. Of course, one of the best things about heirloom vegetables is that they taste really great!

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday. Check out Kelly the Kitchen Kop for more blog posts about real food.

What's important?

As I was checking Facebook this morning, I saw a link to a blog post and clicked on it, thinking it was about how to increase readership on your blog. Author Jonathan Fields began,

There’s been a lot of focus on follower counts, friend counts, subscriber counts, viewer counts and readers as of late. And, those are important metrics from the standpoint of expanding your impact on the world…and potentially, your income.

But, sometimes I wonder if we’re spending too much time on the wrong metric…

Then he proceeded to talk about the things that really matter to him. The writing is absolutely beautiful and I don't want to paraphrase it for you, so check it out for yourself.

His post really got me thinking about how blessed I am and what's important to me, so here's my list:

I love beautiful flowers, simply because they make me smile.

I love food that makes me close my eyes and sigh, food that begs to be eaten slowly, savored, and enjoyed; food that comes from soil that has been treated with respect; food that comes from animals that have been treated with love.

I love newborn baby animals. I don't think I will ever cease to smile and squeal with joy as a new baby animal is born, or as it takes its first wobbly steps, or as it figures out where to find its first meal. I love their motivation to live, to walk, to bounce, and to simply be themselves.

I love the soft wool that comes from my flock of Shetland sheep and llamas, not only because it feels heavenly, but also because I know where my scarf or hat or afghan has spent its entire life. I am working on an afghan from wool that was grown by Teddy and Latte, washed by Mike, carded by Jamie, spun by Katherine, and knitted by me. As it keeps me warm on these cold Illinois nights, I'll have no worries about what animals were mistreated for the wool or what workers were exploited in its spinning or knitting.

I love my house because it was built with love and care. Every bit of flooring, paint, and wallpaper, every bathroom fixture, door and window, everything was chosen by me. Every nail was pounded into the two-by-sixes and two-by-fours by Mike. Walls were lifted into place by all of us. Margaret screwed the drywall into place. It's more than just a shelter for our family. It represents the ultimate family project.

I love my children for making me the person that I am today; for teaching me patience; for making me smile and laugh; for being thoughtful; for being supportive.

And I love my husband for being the ultimate partner; for being an attentive father; for attempting to do all the crazy things I ask; for making the world's best homemade croissants; for bringing me coffee in bed every morning; for providing our family with the most wonderful home anyone could ever want.

When I see this list and know that it does not even represent half of my blessings in life, I ask how I could want anything more. But I do. I want to empower people to create their own little Eden, to help them learn to be self-sufficient, and to experience the joy that can be found in nature. I want everyone to have access to fresh food and to have the knowledge to prepare it. That's why I blog. I want to share my enthusiasm for all the things I love, and I don't mind sharing my mistakes if it will give people a little more courage to risk success!

It's vital to know what's important in your life so you can make sure you're heading in the right direction. For example, I know a woman who bought four sheep and got rid of them a year later when she realized she didn't want their wool. If you look at my list, you might come to the conclusion that while I love flowers, they're not the most important thing in my life, and I act accordingly. They are the last living things on this farm to get my attention ... after my animals and the herb and vegetable gardens and my family ... and my blog ... and I guess I'm just lucky that daylilies are so hardy.

So, what's important to you? What do you love?