Wild and Wooly

Happy Monday!

I hope your weather is as beautiful as ours has been these past few days.

Our days have been sunny and cool...

the wind blowing through the trees and the birds singing joyously!
I am once again loving hanging out the laundry and working in the garden.

A portion of my weekend was spent in the garden.

I planted carrots, beets, spinach, and some of the seedlings that were growing in the greenhouse.

Our garden boxes are now filling up with radishes, spinach, lettuce,
sugar peas, kale, chard, onions, garlic and perennial herbs.

We took the dogs for a hike.

Annie had her first hike off-leash through our woods.

She stayed pretty close to Oakley...so we had no worries.

Hiking was interspersed with horseplay with Sam.

Sadly, the most interesting story of the weekend is one for which I have no picture.
Hubbs came face to face with a black bear on Saturday night
while taking Annie out for her bedtime potty break.
The bear simply lumbered off into the woods...unafraid.
I know.... a picture would have been great!

It's that time of year when our goats look more like sheep

that are desperately in need of sheering.

With the frigid winter that we had,

they all grew a thick undercoating of fluff

that is starting to shed.

Feeding time usually ends up being a grooming session

as I pull handfuls of wool from their coats.

As soft as it feels in my hand, I would have thought it would make soft yarn,

but last year we had it spun into yarn...

and it ended up rather itchy.

So, I suspect this year's shedding will end up as lining in birds' nests.

In mid-shedding, Andy looks as though he has dreadlocks!

By the way, there has never been a goat more difficult to photograph than Andy.

He runs like the wind as soon as I point the camera in his direction.

By summer, everyone will be sleek and lovely again.

For now, though, they are a rag-tag bunch of wild and wooly goats.

You have probably figured out that I am just loving Springtime.
I'm even loving all of the work that goes along with it.
The work will pay off...
by mid summer everything should look spectacular!