Netherfield Farm

Unable to sleep a few nights ago and was thinking. You know that was going to cause problems already right? I thought about lots of things but only remembered one thing the next morning. The story about the tortoise and the hare. It’s supposed to be a story about the fact that the steady tortoise wins the race, but I don’t as thinking of another interpretation. The hare represents youth, full of energy, no worries about tomorrow because it will always be there. The finish line was not the goal. Having a good time and taking a nap was the goal of life/the race. The tortoise is old age. You no longer have the energy of youth, and you can barely stay in the path of life so you have to focus all your energy on the goal if you are going to get there. Yes, you guessed it. I’m the tortoise now. The difference is that I am not even sure I know what the goal is and if I want to get there. Maybe I’m learning from the rabbit and learning to enjoy the race but instead, not rushing.
Brigitte Hoarau what do you think?

Today 8:30-noon! We are low on honey so get what you can now before it disappears. Not sure if we will get anything before winter this year. Hives are looking low.

Tomorrow!

See you tomorrow!
The market will be open 8:30am-12pm.

On 9/11, yesterday, my farm family decided that I needed a pick me up moment. Dorsey sent my this picture of surprise baby ducklings! Apparently we have a duck couple that nested in our rosemary, unknown to us. The Drake was chasing off all intruders and I thought that he was an aggressive Drake that had to be dealt with. Thank goodness we hesitated! He was just protecting his little family! He is so proud of his precious babies. He is the one with white spots on his chest. His wife is the other duck in the picture. Aren’t they adorable!! I love baby ducks, and old pickup trucks….

Update: sadly, 9 babies became only 7, the next day. Then today it was only 5, and parents were leaving them to fend for themselves!! New parents I guess, didn’t know how to keep them safe so we grabbed the 5 remaining babies and put them into the baby coop. While there, I heard more peeps coming from outside the baby coop! I saw a baby running around in the adult coop! Went to rescue her and Dorsey found one hanging out with the adult chickens! We were back up to 7, so we think. Chasing the baby, I found 2 that I think were the original missing babies. It looked like they were attacked by older birds and were dead. So sad but happy to have us back to 7 out of 9. Then I heard another peep! We had some khaki Campbells sitting on some eggs but they abandoned it so I looked in the nest. A tiny little baby was chirping in the nest and another had gotten seran wrapped in its egg trying to hatch with no moist mama keeping the membrane from drying out. I grabbed chirpy baby, hatching baby and all the doin to hatch eggs and put the eggs in the incubator and the chirpy baby into the baby coop. I don’t know now if we found missing babies or newly hatched ones but not taking chances with bad parenting anymore! I moistened the membrane on the hatching baby yo give it every chance to survive. We are back up to 9 babies if the hatching one makes it, plus we have 3 additional eggs that may or may not hatch. It’s been a good day.