Spring and a new start perhaps

It's been so long now since I have written here.
It has been on my mind so often to write about such-and-such, but I never seem to be able to find the time these days!  But I have carved out a little today, so here are a few random pictures--

Last year we had a good year.  Nothing has changed extremely.  The garden was so lovely and productive last year with all the rain.  We got a buck for the goats, and the babies are being born now!  The first one was born on Thursday.  I thought it would be Firefly, because she was supposed to be first, but it was Cricket's baby.  It was a little boy--the first boy goat born on our farm.

There was a calf born in February.  We've called him Sampson.

The rye we seeded on some of the pastures and in the garden turned out quite nice.  It has made such a difference for everyone to have some good green stuff during the winter.

Clothilde has grown up quite a lot now. 

This spring our table is decorated with spring flowers and an Ostara tree.  We had lots of fun blowing the eggs and painting them on the Equinox.

This was from warmer days--Clothilde helps to feed the animals!  She loves all of them, and isn't afraid.

This was the buck.  We were reading Washington Irving, as per family tradition in the fall, and called him "Young Buckthorne."  He was, after all, a young man of great expectations.

He was a good buck, got all the girls bred, was friendly and gentle, and towards the end of his stay was not even terribly stinky.  The drawback was that he was very funny looking.  His mama was a La Mancha and his father was a Kinder (Nubian and African Pygmy).  My friend Denise lent him to us for free.  His dad had gotten in with the does and so he was sort of an accident, but we weren't picky at all this year.  She said his mama made the most milk of all the goats, but he did have wattles and weird little Shrek ears.

Spring is in full bloom out at the farm.  It is so beautiful out there these days.

I hope that I will be able to write more this year.  But look what happened last time I shut the office door, leaving Ethan with the children, and tried to order the Freedom Ranger chicks for this year without a certain someone chewing on the electrical cords or ravaging the sewing table, or other certain someones asking innumerable questions:

In case you don't recognize this, it is a $1,000 fine for "Cruelty and Neglect" of my children they tell me!  I thought that was pretty steep for 15 minutes alone.