Happy Holidays from Capra Lane Farm! It's that time of year again where we look back on 2017 and review our year-end accomplishments and crazy decisions. This fall we opened the new farm to family and friends and enjoyed home grown foods, drinks, tours and many many animal meet and greets. If there was any doubt, now they are all certain just how insane we really are...
Early spring generally brings the arrival of baby goats. Last years kids grew by leaps and bounds, and by February we made more!
We also had kittens. Twice! Oops....The kittens provided many hours of wasted time during chores and Rog could generally count on finding me sitting on a pile of hay playing with a piece of string when I was supposed to be doing something else.
With summer came the constant flow of tomatoes from the garden. The unusually warm spring and fall gave us our earliest and latest harvest ever. We enjoy eating exclusively from the garden and barnyard as much as possible.
Yep, we made hay. Lots of it. Making hay has become Rog's greatest obsession. He checks the weather incessantly and meticulously maintains the equipment. Now that his hay was crowned "grand champion overall" at the fair this year, he's been a little difficult to live with. 😉
We appraised each of our adult does this year, our herd average went up since our last appraisal which is a definite positive. The process requires a lot of prep time but we always gain a lot of knowledge about our herd.
The ponies turned a year older, Sierra and Rain are still going strong at 24 and 23. We raised 550 lbs of pig as well as a flock of 10-12 lb freakishly large chickens. The freezers are chock full for winter.
We added a few 'new' toys to the Capra Lane family, a 1962 Oliver 770 which Rog is currently restoring. And a 1982 Ford F-250 which is now my exciting second vehicle, after it gets a paint job, of course. I call it 'exciting' because it's a challenge keeping it between the lines on the road. We also tried something else new-vacationing! We were able to squeeze in a 3 day beach trip in June for our anniversary and it was pretty fantastic, a nice change from the daily grind.
And lastly, the most exciting way to end 2017... we have another Weimaraner in our lives! Meet Ivy.
Ivy is 9 months old, she's a little different that your average Weimaraner, she's a blue instead of the traditional silver gray. She is also a long-haired weim- having one with a full tail that can clear a coffee table is a whole new experience for us!
Ivy was a rescue that we adopted through Great Lakes Weim Rescue and we spent many long months waiting for just the right dog to add to the family. So now, just in time for the holidays we are deeply entrenched in the joys of puppydom. She's pretty great so far though, we told her she has pretty big shoes to fill.
So as 2017 comes to a close we here at Capra Lane wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous 2018!
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another. ---Anatole France
