Updates on Swede Farm

The fire that was threatening us is now 100% contained, thanks to the herculean efforts of the firefighters from many neighboring communities combined with a tad bit of divine intervention in the form of over three inches of rain in a county that has only seen 5.23 inches in 2011! We are thrilled that the fire is no longer a threat but ecstatic over our rain! Unfortunately we are not forecast to have any significant precipitation for the next ten days or so.

We are having our mid-Summer baby boom! We have had six babies born to four moms over the past week. We do not often leave the babies with the mommas for several reasons but we decided to do just that this year and we are really enjoying watching the little ones torment the milkers in the pen.

The new cheese room is inching ever-so-slowing towards completion. What once seemed like a weeks worth of work has now taken at least eight weeks. Is the work really so difficult or time consuming? No, the rest of life simply has no wiggle-room and finding the time and energy once goats are milked, cheese and yogurt is made and the needs of a family of fourteen is tended to is proving difficult. We are seriously contemplating picking a day and inviting people out to a 21st century barn-raising, if you will, except that the barn is raised, it just needs to be finished on the inside!

Speaking of the ever elusive time and energy, as the school year drew to a close it was time for some reckoning and we realized that with time and energy in high demand and short supply things were getting shortchanged around the house. Things like peace and joy and contentment. To regain those precious missing emotions we realized that we needed to pare back to essentials and focus on remembering why we moved to the country and began farming in the first place. This led to some challenging decisions. It was evident that some things had to be jettisoned if we were to see that peace and joy and contentment for which we were longing. The things that we are letting go are leadership of the 4H Vet Science program and the reviews that I did as a part of This Old School House's review crew. The main impact that might be seen to outsiders due to the release of these responsibilities will be (hopefully) more frequent blog entries and no more reviews of homeschool curriculum.

Hopefully we will see more visitors to the farm, with Summer here. We enjoy sharing with people what we do and hope that they find it as exciting as we did to learn that in a world of big box stores and food factories, that you can still produce food the way that our forefathers did, that there are still places where children grow up feeding the chickens and riding horses (even though they also surf the web) and that you can still get dirt under your fingernails in the picking of your food. Drive out to the farm and see for yourself--and if you wear suitable shoes we might just give you a job to do while you are here!