Happy Summer Solstice! It will be here before we know it! Well, I thought it was going to be an early spring, but I was wrong. It ended up being months of cold rain, and now, of course, many more months of well-watered weeds! I do pretty well with those huge plastic white paint buckets. I pack 4 of those overfull every day and dump them in the chicken yard so the ladies can go through them and eat the weeds they like and all the bugs they want. There are, of course, more weeds should I want them, but that is my personal limit. The chickens are well and happy, and producing tasty eggs. We lost one chicken, so we are down to 20. I collect between 13 and 17 eggs a day. I wash them, dry them, and put them in the fridge. Every two weeks Don takes about 14 dozen eggs to sell to the Co-op at the Big Town Over the Water, where they are always pleased to get them. Because the weather is nicer and the days are longer, Don is able to come home more often than every other weekend now, which we all love.

The only snow we had was in March this year, with a brief spurt of hail (yes, hail!) the first week of May. The greenhouses are filled with happy tomatoes and peppers and peas, all of whom hardly noticed the strange weather. The early peas which I so carefully weeded and staked were eaten by this year's superabundant bunny crop. And the tomatoes I had planted in the field in March under row covers died in a passing gale followed by a freeze. The garlic is looking quite well, and the peas I planted inside the garlic patch are (knock on wood) untouched by the ubiquitous bunnies. The bush beans I planted in the raised beds are starting to come up, and we are still enjoying the end of the lettuces and kale that overwintered in their own raised beds. (Proof that it was indeed a mild, if tediously long, winter.)

Before mid-May we passed the marker: when the sun begins to shine and all of a sudden I'm done putting wood on the back porch every day, and done lighting a fire at night, and that same week I begin to start the day with watering and weeding, and end the day with another watering and weeding. I like both rhythms, but it always takes a bit of getting used to when there's a change the routine. And of course now Don is spending time riding about on the mower, trying to keep "on top" of the grasses. We don't waste much around here, I usually follow him with a weed bucket. He also tilled up the fields, so that when the nights are warm enough I can start planting seeds. The goats have shed their furs and are looking sleek and trim again. They particularly like lawnmower weeds, so they get a couple buckets, and so do the chickens.

The Wee One is gearing up for a role as Will Scarlett (and a few smaller roles) in the slapstick version of Robin Hood, this year's end-of-school play. She and a friend has been studying the life cycle of the tadpole, via our pond, creating many artificial mini-pond environments in various buckets and jars on our porch to house their subjects. The Almost Grown Up is happy in her own apartment in the Big Town Over the Water. She is working more hours and gradually paying off some bills, and is about to turn 21. ?!? Can it be? She gave us a lovely combined Mother's Day/Don's birthday gift of allowing me to step off the farm for 3 days and visit Don on the mainland while the Wee One visited grandparents in the Big Town Over the Water. She took 3 days off from her job over there, and did a great job here hanging out with the dog and watering plants and keeping goats and chickens happy. It was a huge gift, and we are most grateful!

The bunnies have caused me some angst this spring, but I'm hopeful that with some direction and luck, our terrier will figure out the knack to bunny hunting. Welcome Summer!