Let's see... what's been going on around here lately? Lots, to put it mildly. Things are crazy busy.
Mango quickly and quietly birthed two bucklings a few days ago. They are complete twin mirror images, born at a husky 9.4 pounds, with slightly floppy ears. And one has wattles. This makes for ten kids on the ground, 7 boys and 3 girls.
Now we only have three does left to kid, all without kidding dates. Iris will go first, if I'm not mistaken. Here's a couple pics from this afternoon: 
What else? Honey, our new Icelandic sheep is getting used to the milking regime. It seems she went through quite a transitional period, moving up to our place and learning about how we do things up here. But she's settling in... and within the next day or two, we should have enough milk to try our first sheep cheese making!
And we've decided to convert our bunkhouse to a milk shack. The front room will have duel milk stands so we can tandem milk, and barley/oat/BOSS/alfalfa pellet storage. The back room is going to be for cheese and jerky making. No more scrubbing floors in our cabin after trailing in 7 goats and a sheep twice a day. And my kitchen counter will be unencumbered by the cheese press/camp stove/double boiler used to make cheddar twice a week. Yeah!
Oh, and we got 14 inches of heavy snow this week. Yesterday it warmed up to 50 degrees and then didn't freeze overnight. We even woke up to the sound of rain on the metal roof. So spring is here after all. Now the new snow is melting back enough to let the chickens range out again, and that's a good thing.
I've mastered a new cheese recently... Domiati, which is an Egyptian/North African cheese that's reminiscent of feta and is quite delicious.
Well, I guess that's about it. I better get back to work while I still have the energy to move. Cheers!