After 9 months of exploring 'down under', I have returned to wonderful world of Pope Valley Fruits. When I left at the end of August 2009 after spending a glorious summer wwoofing here at the farm, I knew that I would be back one day. Luckily for me my last stop before returning back home is back at the farm for another summer of goats, figs, planting, digging and concreting ... perfect! I experienced a very strange event when I first arrived ... a day of rain. But now the temperature is rising and I am sure we will soon be experiencing over the 100f mark. Sunscreen at the ready.Nancy, Terry and I have been laughing a lot when we talk about the great things that happened last summer and it is so great that there is now a facebook page so we can all stay in touch. There have changes since I was here last. What was the rather crazy wwoofer HQ has now been turned into Nancy and Terry's lovely home, there are grapes blooming all around the house, we have wifi (it must be goat-powered), the root cellar that we built last summer looks amazing ... and but of course the most wonderful thing has to be the new four-legged additions to the farm family.
Back in the Spring, Jada gave birth to Boots, Mr Brown and Greta; and then Wanda produced Ava and Penny a few weeks later. The two boys and three girls are extremely cute and even though they are getting bigger every day, they still want cuddles and to generally use us as human climbing frames. Nancy says they are in their teenage years so the naughtiness is to be expected .. but trying to get in and out of the milking shed when five kids want to get in with you is slightly challenging.
We are milking the mums in the morning and will soon be weening the kids of the milk completely so we can start milking in the evening. We obviously need the milk to keep up with my iced coffee and ice cream demands. As with last summer, we are waiting to see whether Lola is pregnant. If so, then there will be some more additions in 2-3 months.
We have a smaller number of wwoofers this year. Emmanuel is here for the summer and up until a couple of days ago Justin was also working with us. Justin has left to wwoof at Sarah and Andy's goat farm and we hope he will come back and visit with lots of goaty knowledge. Emmanuel is a carpenter and is making a beautiful redwood trellis that will wrap around the house and the grape vines will grow up it. I am currently working on the root cellar entrance walls and I'm relearning (the painful way) the art of digging.
When we are not working I have been rediscovering all the lovely walks around the farm, swimming in the lake (which is completely refilled from the rain over the winter .. and still a little chilly), kayaking and the simple pleasure of good book and red licorice on a sunny day (sitting in the shade obviously).
Bye for now ... project updates and photos very soon. denise.x
