Birdsfoot Farm

Dear All,
    have you heard yet, that we have a cow? Her name is Carol and she is a six year old Jersey from the biodynamic Kawecki farm.  She is a sweetheart and Kira loves her.  The cow follows Kira and licks her, Kira follows the cow and  brushes her every day.  We are busy milking and coming up with ways to use the milk.  So far we made butter, quark ( a german soft cheese), pudding, yogurt and mozzarella.  For the hard cheeses I need more time and not go away for the weekends.      

The Little River School has the opening celebration of the addition today from 4-6pm with live music.  Come and see the beautiful new space if you like.

Peace,
Dulli

Dear  All,
we had a wonderful vacation at Cape Cod.  For a week we slept in,
took  naps, went to bed early, slept some more.  We read books and swam in
the  waves of the ocean, watched seals and had a wonderful time with Kira. 
  She really enjoyed having Steve and me all the time living into the  day. 
On Friday we got rained out and packed up all the wet sleeping  bags, tent and
stuff and drove to Boston and visited Seba for a day.  I  still get worked
up a bit driving in Boston.  I did not know I could  sleep that much. 
My batteries are charged and this past week in the  gardens was busy but
relaxed. Zach, Phil, Ian, Sal and Miguel did a  wonderful job keeping you all
fed.
The morning we had left, the three guinea pigs had left their pasture
  through a hole under the gate and went missing for 8 days. When we got  back we
found them in the tall grass near the fence.  It seemed like  they went on
vacation too.

The gardens are busy.  It is cool this morning and I
am procrastinating  to go out in the wet fields.  We found that the cabbage
got hit with  swede midge.  Normally they don't like cabbage, but since all
the  broccoli and kale was covered with the new netting, they got desperate and
went for the cabbage.  We just harvested a few beautiful heads of  broccoli
and there should be more coming on soon for you, as they  recover from the
earlier slug hammering.

The onions and leeks have gotten leek moth, a  moth that lays its eggs  into the inner leaf and causes mining windows in the leafs and they will go into the bulb and it that will not store.  I think
we got the  garlic out in time not to be fresh green and appetizing to them and
we  are scouting onions and leeks and eat any sick ones right away.  It is
a  bummer though.  We will need to cover onions, leeks and garlic with a 
netting to have any in the future.  I had bought a second net in the 
spring for that, but we would not be able to grow the amounts we have  now,
plus we have to cover the cabbage too.

Two days ago we saw late blight  in the tomatoes and with the rain it  will spread fast.  We just got the  first few tomatoes and I am afraid  there will not be many more to come. 
Hopefully potatoes will make some  crop before they get hit.

I know this is not a very up cheering newsletter.  On the good side parsnips and
greens are doing good and we looked at a cow to buy and  that is so very
exciting.

So long for now, I have to go and harvest for the day.
Dulli