July 31, 2022 ~ July was HOT! Months like this challenge everything about having a farm! And to top it off, our well is not working properly, so we can only use our hose for about 30 minutes before we run out of water and have to wait an hour for the well pump to recharge.  We’re hot and exhausted!

We started the month by harvesting our garlic. That’s a funny story, because we planted onions and garlic in the same bed and we were certain that the garlic was not growing and the onions were doing just ok. They did not get as many leaves as we thought they should and when the leaves started dying, we pulled them. That’s when we discovered it was the garlic that WAS growing and the onions did not.  We were disappointed that we did not get any onions this year, but thrilled with the garlic harvest.

We think we found the suspect that killed our chickens last month. We have one laying hen that doesn’t stay inside the electric fence. One day, in broad daylight, we saw a raccoon sneaking up on the hen.  We spooked it and it ran into a cage where we trapped it and removed it from our property. We know there are more out there, we will just keep watching.

During the long Independence Day weekend we started to clean out the barn. When we moved to the farm 2 ½ years ago, we dumped most of our stuff in as organized chaos as we could so we could work on living spaces. We are finally starting to go through it all.  It was so hot, though, that we only scratched the surface.  We were, however, able to fill the bed of the truck with things that went to the dump. It is nice to get that “stuff” out of the garage so we can start to organize.

COVID hit our home again! Katie was infected late last month and it was extremely mild. BUT, 8 days later, she was plagued with horrible coughing and shortness of breath, and then liver damage.  She was down for almost 3 weeks. Thankfully, she was able to heal her liver by eating a strict diet and she does not have any lasting complications (well, she still can’t taste food).

After our chicken massacre in June, we realized that we needed to get a livestock guardian dog (LGD) for our farm. We hope to get sheep soon, and we will really need a dog then. And, it takes about 2 years to fully train a LGD.  It just so happened that the friend of Katie’s coworker had two LDG puppies that she wanted to give away. They are a mix of Great Pyrenees and Australian Shepherd. Both their parents are the same breed and they had all been raised with livestock.  We went to check them out and decided that we would take them both.  We figured that the two of them would play together and get through some of their hyperactive puppy-ness together. We kept them in a 16’x40’ pen when we were not home and worked on training them several times every day.  We named them Cosmas and Damien after brother physicians from the 3^rd century who never charged for their services.  Within a few weeks, we realized that we were over our head.  The puppies were very difficult to train – they would do great one-on-one and learned some commands, but they forgot everything once they started playing together.  We also read about littermate syndrome and decided that we should re-home one of them.  We were able to find someone who was looking, and it worked out great!  We kept Damien (the white and tan one).  He seemed to be the smartest (and cutest) of the puppies. He is learning very quickly – and he LOVES to sit in water. Again, it is SO HOT this month!

John helps tend bees for two friends.  This month, he helped them both harvest honey from their hives. They both had very healthy hives and had impressive harvests. We won’t be able to get into our hives until next week.

Several months ago, Bass Pro Shops contracted with John to make rawhide chandelier domes for their store in Las Vegas. He has spent several months trying to find a rawhide supplier. Who knew there’d be a shortage of rawhide?  He finally found some and the 56 hides were delivered by truck last week.  We will start the process of covering the large metal shapes with rawhide. It is a HUGE job and will probably take at least 2 months to complete.

Katie works in the administrative offices of our church and manages the 8 weeks of our summer camp program. Last week, we had several adults cancel for various reasons, so Katie got to attend camp for the week to fill in.  It was a great week being in nature and helping to bring Jesus to the kids. As an added bonus, our middle son, Father Nicholas was at camp the same week.  Unfortunately, on the last day of camp, she sprained her ankle and is now an invalid!  Please pray it heals quickly.