Ranch Newsletter | June 2023

Originally sent to subscribers on June 29th, 2023

Farm Update: July

Our CSA is officially underway! We have the first two weeks under our belt and the garden is looking great. I'm excited for what this year is going to bring to us, and to our farm share members.

In goat news... Honey's due date is right around the corner. I expect I'll have some sleepless nights starting in about a week. You can expect baby goat content over on our social media pages as soon as they hit the ground. I'm hoping to be present for the birth, so there may be some birth content as well. We shall see.

Reba isn't growing round, which makes me wonder if she's pregnant, but I know she only had 1 kid before we got her, which may not show as much. I don't really know. We'll just keep watching and waiting. If she is pregnant she is due toward the end of August.

In chicken news... Our house is finally baby chick free! We moved the babies to the chicken coop, and the big chickens to the chicken tractor.

That was an interesting process. Our original plan was to cut, dry, and bale our field of hay, then move the big chickens into the chicken tractor. But, even though the forecast said we were going to have dry weather, the day after we cut hay, it rained... for three days. Ugh! So we had to delay putting the chickens out.

But the baby chicks were getting far too big to be in the dog kennel anymore and we didn't have another space for them. So we found a spot to park the chicken tractor temporarily, and moved all the chickens around, despite the rain.

The baby chicks all have names now too. The older two, from our first batch are Chamomile and Peppermint. The seven from the second batch are: Turmeric, Curry, Rue, Bay, Poppy, Saffron, and Clove.

In soap news: A while ago I mentioned I wasn't doing much with soap right now because I'm planning to transition to goat milk soap once Honey starts giving me milk.

I've started planning the "re-release" of our soaps and here are some things I can tell you about it right now:

1. I'm discontinuing some of the scents I've been making including: Earl Grey, Spring Meadow, Peppermint Orange, Cinnamon Orange, and Minty Eucalyptus.

2. I'm going to keep making: Rosemary Mint, Unscented, Lemon Tea Tree, Breathe, and Summer Citrus.

3. I'm going to release 7 new scents. These scents are going to be based on classic novels.

4. The discontinuation of the soap scents will correlate across all of our products, so I won't be making Spring Meadow lotion bars anymore either.

Lotion bars are also getting new packaging. They will now come in tins with screw top lids. And with this change, I'm looking at ways to give you all a discount if you return lip balm, salve, and lotion bar tins.

As always, there's a lot going on over here. But even though we're busy, we have managed to get away for a little fun as well. Craig and I took our kayaks out on Pineview Reservoir a couple of weeks ago. It's one of our favorite things to do when we have some down time and the weather has been absolutely beautiful.

I hope you're all enjoying your summer!

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I realize there might be some confusion with the title of this post, and the heading of this post. My intention was to talk about what was coming up in the next month at the end of the previous month, but I inevitably ended up talking about both the previous month and the upcoming one. I did eventually realize how confusing this was and changed my methods.