Dry

Serious lack of rain here.  The hillside is dry as a bone but the thistles are lush, prickly and green.  I'm hoping to buy some fencing and enclose the flock in thistle land for a few days to eat it down.  Trouble is with the ground so dry on the rocky hillside I would have a heck of a time pounding in stakes.  The fiberglass push-in stakes would never penetrate the cement.  Will likely have to bush hog them down.  All that goat food gone to waste!  The mommies are loose with their kids.  Luke and I have been whacking down thistles and carrying them in for them to munch on.  I can hardly carry the bushes with thick leather gloves without the thorns going through but the goats and sheep munch on thistles like chocolate.  Amazing.  The weather is cool and lovely.  I have a bag on machine and am still spinning the celery colored mohair.  If I keep some bags cut out I can sit down at night and do a little sewing before I go to sleep.  Half a bag at night and finish in the morning works out nicely.  Mia brought one back to a nurse friend in New Jersey.  Nice thing about my bag customers - they so often purchase them for friends.  There's a big batch of Almond soap waiting to be cut up and cured.  Will take Hannah and Luke to the movies in New Hartford and stop at Lowe's to pick up more lye.  Very pricey - everything about soap making is pricey - but no lye, no soap.  Still cheaper than getting it shipped in.  The logistics of making multiple products is daunting.  I always need something I don't have, and then, where to put it.  Challenges, challenges.  As long as the hay is being cut and baled for winter - I'm okay.