Easter Weekend

This is Easter weekend. Katelyn and John drove from New Jersey for a long weekend. They came to help organize the basement, a huge task, so Katelyn's friends from England, "the Brits", can stay with us for the wedding. Katelyn also came so she and I could, once again, look for a wedding dress. This time we were successful! She found a beautiful dress that really, was completely different than the dresses she'd tried on in the past. Yeah! We had smoked leg of lamb Saturday for Easter dinner. Bob is first call today, Sunday, so we celebrated Easter yesterday. A friend from work, Dennis Gregory, smoked the leg for us. It was fabulous, done medium rare. He rubbed it with a salt, pepper, and rosemary marinade, let it sit for twenty four hours, and then smoked it yesterday morning. Bob picked it up and I warmed it in the oven, in it's own juice and wrapped in foil. Amazing. Dennis will be known forever as the King of Smoke. Paul Shetterly came Thursday and trimmed everyone's hooves, goats included. We discovered that Lulu has mastitis. I wondered why she looked a little thin and her babies did not seem to be growing as rapidly as the other lambs. Mastitis. Mastitis is an infection of the udder. Symptoms include pain, reddness, heat, and a hard swelling of the udder. She was so painful that she was not allowing her lambs to nurse on that side of her udder. The lambs were surviving on milk from one side. They were not starving, but they were not growing as rapidly as they should either. We gave her a shot of antibiotic Thursday. On Friday after Bob spoke to the vet, I went to the dairy farm around the corner and picked up a different antibiotic. The vet had to stop at the dairy and was kind enough to leave it for me. The new antibiotic was presription strength, so was not available from the Tractor Supply. That also meant I didn't have to make the drive to their office in Ionia. The treatment for mastitis is antibiotics every other day for a total of three shots and milking, or stripping her udder on the affected side, as much as possible. We've stripped her udder twice a day since starting on Friday and Bob said the lambs were actually nursing on that side on Saturday. Good news! Frost came again on Friday morning. Hopefully, everything will struggle through. I need to check the seeds I planted in the early garden. Some had germinated. I may need to re-plant. The chickens come on the 23rd. The area in the barn will need to be cleaned. Rabbits are due to kindle on the 17th and 24th. I put a nesting box in with Wanda but I think it's a little early for that. Wait and see. Live well, Carmen