Birds busy nesting

These baby robins want food all of the time. 

We often have guests comment on how many birds we have here at Brambleberry. From song birds to swallows, hummingbirds to hawks, turkeys to sparrows and even some eagles, this is a birder's paradise.
Many of our avian friends are visible just by sitting on our porches. The barn swallows nest in the former dairy barn and are our natural mosquito predators. You can watch them dip and dive from morning to night catching bugs for their young.
We also have lots of robins. This spring a robin built a nest on a decorative basket we hung on the wall of our garage with hopes that's exactly what would happen. It's a non-stop battle to try to keep the robins and other birds from nesting right near our porch doors.
There were actually three birds in the nest -- you can see the tips of the yellow beak of the third bird near the adult robin. Without feathers the baby birds look more like prehistoric creatures. But they wait with open mouths as the parent comes in with bits of regurgitated worms and other food to feed them. It's an endless job that doesn't stop until the birds are big enough to fly away.
And then the circle of life continues.

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Baling hay brings challenges

Some of the 1,500 bales of first cop hay stacked in the barn. 

 Nothing every comes easy, particularly when it comes to farming. Between the challenges of the weather and equipment, there seems to always be something to overcome.
That was certainly the case this year with our first crop of hay. Most farmers get between three and four cuttings of hay, which grows back in between harvests -- just like your lawn.
Chris had taken the week of Memorial Day as vacation with the intent to bale hay, but cool weather and equipment issues preventing the hay from being cut until the first weekend of June. The hay baler needed repairs, which was accomplished.

A new chain was needed to fix the elevator.

Chris's father started baling, which went fine, but the elevator that is used to unload the hay and carry it up into the barn was a disaster. The clutch slipped and had to be fixed and then the chain, which is old and worn out, started breaking. The elevator broke six times before we had to break down ourselves and purchase 48 feet of new chain!
Chris helped unload hay when he got home from work and two remaining hay wagons are safely tucked inside a shed. When those wagons are unloaded, there will be more than 1,500 bales of hay in the barn -- feed for the sheep and cows in the fall and winter.
But if we don't get rain soon, we will be feeding it year-round. The pastures are drying up and that means our second cutting of hay might be a lot less. But that's just another challenge in farming!