First visitors

Grandma and Grandpa drove from Minnesota to visit Ole this week.  They snapped every Ole sign they saw, stopped for fresh produce in eastern Washington, and brought a whole baby shower along.  It was great to see them and watch them meet their first grandchild.

Ole took his first real foray into the outdoors.  It included a goat parade as we led them to new foraging grounds.

New Ole!

Ole MacIntosh Stiles made his debut at One Point Seven early Thursday morning.  He's already running the show around here with his crazy hours and wild demands.  He's bouncing and healthy, though, and we really adore him. 

*Note: Photos have been edited to remove screaming and crying.

Passing the time

Well, it's one week past my due date and I'm still pregnant.  I'm trying to see the bright side of things (In France, today would be the day as they use 41 weeks as a due date), but it is getting a bit miserable.  Luckily the weather is perfect and there is plenty to do around here.
Cooking, for example.   I baked this egg dish with little bantam eggs and beet greens from the garden and baked a loaf of soft wheat bread.  A little garden lettuce and basil and it turned into a nice meal.

And let's not forget about the goats.  We sheared stinky Iva Belle with our slick new shearing machine...much better.

Before

 

During.

After...happy again.

Her fiber has turned into a really nice latte color, kind of like a weimaraner.
Also, I'm getting in some quality "sitting around" time.  Though my instincts tell me to clean all day, I've been forcing myself to relax and sit outside and watch the world go by.

The garden provides...finally!

All this rain and cool weather has been great for the sugar snap peas at least.  So here we are mid-July...

Sugar snap peas Day 1:  Oh boy!!!

Sugar snap peas Day 10: More!?!  I'm getting a little tired of sugar snap peas.

Lettuce have salad tonight.

Sweet baby carrots.

Alex is still outside picking raspberries--yay!  And I managed to wrestle one strawberry away from the chickens.  I am loving their tiny bantam eggs.  Hello, five egg omelette.

Pepper spotted a little gardener snake in the yard.  For the record, she jumped just as high as I did when she saw it.

Nose to nose.

Falco sparverius

We've been watching closely these past few weeks as a family of American Kestrels has moved into a birdhouse in the front yard.  We hear their calls as they fly through the fields: klee klee klee klee.  The baby birds have been squawking for weeks, so demanding.  My favorite kestrel quality is their ability to hover while they hunt, beating their wings quickly but staying in one place while they scan the fields below...so cool.

Alex took this great shot of a baby kestrel poking its head out.

Tygh Valley getaway

So I thought I'd tempt fate a bit by leaving town two weeks before my due date.  It certainly occurred to me that my water could break in the middle of the night and make for a very stressful trip home, but it didn't.  Instead, we got some sun and a bit of relaxation.  It's always sunny in Tygh Valley and this weekend was no different.  Here we cooled off by the Deschutes River:

Watching the rafters float by and soaking my feet...

Pepper loves the river and having a little freedom in the high desert.  She does a great job of relaxing at the cabin.

 Me, not so much. 

I pressure-washed the cabin while Alex trimmed tree branches, getting the place ready for a much needed paint job. 

Green in central Oregon in July!  It's usually pretty golden and crispy by now--the cool wet spring has delayed the dry out, I think.  So beautiful here.
But it's time to go home and prepare for the excitement to come.  So we packed up the Subaru and hit the road, stopping for a lovely lunch (and an ice cream cone!) in Hood River on the way.

And just like that we're home again walking the familiar fields. 

Not so bad.

 

Lilacs make me happy