Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

We cannot believe that just a week ago we were suffering with torrential rain and sodden ground! Today is our sixth day without rain (well we had a few spits last night...) and all week all the animals have been outside, enjoying the sun and grass as well as the increasing daylight hours. Our evening feeding is now six o'clock at the earliest and we don't get the last animals (usually the ducks) shut away for the night until almost nine o'clock!! Wandering around the smallholding is such a joy at the moment.
Mind you, we had a bit of a scare today as Onion, fast asleep in the first photo, ended up on her back and could not get herself back on all four feet again!! Quite how she managed this we do not know but fortunately she was only in that position for a few minutes as we were down on the smallholding at the time. Sheep often end on their backs when they are pregnant but we have never had it happen to one of our pygmy goats before. The problem is that when animals like this are pregnant, their centre of gravity changes and they become 'top-heavy'. This also makes them less well balanced and so if they fall or slip and end up on their backs they are then 'bottom' heavy and with such short legs, turning themselves the right way up can be really difficult. Onion's breathing is not great at the moment either: she had a bad cough two years ago and was left with slight scarring. Now, if her body is under stress (such as when she is pregnant) she can find breathing a little bit harder than normal and so being upside down is not a great position to be in.
She does now seem fine but the sooner she gives birth the better really: last year she gave birth on the evening of day 145 (which means 145 days after being mated with and the earliest one would expect a goat to give birth) which this year would mean Friday night. We have told her any time from now is fine and we are certainly checking her lots!
And so to the polytunnel where the Elephant garlic continues to shoot up. The middle photo was taken nearly two months agao, the second one today. By looking at the label, you can see how much bigger this particular plant is. We hope to be harvesting this garlic in July: goodness knows how big the leaves and bulbs will be by then!!