The Birds and the Bees and a Whole Lotta Love

June has been a crazy-busy month. A partial list of the things we have been doing the past four weeks include:

 Not one not two, but three amazing weddings! Tori and Izaak...

Amy and Aaron...

 and  Shannon and Christian.

Each wedding had a totally different, delightful character. Shannon and Christian decorated the reception tent elaborately with vintage linens and hung swags of lace from the tent.

Their wedding was especially intense for us because we prepared appetizers,  followed by salads and wood-fired pizzas for the reception.

It is truly an honor to be an integral part of the most meaningful celebration in a couple's life together.  But now, we are looking forward to no weddings for a while, and just focusing on ordinary  farm life,
Such as...

Weeding the garden. Weeds had a heyday while we were focused on weddings.  And appreciating our wonderful  WWOOFers (Kathleen and Ira, both of whom have now moved on to their next adventures, but more will soon arrive) and our aMAEzing summer intern, Mae.

Farmer's Market (which we managed to bake for every week except last Saturday when we  catered  Shannon and Christian's wedding!) Here Kathleen is serving up samples of sourdough at market.

Bees. Our assistant farm manager, Ruth, located another of her hives in our farm apiary.

We  increased our farm's livestock count by about 30,000 head of bees.

But then, one of my hives swarmed, the morning of the wedding, so  we did not have time to try to capture it. Back down about 30,000 head.

Up one canine- our daughter's  sweet dog, Luna, is staying with us while Cadence bikes from Minnesota to the Pacific Ocean.

Also up a bunch of new chickens. A hen surprised us with a new batch of chicks, plus our 16 mail-order chicks, who are starting to get their feathers.

However, we are down a number of older chickens. There was a bit too much roostosterone around here, so we harvested a dozen roosters. And then we lost a few old girls to a nasty bird respiratory infection that must have come in on wild birds.  The cycles of life and death, growth and decay, plant and harvest, love and more love, are unrelenting on a farm!