Finally, A Little Rain!

It won't be a "drought buster" as the term is becoming popular with meteorologists in our area this year, but finally a little rain yesterday for our area - an INCH to be exact!  With that came a little wind as the cold front moved through.  I was out early this morning, standing back up some sweet corn and pepper plants that had laid over during the storm.  We'll take it though.  I'm hoping this helps the pastures to hold on a bit longer, and yeah!!!! no watering this morning for the first time in a long time, mother nature took care of it for me.  You could almost see that things had grown overnight.  Our garden is doing well (thanks to a lot of help from sprinklers) and the zucchini are growing like crazy, in fact a few are getting picked this am, and run through the food processor and into the freezer for soups, or zucchini patties this winter.  The squash are doing good as well, although I'm not quite sure what I will do with the one that is growing through the fence, 1/2 on each side, guessing I will have to break it in half to harvest and cook it for myself.  (I'll try and get a picture of it posted).  A cooler morning for us, the dogs are excited this morning even to be outside for a couple of hours (it got down to 62 overnight), the chickens were all scurrying around trying to get any worms left over from the rain.  We will be cooking our first round of brat's this weekend with our own sweet peppers to saute and put on them, last year we couldn't get sweet peppers to grow/pollinate, but this year looks to be different, the plants are loaded, greens & purples are doing well.  I picked our first green beans the other day, but gave them all to family off the first round.  I will be picking some more tomorrow to cook up for ourselves.  We love the pot of green bean, potatoes, onion & summer sausage to make a meal off of.  A large bowl of slaw was made yesterday - thanks mom for the Cuisinart food processor a few years back, it sure gets a work out this time of year. 
I found some raw alpaca fleece this week.  I had ordered some hand carders and have been watching numerous videos on washing, processing and spinning fleece.  I started by purchasing the spinning wheel a couple years ago and am kind of working backwards now.  The fleece I found was in beautiful grey tones, I'm anxious to start processing some of it and see what I get.  The main project may have to wait until fall, but I look forward to it.
Two more batches of soap were made this week.  A Eucalyptus Mint and an Oatmeal batch.  The Eucalyptus batch made the whole upstairs smell.  It smells good, just hoping it tones down a bit while curing.  Those will be ready to add to the Farmers Market in a couple weeks.  It seems like endless craft projects around the house these days, but what fun!  I may not get to it until fall, but hope to try my hand at an Etsy Sellers site.  I've signed up for it, but haven't had the chance to take photos and get items listed yet. I'll keep you posted when I get to that point. 
I best get headed back outside and finish up a few chores - the Vet is due to come through this morning for dog/horse vaccinations. 
Hope everyone's gardens are growing well, and that you are getting a chance to enjoy some of the wonderful fruits of your labor in the form of some good healthy meals.