Edit: Sadly, Artemis’ cancer returned and was not operable.
Rest in Peace, my girl. June 5, 2015 – December 22, 2023
All of the productivity of a summer can seem to disappear in the blink of an eye. And we did have a mostly busy and productive summer, almost right up to the end (I think most of us consider summer over when school starts, even if it’ll be warm for a while yet).
Our Rottweiler, Artemis, had to have emergency surgery on August 18 to remove her spleen, ruptured splenic tumors, and a whole lot of leaked blood into her abdomen. The tumors were sent to the lab and unfortunately they came back malignant, hemangiosarcoma. Because of the nature of this cancer, it will spread, quickly, and is incurable. We have a short window of time to consider options and will do whatever we can to keep her feeling good as long as possible.
Currently, she is thankfully recovering from surgery very well, and feeling good. We had started her losing weight this summer (less food, more exercise) and she’s just so healthy and happy looking. Except when we have to put the cone on. Have you ever heard a Rottweiler grumble – not growl as a threat, but grumble as a complaint? To the untrained ear, it sounds like she’s threatening to tear your head off, but she’s just voicing her displeasure at the stupid thing!
For the rest of the farm and life, we got a few things planted and producing in the greenhouse – not much, just some cucumbers (enough for about a gallon of refrigerator pickles) and tomatoes (enough to snack on). None of the herbs or lettuce got passed seedling (too hot by the time I got them planted) and the peppers absolutely refused to grow more than about 6″ tall with lots of healthy leaves. Possibly too cold at night? “Shrugs* There’s always next year.
The husband has been working on building a road back to our back field – the original owners of the entire section (of which we bought 1/4 section, or 160 acres) had access to that field from one of the other quarters, and while the neighbors are nice enough to let us access it through their property, it’s inconvenient for both parties. Thankfully he’s a heavy equipment operator and another neighbor loaned the equipment so he’s been working on it around work and everything else.
Goats? Still got ’em! There will come a point where I’m ready to dive back into breeding them (financially) but the cost of failure was very painful and I want more of a cushion to take the sting out of it, if things go badly again. For now, they’re all looking ridiculously healthy and spoiled rotten.
I have some soap just made (Enchanted Woods, Oatmeal, Milk & Honey, and Autumn Harvest) that will be ready the end of September. I’m hoping to do a few more batches and really stock up soon.
I’ve also got a Pineapple Upside-Down Cake recipe that I hope to share with you in September. It is probably my new most favourite dessert in existence and I actually feel a little guilty for not putting it out there for the world to share sooner.
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