We have 2 bichon frise dogs for farm dogs. They are those fluffy, white hypoallergenic, 'grandma' lap dogs. Not suited well to the farm. They bark at butterflies! They are outside in a cage because they aren't smart enough to not run the 600 ft to the road and sit down in it. Great indoor house dogs for cuddling and snuggling, but won't do any good as a farm dog.

So DH got a farm dog!! Introducing our new 6 week old German Shepherd farm dog..

SEQUOIA

I wasn't going to even attempt a garden this year after putting so much labor into last years then becoming so sick with morning sickness... but I had to!

Can't let all that tillable land sit there dormant. I have just planted 5 rows of green beans, some onions, 12 small tomato plants, 2 jalepeno, 2 banana peppers. I also planted a mini herb garden if seeds which may not even take... chives, cilantro, dill, spearmint, oregano.

Hoping to buy a couple plants later this week to get in as well :)

Melanie

Well this time last spring I was pregant with the baby and sick sick sick. So the garden went to seed, and nothing got weeded. I have had to make up for lost time this year. The strawberry patch was growing better grass than the front yard does!! And sometimes those grass clumps are harder to get out than the weeds. I have a great majority of the strawberries now weeded and they are flowering and forming small berries already. Praying for a good harvest. Everyone loves strawberries here.

The raspberries were in the same condition. Tons of grass and weeds around them, suffocating them from sunshine and water. I did some weeding of those yesterday and had hoped to finish today. Will see as it is misting and cloudy outside today. These raspberry plants are so special as they came out of my Mother in Laws garden in Michigan. She has been in heaven for 9 years now so they are really an heirloom to us. So I want to strengthen their survival. No flowers yet on them, so I think we are doing well. There are many small plants growing from the last 2 years so they should do fairly well. They are much bigger and sweeter than my wild raspberries.

The garden has been plowed but not disked yet. DH is working on his sickle mower to cut hay as soon as it is ready. It is a very old mower and has had to have a lot of replacements and tune ups. It was a good deal at auction but is taking a lot of work. Still better than paying someone to harvest the hay for us. With the price of hay being so high right now, it is better to harvest our own and sell any extra we have. Hopefully the garden will be worked up soon. I have 2 tomato plants, 2 jalepeno plants and a sweet banana pepper plant I bought at Walmart to get in the ground. Otherwise I am only planting left over seeds from last year.. corn, and green beans mostly. 

Today is the dentist for me. So I am going to get the house cleaned and then head out.

Have a blessed day

Melanie

I got a great dose of sewing this weekend and completed 25 insect jar blocks. I plan to border it in green and yellow.

Melanie

I am not getting much sewing time but did manage a few jar blocks. I am going to make bug jars next for a quilt for one of the boys:) I have a lot of insect material from swapping with people in my quilting groups. I am hoping to make a food jar quilt too.

My list of sewing projects is growing!! Today is raining so I may get a little bit of time to sew. This weekend we are putting the garden in so that will take the extra time up with weeding, picking, canning to provide an awesome winter harvest :)

We have been busy this spring so far.  Various farm projects have kept us outside quite a lot. Building a new cow fence, various chicken projects, rabbit projects. Weeding the strawberries and starting planning for the rest of the garden.

I have made violet petal jelly, will have to get a picture taken of that. Also made Chevre which is goat milk cheese and Ricotta. 

Trying to finish up school and getting ready for our CAT tests (California Achievement Tests).

The Ducklings have grown up!!

So has the Turkey

Melanie

Whewww.. it has been a busy week or so..

My Grandparents came last Friday (though I thought they were coming on Sat evening!). Grandpa helped DH in the basement alot as he took Mon and Tues off to work on getting some rooms done down there for moving the 4 older boys. They are looking great!!

Grandparents left this morning. The boys are outside enjoying a day of spring break. They worked hard for the last 4 days in the basement, I wanted them to be able to enjoy a spring day. It is gorgeous out. They played in the barn and are now fishing in the pond to catch the big one. I guess they had it hooked.. but it got away (I think I have heard this line before)! Wish I could get out but the baby is very fussy today. Probably just overstimulated from 5 days of visitors, noise, busyness... He wants to be held and is very tired today. He is stuffy too and really hates the wind outside anyhow, but being stuffy I just don't want to torment him more by taking him out. I figure when the older boys come in from playing then it will be my turn to at least walk up to the mail box. What I REALLY need is an all terrain stroller! That would be perfect for rolling along the gravel driveway and the paths on the farm, yet baby would have some protection from the elements.

Hoping to get pictures soon, but DS11 got his 2 rabbits for the 4-H fair. English Spots is the breed. His are lilac. A boy and a girl each about 12 weeks old, not related to each other (which is great for breeding in the fall). He named the boy Derby and the girl Dandy. Very nice rabbits. They are currently in the living room so that they get lots of attention.

New bantam chicks and some easter egger chicks (Arauncana which lay pastel colored eggs), in a tote in the bathroom right now. Too cold outside for them, and they are too small to go into the brooder with the older fancy chicks.. We are doing a bit of rearranging and hoping to get them out before too long. Nothing like hearing chicks everytime you go in the bathroom. And we have to leave the door closed because one of our cats is in the house.. I am such a sucker!!

Sheba was pregnant and DH and the boys were begging to let her in to have her babies so that they would be tame and that they wouldn't freeze. We let her in and she had them 2 days later under the bed. She had 4 little ones. 2 black, one an orange tiger, and one orange and white spots. Very cute!! Born April 2nd. So the chickens would be prime prey for her to catch for her babies!

Rabbits in the living room, chicks in the bathroom, kittens under the bed in the kids room.. Good Grief no wonder I feel like I am living on a farm!!!!!!!

Melanie

Yep, we are all doing well.. just been missing in action from the computer lately.

Spring is finally here, and we have started up with 4-H again. This year we are doing rabbits, chickens, and wethers (neutered male goats). Time to start thinking about getting outside and doing some projects. We are still working school into our days and figureing out when we will do some testing for that.

DH and the boys are making 2 bedrooms in the basement. DH took a couple of days off work, and they are hanging drywall today. The rooms are looking great and will be wonderful for moving the 4 oldest boys downstairs, freeing up a bedroom upstairs to get the other 2 children out of my room. So I am excited about getting some room for my sewing table again. It is hard to get everything out and put it back away when I am working on quilt blocks. I haven't been doing a lot of sewing lately, just haven't had the time.

Well just wanted to let everyone know we are still here, just really busy right now :)

Blessings

Melanie

I have not had time to post on here lately. Just busy with the farm stuff and school. I wanted to share a couple of pics though and hopefully can catch up with happenings soon.

Melanie

Ducklings, we are down to 4 now... but aren't they cute!

Our little sunshine on a cloudy day!! What a cutie he is!

A rare glimpse of me :) My littles wanted a picture with me, so couldn't resist. This is in the morning with all my little guys!! The Mom team we call ourselves!

Have a Blessed First Day of Spring!

In my last post I mentioned my yearling doe Willowbee who was due to kid. We were not there when she had her doeling and we think it froze, so chalk that up as another loss... but

we have new chicks, ducklings, and baby turkey (what is a baby turkey called?) Picked them up at the post office this morning :) Here are a few pics.

Melanie

I know the Lord will, in His time. But for now we are mourning a loss on the farm.

Anhelena had quads in the early morning Saturday, and we believe they were all stillborn. 4 babies is a huge stress on a goat. Unfortunately she had 3 girls and 1 boy (girls of course being the desired sex with dairy goats). She was very weak on Friday and we had the vet come out. Her labor had stalled, and so he gave her some shots to get labor going again. She also wouldn't get up and walk, not being able to bear weight on her back legs. He gave her some calcium and we put electrolyte in her water. I checked on her at 4 am and she had given birth already.

We monitored her on Sat, and she started to perk up some. But didn't get up still. We worked with her, and did the things the vet recommended. By Sunday she still wasn't getting up so we stopped by the vets after church and got another shot and some things to help her stomach and try to give her some energy. DH gave that to her in the afternoon. By dinner time she had passed away.

Not only did we lose the quads but we lost the doe as well. We are sad as she was our buddy, much more than just a dumb ole goat. We will mourn for awhile, and consider what to do as far as buying any doelings or another milker. We still have 2 does, the one had 3 bucklings in the previous post. One is pregnant and is very young, so not sure what will happen with her. Really praying she has a very healthy little doeling and that is all.

The Lord is faithful though and we will get through it. Another one of the loses that you endure on a farm. We have had more loss than gain in our short farming experience and it always makes us wonder if we are doing the right thing....

Melanie

Well it was touch and go with 2 of these little guys last week. They got awfully cold and then wouldn't eat. But God was faithful and now they are a week old and doing great!! Our girl Anhelena is in labor right now and will post on her babies as soon as she has them.

Here are some updated pics of Tippy's boys

This one is Avalanche

Here is little Durango

And Rushmore..

Melanie

Our girl Tippy had 3 little bucklings this morning before chores!  They are adorable!!

More pics later...

Melanie

DS 12 is quite the little photographer these days. I wanted to share just 2 of his pics he took a couple of days ago in the ice storm. We are now covered with snow and ice. Oh and The Grands made it safely to us, and have left this morning on the road to Florida.

Melanie

Sleet and snow coming down outside, a slippery mess. Dh is still at work. My 80 year old grandparents are on the roads from Mich to here. Praying for safe travel.

Hot homemade chicken noodle soup in the crockpot for the travellers as well as the sick littles. Baby boy is congested. Little girl is congested and feverish. We always have sickies in Feb, why is that?

Melanie

Is there anything more precious than first smiles

We are so blessed with our little 2 month old...

The first block shown is called "children's delight" I got it from

http://www.jinnybeyer.com/block-a-week/live/patterns.cfm?blockid=40&CFID=909108&CFTOKEN=107b60b-000b5c3e-7a3a-1f73-b10e-ee9c4500d036

It represents Jesus as The Child

This next block is a simple basket one, though it was quite tough. I got the pattern at

http://www.learnhowtoquilt.com/basketpattern.html

It represents Jesus being The Bread of Life

Time to start thinking about spring, chickens and 4-H. DS 12 and I looked through the Cackle Hatchery book and picked out some birds that would fit into a variety of categories for 4-H. We have some from last year that will bump up in the categories of 1 year and over. If you are interested in buying chicks, Cackle is a great place to get them. www.cacklehatchery.com They have fantastic pictures of the hens, roosters, and chicks of all the breeds there. A great site for information.

We ordered Buff Orpingtons, Bantam Buff Orpingtons, Golden Laced Polish chickens for 4-H

We also ordered 5 pekin duck hens to go with what we believe must be drakes (we have had them over a year and no eggs). Our ducks are actually part of my avatar there, Ping, Pong and Ming. I just LOVE seeing my ducks on the pond!! So the 5 girls to go with the 3 boys that we have. How will we tell them all a part I wonder!! They all look identical so far. Maybe we won't name these ones as we have no way of knowing who is who.. but it would be fun to go along with the same theme... Mong, Ding, Dong..

We also are getting a turkey to try to raise for... yep Thanksgiving. Not sure if it will survive that long but it will be fun to try. I am not a big turkey eater for Thanksgiving. We typically have ham as I don't care for turkey. I thought it would be fun to try our own turkey with the thought that maybe it will taste better!!

I will definately post pics when we get them. I am hoping for the 3rd or 4th week of Feb so that the weather is just a bit warmer. We do have a place for them separate from the other chickens, and we use a heat lamp in there so they should fair pretty well. I just love getting the call from the post office that our chicks are in!!

Blessings

Melanie

We spent all morning cleaning the boys and my room!! We have a small house and things get out of control easily. So instead of a school day, we did a cleaning day so that mom stayed sane!! The kids have church tonight so they will at least get some Bible and Character today. Plus I figure they had to work as a team to get the bedroom done.

We also looked at the website www.fiascofarm.com to see what kinds of signs the goat may give off that she is getting close to kidding. We have our birthing kit out in the goat house ready to go. I figure all that work getting it ready and she will probably have them in the middle of the night without us!

We are taking dinner to a friend tonight who just had a baby. I made tamale pie, and got the recipe from allrecipes.com. It is a nice, easy recipe but tastes so yummy!! I made one for her and for the kids here. DH and I are going out to chinese while the kids are at church. They don't have any adult classes right now so DH and I get an hour to ourselves with baby, a nice chance to catch up with each other.

DS10's male rabbit died. We aren't sure what happened. It has been terribly cold lately and he may have gotten pneumonia or something. We will have to find a boy to 'borrow' soon for our female. DS wanted to use the babies to show at the 4-H fair. Fortunately it only takes 21 days for baby bunnies. The last set that Virginia had though didn't make it, so we want to make sure that we can get it right before the time limit of having them ready for the fair. His rabbit is a Holland Lop. We are thinking of getting a female English spot as well and having her bred so that he has two different breeds.

We need to order DS12's fancy chickens that he wants for fair this year as well. He wants some Buff Orpingtons, and some Bantam Buff Orpingtons. We are also going to get some more Mottled Houdans to try to breed them. No meat birds for us this year. The work it takes to process a chicken is just not worth it. It is A LOT of work for the kids and DH, so we will take a break from it this year and buy "Sad, processed, hormonal' chicken from the grocery   But we will process our cow so that will be happy, pure unadulterated beef!!

Getting goofy, better put some cheese on that tamale pie that is cooking..

Blessings

Melanie