LightHouseAcres

What happened in the past 3 months!

04:11, 6.5.2006 .. 1 comments .. Link

It's amazing to see how fast time is flying. Since March I've hardly seen the internet. If I get on to see the weather and local news I'm doing good.

Our homestead is taking on new projects and new directions. The Lord is just amazing. We have sold off our team of draft horses. We also have sold our 2 calves. We now have boar and nubian cross goats.
We've also attended 2 auctions. From the auctions we have purchased enough windows to redo our farm house and purchased a cake decorator at an amazing price.
Also in the past couple of months we've had the blessing of taking care of a baby boy. We haven't had a baby in the house in 3+yrs now. It's amazing how time consuming a baby can be! But we are loving it as it is a short season for us.
We are now haying our hay field. Our first batch of hay was about 200+? bales. We are hoping to get another 2-3 more cuttings this year. The hay is what feeds our animals through the winter. Our goal is not to purchase any hay. Either this year or next year will be the last year for the alfalfa and we will have to replant it. We will go without alfalfa for 1 year so we are trying to save up enough bales of hay to cover that year also.
My oldest daughter and I are making cakes. It's been years since I've made this many cakes in a short time span. We've made 2 grad cakes, 1 birthday, and 1 baby shower cake recently. I put the pictures in our photo album. I will keep updating as we make them. We have no cakes on the agenda until later this month. We will be making a cake for Father's day. Then we will have 2 cakes to make for birthdays here in our family. Not sure what we will do for either one yet.

I hope I get another chance soon to update this blog.

Blessings on your day!
Michele

Hayrack Runaway Rodeo Grand Champ

01:57, 3.7.2006 .. 1 comments .. Link

Our youngest son has earned the 2006 The Hayrack Runaway Rodeo Grand Champ. While we were at a friends learning about goats our youngest son had a wonderful ride on a hayrack. Our team, the one we are selling, got spooked by something and took off. My 2nd oldest son was driving and unable to hold on/stay on the hayrack. My husband and 3rd oldest son got bounced off. During this runaway hayrack ride our youngest son was able to stay on the longest but did end up falling off. This was the first time our family has ever experienced what it is like to have a team run off with you. Our son, the driver, said he won't drive for awhile. Gotta teach him if you fall off a horse you need to get back up on him :) The gentlemen that is considering purchasing our horses had just left. He missed the big event. He will be letting us know soon if he wants them.

Last week my only living Aunt on my mom's side went to be with the Lord. Her wake and funeral happened to be a weekend we had 3 extra children. It turned out not so bad. I wasn't sure how the children would react. Some of the little children went up, knelt and prayed by my Aunt. This sent one lady into tears. She couldn't believe little children would do that.

Last Monday my dh called a local butcher to see when we could get our beef cow in. He said they were booked until December!! He asked if we wanted to be put on a waiting list. My hubby said sure. I figured it would be middle of summer before she would go. On Friday they called to say they had a cancellation for Mon the 6th of March!! We said we would take it. Hubby was supposed to go into work that day. He was able to get someone to cover until he could show up. Last time we took at cow in it was only my 2nd oldest son and I. She got loose by the butcher shop. We were blessed she didn't get far and we were able to get her into the shop. Dh leaves at 6am to go get a trailer from a friend so we can take her in. Gets back here only to get stuck in our driveway. The day before we got about 3" of wet heavy snow. All he kept doing was slidding in our driveway. I just got done milking and came out to see some snow and mud mixture under his tires. We got a tow rope at this point. We hooked up the tow rope to the trailer. When hubby when put the van in reverse we pulled the trailer so he was able to move backwards. Next came the time of trying to get a 1,500 lb cow into a trailer who didn't want to leave. It took 4 of us to push/pull her into the trailer and not let her escape. Once we got her loaded she left for the butcher. Wouldn't you know it, she didn't have a problem going into the chute into the butcher's shop!! Hubby and boys got back in time for hubby to grab a quick bite to eat. He left and I took our oldest son to work.

I can't wait for our beef. She has been on our farm since Aug 2003. She gave birth to a calf in January. During her time on our farm she didn't have any shots or antibiotics. She was fed very little grain. We were very blessed to have a healthy cow :) I will miss her opening the barn doors and escaping on us many many times. I'm guessing that is why I lost about 10lbs in the first year we were here. Only one time did they get off of our property and were down the road. A neighbor called us at 6:10am to let us know someone spotted 2 cows and she was wondering if they were ours. Sure enough, they were.

Have a blessed day!

Downsizing and God's blessings

10:07, 2.24.2006 .. 0 comments .. Link

Our downsizing might be in action as I type this. Our horses are at a friends farm today for some filing of their hooves. After that we have a gentleman coming out to look at them and drive them. He will make a decision if he wants to get them. He has grown up around horses all his life and I would feel very comfortable leaving them in his care. After that the men of our family will be doing some logging with the horses. There will be 2 teams of horses to help bring back the logs as they get them. Once the logs are back they will cut them up for firewood. I expect my men will be pretty tired by tonight :)
While the men are out playing today, the girls and I are going to a friends house to gleen information. Our daughters will talk/play together while we talk. She has goats and is into organics. She is a walking book of knowledge. I pray our short visit will be fun and informative. What a blessing :)

I was concerned that if we sold our team of horses that the boys horse would be lonely. This was a concern I expressed to my oldest son. I told him they would have to look into getting another horse but of smaller quality. More or less something that eats less hay than our team. Well God did answer that prayer and sent us a baby belgian horse today. Her name is Annie. I think she is only 8months old?? A friend had a horse that wasn't growing fast enough for him so he gave the boys this horse :) He shows horses and the new thing with belgian's is sleek, skinny and extremely tall. To me they are tall enough to begin with but it's amazing to see how tall these show horses are.

We got the results from our milk cow's blood test. It came back negative for Johne's disease. That was a huge relief. She isn't even showing signs of it anymore, another blessing. We have been getting close to 4 gals of milk a day. My fridge is bursting at the seams with milk. We have been giving a gal of milk a day to our piggies. They really enjoy it. We can feed the calves the cows milk. The calves are getting big. They both will have horns. We are thinking of dehorning them. If we decide to keep them I would prefer them without horns. They are much easier to handle without horns. You can at least be butted by them and not worry about a horn sticking ya.

God is providing us with blessings this week it seems. First was the baby belgian and yesterday we were given a mini van. This mini van will help with our gas situation. My dh has been driving a suburban to and from work since last year. Work is about 70 miles one direction. Gas expense has been adding up quickly They are talking about gas being $3 a gallon this summer. I doubt we will be traveling too much if this happens.

Some prayer requests....
my Aunt is in the hospital and given only 2 weeks to live. her liver is failing her. she is my mom's only sister living. plus my mom's brother isn't doing well either. he is on oxygen 24hrs now. please pray for my mom and her family.
clear direction on our farm. which animals needs to go and the animals we get are in good condition.
we can sell everything we have up for sale

Blessings to you this day!

Trying to downsize

06:36, 2.21.2006 .. 0 comments .. Link

We have made the hard decision to let go of our big animals and bring in small animals. Our big animals include 2 belgian mares (who are up for sale), 1 beef cow (who is going to our freezer-yummmm) and probably our milk cow. As soon as we get the testing back from her she will be going up for sale. Right now her production is 32lbs of milk a day (about 3+gals). She is a good cow but we really need to downsize. Once these animals are not here we will only have the boys belgian mare, well we thought. We were offered a baby belgian. She is about 6 months old. She isn't growing fast enough so her ownered offered to give us her for free. We will be getting her this Friday. At least for now she isn't eating much :)

We are now looking into Boer goats. We have found a buck for our girls. We just need to find our girls :) We have been doing some surfing on the net and have found a couple places close that have some for sale. We will get these goats as soon as our horses and cows are gone.

I'm starting to plan out our garden. Not sure if I will be using both gardens this year or not. I think I will be as we want to grow as much as we can. Our goal is to be able to can and have enough to sell. Last year we had a problem with some bugs. This year we are hoping to combat that with DE. I've heard good things about DE and praying it will work. I have tried starting plants inside for the past 2 years with no success. I get them about 3-4 inches high and then they die. I'm hoping to work on my green thumb this year. My dh is also in the planning stages of building a green house on the south side of our barn. All we will need to buy is some wood. We will have some windows to put in our green house. They were left here from the previous owner.

Our calves are getting big so fast! We have weaned them both from their momma's. One calf is drinking from the bottle the other one is drinking from the bucket. We are not sure if we will be keeping them or not. The pure jersey calf will be sold to a friend that has expressed interest. The angus/jersey calf we are not sure what we will do with her. It would be interesting to see how she turns out as a momma. Wondering if she will have a big udder like a jersey? She has the bone structure of a angus but the coloring of a jersey.

Blessings to you!
Michele

What a week :)

01:21, 2.15.2006 .. 0 comments .. Link

So much is going on this week and many decisions are being made.

We have decided to downsize our animals. We currently feed our bigger animals hay from our alfalfa field. Either next year or the year after we will have to plow the whole field and put down another crop to restore the nutrients. Then we will have to plant alfalfa again. This field has helped so much with the cost of feeding.

With that in mind we need to decide what needs to go and what can stay. What can we live off of and what can we sell to help the farm to break even. Currently we have 3 belgian mares, 2 cows (one milking and grass fed beef), 2 polypay sheep, 3 pygmy bucks, 1 cross goat, many chickens, about 15 ducks, 2 calfs, a few rolling pigeons, 2 dogs and couple turkeys. We are currently selling our team of belgians and our boys will keep theirs. Also we have our pygmy bucks up for sale. We will probably send our beef cow to our freezer. We will also put up for sale our milk cow. Most of the chickens will go into the freezer and we will be ordering a new batch. That will leave us with the sheep, 1 goats, ducks, pigeons, calves and dogs.

What will probably come onto the farm next will be a couple more sheep. My oldest dd and I are going to learn how to spin wool. We are thinking of adding meat goats. There seems to be a market for goat meat. Plus we will be adding some broilers to put in our freezer and maybe sell some.

Our milk cow has decided to produce again. She is giving us 30lbs of milk. We had the vet out today to test for Johne's disease. At this point it doesn't look like she has that. Vet said it could of been just a virus that she was fighting which caused her to produce less milk for the past 2 weeks. We will be relieved once the test comes back negative.

Starting tonight and into tomorrow night we are supposed to be getting some rain/frozen stuff/snow mixture. Then the north winds will kick in and make it downright cold

I'm not looking forward to that! After it being 57Â° yesterday to today being 37Â° and then Fri. night/Sat. morning going to be -1Â° I'm ready for spring :) Anyone else??

Have a blessed week!

Always learning

07:43, 2.11.2006 .. 0 comments .. Link

That is one thing about living on a homestead, you learn something new. You make difficult decisions.

Right now we are trying to figure out what is wrong with our milk cow. Her production has dropped in half. Her stool seems to be more loose than normal. She is still eating and drinking from what we can tell. I looked up, on the net yesterday, diarreha for a cow. Everything I found was not helpful or hopeful for that matter. We seperated her from her calf to see if she was holding up milk. Hoping that was the problem. We got only 10lbs (about 1 gal) last night and this morning only 6lbs (not even a half a gallon). The calf is nursing off of our other cow for now. We will probably switch to bottle feeding her calf until we can figure out what exactly the problem is. My worst fears are Johne's Disease pronounced Yo-knee's. If so we would have to cull both mama's and babies. Plus we wouldn't be able to put another ruminant animal in that section of our property for a long time. Our friends had this happen to them last year. They lost 3 preg cows to this disease.

My back is getting better but not fast enough for me :) My hubby has been doing the milking for me. The other chores are being done by my oldest dd. We are going with a friend today to look at some Berkshire pigs. This friend is thinking of raising them. I guess they are supposed to be one of the better porks to raise. The pork meat is supposed to be marbled like a cows?? Something I need to research on. My hubby and I said we would never have pigs........and we have pigs. I said we would never have a horse.......we have had 3 horses now. Never say you won't get something as it will probably happen.

Have a great Saturday!

Down Time

08:45, 2.9.2006 .. 0 comments .. Link

Today I'm couch sitting again. :) Yesterday I had the wonderful idea I would turn over my mattress and boxspring. Something I have done in awhile. I was smart enough to ask for my 3 oldest boys help. My oldest son and I picked up the mattress while the other 2 boys turned around my boxspring. They were having trouble as our room isn't really huge so I lifted up the mattress a little farther and at the same time push it to the right. Next thing I know I felt huge burning sensation in my back and had a hard time breathing. So I'm couch sitting for a few days while it heals. I was hoping by this morning most of the pain would be gone but not so.

What kind of things can you do for your homestead while being down on the couch? Not much. If I had a spinning wheel I probably could do up some fleece. There's just not much to do from this point. Today dh asked if I would create a website for our farm so I will try that today.

Our cows and calfs are doing well but we seemed to have run into a slight problem. Our milk cow was giving 2+gals most days. Just in the past week she has dropped down to maybe 1 gallon a day. We let the calf on her the rest of the day. If you have any suggestions please leave them. While I was milking yesterday morning my boys witnessed this cow's calf nursing off of our other cow. That would be a huge blessing if the other cow will let her nurse then we can milk twice a day.

Our piggies are not as small as I thought they would be. What an adventure we had getting them home. I wasn't expecting them to stink like pigs. We have a 15 pass van and we took out the first row seat so we can transport them there in a dog cage. Oh boy what a smelly ride home. That 30 min ride I thought would never end :| They didn't do much for the first few days. Now they are getting up and moving around. They have also figured out how to get out of their area by the gate. The gate is supposed to be tied closed. If not tied close at the bottom they know how to push it open and run loose. When we moved to the farm I actually lost 10lbs in the first year. Reason? Our cows were able to figure out how to open barn doors. We were chasing cows at least once a week! They have only pushed threw the fencing a few times. Some day I'll have to share our missing cows morning.

We are hoping to purchase new layers next week. Our first batch of layers are now eating their eggs so we are not getting much. Our next batch was mixed with our first batch and they eat their eggs also. We are going to butcher them soon. They are older birds. We are not sure how they will cook up.

Have a good day!

It's been a week!

12:19, 1.26.2006 .. 4 comments .. Link

I can't believe it's been almost a week since I posted last. Time sure flies lately.

This blog started out as a place for our oldest 2 boys to view the calf they missed. The calf was born the morning they left for N.O., LA. Our boys went down with a group from our church to help gut out houses. They were able to gut 2 houses in a weeks time. Our 2nd oldest went down to Covington, LA back in October. That time he cut down trees. They are looking forward to going back down to help out again.

In the morning a local radio station gives out a brain buster question. Our children enjoy putting on their thinking caps and seeing if they can guess the answer. We use encyclopedias, books, computers and internet to find the answers. The questions range from easy to hard. On Friday's they do a bible brain question. Here is this mornings question.......

Which president was an only child?

I'll give the answer later :)

Not much new has happened here on the farm this past week. That will change tomorrow. We are getting "pork chop" and "bacon". They are piglets. We are hoping to butcher them in about 6 months time. This will be our first experience with pigs. I've already warned the children to not get attachted as they are going to the butcher. Since we have been on our farm we have had butchered 2 cows and a lamb. We have been enjoying the beef cow very much. The other cow we had bloated and we were able to get her to the butcher for processing. The lamb wasn't for us. We have learned how to butcher our own chickens. My husband is hoping to be able to open up a business doing that. There is a HUGE need for butchering here. We've been approached by a few people that would like us to do this for them. We are praying on this.

I'm starting to think about our garden this year. We have 2 plots. The people before us had 2 gardens. The first year we did about 1 full garden between the 2. Last year we had success again. I don't have a green thumb at all! This has been a challenge for me. Plus I've never canned until 3yrs ago! Last year we planted tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, corn, watermelon, cantalope, cucumbers, pumpkins, and some more but can't remember. They only success we had was tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and a few potatoes. We had hardly any rain last year and it showed in our garden. Plus we had some major bug problems. Our watermelon, cantalope, cucumbers and pumpkins were overtaken by some type of bug. Just when the fruit started to produce this bug appeared and killed/ate the plant & fruit. I'm hoping this year to nip it in the bud with some DE. We will probably plant the same things this year and some other stuff. We do have an apple orchard that hasn't produced much since we have gotten here. Our peach trees did great until this last year. We had a late frost. I'm hoping they will produce a lot this year.

Enjoy your day! It's going by fast already :)

Michele

It's finally snowing!

04:19, 1.20.2006 .. 4 comments .. Link

Our weather is finally acting like January weather. Yesterday was a balmy 55Â° and today we made it to 34Â°. It's now after 4pm with a temperature of 30Â° and snow! Yes that wonderful white stuff :) Prior to this picture we had no snow on the ground. It's been snowing since 1:30pm and it looks like this now.........

They are predicting us to get 3-5". We shall see. They always seem to overpredict.
The picture of the sidewalk in the lower half of picture was shoveled less than 20 mins ago. It's coming down at a good rate.
The only animals out enjoying this weather is our horses. The rest are in the appropriate places. Our dog keeps coming out and barking due to the snow plows going by.

Sickness this week, warm weather and hand milking

06:17, 1.19.2006 .. 0 comments .. Link

I think this is the first time this winter we have had illness run through. I think it's viral flu. Not fun. It all started Sunday at church. So far out of 10 children only 4 have gotten it. I'm waiting for the rest to get it. Our oldest 2 children will miss out on it, as of right now. They are down in New Orleans, LA helping a group from our church. Their job this week is to tear out walls and such from inside houses. We finally heard from them last night. They were going out for cajun food. Something my boys haven't tried yet. We are curious to see if they like it or not.

Today's weather is not the norm for this time of year. Our children were out playing without jackets!! We are in NW Illinois. Today's high ended up being a balmy 55Â°. That will all end tomorrow. We are supposed to be getting some snow. That is January weather!!

We opened up our dairy barn to let the warm air in. I'm hoping that will help keep the barn warm for the next few mornings. It's not fun milking a cow with frozen hands. Yes we handmilk our cow. She is a good family cow. She came from a dairy farm and we were the first to milk her by hand. She was used to being milked by machine. The first milking took us almost 2 hours and only produced Â½ gal of milk. The next morning we milked her again and she gave us almost 2 gallons and it only took 1hour 45 mins!! I think we are down to 20-25 mins for milking her now. The cow and us have both learned about hand milking

Our New Calf

07:20, 1.18.2006 .. 4 comments .. Link

Here is CJ born Monday January 16th prior to 7am. She weighed in at 70lbs.
She looks just like Clara. Her bone structure is angus but her coloring is jersey. She is as tall as Clara is right now. We found her at 7am when D went out to milk. D thought that Clara was in Elsie's pen. She was pretty much clean and 1/2 way dried off by this time. This picture was taken about 7:15am.

Here is a picture of Clara who was born January 7th at 5:30pm. In this picture below Clara is about 1hr old. Clara weighed in at 46lbs.

Life on the farm

05:04, 1.18.2006 .. 0 comments .. Link

January has proven to be a blessing for us. Just this month we had 2 calves born. One calf was born January 7th from a 3yr old cow and the other calf was born January 16th from a 2Â½ yr old heifer.

We are hoping for our farm to be more self sufficent as time goes on. We have a hay field which feeds our 3 Belgian horses, 2 cows, 2 sheep and 4 goats. We will be adding some pigs at the end of the month. Also on our farm we have many laying hens, roller pigeons and 2 dogs. Last year we were able to sell eggs. We had a garden that was huge. We are hoping to add a farm stand with fresh vegetables and fruit as they produce.

Our family consists of 10 children plus my husband and I. Each older child has a chore with a different animal. It has been a great learning lesson for them to be responsible for an animal. They've learned a lot about animals since moving here 2Â½ yrs ago. We are city folk retransplanted out to the country. We are loving it. It's so peaceful. Just tonight we were able to see the sunset looking thru the fields. What a glorious picture. How beautiful God created the sunsets.

Blessings upon your day,

Michele, Dave and Crew

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