Milk Stanchion Complete

Never-ending projects! Our "to do" list is a mile long!

DH and our oldest son started the concrete work in the milk stanchion. We ran out of concrete and had to stop for the night.

In the meantime, I realized I was off on Butterbelle's due date.  I re-calculated and realized she is due anytime between June 6th and `12th.  She looks uncomfortable and spends a good deal of time just laying down.

Her udder is swollen with milk.  We'll eventually have a calf!

Final Summer Squash Harvest?

With the temperatures dropping we headed out to the garden to pick all the ripe tomatoes and summer squash we could find. As you can see, we still had a LOT of squash out there, the yellow crooked neck squashes are really only good for Fall decorations now. The patty pan squashes will be cut in half and baked in the oven, pulp removed and frozen. The zucchini will be turned into various delightful zucchini concoctions :)

And the beans! This is our first decent bean harvest, and we got two baskets full and still a lot of smaller beans out there waiting to grow a wee bit more before we head out to pick them. Today we canned 5 more jars of zucchini relish (the kids love it!) and we canned 8 1/2 quarts of green beans. For this I used the pressure canner for the very first time (yay me!) To say I was nervous would be an understatement! Everything went very well though and the weight jiggled like it should and we had no mishaps. Now I have a bit more confidence and will try out some of those yummy recipes like stew and soups.

As you can see we also got a lot of tomatoes, the children have already finished off a lot of them on sandwiches, but I want to dehydrate some more for "sun dried tomatoes." I need to get a decent food mill so I can more easily make things like pasta sauce and other tomato recipes.

BUTTERBELLE & PIGS

In other news, Butterbelle's next heat cycle has come and gone, and she didn't bellow or run the fence at all, so it looks like we have a pregnant cow! Wooohoooo!!!! :) Her calf will be due towards the end of May.

Also, in mid October we will be going to pay for and collect our Mulefoot boar piglet. The Ossabaw and Mulefoot cross should make a nice meat pig. Our pigs are getting very friendly and enjoy being scratched and patted when we take them their food.

Butterbelle finally AI'd!

Butterbelle came into heat again and our AI guy had the correct semen so she's finally been artificially inseminated! If she took then we can expect a calf at the end of May.

I've been halter training her, which was really helpful. I could hook on her lead rope and lead her to the old wooden fence where the old barn used to stand. Then we tied her to the post and Dan pushed her against the fence while I kept her busy with grain. The process itself went really quickly and she stayed quite calm through it all. Our AI tech said he thinks we got her towards the end of her cycle which is when he prefers to AI.

We thought it was going to be really hard to know when she was in heat since we have no other cows, but it was quite easily to tell because she's generally very quiet. When she's on heat though she bellows all the time and runs along our fenceline calling to our neighbor's cattle. We're glad we could do it that way instead of having her do the round of shots, etc.

She's quite a calm cow, she can be cheeky at times though. She is walking along nicely now with the lead rope, but it does take a bit to get close enough to hook it onto her halter. She loves her grain though, so it doesn't take much to lure her close enough :) Shh, don't tell the other animals, but she's my very favorite of our farm animals ;)

No AI yet

Butterbelle is now on heat and we contacted our AI guy so he could come out. Sadly he didn't get the Jersey bull semen from his supplier yet, so we'll wait until next time. Luckily it's only a three week wait. This probably works out better anyway, it gives us more time to work with Butterbelle and get her more used to being led with the halter/lead rope.

Our beans are up and we had a nice rainstorm so they're nicely watered. The chickens have slowed down a little on their laying, probably due to the intense heat we've had this week. I found this neat little egg basket at a local store, this is what's left of this week's egg haul. We go through a lot of eggs a week!



In other news, our oldest DD has been "adopted" by some of our friends and has an open invitation to go out there and ride one of their horses. She is thinking of entering in the 4H barrel racing this year.



We are also planning on buying some Ossabaw pigs in a few weeks. They are a good size for our smaller acreage. Not sure if we will just raise and then butcher, or try breeding them. We'll see ;).

Animal Update

Our chickens are laying almost up to speed, and we're getting about a dozen eggs a day. Not bad for 14 layers!



We have moved their coop and run into the shade so they can laze about in the shade until 12 pm when we let them out. When we moved it we fixed up the fencing on the bottom so it looks nice instead of ramshackle.



The two roosters are let out earlier so the girls don't have to be constantly pestered by them while they're cooped up. The Buff Orpington rooster will be stew very soon, he is starting to show signs of attacking the humans.. and two roosters is one too many anyway.

Our youngest son had a run-in with a chicken. He stuck his head in the coop while we were putting them up for the night and of course eyes are nice and shiny at night and one of the chickens decided to take a peck. He ended up with a scratched cornea and after a night in the ER and two appointments at the opthalmologist he is right as rain. Thank you Lord that it all ended well, it could have had a much worse outcome. Here is the little guy in his "special sunglasses" he was given to protect his eye from the light while he was healing.



Of course he was back out again the next day with the chickens. He dearly loves them and anything to do with them.

He was not the only one to have eye problems this summer. Butterbelle came down with pink eye and we had to treat it. To do this we had to rope her so we could get her halter on and then squirt LA200 into her eye a few times. We did try to inject her but since we had nothing to keep her still with, that was an impossible task. She is all better now, but a bit wary of us after trying to jab her with a needle, so we need to let her warm back up to us. Poor cow. Dan got the waterer fixed and I can't even begin to tell you how thankful I am that we don't have to lug buckets of water out there everyday anymore. We have found someone to do AI on her, so in about 2 weeks she will be getting AI'd. She is such a beautiful cow and so friendly. I love her. This photo was taken before we got the halter on. We are starting to halter train her. A long and slow process.



Someone blessed us with two female kittens. We woke up one morning and there they were, all hungry and scrawny. We have tried to find homes for them, but no one wants kittens and the animal shelters in our area aren't accepting anymore kittens. Of course the children wanted to keep them.. kittens are so cute! These will be strictly "barn cats" and live outdoors. Right now they're "garage cats" until we get our barn built.



We also have another member of the family: Ribsy. He joined our family as our oldest son's dog, and he's really a neat companion to have around. He's pretty mellow for a puppy and he's taking and learning instructions really well. We've had him three weeks now and he will sit, stay, lie down and listen to "no" when commanded. He hasn't had an accident inside for almost a week now, so we're doing great! He loves to play tug of war and I haven't decided if the kids wear him out, or if he wears the kids out ;) Now if we could just get him to stop chewing things he's not supposed to...

He sure is cute!