Monday Morning on the Farm

Butterbelle has to be tied up while we milk or she tries to eat the goat feed!

Piggies enjoying breakfast

Awww.. say hello to the piglets!

So cute and perfect!

After-milking mayhem!  Poppet is balanced atop the milk stand!

Pretty flowers :)  My clematis that was supposed to grow on that support died :(

Bounce sharing his basket with a kitten

Of ducks and poop...

On Good Friday morning we decided to do a major cleaning of the mudroom.  With the ducks and kittens living in there it was getting a little hectic.  When everything was all nice and clean smelling and neatly re-packed I decided I didn't want the ducks back in there.  They are getting so big and they are MESSY and STINKY, even though they spend the majority of the day outdoors.

So when DH got home from work we went to work on building a temporary duck house in the dog run attached to the chicken coop.  We used hay bales, a section of a cattle panel for the roof support and a tarp.  It actually makes a pretty nice little shelter!

Ducks in the run

Duck shelter

Time for bed!

Nice and cozy :)

It's actually surprising warm in there.  Nice and protected and as long as we keep their water OUT of their shelter area it should stay relatively dry.

Once we have our big chicken coop built, the current chicken coop will become the duck house.  That's not too far off now, so this will do nicely until then.

Oh.. and the ducks are starting to QUACK!  Love it!

Terrific Tuesday

Photos around the farm taken by my DD16 :)

Fuzzballs

On March 16th one of our dumped kitties gave birth to six little fuzzballs. School was pretty much canceled for the day as the birthing commenced and 5 excited children carefully observed and commented on each kitten's birth.

Now they're eleven days old, have opened their eyes and they're just as cute as can be. Not a day goes by without someone asking "Can we keep one?" and the answers is always... "Nope." LOL.

Farm Life

I love how everybody helps out around our little farm. The children love driving the tractor and riding in the cart. This was the day we were digging out Pokeweed. Nasty, stinky weed.

Poor Dan had all the hard work to do since they had to be dug out roots and all. There are many things I can do... swinging a pick axe is not one of them. The root systems on Pokeweed are HUGE. I know some people eat the tender leaves, but with all the boiling you have to do it just doesn't seem worth it to me.



The rest of us were responsible for picking up the weeds and carting them away to the burn pile.



Speaking of burn piles, we had our first fire the other day. We had hotdogs roasted over the fire and s'mores when the fire was done.. along with swimming inbetween. It was such a fun day.



The previous day we'd had rain and this beautiful double rainbow appeared. God is awesome.



Beautiful rainbow, followed by a beautiful sunset.


I love living in Missouri.

Last weekend we cleaned up along the side of the house getting rid of all the old brush/dead pine tree branches.


We carted it up and hauled it to our burn area which is where the old barn used to stand. Someday we hope to build a barn here again and we hope to be able to use at least part of the old foundations.





I would love to know what the barn looked like before it fell/was burned down. We will be building a smaller milking shed that Butterbelle will also be able to use to get out of the elements. It will be temporary cow quarters, and will then probably be turned into a goat/other animal shed at a later date. So many plans!

We also have a few restoration plans in the works. Our basement had some furniture, including a really old over 100 year old cabinet. It's too big to get out of the basement in one piece though. The previous owners must have had it put in there while the house was still being built. Since the cabinet is older than the house I'm guessing it was passed down to our previous owners. It is beautiful with 1 1/2 inch shelves, square nails and dovetail joints on the back paneling. I'm guessing it was used to store canned food. Sadly it has been slowly rotting because of the damp down there. We may cut off the bottom section which is just one big open shelf and save the cabinet itself. No pictures yet, sorry.

In the meantime I also brought this little table upstairs and I'm slowly removing the old paint and cleaning it up. There are also some square nails in this piece, as well as a lot of more modern screws. It should be a nice little piece once it's cleaned up, I don't know what I'll do with it yet.. the kids all keep asking what my plans are for it.. I think they all secretly would like to have it in their bedrooms.



It has been HOT, HOT, HOT here. Everybody seems to love this big waterer we keep filled with cool water. The hens all gather round it and have a drink and a chat and the dog "swims" in it. The kittens and other little feathered friends also use it.

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!