You blink...and its April.

 I can blame my busy life as the reason for not posting anything and that would be somewhat  true. But to be totally honest, its been a tough couple of months on the farm. I have been trying to figure out how to tell the story if I decided to.  But then my friend sent me Soul Mamas blog and it made me feel better about the sad events that have happened.  And maybe I'm being to hard on myself.  So here I go.


It started with us rescuing two lambs from a lady who saved them from a slaughter house. Within 8 hours of having them home we knew something was wrong with the little girl.  We called the vet out and for two weeks we tried to save her. We had to give IVs twice a day, in addition to five different medicines.  In the end she died in my husbands arms.  It was shocking and so sad.

This is Lucky, on the ground ,the ram lamb who is doing great and is now outside. And Ziva in our Daughters arms. 

Lucky- Loving the attention and I loved it too.



Soon after we lost Ziva,  one of our Southdown baby doll sheep miscarriage.  Once again we were shocked and very sad. We were able to get the placenta and fetus over to  WSU, over on the other side of the state to have tests done.  All test came back negative and they think the cause was the fact the Sugar is a new mother.  We have waited two years for our two ewes to give birth and my heart just felt heavy after these two loses.

Our sweet, shy Sugar.


 Finally, Some hope and happiness. Licorice, our other ewe gave birth to a ram on March 23rd.

We were so happy to have a healthy baby. We will be selling him when he is old enough. This  little guy brought hope back for me.

How hard its been, we are thankfully for having these experiences, we have learned so much.

A New Year, A New Bathroom

 This is our Master bath after we demo it!  I love Demo! Our shower was awful. The shower doors didn't open. You had to squeeze inside to take shower. The drain cover came off and if you weren't careful you would get your heel stuck in the hole. It was very small.   I want to give a shout out out to Made House Construction. Greg You rock!

                                  We made the shower a foot wider

                    




With the new shower head




We added the river rock to the opposite side. We liked how it turned out!



 The last thing we need is our shower door. Its on order and will be here in two weeks. 

Happy Birthday our Sweet Girl!!!

                     

 Well,  I never ever in my life thought I would say that we own a horse. And I stand here today a proud owner of a ....pony not quite a horse. Sunny the wonder pony..   We surprised our Daughter for the 11th birthday, by giving her Sunny. Our Kind friend Julie, was the owner of Sunny and wanted Anna to have her.   Our sweet girl was very surprised.   

 She couldn't stop smiling.

As I sit here today I just want you to know that we are so proud of you and we are so happy that we can give you this special gift.

We love you so much. 

Julie and Allison: Thank you for taking part in  her surprise. Your such good friends. !

This week on the Farm.

 Heating our home as been an eye opening experience in the pocket book. We decided to install a wood stove.  Which in itself has been another eye opening experience. We have to remove a light, install a ceiling fan,  install a hearth and then get the stove installed.  Here is step one. We had the slate imbedded in the wood floor.  I love it!!!

Laying out the slate



Drawing out the design on the floor



 You have to have 16'' in front the of wood stove for sparkes. That is the longest part of the slate.



 Did I mention that we love it!

                       The other exciting thing that happened this week is we got our meat chickens. 



Mia loves the chickens. She so wants them to jump out so she can heard them. We had to put a grid over the top. She was reaching in and gently pulling them out and letting them go so she could chase them around the house.  Very funny to watch but I hate chicken poop.

 We will be harvesting the turkeys this weekend. These guys are getting to big to walk. Next year we will go with a heritage breed.



There is just something about sheep.

 I have sheep on the brain. We are starting our first breeding season and I'm nervous. I keep checking that I'm doing everything right.  We found that Vader did the deed with Sugar yesterday.  In 17 days I will need to put a new color in the marking harness and see if Vader tries again. If he does then I will need to wait another 17 days and change the color in the marking harness again. If he doesn't try it means that sugar is pregnant and we have 145 days until we have a lamb(s).  The rams can smell if the ewes are pregnant. We are now waiting for The Dude to romance Licorice...........

Picture of the marking harness

Here are some pictures of sheep that I like

   



 This is our Vader



 I love oldl pictures of sheep



Makes me smile!



Then there was 7

    We decided to "process" a turkey this weekend.  Our Tom was getting big and we needed make sure he would fit in the oven.  I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about us taking a life.  I cant speak for my husband but I kept finding other things to do around the farm to prolong the task.  Here is the process.

 We used a propane stove to get the water up to 145 degrees.

We borrowed this pot from our friends,  Anna and Greg.

 You need to have a ice bath ready to cool down the body temperature.

 

This is the tabletop plucker we bought. Its worth its weight in gold!  Worked great!



The rubber fingers rotate around.

After we drained the bird, (We are not showing that on our blog, we know it might be hard for some people to see.) You put the bird in 145 degree water to losen the feathers. We learned you dont want the water any hotter because the plucker could damage the skin.

You put the turkey on top of the plucker and the the feathers just come right off. Its so simple.

Here it is all plucked. Next is cleaning out the inside but we arent going to show that either. But I have to say it was very interesting to see.

 

 All Cleaned and ready for Thanksgiving dinner.   Tom was 26 pounds when we started and after proceeing him he weighs 19lbs.   Thank you Tom for allowing us to feed our family!



Last Day of Summer.

 The last day of Summer. As I walked around our garden I thought to myself that the vegetables were not ready to let the summer go.

I forgot I planted turnips!

I love eggplant.

Acorn squash.

Our tomato plants had so many tomatoes on them. I didn't want to lose them to blight so I took them inside the garage.

Then I picked them and brought them inside the house. Every weekend I pull the ripe ones and can them.

The zucchini got away from me.

One of our bees on my favorite flower.

Its almost time!

                                             Planting fall flowers on the front porch.