April 28, 2009 by Debbie.

My Faithful friend, Gina, sent me an email with the subject line Happy Tuesday. My first response was it’s ONLY Tuesday??? After not sleeping well last night I got up at 4:00 (after laying awake since 3:00 am) to a homesteader’s dream - milking 3 goats. I am loving milking again, even if it means getting up so early to be ready to leave for sub-teaching by 7:10. These 3 does are first fresheners (first time to kid/birth) but they are doing so well on the milking stand that I had enough milk on Saturday morning to make mozzarella and ricotta cheese. Last night I used both in lasagna, stirring the homegrown eggs in the ricotta I regretted being lazy and not steaming our Swiss chard to use instead of the can spinach.

I was scheduled for first grade today. The teacher is fantastic and gives me leeway so I took in the Kids’ Quilt I made and a stack of books I’d picked up at the library yesterday. I cheated on this quilt and had it machine quilted - the first one I haven’t hand quilted but I needed it quickly. We had such a good time reading “Down the Road” and “Kiss the Cow” while the kids sat on the quilt. I love watching the kids’ faces as I animate the story as I read it. It was such a disappointment when the teacher came back after lunch and I ‘got’ to leave. The kids all came up to hug me good-bye and tell me thanks for bringing in the quilt. Tomorrow is kindergarten and we’ll repeat the quilt story time, just with younger books.

Despite being tired when I came home I had too much work to rest long. John had just told me he was down to his last two t-shirts ….. timing is every thing when it comes to hanging clothes outside. The weatherman said rain much of this week but it had paused for this afternoon as I hurriedly hung out three large loads. Right now the sun is playing hide and seek in the heavy gray sky. Since I’m scheduled for tomorrow already I figured I go ahead and bake the ham and make homemade scalloped potatoes tonight - leftovers are wonderful. I hadn’t made scalloped potatoes in years cause I like them too much …. food discipline isn’t my strong point. There was an hour difference in putting the ham and potatoes in the oven so I used that hour to make more cheeses

So much needs done in the garden - wild sunflowers have sprouted all over it. It looks like a sea of green instead of orderly green rows. The English peas are forming and small little pea pods are so sweet I don’t resist grazing on some. Thankfully, the rain yesterday postpones weeding today!!

Barb posted to her blog (Just Between Us on my blogroll) about her fil, Don, dying. As much as I thoroughly enjoy living here and as much as I love John and being with him, I couldn’t help but feel jealous of Don going Home. I’m so glad for him - if we can’t have him here I want him Home in Heaven, visiting with Jesus and all others who went ahead of him.

I am sorry Don didn’t get to meet the two baby goats named after him. Last fall, we had told Don about the goats named after Barb, Leland (his son) and their two children. He was so tickled we told him we’d name a buckling after him. Unfortunately, Don S and Homer (Don’s middle name) were born after Don went into the hospital. Somehow when I look into Don S’, the goat,  face I see Don smiling - I know he’s leaning over the balcony rail in Heaven trying to pet ‘his’ baby goat.

In honor of Don I’d like to share St. Francis’ of Assisi prayer - Don was this prayer in action -

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

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April 21, 2009 by Debbie.

This has been a busy 2 weeks. Mercy kidded a week ago today while I was subbing - two beautiful bucklings, Don S. and Dan.  The brown circles on their heads are from today’s disbudding experience.

Dan on top of the carrier the bucklings sleep in at night.

Then Suga Baby finally kidded last night - two more bucklings. We’re not sure what thier names are. They haven’t told us yet. This is the first kidding we were able to watch out of the 3 kiddings. It was so neat - perfect presentation: nose and front feet first, just the way God intended. (Note added later -the white bucklings name is Homer and the buckskin is Hank)

Here’s one cute little doeling…. or darling! Avery at Easter - grandbaby #8.

And to the finish line…………………………… yeah, John!!! I gave up waiting on him posting his pictures on his own blog so here’s the grand finish. I was so proud of him. It was SOOO cold that day, the wind was fierce and a few snow flakes fell.

Life is good and God is great. That says it all. I’m too tired to write any more today. After all if a picture is worth a thousand words I’ve already said more than enough.

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April 9, 2009 by Debbie.

After a DAY for both of us - I had Kindergarten class and John had fit a friend’s funeral in around his normal work day.  Should have known we weren’t going to make it to bed early or even on time last night. And it had been a late night the night before. John had been fighting with our master bath plumbing, trying to unclog the pipes, working late with no success. Last night he brought home a borrowed electric arguer, which WORKED! Yeah. No more midnight treks down the hall way to the guest bath, walking into the closed hall door in the dark.

After cleaning up the arguer mess and extra tools and cleaningourselves up, we had just laid down in bed when I turned on the baby monitor. What a wonderous sound came through - a tiny little baby goat meowing for it’s momma and the momma (Betsy) doing her baby talk back. Adrenaline kicked us out of bed and running to the barn we found a baby doeling crying in the feed alley, separated from her momma by the stall fence. She was so tiny she fit through the 4 inch squares in the wire fence. Betsy must have laid up against the fence and birthed her right out into the feed alleyway and she lay in the puddle of birthwater, shivering wet with cold and wanting her momma NOW! Momma Betsy was busy cleaning up a much bigger buckling but she kept looking back across the fence to ‘maaa’ gently at her lost baby.

In the stall, the other two pregnant does were watching in wide eyed wonder. All of these were first fresheners so this is all new and exciting and scarey for them. Especially scarey was the way Betsy, their life long friend and cousin, all of a sudden turned into an overly protective momma and about butted them to kingdom come when they came near enough to see and smell those nosiy little babies.  Needing to separate the small herd, we put the two preggos into the feed alleyway while we tried to get the wet doeling to nurse. She was weak from being separated immediately at birth and not having nature’s cleaning from her momma that stimulates the sucking reflect.

The birthing hormones were running high in the barn and caused Sunshine (in the other stall) to start butting heads through the fence with the two preggos. She butted at them so hard she knocked the welding off the bottom of the gate.  All of the noise and confusion brought the chickens in the coop made from the middle stall of the barn to wild life. Rudy-Tudy-Two thought someone was attaching his hens so he went balistic - he’s a very possessive, protective rooster. Add to the ruckus Betsy trying to butt away the two cats who came in to see who was meowing, hunting some baby kittens.

Fifteen ‘fires’ to put out at the same time! John took care of Sunshine, putting her out in another safe area where she couldn’t even see the two preggo does. Those does took over her stall and out of the feed alleyway. Turning out most of the lights helped calm the chickens down and finally the cats got bored with all the fruitless (to them) activity. Afterall, to a cat, it’s all about them or it’s nothing.

The baby buckling was up and nursing just fine but still the baby doeling couldn’t seem to get the hang of it so I held the buckling while John encouraged Betsy to bond with the doeling, licking it into life. Bonding was achieved but still no sucking.  I milked a little colostrum in a syringe and then dribbled it into the doeling’s mouth - yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! finally success.

We were then able to put the baby down and she turned to her momma and nursed on her own. All the nursing finished up the birthing process, stimulating contractions that expelled the afterbirth.  I had checked Betsy at 7:00 and thought she might go the next day but she produced two sweet little babies all on her own in less than 3 hours. This is how kidding should be - no human interference needed. The only help Betsy needed was due to a fence humans had put in. This whole night would preach very well.

Oh, the blessed relief of crawling into our own bed after a successful night!

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April 6, 2009 by Debbie.

Saturday - April 4 - What a feast we had tonight - a meal fixed completely with chicken and veggies we raised ourselves. Sauteed kale, cabbage, garlic, green onions and mushrooms topped off with home canned, home grown chicken. Dessert wasn’t completely home grown. If we’d had our own goats milk I would have used that for the coconut cream pie but it did have our own egg yolks Still it was very satisfying to know we raised most of what we ate today as lunch was left over beef (home canned at least) stir fry with our own veggies. Bud ate the left over omelet from our eggs, mushrooms and herbs. No homemade cheese or butter til the goats start producing again … soon, but not soon enough for me. I can’t wait to milk again. Here’s some pictures of today I thought you’d like to see. We worked (WORKED is more like it) hard in the garden and yard for 5 hours this morning and still didn’t get everything done we wanted to but we decided we earned the privilege of crawling under the electric blanket to ease our sore muscles before we started up again this afternoon.  John made time to work in his workshop, making the two youngest grandsons’ birthday presents - treasure boxes. Full day is an understatement.

Here’s the start of homesteading meal - mix of lettuces/greens in the salad spinner, Pac Choi on the left of sink with green onions (on plate), kale soaking in sink, cabbage and broc in calendar, asparagus on towel at bottom right. Mushrooms were already picked, washed and in the fridge.

Doesn’t look like much work was done - but it took some major weeding to get the onion sets and potatoe rows cleaned up! (only partial rows shown)

Here’s our fancy landscaping …. resin pups (Labs, of  course), a recycled bowling ball on top of a broken chicken feeder, held in place with a broken brooder lamp shade. But they look good by the curry - which smells like hickory nuts to me. I bought it only for the smell. This bed has huge rosemary bushes as well and spearmint, garlic, iris, several ornamental bushes (prior owner’s beautiful plantings) and a 7 Sister’s Rose I’ve been trying to exterminate for years - it has the sharpest thorns. Don’t know why I planted it by the pool slide….

The perinial stock is blooming bright purple but a finger print on the camera lense makes it look dull.  Wonder if we’ve got a fingerprint on the lense we look at life through  and that makes it look dull when it’s really very bright… so enjoy the laughing pigs’ view of life. There’s one laying on his back, belly laughing straight up in the air, but he’s hiding in the thyme.

Almost lost this sage a year ago, a leak in the soaker hose had repeated drowned it, but it’s come back stronger than ever. It will bloom purpe also in a week or so. Spring is purple in the herb gardens - the rosemary has purple-blue blooms, the lilac was in full bloom two weeks ago.  The lamb’s ear (top right) will bloom purple spikes soon as will the hyssop.

I tried to get the butterfly in the picture but it’s so little it’s hard to see. It’s right above the smudge in the middle. The lilac is almost done blooming but the smell is still strong when you’re down wind from it.

We didn’t get the 20+ tomato plants in but I’m glad as tonight’s temp is suppose to be 25. Ugh. Enjoy your day and may life bloom Royal purple for you!

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