Our not so little Jeremy joined the family on March 19th, making him birthday buddies with my sister :) He was a whopping 9 1/2 lb baby, and has continued to do his best to stay ahead of the rest in his weight gain! And we love it! His cute chubbiness just makes you want to smile, and pinch his cheeks, ok, mostly just pinch his cheeks!
But baby #7 isn't the only thing that has been going on around here. After our first attempt at hatching ducks brought us one little duckling, we started over again, and the second time we ended up with these 5 little cuties. Blue and Black Swedish ducklings. They were sooo darling! We had them about 2 weeks, and then they went to new homes.
Also, we had quite a surprise when our little pet goat had a baby! No we didn't know she was pregnant. You see, the only male goat we had was her brother, and we thought we had sold him off before he was capable of such shenanigans. Apparently NOT! Oh, well. Little Skipper turned out just fine, and the kids ADORE him.
His favorite thing to do, even now that he is bigger, is to jump up on poor miss Penelope's back, and get a ride. I actually don't think she minds too much, they seem to be pretty good buds.
Two of our pigs went to the butchers, and now we have a freezer full of delicious sausage.
We held onto one butcher pig, to be sure he was the right weight, but he too will be going in to be turned into tasty meat.
Our female pigs however are sticking around.
We decided to hang on to all 4 gilts (girls pigs that haven't had babies yet) and to find them a Boar so we could have piglets! Mr. Mac, officially known as McLovin joined in on our farm fun a couple weeks ago. He is SUPER sweet. I know a lot of times boars can be mean, but this guy was hand raised and comes looking for belly rubs and donuts. He fits right in around here.
We moved the pigs around, finally moving them out of my garden area!!!!!!, and put two of the lady pigs in with him. Hopefully soon we will have pregnant mammas :)
Back in March, my dad brought up an old lean to shed that he had for us to use. It had been sitting around, waiting for a facelift. When dad came up after Jeremy was born, he turned it into a nice little coop, big enough i can put my rooster in it, along with a couple of chickens so that i have fertilized eggs to hatch out.
Last week, it got a nice fresh coat of new paint....and so did my children! I had taken Kristi to help me work around the mailbox area, and told the boys they could start painting, and they did. They really did a pretty good job, but several of them came away looking like they had been in a massacre or something. That was almost a week ago, and Michael still has paint in his hair!
Kristi and I did get the mailbox looking better. We installed a bigger box, so that it is easier for our mail lady to leave packages. (seriously. one day she had shoved one in there it was so tight we had to get pliers to get a hold of it and get it pulled back out!) and we dug out all the tall grass and weeds and added in a planter box. We still have to make a trip to town to pick up some flowers to add to the box, but it still looks a hundred percent better then it did.
We also finally hung up the sign I was given for Christmas right after we first moved here. It looks lovely! We are hoping to clear out a nicer area around it as well and add some flowers there, but that will probably have to wait, now that we have a much bigger project to get done.
The lady we got Mr. Mac from messaged me a few days after we had picked him up, to see if I would be interested in "cow sitting" for her for a few weeks in the summer. She is going to be moving and needs someone to MILK HER COW FOR HER!!!! Yes I was yelling that! I am sooo excited over the whole idea! I LOVE fresh milk, and I LOVE milking, and on top of that, in exchange she is going to give us a little Norwegian dairy heifer to have and raise up so I can have my very own milk cow!!!! Meet Buffy!
Can you tell by the !!!!! that I am excited LOL Only problem is, we don't have a shelter for her, or a fence.... DETAILS!
So, this week, we started working on a little 8x12 shed that will serve for her shelter and as a place to milk her. Saturday, we made a trip to pick up all the lumber we needed. Jeff had a LOT of help from these two ;)
My family all came over Sunday afternoon, and we (ok, mostly jeff, my dad, and my brother) put together all the walls and got it framed up.
Hopefully this week we will finish up the roof and get the siding done. Then I think maybe we will have a painting party and "let" others come help me paint it all up nicely. Or maybe I'll just put the kids in charge again, and see what happens LOL.
Next weekend we get the fencing materials, and then we will really be on our way to getting this farm started! Oh, and did I mention we may be getting another few chickens? Only like up to 60?! Well that will just have to wait for another days blogging.
Thanks for checking in,
Blessings from our farm to you
OH, Kristi would be so sad if I didn't let you all know that her cat Had three little Kittens :) More to come on that as well
