I'm Still Here!

Alright, so I haven't been writing on here.  If you have a small farm of your own, you know what a busy time of year it is!  I will be posting again in the next 2 days... ASAP anyways...

Until then, hope your Clothesline Challenge is going well!  I think mine seems to be alright, except there has been a lot of rain, and I think tonight I HAVE to use the drier... boo...

Talk to you SOON!

PS-  also, still trying to get pics onto my computer...  Since I have to replace all of that and I have NO time, it's been a job!  :)

Happy Mother's Day!!!

I hope all mother's out there have a BEAUTIFUL Mother's Day....

You have earned a day named just for you!  Thank you for raising your children the best way you know how, and for trying to be the best mother you can be...

Happy Mother's Day!!!!

Clothesline Challenge

I'm kind of freaking right now because my pictures didn't exactly get saved when we did the computer cleaning.... I mean we THOUGHT we saved them and it DID save SOME....  So I am using some images from Microsoft!  Thank you for saving me Microsoft Images! 



Anyways, the last several months I have been FLIPPING OUT at the increasing amount of electric in our household!  We just can't afford to spend anymore on electricity!  One thing that has made a NOTICEABLE difference in the past, has been when I use my CLOTHESLINE!  My husband actually figured out that 2 years ago, we saved over $100 that summer (about 4 months)... 

So, in wanting to save EVEN MORE, I am going to challenge MYSELF, as well as YOU!  I want to see how much we can truly save each month on our electric bills!  Of course there are other little shifts in electric, but I want to see if you can notice ANY differences at all!

If you don't have a "proper" clothesline, it doesn't matter.  Use some clothesline in between a few trees, whatever you can do to get those WONDERFUL smelling clothes and save some $$$.

You up for it?  Check out your latest electric (or gas) bill (whatever kind of dryer you have).  Look at the total, and let's see what kind of difference we can see! 

So join me!  Let's DO this!  :)

Computer Fixed!

I JUST got my computer back last night!  And it seems as though it is all fixed!  When I type, the letters come up right away (as opposed to several MINUTES later!).  And the pages come up faster, even bringing on pictures is faster!.  So it shouldn't be such a chunk out of my day to do a post any more!  :)  YAY!

I have a few things coming up that hopefully will work out.  I am hoping to post soon about my "Clothesline Challenge".  And I am hoping to do a "30 Days on Muddy Boots Farm", which you can follow me each day in what I do on our farm, and more importantly, see what the animals are doing and how my garden is growing!  :)

I hope I haven't lost all of you...  Now I am so excited to type on my computer!  :D

I will post again VERY soon!  See you then!

Chickens, Bees, Gardens and Spring

Deklyn and his baby girl Leia

 
Oh!  I can't even believe it has been almost 2 weeks since I posted last....  I usually enjoy more time in front of the computer (down time!).  But my computer needs worked on in a BAD way.... it needs a total cleaning.  Like everything needs to be wiped off of the hard drive then things need to be reinstalled....  When I type, it's extremely difficult because it won't move for several seconds and then everything you typed will just appear on the screen....  So there are so many mistakes and to go back and correct them takes forever too...  But enough of my crazy computer, just a note though....  I will HOPEFULLY have a friend work on that his week...  But that means I will be without a computer for a day or two...

We got rid of a few chickens last week.  I put an ad on Craig's List and we sold some of our Rhode Island Reds and some of the Golden Comets that we bought last year.  We kept about 10 RIR and got rid of all of our Golden Comets.  We also have some of our 2-3 year old Buff's and Americaunas.  We also have a few mutt chickens that we hatched last year, plus our banty chickens.  So, we are down to about 30 or less chickens.  Corn prices have just been getting so high, we can't do as many chickens!  We were getting about 20 eggs a day with the 80+ chickens, and now we got rid of all of the chickens BUT our NEW layers started laying this week too and we are still getting about the same amount with 30!  Good news!  :)

We also got our new bees yesterday!  Last years bees, we had got 2 hives.  One hive swarmed (up and left us!) and the other seemed a little weak.  So we left them with all of their honey.  And we didn't expect them to make it through the winter.  But to our surprise, we found them alive and thriving a few weeks ago!  We had already ordered 2 new batches of bees, so we actually had to buy a new set of brooders and other things.  But hopefully, we will have the one hive making honey like crazy since they are seasoned veterans and then we will have another 2 hives with a little less...  I am hoping to have some honey this year then!  Maybe enough to last me all year long.  I would probably use about 8+ gallons of honey a year, maybe more if I had it around instead of sugar!  I am excited to have those going.

It has literally been raining like CRAZY here.  Our pond is flooded and everything is SO muddy.  We finally have our tiller up and running, and it is SO wet, that hubby couldn't even get the garden all tilled.  So for me to plant anything is not possible!  I have seed potatoes (red and Kennebec) ready to go into the ground any day.  I also have all of the cold weather things to go into the ground yet too...  I HAVE to get this stuff in the ground soon, grocery prices are already going NUTS and I have to be able to feed 4 boys with crazy appetites! 

All of the other animals are doing good.  Baby goats and sheep are getting bigger and enjoying being outside.  I love watching them frolic and play in the pasture.  It's so funny!  :)  But we are finally done with baby season.  Our last Jacob sheep had a baby last week and we weren't around all day... It ended up dying.  He was just so big, my hubby thinks she probably had some difficulty...  I gues life on the farm brings those sad things sometimes though. 

So much going on right now!  How about you?  I need to get around and visit some of your blogs also!  I miss spending my down time on the computer and getting some reading in! 

Population Explosion

 We have had SO many things happening the last few days, it's been hard to keep up!  We have went from 5 goats to 11 goats, and from 3 female sheep, to 6 female sheep!

First, on Friday night we had a new baby goat!  Padme, my son's goat, is the mother.  We weren't even sure she was really pregnant.  But she surprised us all when we saw some little hooves sticking out her back side!  She had a little trouble, but when I helped pull as she was pushing, her new little addition came out and was fine!  She had a little girl!  YAY! 

Here she is.  My son named her Leia.  If you are a Star Wars fan, you will understand...

Padme is a very attentive mother, however she has YET to produce any milk....  Have been trying to figure out what to do, but don't know anything yet.... So she is another bottle fed baby!

 Then on Monday night, we were surprised to find Myst, our Jacob, had a baby also!  She was out in the pasture and my hubby came home from Boyscouts and found Myst and baby running around in the pasture! 

She ALSO had a girl!  And she is a tiny little thing!  SO cute!  She doesn't have a name yet....  I haven't had time to THINK about it yet!  Plus, with all of the babies, I might be out of names!!  Ha!

Here is one of our other babies, Daisy (Iris's baby).  The babies are now 5 weeks old! 

 For the last week or more, Lindsay has been trying to get out of her pen in the barn to get out and be in the pasture again.  Well, today I finally let her.  She ran into the pasture and was very protective for her little ones against all of the other animals.  Including her baby from last year, Charlotte.  Charlotte came up to her mother all happy to see her, but Lindsay pushed her away thinking she was going to hurt the babies.  So right now Charlotte is a little sad at this situation.  BUT, hopefully Charlotte will be our last momma on the farm to have some babies.  And I think she has only a few weeks left!  So hopefully she will soon have a family of her own. 

Charlotte top left, Lindsay and babies

On Saturday, we FINALLY got the horns burnt (disbudded) on our goats.  They might have scurs, but hopefully it's not too bad.  We waited too long... The boys (the only 2 boys we have so far out of all of the babies!) were also banded.  Because they will be taken to 4H.  Along with some shots!

I also started Padme on some shots to hopefully get milk going for her, so we can at least MILK her and bottle feed her baby...  We will see!

I hope this gives you SOME ideas of what has been happening around here!  Hope you are having some fun with all of your new babies also!  :)

**Sorry if these photos aren't the best, they were all taken with my cell phone...

Pictures From Our Goat Pens

 So we've been having a good time with all of our goat babies...  As you remember Sophie had 4 and Iris had 1.  And the babies are now 3 weeks old!  They are getting so big!

So I thought I would share some pics from these precious little guys (and girls!).

Koen and I are getting ready to go down and feed Charlie.  You might remember Charlie was the little fella that we had in our house because he couldn't walk for almost a week after he was born. 

 Little Charlie LOVES his bottle!  Here Koen and I are feeding him...  He's even got milk all over his face! 

Iris's little girl is getting big, and she's super sweet...  Her name is Daisy.  She loves to lay her head up against you when you scratch that special spot under her jaw... 

Here are all of Sophie's babies!  She hasn't bonded with poor Charlie, but we keep him in the pen so he can learn things from the other goats.  Top right side is baby number one, you remember him with the heart???  His name is Buddy.   The little brown and white is Grace, she is a cutie.  Then the black and white is Sunny.  She is calm and loving, probably the most loving of all of this "batch".  Then the one to the left (brown) is Charlie...

 

This is little Grace.  She is sweet and active.  She loves attention....  Just look at that little face!

Our 2 little males will be 4H goats.  Our little females will be for milking.  Their mother's were already good milkers and their fathers are from "Star Milker" lines....  I'm still new to MILKING goats so I know Star Milker is a good thing, but that's it. 

We probably wont keep all of the females, but maybe sell them as milkers this Fall or maybe next year. 

Coming soon, we will be putting the babies out to pasture for the first time!  I always love this time....  The babies are a little timid, BUT LOVE it after they spend a few minutes out. 

Have a beautiful day!!!

Some Motivation for You to Grow Your Own Food

This is the time of year when many of us are thinking about or (for those warmer climates!) actively working on our gardens.

I personally also love being able to raise our own eggs and meat.  I want to know how my animals (meat) are being treated.  I want to know what is going into my food.  And more.  Especially when it comes to feeding my boys. 

I found this article via Dr. Mercola. You MAY want to click on it, and maybe even do a bit of research on your own... 

The article is 16 Foods with Scary Surprises.  It gives 16 foods that we commonly buy from major companies, and the FDA requirements as far as ACCEPTABLE levels of rodent hairs, mammal excrement, larvae, fly eggs and more....  Yes, you heard it right, there are ACCEPTABLE levels....

I don't know about you, but this article motivates me even more to grow/ raise my own food!  What about you?  Check out the article, then come back and let me know what you think!

This Year's FIRST Jacob Babies!

It finally happened!  We have our first Jacob babies of 2011!  Lindsay gave birth to 2 baby girls yesterday afternoon, and we discovered them about 20-30 minutes later! 

This was pretty exciting because this is the first time we actually PAIRED the male, Puck, and Lindsay together last Fall.  This is the first time we have ever been involved in the whole process.

We were "rewarded" with 2 precious little baby girls!  YAY!

Check out some of the photos of our sweet little girls!!!

They are SUPER cute and are already running.  Lindsay is being a good mother as usual, being very attentive to them.  What do you think about the names Faith and Hope?   Now, how to tell them apart.... hmmm...

I also have some pictures of our little goats who are now 3 weeks old!  They will be coming soon!

Have a beautiful day!

MO Milk!

Well, it's milk time again!  We have been collecting milk for our little guy, Charlie, that we had in the house.  But a little over a week after they were born, we had more milk than Charlie needed to drink.  So now we have milk for US!   

There hasn't been a LOT of milk, but it is starting to increase now.  I think it is because right now we are just milking Iris (black) and her little baby is eating more hay and grain.  OR it could be the herbs that I am giving her that I got from Molly's Herbals, one for general health and one to help produce more milk!

We will soon be separating the babies out at night and milking BOTH females in the morning, then rejoining their babies with them during the day.  Hopefully at that point, we will be getting even MORE milk!

Soon (I hope) we will get to the point of NOT having to buy milk from the store.  We currently spend about $24 in milk a week!  And that is with buying Almond Milk (for us lactose intolerant people!) and also regular milk.  When we have lots of goat milk, we will no longer need to spend that on  milk!  :)  I look forward to that! 

Goat's milk is illegal to sell it here in Indiana, BUT we DO drink our own...  We trust our own cleanliness and procedures!  So we drink it raw, only filtering it first. 

Do any of YOU drink goat's milk?  Do you produce your own milk on your farm? 

Making Vanilla!

 Alright, when I saw the my sister-in-law was making her own vanilla with a bottle of Vodka, I thought she was a little nutty.

Then, I went to the cupboard and looked at my imitation vanilla in the cupboard.  Ingredient list was Water, alcohol, vanilla bean extractives, and sugar.  Interesting! 

So, I went a did some looking at how to make a more PURE vanilla.  I checked out my sister-in-law's info and HER sister-in-laws info.  From there, I ordered my vanilla beans from Olive Nation.  I paid $13.46 total for 16 beans.  (Free Shipping!)

When I received the beans, it took me several days to get up the strength to go to the store and buy vodka!  When I did, I felt I needed to explain why I was buying it!  The cashier said, "Honey, I don't judge!".  But, I'm a God-fearin' woman, who doesn't drink this stuff!  I promise!!!  I'm sure after doing this a few times, I won't feel the need to explain, but this day I did...

I got home and put my stuff together!  I cut the beans long ways with my kitchen scissors.  And stuck all 16 in the vanilla.  I think I saw where you put 10 or 12 in but I got 16 so I thought I might as well use them all and maybe it will last longer!  You can continue to reuse your beans for several more batches of vanilla! 

After only a day and a half, this is what the beans looked like!

You should let the beans sit, for 4-6 weeks.  It has been ONE week for me so far, and it has darkened dramatically AND already smells heavenly!  I can hardly wait!

When are YOU gonna make yourself some???  :)

More BABIES! Turkeys!

Well, this week wasn't the BEST week to get turkeys, but that is when they came in for 4H, so we will take them!  Like so many of the baby poultry we get here on our farm, we start them in our basement.  Reason is that this IS Indiana, and the temps get really low and CAN get a little warmer...  But they fluctuate so much, that if we want to limit the loss of lives, we will keep them where there are no drafts and constant heat = basement!

Like I said we got these little turkeys for 4H.  And we got 6 of them.  I would LOVE to raise turkeys, we actually eat a LOT of turkey burger.  So in our quest to be able to eat healthier and be able to eat what we have raised, I would LOVE to raise them on a regular basis...

These little guys are 5 days old today, and super friendly.  I love turkeys! 

Do YOU have any turkeys???

So Much Happening at Once!!!

I can't believe it's been almost a week since I posted last, I WILL become better! 

So much has been happening since then!  Last Friday we added another baby goat  to our family!  Iris, our black Nubian, had her baby!  She only had one, which surprised me, because in the past she has had triplets.  But we were good with it because we just had the 4 from Sophie!  Iris had a little girl!  I named her Daisy.  She's a sweetheart...

Proud Mom, Black Iris and baby Daisy, 2 days old

 Because Daisy was a single baby, I wanted to try to make sure she stayed warm.  So I tool one of my hubby's old socks that was developing a hole in it and I made her a little sweater!  I cut it in the house, so when I got it on her, I realized it SHOULD have been bigger but, it kept her warmer...  But when I put that thing on her, she acted like she could hardly walk.  She kept falling over and eventually hung her head so low, as though she were thoroughly ashamed. 

Daisy does NOT like her Sock Sweater!

 BUT, after a while, she got used to it and wandered around again with the big goats...

Isn't she cute?

Close-up of baby Daisy, 2 days old

 Sophie's babies have been doing really well.  Up until yesterday, we still had the one little guy in our home.  But I was afraid he wouldn't get to learn much of what he needed to from other goats.  I mean, he pretty much thought he was one of the HUMAN family!  Plus his little legs FINALLY healed up and were doing what they were supposed to!

We re-joined him with his mother and siblings, and SO far everything is going well... He has now learned to play fight bumping heads....  Big fun!

Here are some pics from a few days ago of some of Sophie's 3 that weren't in the house...

Sophie's babies- Grace (left) and Buddy

Sophie's babies all tuckered out from playing!

The little black and white female on the bottom of the last pic is Sunny. 

They are all doing so great and I have been loving the experience of having babies on the farm again!!!  I have been milking a little bit on Iris, because she doesn't have enough babies to relieve the milk supply.  On the weekend, we will probably be separating the babies from the mom's and bottle feeding all of them...  It took me an hour to do chores this morning, only having to bottle feed ONE.  It may be taking a bit more time in the future!!! 

Padme, our other little female that is possibly bred, looks as though she COULD have a baby or so, but we will have to see.  She could have a baby any day, but it may also be another few weeks.  We don't have the exact date from the lady where we had them bred.  So we will just have to keep and eye out!

I will be bringing you MORE pics really soon!

We Have the Season's FIRST Babies!

Babies asleep

Last night, I had prepared dinner and was getting ready to go to an important leadership meeting for our church's Women's Ministry, which I was running.  My husband comes in from the barn, and he tells us that we were probably going to have babies tonight.  He said Sophie had some wet stuff on her bottom (one of the things I told him to watch for).  So I scarfed my dinner and went down to the barn, within probably 5 minutes.  When I got down there, she had two "bubbles" from the sac coming out already!

I RAN up to the house, because the boys REALLY wanted to see the babies being born.  I ran in and told them the babies were coming NOW!  And I ran back down (and you KNOW this was important, cuz I DON'T RUN...), and found she was pushing.  The boys got down there in time.

They were in time to see the little front hooves of that fist little baby sticking out.  I was there ready to remove the sack off the babies faces.  The boys were excited but slightly scared for the situation, so I was able to explain about what was happening, and what would happen next.

We ended up on the THIRD baby, yes third, having a little scare.  His head came through and she kept pushing, but just couldn't get him out.  She stopped him while his head was out but his body was still in.  I got worried pretty quickly that this might cause some damage.  So I grabbed him and gently started to pull when she contracted.  The big boy slowly started to come out so I stopped pulling.  He stopped at his back legs.  And she wasn't pushing anymore, so I pulled him the rest of the way out.  He ended up being big!

As I was taking care if THAT big guy, she was cleaning him up, and I saw what I believed to be the placenta coming out.  I didn't pay much attention to it, because I was focused on her NOT stepping on her babies.  Then my son said, "MOM!  It's another baby!"  In shock, I looked back and sure enough there layed baby number 4!!!

As soon as I gave some instruction to my husband who wasn't prepared for all of this, I ran to the house and changed my clothes.  Then left for my meeting, smelling like a goat.  And still in shock that our Sophie had 4 babies!

Charlie and Koen

Right now, all of the babies are doing well.  The one little "big" guy that had gotten stuck, he doesn't have his land legs yet.  I think it is from being stuck for a little while.  So we brought him in the house, and are bottle feeding him his mommy's milk.  He is a little sweetheart.  Boys have already named him Charlie.

We ended up having 2 boys and 2 girls.  The first boy paved the way for the rest of them.  Check out his markings:

Sophie decided to have her babies on the coldest, windiest night of the week.  So we woke several times in the night, and hubby even mad them a little "nest" so they could stay warmer.  That was about 3:30 in the morning. 

This morning the babies in the barn, all seem to be happy. I got in the pen and pet them, and they didn't get all upset like they wanted to eat or anything.  Little Charlie that is in the house was starving at 6:30 am when my boys started waking up.  So I went down and collected some milk from mommy, and brought it up, giving it all to that hungry little fella.

It's going to be a busy couple of weeks bottle feeding all of these babies, but it makes you smile to see those little tails flicking back and forth when they are happy...

Seed Winners! (Finally!)

Sorry about the delay in the drawing.... As usual, life just gets busy!  And STILL no babies!  Though she is having a tougher and tougher time getting to her feet everytime I go to the barn to check on them....

Anywho!  I went to Random.org and drew some numbers!

Here are my winners!

Here are your random numbers:

4
7

Timestamp: 2011-03-07 14:21:04 UTC

That  is Dodi and Curbstone Farmstead!

Congratulations!  You SHOULD be receiving an e-mail from me soon!

Thanks to everyone who entered! 

No Babies Yet...

I didn't realize I had been gone so long!  More days than I would like!  I have been busy planning new things with our Women's Ministry at our church and a few days helping out at our church, so I guess I lost track of days!  I will get the names for our seed drawing up soon. 

But, in all my busyness, I guess it's good we haven't had any babies yet!  Though, the one mommy (Sophie) is looking pretty ready, she was acting pretty strange when I went down this morning also.  So we will see if we have babies soon or not!  She is quite a bit bigger than the other female who is due in another week...

Our sheep are needing some attention before they have their babies at the end of the month too...  I need to shave around their bottoms and their utter. It makes it a lot easier for birthing and for babies then to find mommy's milk! 

 So much to do, but looking forward to those babies!!!  Do you have any babies yet???