Sunday, September 25, 2011

New Dexter Calf!

What a wonderful surprise! We came home from Church today to find her! We had gone out this morning to check on Sugar-only to have her lick Jeff's hand and arm to pieces-then she has the calf while we're at Church. Anyway-Oreo is a little heifer and oh so cute! She is half Dexter and half Hereford. This is Fozzie's first calf and Glory is due around Thanksgiving.
We did get a little rain the first of this past week-but just about all the results of it are gone. It was really cool yesterday morning-but was 22 degrees warmer this morning. It's gonna be warm the rest of this week and another cool front is due in by the end of the week-hopefully with a little rain.
We brought the 2 sheets of glass home yesterday for the greenhouse. Jeff started working on it again on Friday and got the old sliding glass door from the house put up for 1 side. We've been working on getting the garden cleaned up so we can plant some stuff-we just seem to keep running out of time. We've bought tomatoes-broccoli (2x's)-brussel sprouts and cabbage plants and still have loads of seeds left over from the spring we want to get planted.
We have all but decided on getting a milk cow. The price of milk is outrageous-but the cows aren't cheap, either! Since we do live on quite a tight budget-we've got to find something very inexpensive. Any excess milk can be fed to the pigs and we might have found someone who will allow us to bred them with. Also have another lead on just buying a young boar-but will have to do some more checking on that! A friend was going to try to pick us up some new Araucauna hens at the Bird Show in Conroe today-but she called and said she didn't see any really nice ones to get -so we'll keep looking! I really miss having a few green eggs!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Good Stuff-Cool Stuff-Sad Stuff

Here's some of the good stuff-the new pigs! They are settlin' in very well-they still don't like creep pellets-they much rather prefer slop-go figure!

And 6 more pints of picante sauce!-This batch came out a little on the warm side-but yummy! I also put up 1 more pint of jalapeno peppers-they don't last long around here!



Ok-now for the cool stuff! My hubby is SO talented! See that small space between the trees-that's one of the laying hens in the far background-that's where the small gate that leads into the little pasture at the front of our property is. We had a very large-very dead black gum tree that's been standing in that area forever. It died about 2 years ago and we kept talking about cutting it down before it fell on top of Jeff's shop. It was hollow-had very few limbs left-and was beginning to crack in several places. We knew it had to be cut before it fell on its' own and caused some major damage.





Well-it's down now! And boy-it really was hollow!







And did I mention how cool my hubby is? He threw that big tree right where he wanted it to fall-right between the gate posts!! One is slightly leaning-but will just have to be reset a little! Boy am I impressed!


We celebrated our 32nd anniversary last week-yeah!! We ran into Galveston Friday afternoon and stayed the night-just kinda hung out and took it easy-we really enjoyed each others company with no interuptions! And as usual-I had the camera-and never took the first picture!


Now the sad news. Dogs killed both of our sheep sometime late Thursday night/early Friday morning. The kids have been missing Pretzel quite a bit-she was just like a big puppy that followed them everywhere in the pasture and demanded attention at the gate anytime anyone was in the back yard. No animal deserves that and she'll be sorely missed.

We also have a pair of turkeys now as well -they are about 17 weeks old. The tom is starting to try gobblin'-quite a funny sound!

Youth group is going well-we have an outting planned in a few weeks-they want to have a paintball war-we'll see-but we want to let them get their bearings in the woods at the river so they don't get lost!! No really-we want to let them just get better aquaintted with us and learn that as Christians-they can have lots of fun in good, wholesome ways!









Tuesday, September 6, 2011

RAIN-OK-2/10ths!

We did manage to get a little-but a good drenching rain would be great! It has just been SO hot and dry this year. But we got our first cool front yesterday-it is WONDERFUL!!!
Well-we did our first football game in I don't even know how long. Last Friday night was Jr. High night at the High School game and was Hailey's very first drill team performance. She did great and even won Belle of the week. We were SO proud! And the Trojans beat the Mustangs!!
Only 2 of the turkeys hatched and lots of guinnes. Only one of the turkeys made it though. We bought 2 pigs yesterday-one that is 175 lbs and a small weaned one-both gilts. We'll watch the oldest to see if she comes in heat-she was in a pen with a young boar-and then decide who will go into the freezer-her or Lucy. We really need to find someone with a boar that we can hire to bred one or both-they are becoming WAY too hard to find and expensive as well! I'll get some pics of them when I can remember to take my camera out to the pens.
We start teaching a youth class at church tomorrow night-keep us and the kids in your prayers. We feel very honored to be asked to lead these young minds toward a closer relationship with Christ.
Mom is back in the hospital again-she was holding lots of fluid-Long story as usual-but she's having a bad go with gout now-she's been there for over a week-hopefully she'll come home soon. We didn't go camping for the long weekend, either. Just decided it wasn't worth it with the high gas prices and all. Our anniversary is next week and may go then or might just book a hotel room in Galveston-we haven't really decided-it's hard to make plans when you don't know what's gonna happen with Mom.
We've been having a ball watching the hummingbirds on the back porch-I go out there when I get in from work and watch them fight over the feeders. Jeff counted 8 one day last week-why they can't share is just beyond me-they fuss and screech at each other and it seems like no one gets anything to eat!!