Well, where to start.

All is well. Febe kidded last Thursday. She gave birth to identical twin boys! Not so happy. But the Lord gives us what the Lord gives us. We’ve decided that we are going to keep one and breed it to Cindi Lou Who and Esme. Maybe even Whisper.

We had the problem of trying to name the bucklings. Dave wanted to name them “This One” and “That One.” I found it cute but I really didn’t want to name them that. At work we have two older guys working with us. They are always pulling pranks and acting foolish. Sooooooo ... I want you to meet ... “This one Arthur” and “That one Mike.” Their official names will have Spring Peeper in front of their names.

I’m kinda worried for them. I don’t find that they are eating much. But they are looking healthy. They are getting bigger and playing and frolicking. It’s just that Febe’s udder is humunga bunga! I had to milk her yesterday, and I milked over 2 litres! And I wasn’t even done. But they must be finding milk somewhere.

I got home from an party a few hours ago and I noticed that the neighbour had a chimney fire going. The fire dept is still there. The strange thing was that she had no fire in the furnace. She just had the oil furnace going. Not good. I’ll have to ask Dave what went on. He’s in the fire dept.

April 14

Well I had to milk Febe again tonight. They are favouring one side. I got 2 litres on just one side. The poor girl was in misery. I called my goat lady and she said that I should milk her morning and night to keep her even and they’ll have enough throughout the day and night.

Cindi Lou went to school Monday. She did well and the kids loved her. They even got to feed her. She was so tired when I left that she fell asleep in my arms on the way to the car. But she’s becoming a little minx. She’s jumping on the milking stand now, while we aren’t there, then grabbing things off the upper shelves. She is growing like a weed. She’s eating some grain now, but she won’t drink out of the bucket so she’s still on the bottle. I had to put a bale of hay on the milking stand to stop her from jumping up.

Tonight (April 15) I milked Febe, and she hardly had any on both sides, so they must be keeping her even. That’s good. But she’s got a sore on her head. I think she goes under the feeder to clean up after them and she rubs her head. I hope that’s all it is. I’m telling ya, these goats are going to drive me to drink. And I don’t drink! This morning I had so much on my mind, I got to work and I thought, “Oh Crud!! I left Febe on the milking stand!” So I call our neighbour in a panic and he went to check. No, I hadn’t left her on the stand. I need to get back in the groove of things. Is there ever a groove?

Monday we treated ourselves to lobster. It was good! We had enough for 2 meals. At $4.75 a pound, that’s pretty good. It was actually cheaper than eating in a restaurant.

The chicks have been moved to a larger place. I think they doubled in size overnight. Otis the calf is doing well. His fur stopped coming out. He’s off the bottle (that sounds strange) and drinking water. Soon he’ll be going to the big pasture up the road.

This coming Saturday is pig day! Everyone is coming to get their piggies. That’ll be nice. We are keeping 2 for ourselves for meat this fall.

Ok, that’s enough. I have to publish this post. It’s been sitting around long enough.

Have a blessed day!

Busy, busy, busy! It never stops. I sometimes just want to sleep and not wake up for a few weeks. That, I think would be bliss. But life goes on and the world is not going to stop to let me off anytime soon.

Well first things first. Happy Easter and our baby is now 9 years old. It seems like just yesterday that he was born. Boy I miss when he was a baby. He’s growing up too fast. Soon he’s going to graduate from high school! Oh well ... such is life.

Most of the farm animals are doing well. Except for our calf, Otis. Otis seems to be losing his fur at an alarming rate. Between his back legs he’s completely bald. It’s coming out in clumps. I’ve never seen such a thing. Mind you, this is only our second bull calf. We’ve asked several cattle farmers around here and they all say the same thing. “It’s normal.” Weird. Oh well. He’s eating well, still a sookie and looking normal otherwise. So we’ll leave it at that. If any of you have seen this before let me know.

We have a few new additions to the farm. We bought a few banty hens (like we didn’t have enough) from a friend. He didn’t want them anymore because he needed the room. Of the hens, 3 are just banties and one is a Millefleur and so is the rooster. That’s why Dave wanted them. They are kind of scraggly, but the feathers will grow back one day.

I’m having a dilemma. I’d love to let my hens run free but we have so many wild mink in the area that I don’t know if they’d survive or not. And also, will they lay in the house or am I going to have to go egg hunting on four acres of land everyday?

The piglets are doing extremely well. They should be ready to hit the road next week or so. We are keeping 2 for ourselves. Dave brought a piglet to the school in Yarmouth last week. A friend of ours teaches third grade, and they were reading Charlotte’s Web. She asked Dave if he could come in with a piglet. I don’t know who was more excited, the kids or our friend? Not one kid had ever seen a pig, and only two had seen hay before. Isn’t that sad. It’s not like we live in New York City. There’s farms everywhere around here.

We’ve come to another hard decision. We have to sell Febe. She’s a great milker, great mom and great goat, but she’s really, really bad with kids of the two legged variety. I cannot leave her alone with J. for a minute or she attacks him. This is not good. She’s a very aggressive goat, and I figure that she thinks he’s a small goat she can bully and she attacks him. Last summer she smacked him in the chest and sent him flying. This cannot happen again, and he loves the goats, he wants to help, but he can’t when she’s around, which is all the time since she’s the head goat.

So this winter when she’s dried off, I will put an ad in the paper to sell her. She was due to kid today but she’s late. I think it’ll be a few days still. They can be up to 5 days early or 5 days late.

So since we are going to sell Febe, I need another replacement. So without further ado let me introduce to ya’ll to ....Hazy Day Cindi Lou Who!

She came all the way from Sussex, New Brunswick. That’s an 8-hour drive from here. And no, I did not drive that far for her. I have a friend that goes to Bethany Bible College in Sussex. He was coming home for the weekend so he was nice enough to bring her along.

She was born March 25, 2010. She was in the CAE prevention program, so that means I have to bottle feed her. It’s fun, but alot of work. All the milk I had frozen in the freezer for myself is quickly dwindling down for her. Oh well. She is a sweetie.

Well, it’s Easter as I write this. The day our Lord and Saviour arose. We organized a breakfast at the church, and we had an early morning service. I had my parents over for supper and had rappie pie and I’m stuffed!

The Easter Bunny passed for J. and left lots of eggs outside for the hunt. The weather was great for it also. It’s been gorgeous for a week now. We are getting June weather in April. On the down side it’s extremely dry at the moment. It’s usually so wet now that we feel moldy. So, if it’s dry now, by August when it’s usually dry it’s going to be worse. That means no fires, no weinie roasting, nada, nothing, zip! We’ll just have to wait and see what the good Lord has in store for us.

Well I have to go and feed “the baby” and check on Febe.

Have a Blessed Day.

Well, once again it’s been nonstop here. We are at that point that we are starting to wonder if it’s all worth it. There’s so much work, and it just never stops. We don’t have 2 minutes to ourselves. We have decided as a family tonight that we are going to set a day or evening where we are going to do something for just the family. The problem is finding that day.

Today was a beautiful day, as has been the last week. I hope that spring is finally here. The goats were happy outside and I cleaned out the chicks and the greenhouse. J. did the chicken coop.

The piglets are doing great. Someone came and picked one up after they were only one week old. We didn’t guaranteee that one. The person understood. Dave finally made a door for Wilbur so he can go outside and divided the pen with electric wire. Now we know why people tell us to put a barricade on the OUTSIDE of the electric fence. When you train pigs to the electric fence they actually run into the fence if zapped. They don’t back away from it like a normal animal. Charlotte ran through it and broke it twice! Sometimes pigs aren’t the brightest bulbs in the bunch.

Well Otis is here! He’s the cutest. I have no idea how we are going to eat him this fall after bottle feeding him and cuddling him. I know we shouldn’t ... but how can we not! I mean look at him. He’s got big beautiful eyes and such long eyelashes.

I think this is the part where I become vegetarian.

We’ve been bottle feeding him twice a day now, and I’ve also started teaching him how to eat grain. He prefers slobbering all over me to eating the grain at the moment.

Esme and Whisper are now forever buddies. I have tried putting Febe in, but she terrorizes the poor things. Even outside she bullies her. I’m not liking that. J. is having a ball, though. They love him especially when he shows up with treats!

After much anticipation we have a grand total of 19 chicks! I put 53 to hatch and we had 20. One died after a day. This might not be a good average, but compared to last year it’s fabulous! Last year I put 30 eggs twice and got only 3 chicks. We were so disappointed. So 19 is pretty good.

Last week they demolished 3 buildings from our downtown area. It’s really sad to see them go. They’ve been there for 60+ years. They were ready to crumble since nobody was taking care of them. Most of the buildings in Weymouth are built over the water, so they’re on cribbing. Needless to say if it’s not taken care of the cribbing rots.

They’re planning on building an industrial building there. I had to give them ideas of color schemes. I think they liked a few of them.

I was so excited yesterday. I have flowers coming up!! My garlic is also starting. I was worried about the garlic, since I had planted it so late in the season. We actually had a snow storm the day after.

My tomato plants didn’t do all that well. They all sprouted up, stayed nice for a few days, then flopped over. It looked like a little forest going TIMBER!!!! At work we have a horticulturalist on staff, and she told me it’s call “damping off.” It’s a fungus. So I have to sterilize the pots and start over again. Wonderful.

Well I think that’s all I’ve got for this week. I know I’m probably forgetting something, but...oh well.

Have a Blessed Day!

Lisa