Feeding Time

In the morning, everyone must eat! 

George loves to "help" feed the goats. I'm sure they are mostly just annoyed with him playing in every tiny bit of their food before they get to eat it. 

George is feeding a few extra handfuls to Poppy who is always eager for any "extras"!

Beauty & her Beast

Sarge is the perfect "farm dog"...fierce and gentle!
He is so vicious and loud when something is going on around "his property" that he doesn't like. There have been many occasion when he jumps into action to let it be known that he is on guard and his ferocious bark makes my heart jump right out of my chest! Then there are these precious moments when he and Addie snuggle and he is the most gentle creature in the world! These two have always had a special bond ever since he was a tiny puppy. He will do whatever Addie tells him to do...when she is scolding him for something he did wrong she sternly says "Sarge, go to your box", he just shrinks down and runs straight to his box. I think its part of the reason he takes such good care of the chickens, because they are Addie's chickens and she loves them so much. There have been many occasions when Addie is out feeding "the girls" and Sarge is running around being hyper and Addie yells "Sarge, calm down and leave my girls alone!"...to which he quickly obeys!

These two are just so precious! They have had a special bond since the day we brought him home as a puppy. I cant imagine a better dog for our family!

My little blessings

These three little ones sure keep me busy and I am grateful for every moment I get to spend with them!! There are many days that I get overwhelmed with the busy chaos of the "work at home mom" life, but I cant imagine missing the precious moments that these three blessings bring to my life!

 

by the way...I will forewarn you that i got a new camera and I'm having SO much fun with it!!! This year, the garden will be very well documented!!

So many blessings

Its been quite a busy few weeks around here! We had our precious little baby boy punctually on his due date. His name is George and he was born Thursday May 12th. 

 Both of Bryan's bee hives are doing fabulously and we are excited to see their daily progress. I have so much to post about Bees, but for now here are some fun photos of their progress.

And of course the baby goats!! They love to sit up on top of the picnic table and snuggle. They are growing up so fast!

 The garden is in full swing with daily harvests of lettuce, arugula, and spinach for delightful salads. This first picture is of the tomatoes. We still have yet to put up the T-posts and twine to hold up our wall of tomatoes.

Bed of sweet sugar snap peas :) YUM!!

Bush beans are creeping up and will soon be in full swing!

I dont have any new photo updates of the baby chicks...which really are not babies anymore! Ill get some good photos and post those later.

Let it Snow!

I found a few pictures from our past snow storm a few weeks ago! Addie's boots kept falling off and so she ended up carrying them most of the time. Other than that wardrobe malfunction, they had a blast playing in the yard! Then of course the snow melts away and now the grass is starting to perk up through the dirt and there is delightful signs of spring right around the corner!!!

When the boys are away, the girls will play!!

Bryan and Henry have been out hunting, so me and Addie got a few projects to work on too! I bought Addie some plain wood peg dolls for Christmas, so we decided to paint them! It was extremely fun! We got to create a lot of characters and have fun making them exactly how Addie wanted.

I definitely recommend this as a fun craft time :)

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Leaves, Leaves Everywhere!!!

With Peaches and Poppy gone to the breeder for several weeks, we had a major leaf buildup!! Usually they just eat through those leaves extremely fast, but not now! However, the kids loved this! We made 1 big huge pile of leaves and it has been hours of fun!

Busy Busy gettin things done!

It has been delightfully busy around here and I'm doing everything I can just to keep up with it! Peaches and Poppy are home!! They stayed with the breeder for almost 3 weeks just to make sure both girls were "well taken care of" :) Note: If you are considering getting and breeding goats...wow, brace yourself for the smell!! We did not want a billy goat because of the horrific smell they produce but I never considered that my does would completely stink of billy goat smell when we brought them home. Wow, it is bad! The breeder said that the smell would just go away, but its been a week and they still stink. (Ill let you know how it goes and what we end up finding to get rid of the smell.) It has been sad because Henry and Addie are so excited to see the goats and all I keep saying is "AHH, don't touch the goats!". So, if you are thinking about getting and breeding goats, make sure you are prepared for the "after smell" as well as some remedies to eliminate the smell from your does immediately!

While the goats were gone for a couple weeks Henry picked up a few extra responsibilities around here - bringing in firewood, watering the animals and putting the chickens "to bed" at night. It has been extremely helpful because he loves being a "big helper" and those are a few extra things that I don't have to worry about being done anymore :) It does take quite a while for him to do each job, especially since he can only carry in 1 piece of firewood at a time, but he loves it and eventually he will get really fast at each job! He gets really excited to get his boots, jacket, gloves and hat on (all  of which he does even if it isn't that cold outside) and runs outside while Addie monitors the back door for him and opens it when he comes back up with an armfull of firewood!


In other random news, we also had a hawk attack one of our chickens! I looked out in the backyard as it landed on the chicken and they both started a rolling flapping fight through the leaves...thankfully it only lasted about 3 seconds because Sarge saved the day! If that hawk would have hung around 1 second longer we would have seen a rolling flapping fight between Sarge and the hawk, but the hawk flew off. Im sure it will be back, but Sarge is definitely on high patrol these days!

In garden/canning related news:

I also canned up 7 jars of mixed vegetables (excellent for pot pie!). I really wish I could find the recipe I used for the mixed vegetables! I'm seriously loosing my mind because I just canned them up last night and I cant find that recipe anywhere!! I sure hope I used an actual recipe and didn't accidentally combine 2 different ones! I would love to share what I did with you all, but I have no idea what I did :) All I remember is that I used about 29 cups of vegetables (potatoes, carrots, celery, onions), covered them with water, boiled for 10 minutes and then filled sterilized jars with vegetables and water, added 1 tsp canning salt, and processed in a pressure canner for 85 minutes. Easy pot pie: 1 Pie Crust, 1 Can of mixed veggies (drained), 1 can of canned Turkey or chicken with stock...bake and dinners done!

Carrot Harvest! Thinning for higher yields

 The carrots are doing quite well so we have been thinning them out every once in a while to make room for the others and to get higher yields! Basically we just reach in and find carrots that are growing too close together and we take the larger ones from each side. Its really simple...even Addie is getting good at it! She loves exploring for carrots! We pulled up about 10 lbs of carrots today! Im excitted to can up some carrots here soon!

 

Addie loves these Goats

Does it get any cuter than a little girl with her two precious goats :)

 

Compost Screening, preparing for fall planting.

Henry and Addie screening some amazing compost with their new shovels grandma got them. We have been getting several beds ready for fall planting and laying down some freshly screened compost before putting in seeds. Yesterday we planted 6 melon hills and today we planted a fresh bed of lettuce and spinach. We prepped a few more beds and I look forward to what happens tomorrow!!

Im loving the compost!!! Amazing soil made right in my backyard! We sifted the compost into 5 gallon buckets and brought in at least a dozen buckets of rich nutritious soil onto our raised beds. Keeps me motivated having good progress!

They just kept going and going! Henry loved to shake the sifter to get all the large particles out...see his new little "worker man gloves". Seriously the best 99 cents Ive ever spent! He wore them all day while he helped me with the compost, weeding, planting and harvesting.