The Adventures of the Reese's Pieces Gang

Each morning I wake up and thank the Lord that we are together as a family again. It is so wonderful to see Phil each day! Philip asked me this past Thursday, “Mommy, is daddy coming home this week?” I smiled and said “Yes Philip Daddy will be home tonight!” Philip's eye's got wide and he exclaimed, “Oh boy!!” The little ones still haven't caught on to the fact that because we moved we get to see Daddy every day now. It is so nice to greet Phil at the door each night and sit down together as a family for Bible time and dinner.

Today we worked hard on the farm again. Phil helped me till up the flower bed along the South side of the house. After tilling and raking out the weeds and crab grass we spread a layer of compost then tilled it in. I planted almost all of the herbs in the flower bed. I still have about 2 dozen parsley plants which I am going to plant with flowers along the front edge of the bed next week. I've always wanted a flower bed and an herb garden and now I have both! YEAH! If all my herb plants grow well we will probably have enough fresh herbs to feed the county. :-)

Samuel enjoyed tinkering with an old riding lawn mower that we found in the barn. The landlord said we could have it if we could get it started. Phil and Sam worked on it today but couldn't get it working. It was so fun to see Sam so excitedly working with Phil on the mower. Sam is still hoping that he and daddy will succeed at getting it to work.

Phil and the boys also worked on the fencing for our pig pen. We hope to finish it up early in the week so our little Berkshire piglets can join our farm. God is so good to give us the desires of our heart when we least expect it! Pigs have been hard to find this year up north so I was expecting to have a hard time once we moved down here. Our new neighbors, that we buy our milk from, have a sow that gave birth to 12 piglets this spring, 10 survived. They are a bit bigger than the normal feeder piglet, almost twice the size actually so we are paying twice the price. BUT the really neat thing is that they are Berkshire pigs. Berkshire pigs are the bread that I had decided through my research that I would some day want to have a sow and bore of. They are wonderful pigs for pasture feeding AND they are the gourmet choice of pork. I'm so thankful that we found these pigs and for such a reasonable price. We will raise these two for butchering this year. Eventually we will try to get a sow for breeding.

Our laying hens graduated from their one room heated establishment to the chicken coop today! The only difficulty we are having is that the roosters are trying to eat their feed and are chasing the chicks away, those naughty boys!! Phil rigged up a heat lamp for the chicks since they are only 4 weeks old and it is supposed to be in the high 50's tonight. He put the food very close to the heat lamps in hopes that the roosters won't like the heat and will stay away. We'll see if the plan works.

Elizabeth the Goat has been enjoying some freedom these past couple days. While we are out in the yard during the day we let her out of the chicken pen and into the yard with us. Thomas is trying to make her a house goat, YUCK! She enjoys laying on the cool concrete in the entry way of the house and has left a couple deposits that mom hasn't been too thrilled with. I'm hoping we will get more goats this week or I'm afraid Elizabeth the Goat is going to start to think she really is a Reese kid!