The Adventures of the Reese's Pieces Gang

Since my last entry our lives have been busy working the garden, preparing for school, and enjoying the summer with an occasional chase the pigs and/or goats day. Yes, our fencing issues and naughty livestock still cause trauma at least once a week. We are raising 40 more meat chickens and my new laying hens are growing nicely. They are even starting to make friends with some of my current laying flock.

We've started to sell off our goats. So far we've sold 2 milkers and 1 yearling. We'd like to sell 2-3 more adult goats and the 2 female kids before winter if possible. We only have 2 goats left that we are milking and they are yielding 1 ½ gallons of milk a day. We keep what we use and give the rest to our pigs. We are selling most of the goats because most of us don't like the goat cheese and only 3 in the family like goat milk.

I don't think that I've blogged since we got our 5 feeder pigs. They look like little Wilbers, and they are very naughty! We kept them in the barn at first because they were too little to be out with pinky. After a month of barn life their stall and our barn STUNK. So we decided to try them out in the pig pen, so we could clean out their stall. They did fine for about a week then they got adventurous and decided to start exploring the farm, yard, and road. So, Pork, Chop, Bacon, and Sausage are all in the pen in the barn while Hamy is still living with Pinky. Hamy doesn't try to escape when he is alone, but if we put the others back in the big pen they five of them explore the property.

We may be “renting” a nice jersey cow from our Amish Neighbors starting soon. They have a Jersey that they don't need right now but in the spring they need the milk from it to feed their beef calves. They are just giving all the extra milk to their pigs. I had mentioned to Sarah that I was working on selling the goat herd so I could get a nice Jersey cow. She told me that they might have one they'd sell. However after talking with her husband she told me that they still need the cow in the spring but would let us use her for now so we could have some cow milk. The details have to be worked out and haven't been discussed by the men yet. This may be a great opportunity for us to see if we are ready to get a cow. And mmmmmmm I can just taste the cheese, cream, butter, sour cream, cream cheese, etc that the wonderful milk would make!

Lately I've been shopping for school books for the kids on ebay. So far everything I've gotten adds up to a savings of 50%. I only shop late in the evening so it doesn't cut into my family and farm responsibilities.

Philip celebrated his 6th birthday this past week. We had a fun party just with our family and lots of water balloons. Philip is seeing an ENT for a lump in his neck. He just had a biopsy on Aug 20. We will find out the results next week. The doctor doesn't think it is anything major but will be watching it closely over the next several months even if the biopsy comes back negative.

Thomas, Philip, and Nathan are excited about going to New Holstein School this fall. We are working with the school to get Thomas's special needs cared for properly. Their back packs are loaded with school supplies which they get to drop off at school on the 31st while seeing their classroom and meeting their teachers.

Elizabeth, Samuel, and Caleb are looking forward to another year home schooling and so am I!

The biggest highlight for the kids this past month was the visit from Grandma & Grandpa Conover. We had only a couple short days with them but enjoyed our time immensely. We took a day's vacation away from the farm to swim at Blue Harbor Resort Water Park. My mom loved the slides..... I on the other hand HATED them. The kids were all wrinkles and red eyed after their day in the water. It was so much fun! Thanks Uncle Jack & Aunt Jane for the tickets!!!

To read about the activity in our garden lately please check out our garden blog. I just updated it with several back dated entries.