The Adventures of the Reese's Pieces Gang

Some folks read my blog to keep up with the family. Some read because they like following our farm and all that we are learning in the making of it. I'll do my best to keep both groups happy.

This blog is about the first "normal" thing that we have had happen on the farm since December. I said I'd write about our cow trauma's and this is it. In December all was going well with the adult herd, with the exception of some mild cases of mastitis (so we thought) until we lost Holly just before Christmas. She was supposed to calf on Christmas and died just a couple days before. She showed no signs of being sick. The day before she died I watched her eating, chewing her cud and got to feel the calf moving. She looked totally healthy. I checked on her last at 10 p.m. and when I went out in the morning she was dead.

In the meanwhile, the yearlings and calves started to have issues. They are kept at what we call "the other farm" or the "lower farm". There is another barn down at the other end of the dead end where our neighbors rent the house and we use the barn and most the land around the house to graze the herds. We started to loose one summer calf every 5-7 days. The first one was because we thought Caleb had thrown a bail of hay on it and killed it. The others, we weren't sure but started to guess that the bull was killing them.

Two weeks after Holly died we lost another one of our best milk cows, Kipp. She too was eating, chewing cud, drinking and had all the happy cow signs then was dead 6 hours later. This death led to us getting 2 different vets out to the farm to look over the herd. We also had all the dairy cows tested and discovered that we had a severe mastitis issue. We knew many of the cows had mastitis, what we didn't know was that it was an incurable type. You see, when our cows get sick we don't usually use antibiotics. We use natural treatments first and medical treatments as a last resort. Both the vets stated that they thought the reason for our losses was too much stress on the herd due to lack of shelter.

This fall we had hoped to get a hoop barn up for the cows. However, time didn't allow and we hoped and thought with the guidance of our landlord that the herd would do fine. We were all sad when the stress led to us loosing 2 to death, 2 others to cull because their udders were useless and probably one other to cull once she calves in April. We still don't think that it was any one thing. We think it must have been a combination of things that for some reason allowed the girls to get sick and not be able to kick it.

This story sounds bad but when I tell you the numbers...... we started with 8 milk cows and ended the winter with 4. We started the winter with 6 calves and ended with 1, and 5 heifers and ended with 4. BIG losses for a little farm.

I must confess that I didn't handle these losses well. I reached a boiling point which caused us to really talk through and evaluate what we needed to change. I told the kids: "We cannot say that we are learning if we do not change anything based on what we have learned." So by mid-January Phil and I took over all the chores and I learned how to milk the cows with Elizabeth.

Since we have made these changes we have slowly worked the kids back into chores with a LOT of supervision and I continue to milk with Elizabeth every day. The health of the animals seems to have stabilized. However, I cannot explain to you in words how anxious we were about Bonita calving. You see, we hadn't had a normal birth since the summer. We prayed and watched Bonita closely as she got closer to calving. Finally on February 24th we woke to find a nice big healthy bull calf that the kids named Boris. Bonita has been giving us a beautiful creamy 4+ gallons of milk a day!

It is hard for me to express all that we have learned this winter. But I do hope we have LEARNED which means that the changes we've made will allow for a successful winter next year.

We have since added another cow and 5 heifers to the herd to try to get our milking numbers back up to where we want them to be. When all the heifers finish calving by December 2011 we will have 13 in the dairy herd. The next cow is due any day and once again we are praying and being vigilant in watching her for any signs of stress.

On a different note... we are trying to get my Boston Terrier to mate with a local stud so we can sell some terrier pups in June. My children don't need the "birds and bee's" talks... they get cows and bulls, chickens and roosters and now boy dog and girl dog training. :-) It is a great way for us to share with them how beautifully God has designed the cycle of life.

The past couple mornings Rose has decided that she wants to walk home to her Amish farm. She acts like she is willingly walking to the pen until she gets the pen in site then she turns around and bolts for the road. The first morning we were able to catch her right by the garden. The second morning was much worse. She bolted away from Sam and by the time we caught her she was down the road a ways. We ended up tying her to the hitch on the back of our Minivan and pulling her home. I decided to park in our neighbors drive and walk her to her pen. As soon as we got to the gate she bolted dragging me along behind her. I would've held on longer however.......... my pants were falling down! :-( UGH! When I let go Elizabeth and Samuel caught up to her and were jogging on either side. Sam decided to try to throw all his weight on her to see if it would slow her down. It did only because Samuel slid under her body and the cow tripped over him with her back knee landing fiercely in the middle of Sam's back. Sam stood up, gasping for breath that wouldn't come. His face was beat red while his lips were turning blue. Finally he fell to his knees then passed out. Thankfully he was only unconscious for a couple seconds. When he woke up his breathing was not labored so I was pretty confident that he didn't have a punctured lung.

So I ran for the van and up the road to catch the cow again. This time we backed her right into the pen while she was still attached to the van. We pulled the van out enough to get the gate closed then we finally untied her. By this time Sam was looking much better and able to help us. He was complaining of pain when he breathed deeply. After talking with Phil we decided that he wasn't in any great danger but we wanted him checked out by a doctor that knew the spine. So I took him to our Chiropractor that afternoon. Dr. Nick found that Sam's spine and ribs were sound, no fractures, however, he had 4-6 vertebra's that were severely out of place. He adjusted Sam and thankfully Samuel felt instant relief, being able to breath much easier. We are very thankful that Samuel's first lesson in cow ridding didn't end with any severe injuries.

Yesterday I didn't take a chance and hooked her up to the van and put her in the pen with the aid of the vehicle so I wouldn't have to chase her. This morning Phil was here and she didn't give him any trouble. Hopefully she is starting to realize that this is her new home.

Many people have asked me, "She really wouldn't walk home would she?" I think that because the Millers lead her here by hitching her to the back of their buggy. She really does know the way home. Usually a cow is hauled to a farm in a trailer which means they loose all sense of direction. Rose however, walked here so she thinks she can just walk home!

I still really am enjoying having a Jersey cow and if the Millers offered to sell her to us, I would buy her in a minute. She is very mild mannered which makes her very easy to hand milk. We are really enjoying her creamy milk and the first batch of cheddar cheese curds are almost gone. Today I'm making cheddar cheese curds again, and either a block of cheddar for aging, or some mozzarella so we can have pizza this weekend. Our first batch of butter will be made tonight and I made some mildly tart creamy yogurt a couple days ago too! I love the versatility of cow milk and of course, the flavor!

This morning was quite the milking adventure with Rose. We had decided to try to use our goat stantion in reverse for Rose. We didn't take into account that the stantion weigh's very little and our 800 pound cow would just jerk it around while trying to get the vegetables and feed we have on the platform for her. So this morning Rose was milked in the barn, in the driveway, and in the front yard! I'm sure all the cars that drove by had a nice laugh, since you don't often see a Jersey Cow in someones front yard with a long haired red head milking her into a 3 gallon bucket! About half way through the milking process when we were chasing Rose down the driveway, Phil said,"Honey, I think your dream come true has turned into a nightmare!" Thankfully we both have a sense of humor and really want our own cow which made the morning very laughable!! After chasing Rose around getting her milked we enjoyed coming into the house to have last nights very whole milk, the jar was almost 1/2 cream, over a bowl of cereal!

We aren't getting as much milk out of her as the Millers were. I think it is because we cannot get her to stand still and relax while I'm milking her. She is also used to being milked with a machine. Rose is actually more difficult to milk than our goats. The goats have a nice firm nipple and they let down their milk well. So far, Rose hasn't been comfortable enough to let her milk down easily and her two back teats are VERY small. Like even smaller than our Brownies teats. Phil is going to work on getting the vacuum pump working so we can use it for Rose. I think once she settles in we will see her milk increase again! So far we've only gotten 2 3/4 gallons out of two milkings. She should be closer to 4 gallons a day.

I must say after chasing Rose around for 1 1/2 hours it was quite relaxing to milk Curley, the goat!

Today Phil will stop at Tractor Supply to get a lead rope and a hook to mount on a beam in the barn so we can tie her up during milking time. He is also going to get a bit of new fencing so we can put her in a pasture area along side the house. She'll be our lawn mower for the fall!

No.... Really, I HAVE a COW! Yes, that is right! Today a beautiful Jersey sauntered up the road to her new boarding farm, the Reese Farm. Our Amish Neighbors lead Rose here behind their horse and buggy. She walked 3 miles to get her and arrived at about 5:45 p.m. We introduced her to the barn then milked her for the first time. She did GREAT!! She has been milked with a machine for the past 2 years. For now we will be milking her by hand. Phil hopes to get our vacuum pump working soon so we can milk Rose with our new Serge milker.

I am so excited to finally have a Jersey on the farm. We will board Rose until she needs to be bread again next summer then we'll take her back for a month or two then they will return her here. Our friends are working on building up their dairy herd so they can eventually ship milk. For now though they only have 4 cows that they are milking which isn't enough to ship. They were giving all the extra milk to their pigs. When I told Sarah I was looking for a Jersey she mentioned it to her husband who said we could have Rose until they are ready to start shipping milk, which I think is a couple years away yet. This will give us a chance to try out having a cow without having to spend $1200 on one. What a DEAL!!! I can certainly handle babysitting a cow when we get to use all her wonderful creamy milk!!

We had another addition to the farm today.... a new dog. Well actually she is an almost 6 week old sweet little puppy! Elizabeth bought her from friends of ours. She will be our farm dog. She is going to live in the barn with the animals and hopefully protect the animals and gardens from the varmints that have done so much damage this past year! Elizabeth hasn't named her yet. Sometime over the next couple days I'll have to take pictures of our newest additions.

And we had one subtraction too. Marie our best goat went to her home tonight a couple miles down the road. Now we are down to just milking Curley until the spring when she and the 2 yearlings will freshen. Caleb is very glad that he will still have goat milk from Curley and I am very glad to only have about 1/2 gallon a day of goat milk to use. Caleb drinks about that much in a day, so it will work out GREAT!

May began with a visit from the local vet. We were concerned that Marie, our best dairy goat, was going crippled. We had some tests run and were happy to discover that she was disease free. She surprised us on May 4th by delivering two black and white billy kids. Elizabeth went to the barn around noon to check on the goats and found that she had successfully delivered. We had to take the kids away form her immediately because we were still waiting on the lab reports from the vet. The vet had told us to heat her colostrum to a low heat to kill the bad bacteria that may be in it form the illness we thought Marie had. Well..... let me tell you, colostrum turns into a solid mass at about 95 degrees. I was supposed to heat it at 136 for 1 hour... HA!!! We had to run to our Amish neighbor who raises goats to find out what he suggested. Goat kids MUST have colostrum or they will usually die of diarrhea. Thankfully Andy had some colostrum in the freezer that we were able to warm and feed Bill & Max.

That first week of May was a busy one. First Max and Bill joined us, then Curley had her kids, Samantha & Clarence on the 5th followed by Brownie who delivered Samson & Simon on the 6th. So we went from no milk to LOTS of milk in just 3 days! We let Curley and Brownie nurse their kids for their first 24 hours, then we removed them and started bottle feeding them. We decided to remove the kids from their mom's after their first day of colostrum so we could train them to be friendly goats. They are VERY friendly!! The children have really enjoyed having to bottle feed the kids each day. They are almost ready to be weaned so they are down to just one feeding a day now.

Patches waited to have her kids until the 12th when Midnight and Courtney joined the herd. All of our children got to see at least 2 of the kids being born. It was quite an experience!! I thought it was a great way to teach the kids about how God allows the birthing process to take place for goats. They all thought it was pretty cool!!

We are now milking the four does two times a day. At first the milk tasted horrible and I was really worried. We learned that during the beginning of the goats lactation the protein and fat content is very high which gives the milk and off taste. Thankfully that taste went away after about 10 days and now the milk is YUMMY!! The only one that says they don't like it is Elizabeth. WE think it is just in her head!! :-) We are using the milk for drinking and making cheese. I also found a great recipe for making a carmel sauce out of the milk that the kids love with apples. WE hope to try ice cream and a wider variety of cheeses as time goes on. Right now I'm just making Feta and Cheddar from our milk. I still prefer cow milk and the options available when using cow milk like making cream cheese, sour cream and butter. I would gladly sell all my goats in an instant if I could find a nice calm Jersey Cow to add to our farm.

I am the primary milk maid which is causing severe problems with my carpel tunnel. I'm seeing a chiropractor regularly since the tips of my fingers on my right hand are always numb now. We are also looking for an automatic milker. We found the machine we want, a serge milker. The milker is reasonably priced on ebay, however, the vacuum pump needed to make it run is another matter. We are praying for wisdom while we research and shop around. I cannot continue to milk by hand because I'm getting to the point where permanent damage could set in. The chiropractic care and physical therapy will hopefully prevent that until we can get an automatic milker. The children help with the milking too but whenever they milk alone we loose milk due to the bucket getting kicked over by goats. They children aren't as good at removing the bucket quickly when the goats get ornery.

We've decided that we will probably sell the three yearling's and the two does that were born this spring to help pay for the milking equipment. We will keep the 6 boy goats that have already been weathered, to raise for meat. They'll be butchered between 9 – 11 months of age. We plan to try a few different cuts but mostly we'll grind it to be mixed with pork or beef. We'll probably use a lot of it to mix with our pork for summer sausage at the late winter butchering of the pigs.

We have about 20 new hens that will be added to our flock of 19 hens in a couple months. Our 19 full grown hens are producing 14-16 eggs a day. We sell our extra eggs for $2 a dozen. The Amish sell theirs for $1.50 and the two places that raise pastured organic eggs sell theirs for over $3 so we chose to settle for a price in between the other places and don't have a problem selling our extra eggs. We will be butchering our 18 meet birds and 16 roosters at the end of this month. When that happens we will move our 30 turkeys to outside pens so they can be ranging on grass and bugs all summer long. We had originally planed to get more meat birds in July but will raise the turkeys for winter meat instead. The local coons, possums and mink have decimated our flock by about 10 over the past month. We are trying to remodel our outside pens so the birds will be more protected but still easily movable.

We still have Pinky. She will be joined by 5 40-50 pound piglets next week. We will raise the little ones so they can be butchered in December or January. Pinky will meet a new boar in December so we will be able to have a full liter of piglets in the spring. We found a farm just on the other side of Kiel that raises organic Berkshire pigs and they are willing to let us borrow their boar for a few weeks so we can get Pinky pregnant! YEAH!

Today is the day of the birds. When I got up this morning I noticed two of our baby turkeys frantically pacing along the front of their cage. I went out to check on them and found our friend the Great Horned Owl in their pen. It killed 26 of our 28 turkeys. So much for filling the freezer with turkeys this fall!

Phil called the DNR who put him in touch with Wildlife Management. Phil told them that he was not turning it loose again like we did last time. This owl has done too much damage on our farm to just let it go free again. They sent out a game warden who we thought would take it away, but instead, he shot the owl. He told us to contact the USDA to file for damages which we did only to discover that since the Great Horned Owl is only protected and not endangered they are not able to give us any type of compensation for the loss of birds. UGH!

On a happier note we butchered our meat birds this morning with some friends of ours. We did 200 birds in 4 hours. Only 23 of the birds were ours. Tonight I put 12 in the freezer and will package up and freeze the other 11 tomorrow afternoon. We'll be ordering more meat birds in a couple weeks to raise for butchering in September.

April was a busy month. We finished up our syrup season making just over 6 gallons of syrup. A GREAT first year! That will save us $240 on syrup this year.

We've spent a lot of time working on getting the gardens ready and still have a lot of work to do. You can visit our garden blog to read more about it.

Phil and the kids have been busy mucking out the barn. We welcomed 26 little meat birds mid April. We lost a couple in the first days then 3 more to a rat when we moved them to the barn. So we had to move them into the brooding box in the barn to protect them from our resident Templeton... EWE!!! We hope to have them outside grazing within the next couple weeks so they will have a full month on grass before butchering.

Four of our goats will be kidding any day. Phil is working on getting their new solar powered electric netting up so they can start grazing every day. We tried getting Pinky bread but the boar and his girls didn't like her so we aren't sure if she was actually bread or not since she only made it 5 days with the herd before we had to bring her home. We will butcher her this fall since getting her bread is going to be a challenge each year. We hope to find a few feeder pigs in May to raise for fall butchering too. If she is successfully bread then we will raise her piglets for early spring butchering.

Elizabeth's incubation experiment failed so the pig enjoyed many rotten duck eggs. Elizabeth still wants to incubate so we have borrowed an incubator from a friend and are trying to incubate turkey eggs and more duck eggs. We'll know if any of them were fertile starting May 14th, the date the first tray should be hatching. The kids excitedly told me that we have a chicken that appears to be broody, so they put 6-8 eggs under her. If she stays on them we'll see little chicks peeking out in 21 days. Spring time on the farm is full of fun and new life!

Nathan celebrated his fourth birthday on the 26th. It is hard to believe that my baby is 4 years old already. He was very excited to get a “shoot a bow and arrow” as he calls it for his birthday. The boy seems to always have a gun or bow and arrow in his hand trying to hunt for some exotic animal. :-)

We kicked the cats out of the basement about a week ago and of course I now have mice in my kitchen... YUCK!!!! Speaking of mice I'll end with Thomas's mouse story.

Two weeks ago we got home from church and Thomas saw one of the cats outside. He walked up to it and noticed that it had caught a mouse. He took the mouse..... which was still alive mind you.... away from the cat and brought it inside to show me. He was all excited and wanted to keep the mouse. Of course I bravely yelled for Phil and he guided Thomas outside to free the mouse. Thomas proceeded to talk about the mouse all night saying that he wanted a mouse for a pet. Phil told him he couldn't have a wild mouse but that the pet store had mice. I then said that mice are not ever welcome in this house as pets or not!!! When Phil was tucking Thomas into bed Thomas told Phil and he had KISSED the mouse... EWE!!! I was glad that Thomas hadn't kissed me goodnight!

I'm not doing a very good job blogging in this new year. I've composed many blogs in my head that have never made it onto the computer for various reasons. February flew by with a few colds, more dead chickens, and lots of school. We are pushing to complete the majority of our school work by the end of March because we have gardens to plant and fences to put up. Once that is done we will resume "school" by doing a summer review book for each of the kids.

Our chicken flock has gone from 70 to less than 40. Some of the hens have finally started to lay again and we are averaging 10 eggs a day. We've ordered 25 meat birds which will arrive in April and be butchered in July. Twenty five new hens will also be added to the farm in May.

The goats are looking pregnant which is a good sign. They aren't due until the end of April. A couple of them are getting quite large, so they might be carrying triplets.

Elizabeth has decided to try to incubate duck eggs. We will know in a few days if the eggs are fertile or not. She did the research and has a little home made incubator in her room. We had one female and 2 males survive the dog and mink attacks. We hope that the female will eventually get the motherly urge, so if our attempts to incubate fail, we will still have some little ducklings sometime this spring. We have also discovered that we have one goose. A goose egg was found in the barn two days ago. Only time will tell if we have a pair that will mate or two geese.

Phil and I have been researching Maple Sugaring and will tap 12 trees this weekend to start the process of making our own Maple syrup. This year is supposed to be a good year for the sap run, so we hope to make a gallon or two for our first sugaring season. I'm sure it will be quite an adventure!

We are very excited that over the next 15 days 10 are supposed to be at or above 40 degrees. That is perfect maple sugaring weather.... and it will allow all the snow to melt so we can start to clear the upper garden and plan the lower with some early spring food (spinach, peas, lettuce, kale, etc.). I'll be starting many of my garden plants over the next week in the living room.

The boys have been enjoying "hunting" on these warmer days. They dress up with their swords, archery items, and shields, and head out to walk along the creek in hopes of spotting animals. Nathan and Philip love trotting after Sam on these adventures.

Caleb has new glasses and can now see out of both his eyes, PRAISE THE LORD! Samuel will be getting his new glasses next week and I get to have an appointment for contacts next week too! YEAH!! I haven't had contacts since Phil lost his job at NBBC, over 3 years ago. I'm looking forward to getting to wear sunglasses this summer while I work in the garden.

We hope you are all enjoying the coming of spring in your neck of the woods! For me Spring is a reminder of the New Life we have in Christ. It also causes me to be so thankful that God never gives up on me, He forgives me of my sin when I confess it and allows me to start fresh and clean in my efforts to serve and please Him.

Today we found 5 chickens dead upon entering the barn. We thought another dog had gotten in, you see a few weeks ago we lost 8 chickens and 2 ducks to the neighbors dog. They then got sick because of getting overly stressed due to the dog attack and we lost another 9 chickens. Well, today's chickens were peculiar because they had bite marks on the back of the neck. We were also missing another duck. I thought that we had a fox or raccoon that had found their way into the chicken pen. The boys went out to clean up the mess and saw a “creature” sniffing at the door of the rabbit pen. They threw a bucket at it, which caused a hiss from the animal and it scurried away. By their first description I thought the animal might have been a muskrat, but then they told me it had a long furry tail. We looked up a mink in our encyclopedia and both the boys confirmed that that was what they saw in the barn.

Discovering a varmint solved another puzzle that presented itself this past Sunday. Sunday morning while doing chores Elizabeth found a barrel that had 17 eggs. All the eggs were frozen, most were cracked and ended up being partially empty when I thawed them. Some of the eggs were cracked in half with exposed frozen egg. Phil thought maybe the chickens were so shook up after the dog incident that they were laying eggs while perched on the barrel. I didn't think that would happen. We've asked a couple locals if a mink would steel eggs, and all have said YES! I guess eggs are a favorite of theirs. Our friend had mink killing his chickens through chicken wire. It would reach through the wire and grab the birds by the neck and kill them but not be able to get them out to eat them.

Our plan is to trap and kill the mink. Thankfully one of our friends has a live trap we are using for tonight. Tomorrow Phil is going to stop at the mink farm that is about 2 miles from here and see if they have any traps and if they'd want the mink (maybe even pay for them) once we catch them. If we are successful you just might notice a lovely mink collar on my coat! :-)

Oh by the way. On a very sad note. We started the winter with 70 chickens and 6 ducks along with our geese and turkeys. One of the geese is still healing from the dog attack, the turkeys are safe and getting nice and big. However, we only have about 40 chickens left and 3 ducks. SOOOOO sad!!

February 1, 2009
Praises

It has been a couple months since my last post. I'm just curious..... did you miss me? I've often wondered how many friends and family members actually read my blog. If you've missed hearing about our family adventures leave a comment or email me and let me know.

There are many things that need some updating but I thought I'd start the year with some praises.

1.We found out this past week that I do not have a chronic blood clot in my leg any more. We have been praying that the Lord would do a miracle and allow both clots to dissolve and Praise the Lord He chose to heal my leg and remove both clots. I will no longer need to be on rat poison and according to the blood labs I do not have the genetic tendency for clotting. We praise the Lord for these specific answers to prayer!
2.We have a new dog. Some friends of ours needed to find a new home for their year old Great Dane, Nina. Phil and the boys met Nina and we decided to adopt her. She is very BIG and very mild mannered. The previous owners did a WONDERFUL job training her. She is starting to enjoy our family and show signs of settling in. She is black with a little white patch on her chest. Her back is about up to my hips. She looks like a black lab on stilts! :-)
3.We successfully butchered Stinky with the help of some friends just after Christmas. We've been enjoying pork chops, sausage, and ham. When the slicer comes in we will be able to slice the bacon. Our summer sausage is sitting in the freezer for 30 days to make sure all possible bacteria is dead.
4.We are all in good health.
5.School is going well. Elizabeth has become quite independent and usually gets her schoolwork done very quickly, which allows her to fill her “extra” time with reading and art. Caleb is needing some extra challenging, and Samuel is plugging along. Philip is wanting to learn to read and write. Thomas is doing great with his sight words and short vowel phonics words. He will start journaling this week. We are thankful that he is in his third year of ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) therapy. He receives 30-35 hours of one on one instruction from his therapists. Nathan enjoys coloring and cuddling up to Nina.
6.Phil is enjoying his work with Dynamic Campus Solutions. We are thankful that for the time his job is not in any danger of cut backs or lay-offs. I got to meet his co-workers at his companies Christmas party which was held at the Whistling Straights Golf Course Clubhouse. The PGA Championship tournament will be held at this course in 2010, 2015, & 2020.
7.Spring is coming! Yes, I can feel it in my bones! :-) The seeds for the garden have been ordered, potatoes will be ordered in March, and I am anxiously waiting for the snow to soak into the earth so we can begin working on this years planting.
I'll end this post with another of Philip's funny moments. Philip is starting to show more interest in spiritual things. The other night he was having a talk with Phil about Heaven, sin, and hell. He was very curious about why when people are naughty they have to go to the “hotel”. The poor boy must have his ears clogged again... he mistook the word hell for hotel. Out of the mouths of babes! :-) We are so thankful that God's word says, “Suffer the little children to come unto me....” This is our prayer for each of our children that they will come to know the Lord personally and choose to serve Him with their lives.

You may have noticed that my last several posts have a date listed before the title. I've decided to blog daily on my computer then download those blogs when I have internet access. So you may notice a lapse in blogging then several all at once will be posted. I hope you will enjoy keeping up with things a little more closely than before.

Today we had a deer given to us with the skin still on. My dear family knows that any time an animal was being butchered when I was growing up, I ran and hid. Well our desire to learn how to do our own butchering and processing of food has changed my outlook quite a bit. Last weekend, with the help of our friends I butchered 30 chickens, 15 for us and 15 for them. Tonight Pastor Steve and Bob, friends from church came over to teach Phil and I how to skin, quarter and butcher venison. Ok.... Kirk & Dad you can pick yourself up off the floor and continue reading. :-) Yes, I touched raw bloody meat! Not only did I touch it but I de-boned it cut it into steaks, butterflied the tenderloin, and cut roasts while picking off hair and cutting off the Grissel. The doe was quite small so we only got about 13 meals from her but free meat is free meat!!

Now that Phil and I are trying to learn all this stuff I only wish I had paid more attention when my Dad and brother cut up meat each year. Phil is thinking about taking some butchering classes sometime in the future so we will be able to more confidently process all our own home grown meat.

I'm very thankful to have chicken and venison in the freezer along with a little Lamb and Elk that we received from friends this past week too. We might get to eat meat every night this week what a treat that will be!! We've also been blessed with more carrots, beets, and cabbage. MMMMM!

Phil will be hunting with a bunch of men from our church opening weekend. If he doesn't get a dear there is a very good chance that there will be "extra" deer shot that others won't want for their families. Very soon our freezer will be full of venison, pork, and beefalo! I'm exciting about being able to have a menu centered around meat rather than beans BUT ....... I think we will need another freezer next year!! I already have my chest freezer almost full with lamb, chicken, and veggies from the garden. I'll have to do some shuffling to fit in all the meat we have coming, but it will be worth it!

Oh and for those of you who care..... we got 9 eggs today! :-)

Raising animals is another great prof for God's miraculous seven day creation. When you want eggs from chickens you have to have hens that are at least 5 months old. This week our hens reach their 5 month birthday and it has been so fun seeing the beautiful new eggs they are laying each day. According to our calculations only about 6 of the 23 hens are laying. Some hens take 6 months before laying so we aren't expecting them all to be producing until sometime in December. Our hens are laying beautiful eggs, some are a light tan/beige, some are orangish brown, others are brown with white speckles and brown with red speckles. It makes a beautiful carton of eggs! The next time we are able to fill up a carton I'll try to remember to take a picture. We tend to eat them about as fast as they are coming into the house most of the time.

We spent this past week getting back into a "normal" routine. The week before was so busy with Sunny's departure, Elizabeth's birthday, and the Youth Group activity that our week was just CRAZY! This week we focused on getting back into a good school routine and enjoyed stopping by the library to refresh our supply of books and audio learning cd's. We have a great library only 10 miles from our house. The head of the children's dept loves home schooling families and it shows. She is very helpful and loves working with kids!! We checked out a cd on Squanto that is produced by Focus on the Family. It is excellent, I would highly recommend that you try to borrow or buy it for your family if you have children.

Phil finished up the chicken room all but the laying boxes. For now we put some crates filled with straw up on top of their tall feeder lid. Our new hens will hopefully start laying eggs any day.... we anxiously await the day when we no longer need to buy eggs from the store or others.

Phil also made a stall in the barn for the goats so we could get them out of their summer area and into a place where it is much warmer. He plans on building them a larger winter stall in the middle of the barn but the one he finished was already partially started and easier to complete. Plus it leads to the outside which he can fence in with some electric fencing to allow the goats to have some free choice grazing on the "warmer" days.

Pinky and Stinky have been reduced to the upper left hand corner of their pasture area and are enjoying more feed these days while we fatten them up for butchering and wintering. Phil will be working on a stall for Pinky over these next couple of weeks so that when we haul off Stinky for butchering we will be able to move her into her winter stall.

Our first Youth activity was the evening of Elizabeth's birthday Party. Our activity for the night was entitled "chicken run"! We divided the youth and our boys into two teams which had to catch all the roosters (18) and put them into the chicken tractors for fattening before we butcher them. Would you believe I forgot to take pictures!!! It was quite fun watching the girls, Pastor Steve, Phil, Caleb & Sam chasing the roosters. We enjoyed a toasty campfire which we used for hot dogs and s'mores. The girls also practiced for their Bible quizzing in which they tied for First Place this past weekend at our regional Youth Meeting. Elizabeth was very nervous about the quizzing but did manage to answer one question to help her team gain their victory.

The boys and I spent Saturday getting the garden ready for its wintery rest. We pulled up the trellises, ripped out all the dead plants, buried the strawberry plants under straw, and started the process of spreading a thin layer of straw over the entire garden. Our soil is solid clay. I hope that by adding the straw and rabbit manure it will start the process of getting the soil more peat like and workable. I will do a shallow 3 inch tilling of the straw this week after I sprinkle on some lime. Next fall I will have some nicely composted goat, pig, and chicken poop to spread throughout the garden, that will be just lovely!! :-) We will also be picking rocks in the new garden plot and ripping up any weeds that Stinky & Pinky decided not to eat this summer. My last garden project for this year will be to transplant some raspberry plants from a friend into the new garden plot. We are still enjoying lettuce, spinach, leeks, celery, and brussels sprouts but that will probably come to an end soon since the temperatures are dropping and I don't have these foods in winter boxes.

The only other new event in our lives is that I am a piano teacher again! I was approached by a family in our church and asked to teach their three daughters. I was planning on teaching Elizabeth this year and decided it would be fun to get back to teaching a couple other students. It has challenged me to get back to the piano, and I now spend many days wishing I had a piano here at the house to practice. Since we don't have a piano I teach at our church and practice at our church. I hope that this week Eliza and I will be able to start practicing 4-5 days a week at the church. Thankfully our church is only 10 minutes away, but it is more convenient to practice when the boys can stay here, so Phil and I are trying to figure out when we can work piano practice into our daily schedule.

Well, that concludes the latest info on the Reese's Pieces gang.... enjoy a week filled with God's beautiful creation during this wonderful fall season!

Last night Samuel, Philip, and Phil were throwing some wood into the basement wood room when Philip started to scream: “Sunny's dead, Sunny's dead!” At that time Sam joined in the chorus and Phil and I went running for the front of the house.

Our dear sweet Sunny dog decided to take on a Combine and lost the battle. We are very thankful that he didn't suffer, his death was very quick and painless. The next several hours were quite difficult for us all. We all shed many tears as we tried to encourage the kids to be thankful that we were able to enjoy Sunny for the past year and a half.

Phil came up to me after all the kids were finally down for the night and held me so that I could cry. Sunny was my dog. Phil got him for me last summer. Phil knew the moment he saw Sunny that I would want him. He was part pure bread golden Retriever and part pure bread German Wirehair, but he looked like a rolly polly lab pup. He grew up to have the look of a lean hunting lab. This past year when Phil was gone from us for most of each week Sunny was my evening buddy and our protector. I never had to worry about him with the kids. He protected our family not only from strangers but from Phil's old dog Bandit who often turned on the kids. Sunny would jump between Bandit and the child in danger and keep Bandit from hurting anyone.

Sunny will be a dog that will be hard to forget. He was a wonderful companion, a playful dog, extremely smart and very cuddly. He was constantly curled up with one of the kids on the couch or in one of their beds. The silly dog thought that he was a chicken herder, chased bikers, stole sticks of butter, and ate lawn ornaments, but he was always there when we needed him either for work on the farm or to lick up the soup that I just spilled on the floor.

This morning we buried our sweet Sunny Dog and will soon start on a quest for another family dog. I pray that we will be able to find another dog that will fit as perfectly with our family as Sunny did.