One year ago we decided to give raising pigs a try. After what has seemed like a really long time, our Red Wattle sow had her first litter last Wednesday. She had 12 babies, and managed to only smother 2 so far. The babies are so cute and funny to watch.

Here is a picture of all of them but one.

This little girl is so tiny!

All tired out and enjoying the warm sunshine.

Having baby pigs has been a new and interesting experience, but so far it has been a good one. We have learned a lot, and continue to learn more everyday. We are looking forward to two more litters in June, hopefully they will go as well and this one did.

Well, that's it for now.

God Bless,

Rachel

It is 6:47 a.m. and my internet just shut down without my permission, causing the download that I started at 5:30 a.m. to end before finishing. Argh. I wouldn't care so much if it wasn't a program that I really need to finish up some stuff for our business. So, I have started it over, and now have about two hours of time to kill online (if I don't keep doing something the internet times out). Anyway, here I am with plenty of time to blog, and not much to blog about. :)

I guess I'll start with some pictures from our multiple snow storms.

This is from storm #3, looking across the valley at the other farm.

From storm #2, looking out my kitchen window.

This is what our windows looked like most of the mornings after the snow.

Our barn in the snow. If you look at the left hand side of the trail through the snow you can see Dozer (our beagle) plowing (our should I say "dozing" :) his way through about 14'' of snow.

The new addition to the farm. This little lamb was born in the snow and cold. Her owners rescued her, and through a series of people and events, we got her. She is fun and different and we are looking forward to trying our hand at raising a sheep.



Well, that's about it for now. I thought all of the snow that we got was beautiful, and really enjoyed it, but I have to say that a forecast of 60 degree days for the next week or so sounds really, really nice. No more frozen water, stock tanks, eggs, or fingers! And no more spending ten minutes or more getting bundled up to go outside, just open the door and go out!

God Bless,

Rachel

To Much To Say

I am so far behind on blogging about life here, that I am not even going to try to catch up. However, for once it is not my fault. Through many issues, complications, and mistaken quotes, I wound up without internet access for a couple of months. Now I have a new phone, faster internet, and not much to gripe about :)



I don't have a ton of time to write today, but I thought I would at least get things updated a little.



Since February is the purple month, and since we have over 12 inches of snow at my house, I thought this background was just about perfect. The weather is the big news here. Colin got to stay home for THREE whole days this week. It was great. Yesterday we decided it would be nice to be able to leave if we wanted to so we worked on getting the driveway cleared (this after getting two of our vehicles stuck). I never considered our driveway to be especially long before. I have since revised my definition of long. We only cleared enough off of the top of the snow to be able to drive without using the bumper as a snow plow, and it still took us several hours to get it done. The mail person has not come for four days, unless they managed to be here without leaving any tracks in the snow on the unploughed roads.



Well, I have got to go make bread, and maybe a peach cobbler......



I leave you with a picture of the snow here. I will try to get some more up later.



Yep, I'm loven' it! :)

God Bless,

R

The next chapter.....

.......in the snake saga.

We are trying to sell our little Fiat car. Colin opened up the engine area to check on things and found this.

It was a BIG black snake. It took Colin over half and hour to get it out of the car because it turned around and went down in this area that he could not get at very well. It finally came out underneath the car and Colin pulled it out with the rake (after it crawled back up again once) and killed it.

The car is still for sale, if you know anyone that might be interested in it.

We are not responsible for any hitch-hikers that come along with the car.

Rachel

Garden 2010

For those of you that are interested in our gardening adventure, here are some pictures from this year. Things have really gone well, even though we planted the whole garden about a month late.


Plowing up the area. We extended the length of the garden this year

Pictures of the blooms and fruit of the various plants.

We grew our beans, long beans, and some cucumbers on arches this year.

A "volunteer" sunflower that was really beautiful.

That's all for now, God Bless!

Rachel

A Blogging Problem

I have now tried to update my blog several times. It won't work. What I would really like to do is to change my background and layout to something more fallish. In July I wanted to make it more summerish. The problem is that I live far enough out of town that my internet signal is too weak to accommodate the new Blogger Template Designer thingy. I left it sit for 45 minutes one day hoping that it would eventually pull up. No go. So, this note is really for all the people in charge at Blogger.com.

PLEASE remember those of us who are still without uber fast, 2 trillion MB's per second, internet before you make any more "improvements" to the system!!!!

Now I have to go to the library to make any real changes to my blog.

You all know how high on my priority list that sits.

So, until I have a lot of time to kill, please forgive my "springish" layout.



Rachel

Update For the Last Month or So

First off I have to say that I agree with the opening paragraph of Jessie’s last post. Not only do I think that I must bore you all to death with the mundane details of farm life, but it also drives me nuts to try to come up with some exciting way to write things up for a post.

That said, it has been over a month since I posted, so here is a bit of what has been going on in our lives.

Well, summer is flying by for us, and is (as usual) very busy. The garden is growing like crazy (I am working on a garden post with pictures, stay tuned) and even though we got it in late we are enjoying fresh cucumbers, squash, green beans, and peppers.

Our animal “experiments” of the year are also going well thus far. We are very pleased with the Red Waddle Hogs, and are looking forward to trying the meat. So far they have grown faster than we thought that they would. My parents decided that theirs were big enough (around 300lbs) so they went ahead and took them in this week. The hogs weighed in at 360 and 380! Now we are wondering if we need to take ours in early too.
The turkey adventure is doing great as well. Turkeys are a lot different than what I thought they would be. They are really calm birds and are for the most part a quiet bird too. Since I really dislike chickens, I was prepared to feel the same way about turkeys, what a pleasant surprise to actually enjoy them!

We had a goat adventure this week when one of the goats broke a horn off at 6:30 in the morning. Yes, it bled a lot, and no, none of the vet offices were open yet. I always said that I would never have goats with horns because they cause so much trouble. Well, it happened through a series of events that we did not get this ones horns burned, and then I just kept putting off going into the vet to have them removed, and so on Tuesday morning I had a mess to deal with. I was not a happy goat owner most of the morning. At 7:30 I was able to talk to the vet, take the got in, and have both horns removed for good. Now I am back to a horn free herd, and am much happier.

The only other excitement since the last post, has been the continuation of the snake saga. After the bull snake adventure, I was determine to pay closer attention to were I walked, and watch out for more snakes. I guess you could say that it payed off.

Snake #2~

~was a large black snake, taking up residence in my herb garden. I tried to shoot it, missed several times, and decided to stand guard over it until Colin got home and could take care on it. Thankfully he was only about ten minutes form home, and was able to remove it form the premise for good.

At this point in time I decide that I need to practice up on the 22, so that I can deal with any snakes that come up when Colin is not there to do it for me. So the next time that he and O are practicing, I spent some time putting hole in old canning lids. After that I felt confident that I could deal with whatever came up.

Snake #3~

~was another black snake. This time it was sunbathing on the tree roots two steps frome my back porch. (Side note: I am dressed for town in a skirt, blouse, and dress shoes. Not exactly the best snake killing outfit) Having just locked the door in preparation to leave, I calmly turn around, unlock it, get the 22, shoot the snake, (it crawls under the Fiat badly wounded, so I get a 2x4 and lay it on the snake so that it can’t go any further) relock the door and leave. Colin removes the dead body when he gets home later.

Snake #4~

~is a King Snake (or a salt and pepper snake). I am watering my melons at 6a.m. and it come sliding out from under the mulch. I have a momentary thought of racing for the 22, but figure that it will be gone by the time I get back. The snake is double timing it for the woods, so I let him go. He wasn’t overly big, was actually rather pretty (did I just say that???), and seemed to understand that in the woods, he would be left to live.

So far there has not been a snake #5. I will keep you posted.

I did suffer through several nights of snake dreams. I am not sure which is worse, the real snakes, or the dreams.

Well, that is about all the news here. I think that I had better get moving on cleaning the house.

God Bless,

Rachel

My Bolg Is Not Dead!!!!

It just seems that way. Anytime that I slow way down on posting (or just don't post at all :), it is because my life is too full of other (more important) things, and I just don't have the time to give to blogging. That said, life is very busy at the moment. However, as it is extremely warm outside right now, and most of the "more important" things that I have to do are outdoors, I am taking a break in the much cooler house, and blogging. Now, having bored you to to death so far, I will try to move on to more exciting things. But no promises. Everyday life is usually not all that exciting. Thank goodness, because if it was, we would all be worn to a frazzle very quickly.

Okay, so the news form here. The garden is in, the animals a well and healthy, the dogs are very lazy, the pigs are even lazier, the weather is too hot, the baby goats are all sold (except the two that we are keeping), I am tired of summer already, and Colin cut his finger today and had to get three stitches in it.

One of the less mundane, more exciting events (those that do not occur on a regular basis) is this:

*

A couple of days ago Lizzy was over here to help me with some gardening (and watch a funny movie) and we found a large, gray snake in the yard by the milking shed. She watched the snake while I went for the gun. The 22 was handy, having just been used in defense against some bad birdies that needed to go bye-bye, so I grabbed it. Unfortunately it was jambed, and while I struggled to fix it (Liz hurrying me along), the snake disappeared into the (very) tall grass of the goat pen. At first I was not too bothered. It was a bull snake, not dangerous, and it had headed for the woods. Then I started to remember more about it, thinking about how small the head had looked compared to the body. I told Liz that I though it was full of eggs, and that I was glad it was gone because I did NOT want it to lay them under my stacks of hay in the barn (mentally picturing myself walking in one morning to do the milking and seeing snakes everywhere). Alas! I spoke too soon. Later that evening, Colin and I were down by the pig pen talking, as we headed back up, I wasn't paying much attention to where I stepped. I had just passed the exact spot where the snake had been earlier when Colin says, "oh look, there's the snake again". You can imagine my reaction. Standing on top of a pile of 2x4's I asked him what I could do to help him kill it. We got the gun and shot it (okay, HE shot it and I stood in the 2x4's), but the snake was not about to give up. It disappeared again, and we knew that it was in the milking shed. After examining the blood trail, we discovered it (you will never guess), under the pallets that hold the hay. I won't go into the gory details, but I will say that it was very determined to make it all the way under, and we were very determined not to let it. We won. Half an hour later, it was finished of for good, and the multiple eggs that it was carrying were finished too. After thinking about it for a while, Colin decided that it must have been in the barn for several days, because the cats had refused to sleep in there, and would not even come in at milking time to lick up the extra milk. This did not contribute a good feeling to my already disturbed mind. What did help was seeing the corpse thrown over a cliff, and knowing that snakes do not run (or would it be slither) in pairs. Now the cats are back in the barn, and I am carefully checking the floor over before I enter!

Well, time moves on, and so must I. Check back when you get a chance, my life may slow down a bit and I'll try to get some pictures up.

God Bless,

R.

*No, I did not pause in my snake killing to take a picture. This is just one that I got online, that looks like the one we killed.