Monday, January 28, 2013

After a long hiatus, more homesteading adventures!

I apologize for the lack of activity going on over here, its been a wee bit busy since the holidays and I am just finally getting back into the groove of things. I always find it difficult to get back on track after a holiday, the kids fight doing their school and practicing, I fight getting back to the everyday after so much interesting activity. But alas I think we have gotten back into routine-and with that comes some adventures to share with you!

We have had some new member join the homestead and sadly lost a few as well... Both of the older girls horses foaled two weeks ago! Ohh the excitement of getting up early to go see if there is a new baby in the barn lol! Sadly Julianna's filly was born in the snow and got its one leg caught in the new wind fence. Its mama is so protective she hides as far away as she can and then has her babies in really terrible places-two years ago she had one right by a pond and the baby drowned *GRRR* So this new little filly didn't get found for a few hours, and it later showed evidence of frozen legs...I WILL NOT go into how this looks as it will make you cry, so my poor dear hubby had to put it down lastnight. We have not told our girl yet-was waiting for daddy to be home too. Seriously dreading the task.

We have also had two more litters of baby rabbits, and we don't know what is going on, but both batches have been eaten by the mothers gahh!!!! We are having a very heartbreaking year on our farm this winter! Please pray for my children as they are learning a few of life's heartbreaks all at once.

On to some more positive news-I am getting almost three dozen eggs a day now lol!! My barred rocks have started laying-the first egg we found from them was sooo tiny! It was the size of a small gum ball lol! They lay much darker eggs than my buffs, they are very pretty! Only a few are laying I think, so it won't be long before we will be having more eggs than I can sell! The barred rocks were supposed to be butchered by now, but they are not quite big enough, the weather hasn't been cooperating and my hubby has been working like crazy!  He has next week off though so hopefully we will be taking care of at least all the big roosters.

I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but a neighbor had some square bales for sale, we bought 100 of them to put around our house as we are still awaiting insulation and skirting. Well he was only charging 1.00$ / bale which is incredible for good hay. So we ended up buying all 800 bales. Well my dad and hubby decided it would be great fun to haul all the bales with the team and sleigh, as they only live two miles up the road. So they did! In - 20/25 below lol! The following pictures were taken just as he was getting in with his last load for the day around 4 ish so the light is not great. The first load the took straight out to the field and fed to the cows. They can get on about 75 bales/ load. The kids and I made a few trips, and I drove the team a couple times while he hand bombed them off to the cows. It was lots of fun-if not a little cold! I of course didn't get picks of the kids and I *grrr*.

So I will leave you with that! I have a few more post coming up so stayed tuned-and enjoy the pics lol!






No comments: