Chickens!

Philip is back on his poultry kick! haha. That man certainly has a soft spot for birds! He wants to get chicks. I think it's a good idea. Both layers and meat birds would be good. Also ducks. I want some ducklings SO bad! Wonder if it's all the Easter propaganda sinking the idea in our heads. The boys love chickens though, so it would be fun.

Our milk buyer, David Major, who makes cheese just up the road has a sheep farm, and the ewes are lambing right now. They are SO adorable! Philip and the boys have gone up a few times just to see the sheep. They love it!

I think we have Spring fever!! haha!!

Whoa! It's been nearly a year!!

I have been totally slacking on the entries, I know.

Life has been chaotic to say the least. Without divulging into a frenzy of details, I will give you the nutshell version. In August we sold the herd, to a guy in NY. The cows came down with lungworm, most of them died and now we are fighting a massive legal battle for both our money he owes us for the animals, as well as to prove that he neglected them. That is the EXTREMELY short and not so personal version.

We kept 11 milkers... Peace, Pansy, Katie, Half, Louise, Leah, Oriole, Paisley, Phila, Raye and Ruby. We are selling all of our milk to 2 local cheesemakers. Things are pretty tight, and we are trying to focus on figuring out our future.

Garrett and Sawyer continue to get bigger and smarter by the day. They never cease to amaze me. Garrett is in first grade now, and has lost his 2 bottom teeth. He is reading above level, and can write neater than some adult guys I know! Haha!! Sawyer is 4 now, and going to the Village Early Learning Center. He LOVES it. He is my little social butterfly!

I myself, went back to school. I started in January at the Community College of Vermont (CCV) in Brattleboro. I am currently taking 3 classes... Dimensions of work, Intro to Human Services, and English Composition. I am aiming at an associates degree for now.

So that is my very breif update. I will try to be better about updating regularly!

1st Grade!!

Garrett will finish out his Kindergarten year on June 12th. It's a little bittersweet to see my little boy become a first grader. He on the other hand, is seriously excited. He has learned SO much this year, and changed so much. I am so proud of him.

We put a request in back in December to keep him at the Center School. Since we live in the West Village, he would have had to go to the little school house for 1,2,3,and 4 and then back to the Center school for 5 and 6. Our request was granted, and he got a great teacher. Also one we know that atleast one of his close buddies, Kobe, will also have her. He is just thrilled!

I am really looking forward to seeing what the next year brings, and all that he learns and accomplishes! Kindergarten went by so fast!

The Farm...

Things around the farm have been unbelievably hectic lately. (Hence the lack of blog posts recently.) Our farmhand was gone for a month, so it was just Philip and I and an over abundance of work to be done. We plugged away and made it through.

We finally have all the heifers home from Richard Stickneys. He raises them for us all winter. All the ones that were bred by the bull calved in pretty much all in the same week, and most all of them had heifer calves! We just put all the heifers, older calves, dry cows and steers out to pasture. They are loving it!

Our bull, Remington is home now too. We are going to breed him one more round since he still is maintaining a good disposition and seems content.

We are getting ready to get the haying eqiupment ready and get the summer started haying soon.

Well. That is all I can think of now. The boys and Philip are all here, and ready for some lunch!

Haven't blogged much lately

I have been avoiding my blog really. I try to keep my updates on the positive side, and truth be told, there isn't much positive going on lately. Farming gets harder and harder as the milk price drops. We are trying to keep our chin up, and we are doing the best we can but the odds it seems, have been greatly stacked against us over the last few months. With that said, I do have a few positive updates about our family.

Garrett is doing awesome at school. We are so very proud of him. His teacher sent me a note telling my how nice it was to have him in her class, how well he was doing and that we is so proud of his family and his farm. Also that he is never mean to the other kids, and is a great friend to all. She said he is really enjoying being an artist and an author, and really proud of his work. Philip and I just beaming.

Sawyer is growing more and more everyday. He is totally into snakes and spiders and bugs. He is going to preschool more now and just loving it. He is also learning so much! I recently joined the board at his preschool. They had an opening and the director asked me if I was interested, so I decided to give it a shot.

I have been taking the cooking for life class the last 5 Thursdays, and our last class is next week. It has been so much fun! It's a free cooking class where we talk about nutrition, make a couple recipes, and get the ingredients to take home to make the recipe for our families. The last class we got $10 giftcards and took a field trip to Shaws, to try to plan a meal that consisted of all the food groups, for less than $1o. I picked Corn Chowder and whole wheat Bread and Strawberries. I bought everything except the bacon and milk which I had at home and it came to $9.78! Next week we will be getting a surprise gift for completing the class! Sometime when I have more time, I will post some of the recipes we made. The apple cake was awesome!

We figured out that I am allergic to Kiwi and Fresh Pineapple. A couple weeks ago I had a smoothie with Kiwi which has never bothered me, but my mother developed an allergy to it in her mid-twenties. I drank the smoothie and instantly my mouth and lips began to itch. I stopped drinking, since I knew those were symptoms my mom would get. Then the other night I bought a fresh pineapple and ate alot of it as it was so good. My mouth and lips and face started itching so bad and my mouth burned. I had to go in and brush my teeth and scrub my face and it still continued to be irritated for a few hours. No more Kiwi or fresh pineapple for me :( I am bummed as I love pineapple. Kiwi I can live without.

I think that is pretty much all for now. Today was an Easter, a wonderful but hectic day!!! I am exhausted!!

Spring Project Plans

Spring is in the air. Yesterday was so nice. We were able to keep the door open and open a few windows to air the winter yuckies out of the house. It felt SO good. The boys played outside in sweatshirts and mudboots. No hats, mittens or snowpants! YAY!! Well it got me thinking... Spring Cleaning. Here are a few things on our list to do this spring/summer.

1st and foremost, my main goal is for me to lose 15 pounds which will put me under 200, something I haven't seen on the scale since I was pregnant with Garrett. Also, to have Sawyer completely potty trained. I would like both of these to happen before my birthday, which is October 20th. Both very attainable goals.

We are also planning on repainting a few rooms in our house. We have been here for 4 years now, and are ready to change things up a bit. Painting is the cheapest way to go about that. Right now, our living room is a pale yellow, and gets ALOT of sunlight. Sometimes its even TOO much. We are going to be repainting that room LOGANBERRY. It's a deep reddish pink. A very nice color. Our Kitchen and Dining area are currently the same color as our hall and our bedroom, which is a lavender tinted white. Very pretty color, I am just sick of it. We hace decided on a green theme for these two rooms. The kitchen will be ROSEMARY and the dining area will be PEAPOD GREEN. Both the same color, one being a lighter shade than the other, since the kitchen doesn't get much natural light, but the dining room does. Our bathroom is now a blue, which I have never really liked, but I am thinking of painting it a PECAN DREAM color, which is kinda of like a tannish brown, and redecorating it in a brown/teal theme. Maybe. Still undecided on the bathroom.

The boys really want their room redone as well, but we haven't much thought about it yet. That may be a fall project. Garrett really wants a Star Wars theme... but they share a room so that will be tricky. He may just get a Star Wars bedset for his birthday. Also their beds need to be bunked again soon. The bigger they get, the less space that room seems to have, and all of their stuff ends up in the livingroom, and it drives me crazy!

Another project that MUST get done is our basement. It is a ginormous MESS. WE moved a bunch of furniture that we had been storing in the farmhouse when Philips parents moved out, and it was all just kind of tossed in their for the moment and hasn't been dealt with since. We have our farm office down there and my washer and dryer, and I would like to have my sewing area back up down there as well this summer. We need to have a major yardsale at some point!!

And last but not least, and I will most likely think of 10 more projects later... is going through clothes. My kids have sooooo many clothes it's ridiculous. I need to go through ALL of their winter stuff and decide what is worth saving for next year, what needs to be consigned, handed down or thrown out. And I need to do the same with the summer stuff as I slowly unpack it. I got out the T Shirts yesterday since it will be warm enough for jeans and T's pretty soon. We have awhile yet until the shorts and tanks and swimming stuff need to come out.

Well thats all for now. Wish me luck on my list. Unfortunately I am the worlds WORST procrastinator, and get all these big ideas and then never finish.. BUT, I really want all of this stuff done, and will feel so much better once it is.

Bale Moving

Philip has been trying to get all the roundbales home from all the fields in his spare (haha...spare) time. Well he was finally able to finish the job today! For awhile it was looking like we would run out of feed before we'd be able to get on the fields again, but we just had a few nights where the weather was cold enough to freeze the ground enough, and he was able to work on them alot today and yesterday. Now they are all back and we have plenty of feed to go until our turnout day of May 1st. Such a relief!! Good Job Philip!

Maple Sugaring!!

A sure sign that spring is on it's way! On Saturday, Philip, the boys and I went to Allen Brothers to grab breakfast since Philip had some extra time with Steven working. We got food and went up over Hartley Hill in Saxtons River to check out the Beefalo and Belted Galloway herds up there. Philip mentioned to me that he had been craving sap, and we pointed out some buckets to the boys and started to explain the sugaring process. On the way home we passed the Major Farm and saw that our vet, Stephen Major was in his sugar house boiling, so we stopped by. The boys got to see it all! Stephen showed us the buckets and taps, the sap line and tanks, the boiler, the woodfire, and all the wood it takes. Garrett and Sawyer had a blast helping Stephen and Daddy prepare the wood. Sawyer was a little upset when Seamus the Golden Retriever took his stick though. They worked it out. Seamus quickly found another one that was just as interesting and moved on. We got to taste sap, Daddy drank 2 hole cups full!! We tasted the syrup when it was quite done, and then again when it was all done! YUM!! We watched as Stephen filtered the finished syrup and then Garrett helped him to grade it. FANCY!!! yay! While we were waiting for the syrup to finish up, we went sledding on the little hill next to the sugarhouse. Boy was that FUN! We headed home when all was said and done, and two tuckered up little boys curled up on the couch with a movie. It was so much fun!!! Thanks Stephen!

Tango!

Our cow Lilac gave birth in the wee hours of this morning, assisted by her loyal farmer. She was pregnant with a Jersey/Angus cross, that we have been anxiously awaiting for 9 months and hoping and praying for a healthy heifer calf. Philip guessed the other day that she would calve on her due date, March 8th. (She proved him wrong by 40 minutes! Women love to do that!) Last night we went to Brattleboro and stopped at the farm on the way home to finish up, about 9 pm. Lilac had cool ears showing that she was flirting with Milk Fever, a calcium deficiency. She had been in labor since 6pm and still hadn't calved. Philip gave her a calcium tube, and came home. He went to bed at 10pm, after deciding that he would get up at midnight, and run down to the barn and check on her. He went down, and could see that she was dancing around ready to go. He helped her by pulling on the calf, which was resisting him. The calf kept pulling its legs back as Philip tried to pull them out. (Calves come out front feet first, then head then body) He delivered the calf with minimal assistance. IT WAS A HEIFER!!! YAY!!!! We named her Tango. She is just beautiful!! She was born at 12:40 on March 9th. Lilac was given another tube, and was able to fend off Milk fever thus far. Philip cam home at 1am and went back to bed until 3:30 and Lilac and Tango were both doing well this morning. She is a big calf, the most beautiful dark brown almost black. She favors the beef body and nose, but overall is very feminine with gorgeous eyes. We couldn't be happier with her. She is going to be raised as a replacement to our beef Brood cow, Leda and will get to raise her beef babies. Leda is pregnant right now, but this will most likely be her last calf, as the twins did a number on her and she is almost 6. Not old, but old for a beef animal. SO exciting!!

In Like a Lion...

Well March is officially upon us, and giving us the traditional spring in New England weather. Don't like it? Wait a minute and it will change! Yesterday was 53 degrees and sunny and beautiful. Today is 35 and snowing! Mud season came right along with the short warm spell we had, and our unmaintained road has gotten pretty horrendous. Still passable, but barely. Times like this I miss my Subaru, although my Honda van did really great all winter. I am really looking forward to spring blossoms, and warm weather and all the mud drying up. Long walks on the dirt roads, the boys being able to play out on their playset, and having the windows open. I am also looking forward to packing away winter boots, snowpants, hats mittens and coats. That stuff is so bulky and has been taking claim to my kitchen far too long now. So heres to hoping that while March has come in like a Lion, it will go out like a Lamb!