Farm Life

Our little farm is a little piece of sanity in the crazy, busy world. Our 3 milking goats are producing 2 gallons a day after one of them supplies all the milk her 2 month old baby can drink.

After the baby is weaned, I suppose we'll get 3 gallons a day.

We have a young buck and a funny ewe we'll swap for another doe goat on the 28th (finally!), and we're having a lot of fun looking though pictures of the available does.

One of the goats we are milking right now should be having more babies around the middle of august(surprise, surprise), so I guess that will bring the saleable milk quantity down a little bit for a little while again.

We're getting 8-12 eggs a day from our 13 laying hens, and are eagerly waiting for this year's 20 hens to start laying (any day, now). We have 80 chickens growing in the pasture, eating their way through the weeds and sod until the target butcher date in Oct.

Our garden is doing nicely--the ducks and goose ate all the broccoli, most of the beets and peppers, and they must have eaten the corn and a few squash plants, so whatever is left by the time everything is ripe, will be ours. Two of those ducks are now in the freezer, and the goose has been exiled to the pasture with the chickens.

All of the milk and eggs and meat chicken are sold at church, and I'm sure we could sell more than we could raise. I have to turn people down every week.

There certainly are enough customers for the small farmer if only he didn't have to fight the big businesses all the time. They are able to advertise and produce a lot more, but certainly not a better product. And, of course, the big government gets in along with the big company for money reasons. In effect, if the government and big business is allowed to go on the way it does and has for the last 20-50-100 years, there will no longer be the productive small farm. There would only be the unproductive hobby farm left, and given time, the big business(wielding powerful money) will convince the big government that hobby farms and anything with any animal that might produce anything edible should be illegal for 'consumer safety' reasons. And then, they will chortle with the evil laugh as they 'earn' even more business. If you would like to know more, check out this site: http://www.nonais.org Here you can find out how to vote for the small farmer and for free enterprise in general. And now, I'll get off my soap box.

Enjoy your day. And your milk and eggs and produce (especially if they came from a small farm)

Tball and art camp

Here, finally are a few pictures from Tball:






I don't have any good ones of her batting or running the bases, but we'll be back at it on Monday. She has 2 more days of Tball, and then it's on to swimming lessons again.

This past week she went to a half-day camp for art. And this is part of what she brought home:



Her 'Fireworks' picture made by shaking a paint brush over the paper. She came home and said it would be a good way to paint the deck.

Jon's sister Sara and her family are here from Texas for a few weeks before they move to California. Their father has spent the last several weeks in the hospital recovering his health and strength and regulating his Parkinsons' medication a little better. He had pneumonia and other complications, but is doing much better--maybe better than we've seen him since Christmas--and can't keep still about what Jesus is doing for him. I'm sure his lengthy stay in the hospital is as much for the people working with him as it is for himself.

And in the meantime, Sara's two girls are just a year or two younger than Kristine; and they love playing together. Both of Sara's girls have great imaginations--Kristine's play is much more concrete and factual--so Kristine benefits is a big way through their playing together. They will be her sometime next week, and I'll get some good pictures.

All in all, we're happy, healthy and busy and hope you are too.