It’s calving season. 4 down and 4 to go.

First born calf of the season is a bull calf. He’ll soon be a steer calf. ;)

7 more to go. And then there will be bunnies. The first doe I bred, or so I thought, doesn’t seem to be bred. So, I’ll wait another few days and put her back in with the buck and take the other doe out.

Finally got a pygmy billy goat. He’s marked a lot like GiGi.  He seems to be fitting right in. He’s happy as can be with 6 pretty girls to hang out with. He’s really small, so he’ll have to watch out for PITA who is at least twice his size and likes to assert himself as the ruler and master. We figure the kids will come late August or early September, assuming the girls will come in heat soon.

Spring really has sprung!

It’s Ag Days at the local mall.  Mr. Bird likes to go even though we live Ag Days at home every day of our lives.  There’s always a big crowd.  The kids, when they were smaller, liked the petting area.  Funny, because we have goats and rabbits to pet everyday and they don’t show that much interest.  Maybe because the animals are no longer babies?  The kids are old enough now to walk around by themselves.  Come to think of it, they still like the petting area. 

We’re still waiting for the first calf of the season.  We thought it would have happened by now because one or two of them are starting to show signs of being ready.  It’s a stressful time until we’re sure that everything is going well and we aren’t running into problems.  Constant checking.  We’ve had some bad experiences, but overall we’ve been very lucky.

The baby bunnies should be coming sometime next week.  I’m looking forward to that too.  Spring (weatherwise) is almost here!

I wonder where the flowers is?

Robins are out in full force. We were in the 70′s last week and over the weekend plummeted to the 20′s.

The cows will start calving soon and I have a bunny that should have kits in 2-3 weeks. I’ll breed my other doe when the first one has her babies so 4 weeks after that we’ll have more. That’s when the blues should start to lift.

I miss the kitten.

We’re STILL looking for a pygmy billy goat. I do have to say, again, how relieved I am that we did NOT have any kids over the winter. Too frigid for those 1-2 pound babies to survive outside. With the warmer weather coming it should be much easier this season.

The first significant snow of this winter season!

We’re supposed to have over 16″ of snowfall by this time for the winter.  We haven’t even gotten 2″.  As much as I hate to say it, I hope we do some catching up before summer.

This is a picture that hangs above our fireplace. It’s a photo of what our farm looked like before they sold it and separated it into different parcels. It was over 100 acres before. We have 35 acres and the original house and barn. Our property is the left side of the picture.

A dear friend of ours had this made for us. This farm was originally his family’s. He passed away a couple of years ago and we miss him. We still keep in touch with his wife. His mother passed away shortly before he did and she was also a wonderful person.

The farm doesn’t look the same now. The house has been remodeled. The chicken coop and the barn are still there. There are many more trees. The field on the right is now a driveway with a house on top of the hill. The children who grew up in the house lived a couple of houses down and would often come to visit and reminisce. There is only one of the children left and she is currently in a home. Before her brother passed away, he was also in a home because of alzheimers. We got a phone call one day and were told that he had found his way out of the home and got a ride. He said he needed a ride “home”. To him, “home” was our house. By the grace of God, we had accidentally left one of our doors unlocked. It was the beginning of march and all he was wearing was a light jacket and his pajamas. They found him in our dining room watching tv with our little dog watching over him. If our door hadn’t been unlocked who knows where he would have ended up. We were grateful that they found him safe and warm.

There’s no place like home.

This was what we saw from our hayfield when we got our whopping 30 bales out of 2 fields for a second cutting.  Like I said before, the lack of rain this summer really set us back.

Gigi’s been here about a month now and she fit right into the herd. She’s still a little shy around us and won’t immediately come and sometimes runs, but she’s curious and will come up to the fence when she thinks we have something for her.