We had 4 hens hatch out chicks this summer.  The boys noticed the hens go broody and were able to separate them and place them in their own small chicken tractor so predators didn’t bother them.  Within a few weeks each hen hatched out a batch of chicks.  I think we have about 24 new chicks running around here.  We have several more broody bantam chickens so we are awaiting to see if they are successful.  It’s always exciting to see the farm replicate itself and provide new animals instead of us buying them

For all those looking for farm fresh pork this fall, we have some goods news. Our first sow had her piglets! There were only five for this first time momma, but everyone was very excited to see the first pigs born on Vaughnshire.

I know I talk a lot about the Katahdin sheep we have.  We really do love the Katahdin hair sheep!  Someone asked us not too long ago why we have sheep on the farm.  The reason we chose the Katahdin breed was because of several reasons:  they do well in the South, they have hair and not wool so you do not shear them, they are excellent mothers and give birth easily (in most cases), they are resistant to many parasites and are relatively care free.  Right now, we are keeping all of our ewes and are selling the rams or raising the rams for meat.

Sheep are amazingly different compared to goats!  They are much easier and less hassle!   They also are easier to raise for meat compared to a cow.  A cow is much more time intensive and during the winter requires more care and food than the sheep do.  The sheep have been very hearty in feast or famine, flood or drought, bitter cold and extreme heat.

No..the baby isn’t dead…he was just born and is resting.

This morning, one of the ewe’s had twins.  She had one baby ewe and one ram.  We are thankful that the momma ewe and her babies are thriving and bounding across the field on this fine spring day.

Louisiana is one of the original ewes we bought.  She had twins last year too.

It isn’t a understatement that we have been swamped with activity here on the farm. This year has brought us many changes….many good changes for our family and we are starting to feel like we are gaining traction once again.

This spring, we are enjoying all the babies being born. We’ve had several different sets of sheep twins born recently. Baby lambs are so adorable!

We also had baby goldfish born which was is something we didn’t expect!

We are now getting lots of eggs from the chickens and even some from the ducks.

The boys have been working on repairing their “Indian Fort”. It’s served them well over the years and they have put a lot of hard work into getting it back in shape. So they have been measuring, drilling, cutting, sawing and nailing wood for days.

We are still having some cool nights but on the warmer spring like nights, we all love hearing the loud frogs.  During the day, the little ones are having a great time making frog homes for all their pet frogs. 

We also found the first snake of the season yesterday and it brought back really bad memories. I know warmer weather brings the ticks, chiggers and snakes, I just like to forget about it and hope they might just go away one year.

Also with warmer spring like weather comes the beautiful greenery in the leaves and grass. Which means the grass is going to need to be mowed soon. We’re taking a proactive approach on keeping the grass down this year. It’s an old fashioned lawnmower and natural fertilizer all-in-one!

We love having sheep on the farm.  Our 12 year old raises them, but we all love them.  It has been lambing season here on Vaughnshire farm.  We love having babies around here!

We’ve had mostly pleasant experiences this year, except for the one stillborn lamb the boys had to pull. That momma ewe is doing wonderfully though.  We weren’t sure if we would lose her or not.

The other ewes have done wonderfully.  They’ve all given birth to twins and have been excellent mothers.  Yesterday, one of our younger boys ran in to tell the family that one of the sheep had a baby…just one.  We all went out to take a look and by the time we arrived…there were two babies!  That was very exciting.

These two babies were very unique.  The ram lamb was huge.  The ewe lamb was a tiny thing.  Normally the rams are a tad bit bigger, but the twins are usually pretty close to the same size.  These twins are different!  We’ve never had this big of a difference in size.  They are both doing great though.

Tomorrow, the young shepherd is going to try to catch the babies to measure and weigh them.

If your not interested in hearing about our experience with pulling a breech lamb, you should just skip this post.

Our 12 year old has a thriving herd of 12 sheep.  He bought 4 sheep 2 years ago.  We’ve already butchered 2 and and lost 2 babies.  Overall, we love the Katahdin sheep.  They have been very easy compared to some of our other farm animals.

The book says 95% of the time, sheep lamb just fine without any help.  We recently had one of those 5% gone wrong experiences I don’t think any of us will forget.

One of his yearling ewe’s was due to lamb and was showing obvious labor signs.  The day progressed and during our periodic checks on her, it became obvious that she was in good labor but making little progress.  Being of the 95% belief, we thought for sure she’d have the lamb any moment.  When it became clear that she wasn’t progressing, the boys brought her down to a pen to check her out.

Our 12 year old put the gloves on and checked her finding only on foot presenting.  He knew that was a problem and tried to find the other foot.  It proved to be a very difficult needle-in-a-haystack search, but eventually he found the other foot and leg.

Even after finding the other foot, the lambs presentation was terribly wrong.  Eventually, we figured out that it was completely breech and one of the legs was twisted and broke (probably from laboring in the position it was in).

He tried to get the legs together and presented right while daddy held the momma ewe who was not happy and our older boy held the flashlight.  Our 10 year old took pictures, while I flipped back and forth in the sheep book trying to match up the malpresentation pictures in the book to what my 12 year old was telling us he was feeling and seeing.  It was one of those moment where you are thinking, “I can’t believe we are doing this!”

It became apparent that the lamb was probably already dead and that if they didn’t take more forceful, drastic measures to get the lamb out, the ewe would probably not make it either.  Eventually, the guys were successful in pulling the breech lamb.  The baby lamb was a stillborn little ram who was terribly malpresented with a twisted and broken leg.

After they pulled the lamb, the ewe was in a bit of shock and didn’t move for quite a while.  They gave her a shot  and some molasses water and watched her in the pen until morning.  The released her out in the pasture and so far, almost 2 weeks later she is doing well.  Thankfully!

A couple of days later, another on of his expecting ewes, also a yearling, had a healthy delivery of twins!

So the children were right, our dairy goat, Mally, had twins!  Finally on Feb. 1st, she gave birth the day after the other goat had her baby!  Newborn goats are so cute!  She had one doe and one buck who have some very nice Alpine colorings.  The momma and babies are called Cou Blanc Alpines which means that they have literally a ”white neck” – white front quarters and black hindquarters with black or gray markings on the head.

Our daughter had a nice surprise out in the pasture yesterday. 

One of our goats gave birth to a very cute little mixed nubian alpine doeling, which we weren’t expecting.  The boys found the baby and thought it belonged to Mally, the goat who we have been anxiously awaiting to give birth.  They ran inside to announce that Mally had her baby!  We were all excited and jumped up from the table to go see!

We soon discovered that the baby wasn’t Mally’s and was in fact from one of our other goats — a first time momma.  

Feed corn, winter snow and boyhood farm work are beautiful sights!  The boys went up to a new feed store that just opened up in town.  They bought some bags of corn for $5.75 for a 50 lb bag.  They were doing good to get the trailer unloaded and the feed put away in the barn with the down pour of snow we were having.  After they unload and stack feed bags, they bolt in the back door wanting hot cocoa.  They take the layers of  coats and gloves off  as I fix them a warm mug of raw milk hot cocoa…something our family loves on cold days like today!  I love hearing them talk about how many pounds they lifted and watch them compare muscles.  Boyhood farm work is so good for young men!

If we were real agrarians, we would have a corn crib full of corn and hay piled high in our hay loft that we grew in our fields this summer.   But we aren’t experienced agrarians yet.  We’ve experienced a lot of what not to do.  (like the example we give here)

When you start living on a farm, you quickly realize how inadequate your farming efforts really are.  It’s good to put your hand to the plow so to speak and start somewhere and be grateful for the work you do get done.  However, as spring turns into summer….summer to fall….and fall to winter….the grass disappears, it gets cold and your animals get hungry!  A real farmer would plan to store up enough food for the winter.  Just like a real farm wife would still have a pantry full of wonderful food stores conveniently stored away for the winter blasts.

We’re grateful for the lessons we are learning on the farm.  We’re grateful for the challenge, for the growing and the stretching.  We’ve come to understand the completeness and depth of the words provision and preparation.  Our 24 hr. Stuff-Mart cultural mindset is completely opposite of the agrarian life where forethought and preparation are vital to survival.

Ideally, we would love to find a resource for buying bulk corn and mixing it ourselves.  It’s too cold to think about that now though.  We’re collecting the last pieces of firewood and hoping to hold out until spring so we can start over and try preparing for winter again!

I found some other “When It’s Cold Outside” posts I’ve written in the past.  Here are just a few.  There are a ton more:

When it’s Cold Outside and the Natives are Restless

The Not So Glorious Agrarian Life in the Winter Time

Ice Weather

Farming Frustrations

Farm Boy’s Birthday Saga

Talk about a cowboy. Here we have Tex the son in the cowboy hat, riding on Tex, mommom’s freezer beef.

The stated idea was to use a cow to round up the cows. I’m not so sure that worked well. But, I think the real objective of having a little farm adventure was achieved!

He knows she’s a moo cow and he’s not afraid of her.  He runs right up to her and moo’s with her.

He doesn’t like the chickens much.  He tricked them by walking around the yard with an empty feed scoop.

They kept begging.  He kept shouting “NO” and pointing his finger at them.

He’s a small farm boy….but he loves helping his big brothers out!

We have a pregnant dairy goat about to give birth to one or two kids.  I’m guessing one…others in the family are guessing twins.  We are anxiously awaiting!  The children have been updating us on her progress as they have been checking on her throughout the day every day for a little while now.  The first signs are usually that they notice the pregnant goat or animal is gaining weight and has a growing belly area.  Near the final stages of pregnancy in dairy goats, the milk goat’s udder will start to swell or fill and become very large in comparison to what it was previously. 

We suspect our dairy goat is within a few days of birth.  She has a very full udder, very fat and her birth canal area is looking quite different.  The children checked her tail ligaments.  Today, she’s indicating it will be very soon. 

Here’s Mally.  She is 75% Alpine and 25% Nubian….which will give your goat airplane ears!  She’s more friendly than the most Alpines and I suspect that’s the friendly-I-think-i’m-human-nubian blood in her. 

Here’s another good dairy goat resource we enjoy reading with detailed instructions and great pictures on how to check your doe’s tail ligaments and tail head:  Fias Co Farm

Our boys are the main milkers here on our farm.  They have strong hands to prove it.  I am very grateful to them for all their hard work around here.

Having a milking animal changes life pretty dramatically.  She’s a big part of the family.   She requires attention and care daily, but we are rewarded with lots of good fresh milk.

May still has a calf nursing on her.  So we are managing the calf and the amount of milk we are getting.  The calf is close to weaning.

The ponds have been frozen.  Not yet frozen enough to ice skate all the way across.  Although they have had some good laughs at the ducks slipping and sliding all over the pond.   The kids are sure hoping the drop in temperature coming up later this week will do the trick.

Yesterday our sweet momma ewe, Georgia, had two baby rams.  Momma and babies are all doing wonderfully even if it was 9 degrees last night. 

We are glad the rams are thriving and “boinging” around like lambs do.  We have some other ewes that are due to have babies, so we are all anxiously awaiting the new lambs this season. 

Newborn lambs are so incredibly soft….and cute….

It’s cold…very cold.  The boys enjoy updating me on how cold it is outside.  It’s been below freezing for a couple of days. 

We’ve had a busy first few days of the new year and all very eventful.  The boys heard coyotes out one night while doing their chores that they said they were so close that it ”made their heart leap into their throat”.  Today, one of our ewe’s had twin baby lambs.  We were all guessing that with the extremely cold weather, the ewe’s were going to start having their babies.  Today she did and several of us were able to see her giving birth as we watched from the upstairs window. 

I hope to get some pictures of the cute lambs soon. 

We love May the Milk Cow.  She has a bull calf that is about 6 weeks old now.  They are doing wonderfully.  We have an abundance of winter milk for which we are all thankful for. 

Having that milk drastically cuts our grocery bill as well.  Of course there is a lot of work that goes into getting that milk to the house everyday.  We love the fact that we have a handful of very energetic boys who can milk the cow now.  We look back at when we started farming and see a huge leap in what the boys can do now.  It’s amazing.  We have a 3rd cow milker in training currently. 

We’ve moved up the younger ones to take over some of the chores the bigger ones use to do.  Like collecting eggs…however, this has had its challenges.  A 13 year old is a lot more careful than say…a 7 year old….but after losing a few baskets of eggs to mysterious accidents…like tripping over the goat…he’s well on his way to becoming an expert egg collector.  He hands me baskets of eggs every evening….and now they are consistently not broken!

The 7 year old and 8 year old are also delivering slops to the pigs everyday.  That usually goes without incident, except recently somehow they lost the slop buck on their way back to the house.  I don’t understand how things like that happen…but they do.  Hopefully, we will have some pork soon. 

At the end of this year, our meat is almost gone and we’re having to reevaluate our “planning” on raising meat.  It should be timed so that you go from butchering to butchering without lag time waiting on animals to get ready.  When you are about to butcher your cow, don’t get so caught up in the glories of having your very own meat to stock your freezer with that you forget about the next cow that should be making its way into your pasture before or around the time you butcher the first one.  Keep the cycle going or you will end up with an empty freezer and no “next cow” ready to be butchered. 

Lessons learned…

It’s a busy time…farming and home schooling and livin’ life.  We’ve had a full Fall already with difficult funerals and happy weddings.  We’ve tried to slow down.  I’m beginning to think that is not possible.

So we’ve been hitting life full speed ahead and making progress some days…and other days not so much.

As the day winds down and our family takes a seat at the family meal table, I look around at all those sweet faces.  The older boys and girls have worked hard all day.  The younger ones…not so hard.  The baby…was hard work.  It’s loud and busy.  They’ve all got something to say about something that happened that day and when we ask them, “So, what did you learn today?”  They are eager to talk about all the things they learned.

I’m blessed to know my older sons learned something new in math and figured out how to castrate one of their lambs and ring the pigs noses without adult oversight.  My younger boys figured out how to fix the broken electric fence and informed me that their school notebooks need new notebook paper.  I’m thrilled to know that my daughter learned her Latin words all by herself, started reading a new book and finished writing her historical letter to a friend at church.

I always enjoy hearing what the little ones learned.  Whether it’s the 3 year old telling us that the kitty cat doesn’t know how to eat peanuts or the turtle likes his food washed…. or something a bit more vague, like our 7 year old boy announcing what he learned,  ”I learned how to turn that black thingy on with that switch thing ….you know….but I didn’t have the right tools to skin it.”

Hmmm…!!!  We eventually deciphered what he was trying to say and told him not to bother the power tools and to forget about skinning the dead bird he found…just bury it.

In the midst of a busy life, are we really taking the time to slow down and savor those moments with our children?  I’ve found that those little children grow fast.  Time is never still. It’s always progressing and passing.  I’m trying to capture the sights and sounds and find complete enjoyment in spending these days with my children.

Cousins watch the momma cow as the baby calf nurses.

One of our boys read an article outloud to the family this morning about cow gestation and how to tell impending labor.  It was quite informational and much more interesting than an A Beka reader.  Then we went outside to check on her.  No baby yet, although, she is definitely showing signs.  We are anxiously awaiting. 

Usually if they give birth before the due date it is often a heifer and giving birth after the due date is often a bull.  Hmm…we were really hoping for a heifer….it’s not looking like that as she is overdue. 

In case you have been wondering where we went…we’re still here.  I amazed at how busy life is.  Fall is already here in full swing and it is absolutely amazingly gorgeous outside.  Every year, I stand in awe at the amazing painting that appears.

We have a lot of things coming up in the near future.  I have a lot to update here on the blog, but for now, here’s a brief update:

• We have a new milk cow (new to the blog..we’ve had her a couple of months actually) that is about to have a baby any day now.  Her name is May and she has been an exciting addition to the farm.  She’s got spunk and personality plus and after our rocky start with her (she ran away the first day we got her and it took 2 days to find her), we are enjoying having her around even if she does consistently challenge the fence lines!
• Our sheep herd is growing.  I love watching the sheep in the field.  They are a favorite around here.  They are easy to maintain and require little care.
• The milk barn has been undergoing some work.  The boys have been trying to make it more functional.  They are trying to remove the rigged setup of bungee cords, bailing twine and tarps and replace it with a real roof that doesn’t leak or look so make-shift hillbilly.
• Our old milk cow, Layna, is doing better than expected.  She’s well loved around here and we could all learn a thing or two from her very laid back, slow-going personality.
• We’ve lost a lot of baby animals.  We lost our baby goats that were born this summer and some kittens too.  We’ve also lost some of our bottle fed infant cows.  Our 8 year old has been very stretched in dealing with these losses, as he has been very involved in their care and feeding every day.  He announced that he was going to go out of business if things didn’t pick up soon.  Haha!  He’s a brave boy who has been taking his job seriously.  He currently is in better spirits and has been talking about maybe getting a few more baby cows!  We are attributing a lot of the newborn/baby losses to weather related issues and being out of town when we needed to be attentive to the babies.
• The fall garden is pitiful.  Nothing has been planted and the only thing the garden has to show for itself is dying okra trees and pepper plants that are still loaded with hot peppers.  I think we’ll focus on getting the plastic on the greenhouse and get  it ready for planting spring starter plants.
• We just completed a wonderful apple order.  These fall apples have been delicious.  I wish I had more apples to sell, but we are out.  Next year, we will order more.  It’s inspired me to get apple trees going around here.
• And there’s more on the horizon.  We are putting together some very exciting Webinars for those interested in family farming and agrarian living.

May with baby belly