Finished!

We finished the fence Monday afternoon. Here are some pictures of the finished product.....
View #1.
View #2.
View #3.
View #4. As you can see, it comes about 12-15 feet away from the herb garden picket fence. Oh, and BTW, those trees are no longer there. We cut them down. No more fruit trees.... :( The price you must pay for a pasture. lol!
The animals are already enjoying it. :) We will mostly use it for horses but occasionally for goats.

For news around here.......Abigail and I started working today picking asparagus. Thus starts our summer job. ;) Oh, and tonight (I leave in about 20 minutes) I take my State Test for Driver's Training. Pray for me!

In Christ,
~Bethany~

Fencing!

What a beautiful weekend we had! It was in the 80's up until today! Now it's down to 55* and rainy but it's supposed to get warmer again tomorrow. Everything is greening up and getting all springy looking. On Friday we started working on the last big fence project we have planned for around here. It is in the front of our house, so it really changes the looks of things around here. :)

I'm going to show you how we do our fencing. I didn't take pictures of EVERY step...but I did get some. Hopefully I won't bore you to death. hehe!


We use a post hole digger that is run off the PTO on our tractor. This is an AWESOME tool! We could never have done all the fencing we did in as short a time that we did it in without it.
Only problem.....our PTO shaft if kinda broken so you have to reattach it for every hole.
After each hole is dug we clean them out so any loose dirt gets scooped out. This is also the way we would have to dig the holes if we didn't have the post hole digger. :)
I know....weird pic....but then you put in the post. lol!
Fill in the hole with dirt......
......stopping every once in a while to pack the dirt in.
Every so often you will have problems....such as when the post hole digger gets "swallowed" into the ground and gets stuck. Then you have to dig 'er out by hand.
Whew, it came out! Left an awful big hole tho!


Once all the fence posts are in...You have to set corner braces just so. These get a lot of pressure so they have to have to be sturdy and firm. Notice the wire in the middle of the brace pulling both posts together. This needs to be pulled tight, so neither post can move.

This ratchet pulls the wire tight.
Tightening the wire.

After putting in all the posts you can put up the fencing. We used field fence which needs to be stretched.
This is a old fashioned stretcher, but it works great! We hook it up to the tractor and crank it using those gears.
Nice and tight!
Abigail putting fencing staples in to keep the fencing in place.

Okay folks. I will post pictures of the finished product soon. It's all done...just got to get them all loaded up. Hope you learned a tip or two here! Oh, and if you have ANY fencing question....just ask. Most likely someone in our family will know. A little something about our farm....our goal is to have our property pastured or paved. :)

Good night all!
~Bethany~

Kickapoo Buck Kid

I have a permit. Well, it's just a temporary permit but it works the same as a regular permit. Dad and I drove down to IL to pick up a buck from Kickapoo. They have some AWESOME dairy goats, both Alpines and LaManchas. It was about a 5 hour drive each way so we left at 9:15 on Wednesday morning. I drove all the way there. Whew, that's quite a ways. We got there about 3:00 (we had stopped at a few places on the way down), looked around at the goats for a while, picked up the buck and were back on the road by 4:00. We got home around 9:15. Long 12 hour day. I slept a good portion of the way home tho. lol!
My temp. driver's permit.
A view out the window of Illinois. Wide open, awesome farm land. :)
Correct hand position of 9-3. hehe!
Driving down an Indiana toll road.
The buck kid. Sorry this isn't a very good picture of him but it's the only one we got. I'll try to see if I can get some more later today while they are outside.

Oh, and for everyone's information.....it's supposed to be in the 80s here the next few days. I'm kinda glad, but it's getting warm too fast. I think the bull calf is already suffering from the immense changes. Hopefully it's nothing too bad.

We are putting up some more fencing so I will be posting on that the next few days or so. I hope to have most of it up by this weekend.

Well, have a wonderful day everyone!

In Christ,
~Bethany~

Rain and more Rain

Rain, rain. That's all it seems to be doing around here lately. When what we think we need is sun and wind to dry out the earth so we can use our showers and toilets we get rain.....and more rain. Remember me saying a few days ago that I shouldn't say spring is here and we won't get any more snow....I was biting my tongue yesterday. No accumulations thankfully but there was some snowy/icy/rainy mix flying through the sky. It is has not only been rainy but it has been COLD. Really cold. The odd weather has not only driven us about crazy but is throwing our poor animals out of whack. The kids are getting used to it but the older ones all got a bout of the flu. This cuts production and I have to feed kids milk replacer which makes them not grow as well.

It is VERY easy to get frustrated during this time. We want SUN! It is very easy to see what we want at this moment. We do NOT want rain. However, we gotta get past that. We started looking at the positives of the rain. The hay fields are coming in awesome and we should get a great crop! The pastures are growing well. There are several states who are in a drought, even in the upper part of our state they are experiencing a drought. We don't need to worry about that! Plus.....April showers bring May flowers! :)

We were praying that God would stop the rain. I was thinking about it though and I was like "you know, this is really a blessing in disguise. Why should we pray to stop it?" So now we are praying that God's will be done. It's not easy to load up everyone's dirty clothes more than once a week and head off the laundry mat and spend a whole afternoon just doing laundry. It's not easy dealing with sick goats and trying to feed kids and balance orders. It's not easy trying to all take showers while draining the water out with a hose or shop vac. But....you know that big BUT....we know that God is taking care of us and has His reasons for this. We will still love Him and trust Him.

We are thankful however to see sunny and 80* this weekend in the forecast. :)

As for news around here, not too much going on. We did have a freak incident with Goldie (Candie's doe kid) last night. When I was walking past their pen I noticed her laying underneath the hay feeder looking dead. I picked her up and she acted almost paralyzed. She could hardly stand up much less walk. Her neck was REALLY swollen. I have never seen anything like it but she seemed to improve just with us holding her. Within in 15 minutes she could stand pretty well on her own. I am thinking the hay feeder had fallen on her neck and bruised it really bad. No idea why it caused her to have a hard time walking, but after I put some ice on it and by bedtime she was looking pretty good. Abigail and I put her down in our room but she kept trying to jump out so I put her in my bed. She laid right down like she knew this was where she belonged and we both fell asleep. Around midnight I grew tired of trying to lay around her so Abigail took her for a while. Several hours later she put her in the box and I guess she stayed there alright as long as I had my hand over there. She looked pretty good this morning.

Well, I should scoot. We may be making a drive down to IL to hopefully buy a buck kid this morning so I have some stuff to do.

Have a wonderful day!
~Bethany~

What's New

So I promised pictures of all the new stuff around here that I have missed in the last while. We are done with kidding, calving, and the only babies left to be be born around here should be ( I might be missing something???) 1 batch of kittens and we still have chicks to get.

I purchased my 4H hogs about a week ago. I still am getting one more. Dad also bought two for the family!!! I LOVE PORK! :)
Pig #1. I haven't named any of them yet. I will probably use this one to show. This is a barrow (castrated male).
Pig #2. This is a gilt (a young female, never been farrowed, or had babies, before). I will use her in case of emergency for fair, possibly at the fair as a pen with the barrow, or farrow her next spring. What do you think? I think it would be pretty cool to farrow a hog. She is pretty nice too.
All the pigs together. My two are in the front, Dad's are in the back. Mine are show hogs, his are not. Can you see the difference?
Our first batch of kittens! There are 4 down in there, 2 orange and whites, 1 gray, and 1 black and white.
Our new livestock trailer!!!! So way nicer than our old one! The floor in it is all new so that is really nice. We may repaint it, haven't decided yet.
Our new 15 passenger van! We bought this in February off of Ebay but I never did put any pictures of it on my blog. Such a fancy new set of wheels, huh? jk!
Okay, this isn't new, this is our old one but it is Dad's new work van. We officially own two 15 passenger vans now..... :)

Have a good weekend!

In Christ,
~Bethany~

It's coming......I hope!!!!

Do I dare say spring is on it's way? I've said that before and it promptly snowed 8 inches on me but this time it should be here to stay. Hopefully without all the rain we've been getting the last few days. :) Let's just say our septic won't be back anytime soon. lol!

Others are feeling the spring bug as well and I've noticed that blogging has become a lower priority which is great for me.....I don't feel so bad. ;) Anyway, here are a few pictures I took yesterday of spring approaching!
Our first blooming daffodils!!!!
Our lilacs are beginning to bloom! This is the first year I think we will actually get flowers on them.

While I had the camera out I got some shots of the animals around the farm. Imagine that.....:)
The big girls enjoying some sun and grass.
The babies looking for attention...what's new? :)
Movie just being cute as usual.
Emmy, isn't she just adorable? She's for sale.....hint, hint. lol!
Top (the Lamancha doe kid), Ellie (the brown heifer) and Blink (the holstein bull calf) just hangin' out in the sun.
Our purty, good lookin' rooster. He's a faithful old guy, been around for almost 4 years now!

Be checking back here in the next few days, I'm going to be posting pictures of new stuff around here......newest babies, trailer, etc.

Have a wonderful day!

In Christ,
~Bethany~

Sara

Nubian Buck 4 sale! SOLD

This is Staccato, our awesome Nubian buck. We are selling him along with all of our Nubian does so we can focus on the Alpines and Lamanchas. If you interested, click here to go to our website and get more information.

~Bethany~

Selling......Nubians!

We have made the decision to sell all of our Nubians so we can get down to 2 breeds to focus on. Our farm website has more info on each doe and prices. If you are interested or know of someone who may be interested post a comment and I will get back to you.
Sara - dry yearling
Sapphire - 1st freshening 2 year old. (my personal favorite of the Nubians....so sharp!)
Gypsy/Frosty - we dried her off this year, will make an excellent brood doe, throws awesome kids!
Savannah - yearling, first freshener. (another of my favorites!)

We also have Sapphire's doe kid for sale.

In Christ,
~Bethany~

Where is spring?

Hello everyone!
Wow, what a week! It hasn't been overly crazy, but just normal life can be crazy here. :) We had another foster girl for the weekend which went very well. I want to thank all those who prayed for it to go well.....'cause it did! :) We worked on our garage and got her all finished up. It is really nice, finally finished after all these years! Oh what that wonderful garage has gone through! When we were building our house we lived in the garage during the months of September, October and November. We ate/lived in the garage, slept in the camper in our driveway and did dishes in the driveway (even in November when there was frost on the ground and frost on forgotten dishes from the previous evening :)). So anyway, just a few short/sweet memories! :)
Here are the pictures of us working!
Elizabeth painting!!!
Me cutting....a special paint term....lol!
Ben.....quite the masterpiece, huh? :)
and......the professional! :)
Our addition....a total of 4 freezers right outside our door!!!

Yesterday it was rainy (yes, adding water to our high water table!!! :)) but we heard it was supposed to get cold during the night and we were on a winter storm warning. It's April 6 for goodness sakes, isn't spring supposed to be here yet? We didn't worry about it, hoping it would go around us. This morning at 3:50, Abigail and I woke up to find about 8 inches of snow on the ground and the electricity out. We got up then and looked around for flashlights for a while. We found one tiny little 14 LED flashlight and a kerosene lamp. Everything else was dead or broken. We headed out into the snowy, blowy, cold, early morning to start chores. Abigail came so she could put her horses in but did her chores while she was out there. I milked 15 of the16 (Abigail did one) goats by hand but didn't attempt the cow since she HATES being milked by hand. Abigail came back in and went back to bed. I came in, took care of the milk and went and laid down on the couch. We went into town and bought a nice new generator. Then we came home and I milked poor Vi (this was about 1:30) and feed kids. The electricity came back on around 6:30 p.m. We still have the cold temps and snow tho. :) I didn't get around to taking pictures even though it was just beautiful! The snow was sticking to everything like crazy because it was so wet. :)

Oh, one little announcement....Mindie kidded with a single doe kid so we are all done kidding! No more kidding posts everyone! Aren't you excited! :)

Well, that's the biggest news around here. Have a good evening!

In Christ,
~Bethany~