I have been writing less, mostly because I have discovered that sitting by a computer makes me feel awful.  I feel bad for all the people who spend many hours a day in front of these machines. April has been getting her head stuck in the fence almost daily (twice one day).  Her horns have…

  A week ago we picked up our buck for this year – a 2-month old Nubian – from my friend Denise.  We traded two piglets for him, which worked out great because she’s got tons of skimmed milk for pigs, and now the piglet load seems much more manageable (or feedable) at our place. …

I am so proud and pleased that both my girls can milk!  Rose has gotten quite good at it.  I really think she could milk the goats all by herself if she wanted to. We are planning a trip to France in May.  My great-aunt is getting very old, and I wanted to see her…

Matilda’s milk supply has been extremely variable lately.  Sometimes there’s only a quart, sometimes three quarts, sometimes more than a gallon, and we have to quickly drink the extra if we haven’t brought enough jars.  I didn’t used to like the warm milk, but I do now.  Something about chilling the milk changes it forever….

  The piglets seem twice the size they were last week.  They grow so fast!  They are still cute as can be.  It’s the way their little ears flap when they run.  If they sense any sort of danger, they scatter, running incredibly fast, and hide. One evening as we were just about to shut…

On Friday Matilda was not to be seen when I was getting her barley and hay ready to milk her.  I thought it was odd, because usually she is hanging around the gate, practically tapping her hooves with impatience.  So I knew something was up when I had to walk up there and find her….

 Piggies are growing – the weather has turned cold, but I think not as cold as was predicted.  The garden is covered, anyway, and some hay was brought up to the piglet nest, just in case.  Matilda’s milk that was at first so abundant is waning as the calf grows.  I can hardly tell her…

  Star had her second litter of piglets over the weekend!  This time we could tell that she was getting close – her udders started to swell, and she looked well, pregnant.  (still no piglets from Bee – we are trying to figure out why). She had TEN piglets!  That’s a lot of newborn babies…

  We just put 2000 lbs of lime per acre on the pastures.  That will be our big fertility investment this year.  For the past three years, we have invested quite a bit of money on organic fertilizer, but we have noticed that the pastures have become more and more acidic, favoring blackberries and broomsedge…

(If you can’t tell, April hates being picked up like this.  She is so cute, it’s hard not to.) It seems like this time of the year is always the most depressing.  The pastures are all dead, revealing how much junk is lying around, lost during the summer in the tall grass.  Tthe rye never…