It is hard work

No one ever promised you a rose garden.  Some famous guy quoted that about the Marine Corps.  Anyway, its been tough this week working and trying to keep up on the farm chores.  Fortunatelly Ryan handles most of the stuff during the day.  We have one goat in milk that we are milking once a day.  I am trying to figure out how to keep that in the schedule.  Ryan doesn't know how to milk yet.  He will be getting a lesson tonight around 8pm, when I get home. 

I am leaving for a womens retreat tomorrow for the next 9 days.  Whew, it was tough for me to give up and go.  Yes, I did say give up.  I have to give up alot of control over things to go on this trip.  I have to give up a week of work.  I have to give up milking and spending time with the kids, to recharge myself.  It is odd in the past 8 yrs I have only went somewhere by myself once for about 9 days.  But that was to go see my mom, so I was still with family.  It will be tough to let go for 9 days and only focus on me.  I have to set a standard of how much texting and calling I will do when on this trip.  I am always connected.  It is hard not to be connected. 

So I will leave with this picture of our little barnyard this morning. 
I will be back posting after the 28th. 

Kansas Patriot Guard

I am not sure if I have ever written about this on here.  I spent 8 1/2 years in the Marine Corps.  My husband spent 10 years in the Marines.  My little sister, just started her 4 years of service this past summer.  My grandfather was a Veitnam Naval Veteran and I am not sure how far it goes back, but military service is in our blood. 

This morning, I road with my Step mom and aunt, little brother and sister to a funeral for a fallen Naval brother in arms.  The Kansas Patriot Guard was creating a flag line to protect the family from protesters of the funeral.  I will not post the name of the organization that was protesting as I do not want to give them the "honor" of advertisement of their group.  Regardless, I was given a flag on a large staff and asked to stand tall and proud along side 200 plus other people.  The respect for our fallen comrad was so wonderful, I was brought to tears on a few occassions.  I saw veterans, babies, families and fellow military members, line around the funeral home. 

I pray that our presence, even at this sad time in their lives,  brought some peace to the grieving family.

Time Change, Snow, and goats feet

I worked most of Saturday, so my weekends are Sunday and Monday now.  Of course there was the time change and then the weather decided it wanted to hang out with winter some more.  So I awoke at 5am, but it was really 6am.  So I got up and started on mount laundry.  After starting the laundry, I ran out and did morning chores.  While doing morning chores I noticed a few things, one being that for some reason the chicken coop door was loose and no longer staying completelly closed.  So I knew we needed to get the door fixed with a latch. 

So I came in and had breakfast. 

After breakfast, I went out and fixed the door latch. Got the baby chicks set up in the big coop with some chicken wire to keep the big chickens out of their area.  Next, I worked on the  milk stand for the goats.  The head gate was not holding the goats properlly. So I went to Fias Co Farm website and adjusted my milkstand just a bit.  The headgate now matches theirs.  Although I still need to tweek it with the feed bucket.  Not sure but for some reason mine sits way to low and it makes milking difficult.  I am thinking of attaching it to the barn wall and just setting up that way.  Not sure.  Always a learning experience here on the homestead.

After I finished the stand, I started trying to figure out what is going on with JarJar one of my milking does, who I thought had dried up.  The other day I noticed her 1 yr old doeling was still trying to nurse. All the more reason to bottle raise your babies.  She also had some redness in her utter when she climbed up on the fence. I put her up on the stand to see what was all going on.  She had some flaking on the udder and was engorged.  I milked her out and cleaned the udder really well.  I have done research on mastist, but she does have a fever or hot udder.  So we will be continue to monitor. I looked at her hooves also.  I trimmed the hooves of two of the goats.

Then starts the rain. I went inside and created dinner.  Woke up to snow this morning...um where is Spring.